Walter Brueggemann's 19 Theses

In September 2004, Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann, who has recently  passed away, sat with a group of church leaders for a theological discussion as a part of the Emergent Theological Conversation series.

He brought with him a working document that he called his “Nineteen Theses,” a series of convictions he had developed over the years that he hoped would seed the discussion times.

Short, succinct, penetrating, these nineteen statements are an interesting and I think, helpful agenda for a life committed to the service of God’s Kingdom.

*** *** ***

1. Everybody lives by a script. The script may be implicit or explicit. It may be recognized or unrecognized, but everybody has a script.
2. We get scripted. All of us get scripted through the process of nurture and formation and socialization, and it happens to us without our knowing it.
3. The dominant scripting in our society is a script of technological, therapeutic, consumer militarism that socializes us all, liberal and conservative.
4. That script (technological, therapeutic, consumer militarism) enacted through advertising and propaganda and ideology, especially on the liturgies of television, promises to make us safe and to make us happy.
5. That script has failed. That script of military consumerism cannot make us safe and it cannot make us happy. We may be the unhappiest society in the world.
6. Health for our society depends upon disengagement from and relinquishment of that script of military consumerism. This is a disengagement and relinquishment that we mostly resist and about which we are profoundly ambiguous.
7. It is the task of ministry to de-script that script among us. That is, to enable persons to relinquish a world that no longer exists and indeed never did exist.
8.  The task of descripting, relinquishment and disengagement is accomplished by a steady, patient, intentional articulation of an alternative script that we say can make us happy and make us safe.
9. The alternative script is rooted in the Bible and is enacted through the tradition of the Church. It is an offer of a counter-narrative, counter to the script of technological, therapeutic, consumer militarism.
10. That alternative script has as its most distinctive feature, its key character – the God of the Bible whom we name as Father, Son, and Spirit.
11. That script is not monolithic, one dimensional or seamless. It is ragged and disjunctive and incoherent. Partly it is ragged and disjunctive and incoherent because it has been crafted over time by many committees. But it is also ragged and disjunctive and incoherent because the key character is illusive and irascible in freedom and in sovereignty and in hiddenness, and, I’m embarrassed to say, in violence – [a] huge problem for us.
12. The ragged, disjunctive, and incoherent quality of the counter-script to which we testify cannot be smoothed or made seamless. Because when we do that the script gets flattened and domesticated. The script gets flattened and domesticated and it becomes a weak echo of the dominant script of technological, consumer militarism. Whereas the dominant script of technological, consumer militarism is all about certitude, privilege, and entitlement this counter-script is not about certitude, privilege, and entitlement. Thus care must betaken to let this script be what it is, which entails letting God be God’s irascible self.
13. The ragged, disjunctive character of the counter-script to which we testify invites its adherents to quarrel among themselves – liberals and conservatives – in ways that detract from the main claims of the script and so too debilitate the focus of the script.
14. The entry point into the counter-script is baptism. Whereby we say in the old liturgies, “do you renounce the dominant script?”
15. The nurture, formation, and socialization into the counter-script with this illusive, irascible character is the work of ministry. We do that work of nurture, formation, and socialization by the practices of preaching, liturgy, education, social action, spirituality, and neighbouring of all kinds.
16. Most of us are ambiguous about the script; those with whom we minister and I dare say, those of us who minister. Most of us are not at the deepest places wanting to choose between the dominant script and the counter-script. Most of us in the deep places are vacillating and mumbling in ambivalence.
17. This ambivalence between scripts is precisely the primary venue for the Spirit. So that ministry is to name and enhance the ambivalence that liberals and conservatives have in common that puts people in crisis and consequently that invokes resistance and hostility.
18. Ministry is to manage that ambivalence that is crucially present among liberals and conservatives in generative faithful ways in order to permit relinquishment of [the] old script and embrace of the new script.
19. The work of ministry is crucial and pivotal and indispensable in our society precisely because there is no one except the church and the synagogue to name and evoke the ambivalence and too manage a way through it. I think often; I see the mundane day-to-day stuff ministers have to do and I think, what would happen if you talk all the ministers out. The role of ministry then is as urgent as it is wondrous and difficult. 

