The Center for Progressive Christianity has produced something called “A Joyful Path,” but it seems more geared toward churches than homeschool families. (We’re actually going to start using “A Joyful Path” with the kids in Open Hearts Gathering.)

Chris Smith pointed me to Peter Enns’ book Telling God’s Story (with teaching and student guides) and, from the same publisher, The Story of the World series. Chris uploaded his review of Enns’ book to the Englewood website.

Eliacin Rosario-Cruz, from Seattle, replied: “When we homeschooled, we brewed our own. Godly Play + Howard Zinn + Paulo Freire + Gloria Anzáldua + bell hooks + unschooling. Our daughter has been in public school for six months now, after four years of homeschooling. She had some struggle with some of the way the school did the academics. However, her teachers and fellow classmates know her as a compassionate, cooperative, justice-seeking student. She could speak with pride and authority about her Puerto Rican/Latino heritage, and, better yet, out of a group of 50+ kids (3rd, 4th and 5th graders) she was the only one who knew and could speak about Bob Marley and reggae music.”

One person suggested Waldorf Schools homeschool material.

Chris Hill, from Albuquerque, replied: “I use a standardized form of academic curriculum, and the progressive Christian part is when I have real discussions about spirituality, religion and Christianity (including the philosophical, theological, and historical) with my kids. Believe it or not, we have several discussions a day that pretty much naturally occur. I do most of the initiating, and my oldest brings things up from time to time. I offer my input, others’ input in terms of possibilities, and encourage my kids to think deeply, but not to fret. Life is more about growing into a fuller sense of Self than it is ‘getting it right.’”

Does any of this help you? Do you know of other resources that you’d suggest adding to this list? Please post in the comments!

Here’s my attempt at curating the content coming out of #EVTC:

Back in December, the conversation was around the terms “incarnational” vs. “missional” for the type of ministry we’re talking about in the emerging church. I had the privilege of doing that first experimental #missionalchat with Kathy Escobar, co-pastor of The Refuge and author of Down We Go: Living Into the Wild Ways of Jesus.

Afterward, Kathy was kind enough to join me for a short Skype videochat interview, to continue the conversation from our online Twitter chat and to talk more about the themes in her book and the kind of ministry she is committed to modeling for others. One of my favorite quotes from Kathy in this interview is this: “To me, downward mobility is not really about money. It’s about this attitude of the heart.”

Here’s my interview with Kathy Escobar (the lighting wasn’t great on Kathy’s end, but the conversation was enlightening!):

I’m going to be doing another #missionalchat tonight at 9pm ET with Anthony Smith, a.k.a. Postmodernegro. There’s no one I can think of who most embodies the ongoing spirit of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., in his prophetic speech and pastoral ministry, than Anthony.

Anthony, Rod Garvin, and I did a podcast together several years ago entitled “Practicing Pentecost” for the Wired Parish network. Anthony’s writing has developed a faithful audience on his own blog, as well as through his contributions to several Emergent books, including An Emergent Manifesto of Hope and The Justice Project.

Anthony and his wife Toni are lead organizers of the Mission House community in Salisbury, NC, and I’m grateful to Anthony for his ongoing role on the Leadership Team for TransFORM Network.

I’m excited to focus our #missionalchat tonight on what the missional church must learn from the teaching and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Please join us on Twitter tonight from 9-10pm!

Have thoughts to share on Dr. King and the missional church? Have questions for Anthony Smith (@postmodernegro)? Please tweet using hashtag #missionalchat!

cross-posted from Emergent Village Voice

I won’t bore you or disgust you with all the gory details, but suffice it to say that my son Hayden and I have now been resurrected from a near-death bout of the flu mixed with strep throat. I’ve lost 10+ pounds (basically from not eating for four days), and it feels like a total reset.

But thankfully I’m on the rebound just in time to tell you about some of the things I have coming up, places I’ll be speaking and opportunities to perhaps cross paths with some of you around the country:

January 17-18 — Re-Mind and Re-New Conference in Tulsa, Oklahoma — I’m excited to participate in this conference on renewal in North American Christianity with speakers from across the emerging missional church: Diana Butler Bass, Nadia Bolz-Weber, Chris Haw, and Craig Van Gelder. If you’re in the Tulsa area, please consider coming out and being a part of this fascinating conference.

January 20-22 — Wild Goose Festival planning retreat — I don’t know who all will be there, but I’m looking forward to participating in the planning process for this year’s festival. If you have thoughts/ideas/questions that I can help bring to festival organizers, please let me know!

January 28-29 — “DARE to Lead” events in North Carolina — This is our first opportunity, in partnership with the North Carolina region, to share what Hope Partnership for Missional Transformation is about and what we have to offer Disciples churches. I’m excited for this to finally be happening, and I hope many Disciples churches in NC will come out to this free event.

February 6-9 — Minister’s Week at Brite Divinity School — I’m honored to be able to give my workshop on “Missional Transformation” during the conference, and I’m also looking forward to co-preaching with Suzanne Castle at The Search in Fort Worth on Super Bowl Sunday. There are plans to do a theology pub that week, as well, so keep an eye open for that. It should be a fun week in Dallas/Fort Worth!

March 27-30 — Mission Planting Base Camp in San Diego — This new training event for progressive missional church planters is one I can’t wait to see get started! Spencer Burke is at the helm, with the support of Rich McCullen and the entire Missiongathering Christian Church community. These are some of the most creative, innovative church ministry people I know, and I’m thrilled to be able to help this new venture get launched.

April 23-25 — The River Gathering in Albuquerque, New Mexico — I’m really humbled by the opportunity to co-lead this missional retreat with my good friend Rev. Phil Shepherd (The Eucatastrophe), organized by the Tres Rios and Hi-Plains areas for Disciples pastors in those areas (and beyond). The setting is breathtaking. It’s going to be a relaxing, refreshing few days on the bosque, experiencing this sacred ground. I can’t wait!

May 1-5 — Funding the Missional Church and Church Planters Academy — Two back-to-back events in my hometown of Minneapolis, where the Disciples are on the verge of doing some exciting new church planting work? Yes, I’ll be there!

Will I get to see you at any of these upcoming events? Let me know where you’re going to be by leaving me a note in the comments! I’d love to connect with you while I’m visiting these areas, especially if you’re interested in church planting/missional community formation.

Earlier this week, Christianity Today published an article by Chris Smith, from Englewood Christian Church in Indianapolis, entitled “Before ‘Transforming’ Your Neighborhood, Talk to Your Neighbors.” It shares a little bit of the story of this urban church and how the practice of dialogue and conversation transformed their congregation and, as a result, is transforming the broader community.

Chris shared with me an advance draft of the forthcoming e-book that goes further into telling Englewood’s story, which will be published soon by Patheos Press. It’s a beautiful and inspiring story, and one which I hope many faith leaders will read and consider.

On Wednesday night, I had the opportunity to actually visit Englewood and join them for their community dinner, and it was a treat to sit and talk with Chris about what is happening in and through the church and meet some of the men, women, and children from the community (many of whom live right around the church and in the Englewood neighborhood). Englewood is an old independent Christian church (who are cousins to the Disciples of Christ, my tribe), with a long history … a “turnaround church” story … a success story of “revitalization.” And Chris credits conversation — and (I would add) open, honest theological conversation — for that revitalization.

“The Conversation”
For quite a while now, the emerging missional church movement has been referred to as “the emerging church conversation.” I think this was initially just part of the nature of something that was seeking to earnestly embrace and embody epistemic humility, because to call this thing a “movement” might be to over-inflate the status or importance of it. And besides, that would jinx it, right?

So “the conversation” has been, for many us, shorthand for “the emerging missional church.” And indeed, it has been within this movement that the practice of conversation has been reclaimed and space for robust theological discussion has been created and nurtured. Emergent Village launched “cohorts” as local expressions of the movement where self-organizing groups could engage in conversation.

I still believe there is a great opportunity and need for Emergent “cohorts,” because there are still not very many churches engaging in theological conversation and creating safe(r) spaces for that to happen.

Church or Cohort?
As we talked over pork and beans in the Englewood basement hall, I shared this analogy of Emergent cohort with Chris, and he reminded me that churches (like Englewood) have advantages over Emergent cohorts in that they offer place (a sense of history and community), commitment (to a local body and shared ministry values/goals), and accountability (to move from talk to action).

I think he’s absolutely right, which is why I’m dedicated to lighting a fire under people to start churches, to form new missional communities of practice, to organize experiments in kingdom living. We will still need cohorts, but we also need churches and courageous leaders to open up those spaces for conversation that leads to action — for the good of the broader community and the world.