From 2004 Emergent Theological Conversation with Walter Brueggemann, September 13-15, 2004, All Souls Fellowship, Decatur, GA.

Renewal and Release - Part 1

Many years ago, a small group of believers challenged the reactionary autocracy that the mainline Church had become. The church had imposed a creedal legalism on the people that effectively separated the ordinary man and woman from the simple but life-changing message of New Testament faith in Christ.

This new radical movement wanted to by-pass the religious and clerical constructs of the day and call believers to a simple Spirit-directed, Bible based faith. They studied the Scriptures together; they relished their common unity around the bread and the wine, and they proclaimed Christ - not the rituals and intrigues of established religion. The ‘brothers’, as they were known, coined the old Augustinian phrase: “In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; and in all things love.”

The fearless preaching of their leader disturbed the Church and the religious culture of his day so much that he was put to death by the religious establishment of his day! 

I speak of course, of Jan Hus and the Moravian movement of the 1400s. Though their legacy was to pave the way for the first large-scale protestant mission movement and for the Reformation a century later, the entrenched church culture of the day pushed their little movement to the very margins.

The Scripture story by which we live is about the conflict between two Kingdoms and their respective cultures – The Kingdom of this world with its powers and principalities versus the Kingdom of God, so radically proclaimed by Jesus.

The story of redemption is about personal  ‘culture change’ – it’s being birthed into God’s kingdom, a new heart and a new mind leading to new attitudes and new behaviours. Discipleship is about the lifelong, intentional reflecting on our attitudes and behaviours in the light of God’s calling. “Be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”

The people of God are to be this peculiar ‘halfway’ people – journeying from Egypt to the Promised Land with God. Learning to put off the mental bondage of captivity and becoming the free covenant people of God – a Light to the nations!

And yet the Bible is marked by struggle, failure, grace and redemption. The people of God are always struggling to leave behind the gods of Egypt and Canaan. Every Judge and every King of Israel struggles with entrenched culture. Which god are we serving? Which belief system? The tribes and clans of Canaan are married into and slowly their culture becomes endemic and Yahweh is marginalised. All through the stories of the Judges and Kings there is a downward spiral ending in exile to Babylon – and then grace, and God grows a new shoot from the dead stump.

In the New Testament most of the letters are written to deal with cultural issues – almost none of the Pauline epistles are about ‘vision’ or ‘governance’ or ‘programmes’ – it’s all about Jewish Old testament culture or Gentile permissiveness or Gnostic super spirituality or the spirit of Rome – humanity’s greatest attempt at heaven on earth contrasted to the Kingdom of God’s culture - and it’s very painful for Paul and the other leaders! Two steps forward, one step back!

The history of God’s church is the same – The slide into Christendom with Constantine through to the valiant resistance of martyrs like Jan Hus, culminating in Martin Luther’s nailing his 95 theses to the Wittenberg cathedral door and unleashing a chaotic, powerful reaction to the decadent culture of the medieval church.
The evangelical movements or ‘Awakenings’ of the 18^th and 19^th century revolted against the immovably, nationalistic state churches of the era. You see it in the evolution of the various movements such as the Wesleyans, the Salvationists, the various Disciples, Adventists, Brethren, and others. These various ‘waves’ - overseas missions, Pentecostalism, assorted para-church movements, the church growth era, and the emerging church all emerged in response to ossified church culture and each birthed fresh, fluid expressions of faith.

Most new church h movements tumble out of such turbulence. How wonderful that the radical Moravian slogan of four hundred years before should also mark the spirit of new movement too!  “In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; and in all things love.” The rich chaos of the Spirit of that time spawned many related but divergent movements. Movements always diverge and differentiate into more sharply defined entities. Out of the turbulence of the book of Judges, comes the sombre orderliness of Kings! Movements have always become ministries and then machines and then slowly un-noticed by their now conservative guardians, they freeze into stone monuments. But God in his grace sows seeds into the cracks of the weathering stone and new green shoots emerge.

And now the wheel has turned again and in 2000’s the fresh new movements of 200+ years ago are almost monuments themselves. Movements tend to be chaotic! Their members ‘live a conviction’ rather than ‘go to work’. They are highly relational, green-zone, fluid, self-organising, team focussed. The leaders proclaim the story rather than the policy! They are prophetic! They are imaginative culture-shapers – and their people interpret and build the new forms, experimentally, under-the-surface, in poverty, by faith, with passion. They expect resistance and difficulty, and learn to negotiate the possible. Sometimes they die prematurely. Too often it’s the dominant system and culture and that asphyxiate them! 

We see that our inherited paradigms are failing! Australia is not a Christian nation! Our numbers are declining; churches are aging and for most of the younger people in our society they seem way out of touch! This is no longer about servicing our going concerns but with urgency praying for renewal and creatively going out on a limb. If we fail, so be it!

We don’t want to be like the good proprietors of Cobb and Co anxiously peering out at the noisy T-model Fords puttering along asphalt roads and then turning to design a better horse! Cobb and Co exists no more! In a few years the motorcar will either be in terminal decline or will have re-invented itself for a new age. We pray for a cultural shift. How can we avoid either being immersed in consumer modernity or fortressed off from the world in a 1950s bubble.

What we aspire for our churches is cultural shift: A missionary paradigm; a bible-narrative from which to live; a contextual mission mindset; a centripetal culture, a discipleship culture, an incarnational mindset; an empowering leadership; a ‘sent’ membership and so on. 

This is not about change of programs but change of paradigm.

So – what might we respond? Our methodology will need to be different. Culture is changed in vigorous relationships, in sound pedagogy, in personal spirituality, in self-awareness, in being enabled to become response-able. It means we need to be modelling and delivering the opposite to the command and control corporation.  New movements rarely flourish long in tightly hierarchical organisations. Edgy ideas come from the edges. Can our respectable institutions, really become  dangerous insurgencies?

Click here for Part 2

Renewal and Release - Part 2

(From Part: 1) ... So, what might be the cultural shifts we need to consider if we are to see renewal? Here are some to think about. What would you add? What would you subtract from the list?

Theology rather than Tradition: It is encouraging to note the shift in emphasis from traditions and rituals, to a focus on our beliefs and practices. Grappling with the core elements of the story of the faith seems to be becoming key. This is important because our beliefs and attitudes will shape our actions into the future. Rediscovering and retelling the 'Story' for this age is key to becoming a living movement of the Spirit

Renewal rather than Reminiscing: This emphasis is necessary because it recognises two elements: (1) The Church of the day can never return to the form of the first century church. The New Testament does not function as a template or Church Growth manual to imitate; rather it is a living narrative that inspires.  (2) Our hope is in the reviving power of the living Spirit! Truly churches need to become a renewal movement more than a reminiscing or a resistance movement. Often we talk about going back to the good old days,'but the New Testament story is not a moment of truth frozen in time, but God’s quicksilver shaking the powers of this world!  We are the people of Jesus who are sent proclaiming a radical message that challenges the trends and patterns of the current age! We should be the least conservative of all people.

Interdependence ahead of Independence: At one end of the continuum are independent Christians and congregations with little collaboration and shared ministry. At the other end are ‘dependent’ churches locked into hierarchical systems that can strip the church of its creativity and spontaneity. We need to learn interdependence. Different shapes and emphases collaborating at a growing level of relationship to learn what God is up to. If the idea of 'covenant' expresses this idea of mutuality. There’s something about the messy dialogical, synergy that comes from discovering new ways forward together.

Says Ori Brafman (Spider and the Starfish):  “Cut off a spider’s leg, and you’ll have a seven-legged cripple[sic]. Cut off its head, and you’ll kill the spider. But cut off the starfish’s arm, and not only will it regenerate, but the severed arm will actually grow an entirely new body. Starfish can achieve this remarkable feat because, unlike spiders, they lack central control—their organs are replicated across each arm. Starfish are decentralized. Starfish forces don’t have a leader, clear structure, or defined hierarchy. These seemingly chaotic qualities make Starfish unexpectedly resilient.”

Unity rather than Uniqueness:  I recall sometime ago, hearing a group discussing whether a new attendee to their church shared the “DNA of their tribe.” It got me thinking about both of those words in regards to churches we are familiar with.  What is the non-negotiable DNA? The temptation for any faith movement or Church that has gone through many decades of evolution is to collect heroes, pioneers, traditions and practices that are of themselves admirable – but that append to the core DNA. A group that was once inclusive, bit by bit becomes exclusive, as fewer and fewer outsiders quite share “our DNA.” Subconsciously, as mores and shibboleths increase, the conservation of all this extra DNA brings inertia. 