Conversations and Communities
Last summer, I had the privilege of meeting Meg Wheatley and Juanita Brown, the founders of the Berkana Institute and World Cafe, respectively. Meg’s writing on emergence theory went viral a few years ago (in Emergent circles, anyway), and her thinking has become very influential for many of us.

I was only vaguely familiar with World Cafe, and I was not aware at all of Juanita’s work with the Art of Hosting, as well. Core to both of those networks is “harvesting conversations that matter.” And Berkana Institute’s mantra is, “Whatever the problem, community is the answer.”

I think our religious/faith communities have much to learn from these two brilliant women and from all the participants in the networks they’ve started. We desperately need more faith communities (like Englewood) that recognize the power of conversations and are willing to do the hard work of cultivating and harvesting the riches that can come from them.

At the same time, there’s been a similar shaking going on in Christianity, and I’ve noticed a similar evolution of language for what to call this too — from “alternative church” to “alternative worship” to “ancient-future worship” to “emerging church” to “missional church” and now “missional community formation.”

I predict the conversation about tech lingo will continue to parallel — and deeply inform — the conversation about Christianity and church (how we organize ourselves into religious/faith communities), just as the revolution sparked by the evolution of the Internet is re-making other sectors of society, such as education, journalism, and publishing.

Religious Professionals = Social Media Gurus?
One example of how this is playing out that I find really fascinating is that many of the thought leaders and practitioners of the emerging missional church movement are now operating as social media consultants. I include myself in this category to some degree, but also friends such as Tony Jones and Doug Pagitt (who collaborate on Social Phonics), Kimberly Knight (no relation, except in Spirit!), Adam Walker Cleaveland, and Bruce Reyes-Chow, just to name a few.

Even my Emergent friends who don’t “do this for a living” are still very tech-savvy and heavy users of social media, and so the two topics naturally overlap in many ways.

Here’s a quick look back over the series on the language of participatory church: curation, context, frictionless sharing, and ROI.

As you look over what’s been talked about, what do you see that’s missing? What other social media terms have emerging church parallels? What additional topics could (and should) be explored in this language series?

Bruce Reyes-Chow recently proposed this on Facebook (slightly edited by me): “In social media, as in church, worth should not be solely measured by the number of followers, friends or members but by the quality of the relationships that are built through each.”

Reggie McNeal has been talking for a while about “changing the scorecard” for how church ministry “success” is measured — moving from the old traditional BBB model (Butts in the pews, Buildings, and Budgets) to a missional model that prioritizes discipleship and relationship.

Measurability (Or Lack Thereof)
The challenge to Bruce’s proposition, of course, is the difficulty in which to actually measure “the quality of relationships.” McNeal has helpfully suggested three missional shifts in how we measure “success” for our religious/faith communities:

1) from internal focus to external focus — how much time/energy/resources are spent on maintaining the structure? and how much is actually used for “blessing” the broader community? making the world a better place?

2) from program development to people development — this is where we talk about “discipleship” and ask, how well are we “making disciples” of Jesus? (instead of the McDonald’s question: how many billions served?)

3) from church-based to Kingdom-based leadership — what are the leaders of our religious/faith communities focused on: maintaining the current religious system (which there’s a lot of built-in incentive to do)? or embodying/enacting God’s dream for the world?

I think there’s much more work that needs to be done on McNeal’s missional shift item 2: people development. The old language of “discipleship” and “disciple-making” has been well documented (especially by the evangelical movement), but the truth is that there’s a real need for the notion of “disciple” to be re-imagined and re-thought for a new era. Per McNeal’s own argument, “disciple” has become more synonymous with “consumer of religious goods and services” than it has with “follower of Jesus.”

But then how to do measure how much someone is a “disciple”? Or, if you’re thinking in exclusive terms, how many people are “true disciples”? Alex Absalom, of 3DM, is working with a megachurch in Ohio to help move them toward a missional communities model. He shares their measurement for ROI in this video: “How many people do we have in discipling relationships with us?” or, in other words, “How many people do we have actively wanting to follow Jesus?”

I think these are helpful questions, but a cynic might say, “You’re still counting butts (‘in discipling relationships with us’)!” That’s not enough of a shift. In his book Practicing the Way of Jesus, Mark Scandrette talks a lot about “experiments” in life-change and gives (in the supremely helpful second half of the book) suggestions for how to evaluate the success of these experiments: “A good experiment is specific, measurable and realistic, and includes asking when, where, and how often it will be performed. It’s important to have a place where you track and record your daily progress, like a spreadsheet.”