For followers of Jesus – the DNA is the person and body of Jesus Christ! Time and again the Holy Spirit needs to renew us, and the New Testament needs to align us with what Jesus is doing in such a time us this. We gather humbly around the table in surrender, unity and love with all and any believers and to go out into the whole world extending the compassion and hope of the gospel. 

It means we serve and labour across creedal and cultural boundaries, we celebrate that: “in non-essentials there is liberty”. The aim is not for ‘them’ to become like 'us', but for the DNA of Jesus to bring all the tribes together in: “... complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.” (John 17:23). 

What would it look like to reframe our faith-tribes as an incubators or a mission agencies of this DNA for the whole Church, rather than one tribe amongst the many? Similarly, descriptors like ‘tribe’ may need reconsideration. 

Our language defines us. A ‘tribe’ is at the opposite end of the social continuum to a ‘movement’. Tribes are highly conservative. They live to their tightly defined rights of passage and rituals – they are creedal. Gatekeepers ensure that foreigners to the tribe do not enter and bring their DNA.  How can we ensure that we do not fall into the trap of celebrating our own perceived ‘uniqueness’ rather than the overwhelming imperative to ‘unity’ and renewal in Christ for all God’s people?

Multiplication rather than Management: Church multiplication has been declining. Over the last few decades the emphasis seems to have been more on strengthening existing congregations rather than multiplying new communities. The Australian population is growing. New and creative church initiatives have the added effect of inspiring Christians to be creative; evangelise courageously; and create fresh ways of understanding faith. Denominations have been closing down more churches than they have planted. We need a culture that gives permission to new and diverse mission projects, even if some of them fail.

Formation ahead of Function: Where there is an emphasis on equipping and supporting and releasing people, the ministry take care of itself. As we develop mature Christians and leaders, they will discover for themselves the ways of Christ. Deep discipleship based on solid pedagogy and a living spirituality are vital. We have not done discipleship and leadership formation very well over the last two generations. Our emphasis must be on the culture and attitude-shapers not the behaviour or program-shapers. 

- As a wise old friend of mine used to say: “The role of a leader is not to change people or their behaviours, but to change attitudes. People with changed attitudes will change themselves and their courses of conduct.”

I wonder how the Spirit will do it? I wonder what we will learn?

Trinity Sunday

Sunday (15/6) is Trinity Sunday. Trinity Sunday is the first

Sunday after Pentecost in the Western Christian liturgical calendar, and the Sunday of Pentecost in Eastern Christianity. Trinity Sunday celebrates the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, the three Persons of God: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. 

The idea of the Trinity can be a difficult to visualise. I've always enjoyed C.S. Lewis' ability to illustrate abstract ideas in a concrete way. Here's a snippet from Mere Christianity about picturing the Trinity:

Seizing the Day!

The church is being pushed more and more to the margins of society. It no longer assumes a role as the arbitrator of societal values and regulator of cultural norms. Though many lament the loss of close relationships with cultural structures, a return to the past is not possible.

Just as the children of Israel had the options to search for the old paths during its Babylonian exile or to look forward to a new and different future, so the church is confronted with the same options. It is this massive cultural shift and unstable social realities that demand a new role for the God’s people. They have huge implications for our ministry.

Walter Brueggemann, (who has recently passed away)  describes our time as one in which an old imagined world is lost, although still powerfully cherished. It is a time of bewilderment and fear because there’s no clear understanding of how to order our common imagination differently or better. He says:

I believe we are in a season of transition, when we are watching the collapse of the world as we have known it . . . the value systems and the shapes of knowledge through which we have controlled life are now in great jeopardy. One can paint the picture in very large scope, but the issues do not present themselves to pastors as global issues. They appear as local, even personal, issues, but they are nonetheless pieces of a very large picture. When the fear and anger are immediate and acute, we do not stop to notice how much of our own crisis is a part of the larger one, but it is." Walter Brueggemann, Hopeful Imagination (Philadelphia: Fortress Press), 45-46.