It may sound cold and analytical, but Scandrette’s 40-day “Experiments in Truth” (and others like it), which are usually done in community, as part of a group for accountability and support, have shown proven results.

Don’t Believe?
This is where I have to invoke social media marketing guru Gary Vaynerchuk once again. (Seriously, go watch his keynote here — again — now, for the first time!) Gary V. has taken to routinely mocking those who ask him, “What is the ROI of social media?” His response: “That’s basically like asking, ‘What’s the ROI of the Internet?’ When you hear someone saying, ‘I don’t believe in social media.’ That’s like someone saying, ‘I don’t believe in the Internet.’ … And if you bet against the Internet in 2012, you’re going to lose.”

I have my disagreements with Gary on his assertion that social media is completely synonymous with the Internet, but playing off his thoughts in this video, I’d suggest that asking “How do you measure ‘discipleship’?” is like asking “How do you measure spirituality?” or “How do you measure Christ-likeness?” There’s no definitive way to measure it, but we all know it when we see it. A true believer is a true believer, and a Christ-like soul is a Christ-like soul.

And Gary’s point about ROI is also key to this discussion. To wit: If you bet against the missional shift in 2012, you’re going to lose.

Is it really best if we just say, “There is no measurement”? Or are there measurements for “discipleship” that are worth keeping/recovering/re-imagining? What can our religious/faith communities learn from the shift from ROI to #RonR (return on relationship)?

Introduced in September 2011 by Facebook to its 800 million users worldwide, the idea of frictionless sharing is to make sharing — what you’re reading, watching (TV, movies, or online videos), or listening to (via Spotify, for example) — automatic and effortless. Facebook wants to be the king of social sharing, because it’s a smart business decision — as user growth slows, sharing will continue to increase (at least doubling every year, according to Zuckerberg’s Law), especially if Facebook continues to make it easier and easier for its existing users to do so.

One of the interesting byproducts of this new innovation is that old news stories are becoming fresh fodder for online readers. As the Poynter Institute’s Jeff Sonderman astutely points out, “Sometimes a good story is just a good story, as long as it is new to you.”

I’m tempted to say something clever/deep here about the Gospel being the “old, old story,” but I’ll refrain. (If you want to share something in the comments, go for it!)

Instead, I’ll just suggest that it would also be a smart decision for our religious/faith communities to promote “frictionless sharing,” encouraging participation from the whole community — in storytelling, in worship, in decision-making, etc.

What do you think about frictionless sharing and religious/faith communities? What needs to happen to reduce/remove the friction? What others areas of church/community life could benefit from some friction reduction?

But social media marketing guru Gary Vaynerchuk has said, “If content is king, then context is God.”

Context is just as important, if not more important than content, because context shapes the very meaning of the content itself, how it is received and interpreted. Or as Marshall McLuhan famously said, “The medium is the message.”

The Word for the Next Decade
In the most recent iteration of Gary V.’s stump speech, he takes his ruminations on context and the Web even further: “The word that is the single most important word … period. The word for the next decade: Context.” And then adds, “We are living in a context war right now.”

What does he mean by “context war”? I suspect he means that with the massive volume of content being generated online, the battle is to break through the noise and capture people’s imaginations, and to do that involves understanding and engaging people in their context, getting really personal, hitting them where they live (so to speak). And, as I’m sure Gary V. would add, actually caring.

The missional shift in Christianity is also all about context and translating the Gospel message into flesh and bones and hands and feet out in the community (incarnational). And this is very location-specific, down to your street and your neighborhood — as we talked about at Inhabit Conference in Seattle last April.

Watch this keynote from Gary V. and pay attention to what he says about “extending the story,” local, “one-on-one”/individual marketing, and “small town” values — and then consider how all of this relates to how we should “do church” in the 21st century:

*The quote from Google’s Eric Schmidt that Gary V. places a lot of emphasis on has been disputed. However, the massive volume of content being generated on the Web daily is still a fact. No doubt about that.

In this discussion of participatory church, I find it really fascinating that there are really two conversations about radical shifts in culture going on right now that share some of the same language but apply them in different ways. One is the Internet/tech culture and the other is religious culture, specifically Christian culture (as I see it from my perspective).

I’d like to begin exploring some of these terms and ideas and how they apply to both Web and Church cultures — starting with …

Curation
One of the endearing mantras of the Internet is this: “Content is king.” This means that design and functionality are both really important, but the most important element is content — usually defined as the words, the message, the information being communicated. (It’s important to note that design and functionality can also be considered content, but for the sake of this short definition I’m focusing on the words.)

In a flat world where everyone can be a content producer and indeed millions of pieces of content are created every day, there is an increasingly important role now for content curators: people who will sift through the mountains of information and filter out the best stuff for the rest of us. (I do a little bit of this in the “Bonus Points” section of my email newsletter.)

In a sense, this was my role with Emergent Village when I was updating that site on a regular basis — sifting through all of the online conversation about Emergent and emerging missional church and presenting some of the best of it for readers to consider. We also produced some of that content, as well, of course. Curation inevitably involves creation at some point.

Worship Curation
In the context of the shifts occurring within Christianity, the emerging missional church movement arguably started with alternative worship being experimented with in the UK and Australia/New Zealand. Practitioners such as Steve Collins and Jonny Baker were reimagining worship and liturgy, which led to the term worship curation.

Jonny Baker wrote the first book on curating worship, in which he interviewed 12 practitioners including Lilly Lewin and Peter Rollins.

I’ve always associated Kester Brewin with the UK alt.worship scene, as well. An interesting thing happened this past summer at the inaugural Wild Goose Festival: Kester Brewin came across the pond to be a featured speaker, touting his latest book Other, and Sparkhouse was a festival sponsor, promoting its latest product Clayfire, “a worship design system,” and its companion blog the Clayfire Curator.

I was hanging out one night on the Patheos RV, drinking the (im)famous Patheos Punch, talking to one of the representatives from Clayfire about what their product did — an online worship planning software, basically — when Kester Brewin stepped into the cabin. I introduced Kester to the Clayfire rep, and asked him, “Kester, didn’t you help coin the term ‘worship curation’ in the UK?” Kester demurred, of course, and pointed to Mark Pierson and Jonny Baker, but the Clayfire rep seemed surprised, as if he’d never heard of Kester before.

It’s such a small (and debatably insignificant) universe, but I was immediately struck by the fact that the term “worship curation” had seemingly gone from creation to popularization to commercialization in such a short span of time — without much sense of history or connecting the dots.

Beyond Worship Curation
For whatever reason, Sparkhouse has already decided to shutter Clayfire. I would argue the online worship planning market was already pretty saturated, and the Clayfire team weren’t able to quickly distinguish their product from the others already available. (Troy Bronsink has other thoughts that are worth considering.)

Ironically, the word liturgy itself is often translated “the work of the people,” and it’s this idea that is beginning to be recaptured in the wider circle of participation in worship curating. But “worship curator” still implies an individual task, and it can too easily just become a hipper, cooler title than “Worship Pastor” or “Choir Director.” And, as Maggi Dawn points out, it would be better translated “a work for the people” or, in other words, “work that is dedicated to God, initiated for the people, and serves to transform the community.”

Yesterday, Scot McKnight re-posted my original blog on participatory church, and the discussion in the comments over on his site is very interesting (as always). Predictably, the people who come from more liturgical church traditions (Catholic, Orthodox, etc.) have weighed in heavily, arguing their tradition is already “participatory.” Some of these comments (especially #24) were pretty compelling, but ultimately I had to agree with anonymous commenter “T” who wrote (in #19), “If one can read the initial post and think that Weiner and those like him are yearning for exactly those liturgical traditions (or any typically protestant or even low-church traditions) and have only somehow failed to encounter them, I think this would be a misreading what’s being said.”

Ultimately, I think that’s absolutely right. Our ancient liturgical church traditions and the more recent innovation of ancient-future worship curation has brought us only so far. We need to go beyond worship curation to missional community formation: creating spaces where spiritual life can be experienced, theology can be wrestled with (without shame or fear, if that’s ever possible), and action can be taken to enact God’s shalom.

“Language creates culture, Yes,” Len Hjalmarson reminds us, “but practices maintain it.” So let us not stop gathering together and experimenting and conspiring and collaborating and co-creating and practicing and participating …

More terms and ideas to come. Until then, what are your thoughts on curation and church? Should pastors be more like content curators, sifting through theological ideas and presenting what is “the best”?