Brueggemann describes this transition as a troubling place to dwell, but it is exactly where we must dwell. There is no other time or place to which God has called us to live but this one.

Mary Jo Leddy describes it as a period when the great tapestry of religious life woven in Western Culture over several hundred years has unravelled and lies in tatters on the floor of our culture. She explains:

We are living through one of those historical in-between times when a former model of religious life (either traditional or liberal) is fading away and a future model has not yet become clear. One could be tempted to flee from the dilemmas of this moment to some more secure past, to the surface of the present, or to some arbitrary resolution of the future. These are real temptations and they can be met only with the faith that this is our hour, our kairos [Greek for “season” or “time”]. This is the only time and place we are called to become followers of Jesus Christ; there is no better time or place for us to live out the mysteries of creation, incarnation, and redemption. These are our times and, in the end, God’s time. Mary Jo Leddy, Reweaving the Religious Life (Mystic, CT: Twenty-Third Publications), 3.

This is our time. It is not a place for simplistic, dualistic, us-versus-them thinking. We have not left modernity behind, but we are in a place that seems so unlike the ethos, experiences, values, and attitudes of the last half of the twentieth century. The generations that led in that era are passing, but there are still many “emerging-age” leaders who work with all the skills, frameworks, and success of that passing time. The generations that might cultivate a new kind of future church are probably not even born yet. How will we respond as leaders to this challenge?

When we are planning a vacation, constructing a building, designing a program, organizing a sermon series, or planning a field trip to another country, then the framework of the past is a good way to proceed.

But when facing discontinuous change, it fails to address what is happening and, therefore, fails to innovate the emergent actions required. It is a process that assumes we are still in a stable environment that allows for rational control and prediction. It is based on the belief that we can, as we did for most of the twentieth century, define, determine, and design the preferred future we want and then align all the elements of our world—congregations, resources, money, people—to get where we want to go.

The problem is that it leaves leadership imagination unaltered. The environment is still treated as if it were a static, manageable plain rather than the turbulent, unchartable waters it is. A turbulent environment is not a knowable environment—we lose control and predictability in the midst of discontinuity and transition. This future is not predictable; it can only be discovered along the way. Therefore, leaders who want to cultivate church communities in transition must set aside goal-setting and strategic planning as their primary model.

Adaptive leadership in this context is not about forecasting, but about the formation of networks of discourse among people. It’s about the capacity to engage the realities of people’s lives and contexts in dialogue with Scripture. It is about building new connections. The Spirit of God will be in the midst of such dialogues, forming new patterns of communication, relationship, and action as God’s people. But it can’t be predicted and controlled from this side; the future emerges as people live in the ambiguities of transition. 

The shift in frameworks, skills, capacities, and habits required of leaders isn’t easy, nor will the road be smooth. People are complicated and organizations are complex. People’s emotional, inner, non-rational responses play a large role in the transition process. One can’t apply change strategies like programs or templates laid over a congregation.

Leadership in transition requires adaptive skills that innovate participative dialogue. Such leadership understands change as primarily an emerging process rather than carefully planned movements towards a predefined, preferable future.

Emergence cannot be imposed from above; it is cultivated through participation. Leaders must let go of the belief that more information, or more data, or some new program can re-establish control and result in a desired future. It’s a new world requiring new skills and capabilities.

Pentecost Fire

Unless the eye catch fire,
The God will not be seen.

Unless the ear catch fire
The God will not be heard.

Unless the tongue catch fire
The God will not be named.

Unless the heart catch fire,
The God will not be loved.

Unless the mind catch fire,
The God will not be known.

William Blake (1757-1827) from Pentecost

ARRIVING LATE

We arrived late at Pentecost,

after the fun was over,

Peter’s sermon finished,

the baptisms completed,

and the minutes written.

What was there left?

Let this be recorded

for any who, as they read,

employ their ears

as much as their eyes:

We found a communal Gift,

priceless yet free

in that heartwood where

the Carpenter had carved

a vacant space.

This Gift we found

filling that Christ-hollow

(at the end of the day

when the curious had gone

home to their boredom)

Was the Soul of love;

not the old stuff, hedged

with conditions and exemptions,

but a new joy-love ready

to embrace the world.

                                            

Source: B D Prewer 2002