I’m excited to join the Progressive Christian channel on Patheos — home to my friends Brian McLaren, Tony Jones, Kimberly Knight (no relation), and others — to launch my latest project called Missional Shift, a new blog dedicated to curating the missional church conversation. I’m already an avid reader of all things missional, and so this new blog will be an outlet for passing along the best and the brightest ideas, questions, news, and information for anyone across the theological spectrum who is interested in missional church.

In my inaugural post, I explain why this new blog has come to reside in the Progressive Christian channel, charting ever-so-briefly my journey from evangelicalism into mainline Protestantism. I feel very privileged to be able to do what I do for a living, and to be able to write about it and share what I’m learning with others — and, honestly, to help filter through the noise of all the missional mumbo-jumbo that is out there — is going to be a lot of fun. I hope you’ll join me on this new venture! Please read, subscribe to the blog (via RSS or email), share links to stuff you find interesting and useful on Facebook, Twitter, etc. I’d really appreciate it. Without further adieu …

Chris sent me an advance copy, and I’ve been tearing through it and enjoying it even more than his first book, The Art of Non-Conformity. I had the pleasure of playing a small part in the launch of that book, and I’m hoping to catch up with Chris next week when his latest book tour brings him back to North Carolina.

This book is loaded with fantastic, practical information and advice, as well as inspiring story after story of successful entrepreneurs who took their ideas and a little bit of startup money and created a new future for themselves. Chris has done an incredible amount of research to put this book together, and more than that, he’s culled through thousands of stories and gleaned the-best-of-the-best ideas to share with all of us in a fun and quick/easy-to-read handbook to hustling, with great illustrations by Mike Rohde to boot.

While the ideas that Chris shares in this book are inspiring to me as a wanna-be entrepreneur (with a few side projects always cooking), I also believe they are transferrable (in some important ways) to the church work that I do on a daily basis. There is so much wisdom to be gleaned from here, that I’ll have to do several blog posts to really unpack all of them and show how they relate to church planting, missional community formation, etc.

For now, I’ll just leave you with this tasty tidbit from chapter 5 “The New Demographics”: “Most of us like to buy, but we don’t like to be sold. Old-school marketing is based on persuasion; new marketing is based on invitation.”

I would now like to invite you to purchase Chris’ new book through my Amazon affiliate link here — The $100 Startup: Reinvent the Way You Make a Living, Do What You Love, and Create a New Future. Seriously, it’s a great book! Get inspired. Pick up a copy. And go see Chris on tour right now!

It seems really hard to believe, but the campaign against the proposed constitutional amendment here in the state of North Carolina has become a very broad-based, bipartisan campaign with both conservatives and liberals coming together to voice concerns for the implications of this amendment and urging voters to vote against. This is not just a liberal, pro-LGBT equality campaign!

I’ve been asked now several times to prove this is true, so here’s just a smattering of the evidence I’ve come across that show the growing bipartisan campaign against:

• Brent Woodcox, former communications director for the NC Republican Party (and self-professed conservative Christian Republican), calls the amendment “anti-freedom,” “unchristian,” and “anti-family”:
  http://www.brentwoodcox.blogspot.com/2012/04/why-ill-vote-against.html
• A Charlotte law student and evangelical Christian makes a very compelling and detailed argument for at least giving this amendment very serious consideration before voting one way or the other:
  http://orphanedbelievers.wordpress.com/2012/04/18/ncamendmenton/
• Evangelical author and NC resident Margot Starbuck has written her “moderately conservative” case against the amendment:
  http://www.redletterchristians.org/a-moderately-conservative-case-for-the-defeat-of-nc-amendment-1/
• Evangelical author and NC resident Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove urges Christians not to be counted among those who have “organized themselves against homosexuals”:
  http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jonathanwilsonhartgrove/2012/04/should-this-family-be-illegal/
• NC Tea Party representative Renee Elmers, John Hood (president of the John Locke Foundation), and other ultra-conservatives are AGAINST this amendment:
  http://static1.firedoglake.com/48/files/2012/04/conservativesagainstA1.jpg
• “Conservatives, Vote Against the NC Marriage Amendment” — editorial from Carolina Review, NC’s conservative journal:
  http://carolinareview.org/2012/01/conservatives-vote-against-the-nc-marriage-amendment/
• David Blankenhorn and Elizabeth Marquardt — president and vice president for family studies at the Institute for American Values and two of the primary opponents of same-sex marriage who were key in promoting Prop 8 in California — have come out against the NC amendment, saying “it goes too far”:
  http://www.newsobserver.com/2012/04/11/1992920/amendment-goes-too-far.html
• Rev. William Barber, president of the North Carolina NAACP and pastor of Greenleaf Christian Church in Goldsboro, NC, has spoken out strongly against the amendment, especially urging his fellow African-American ministers to stand against discrimination:

I hope that my conservative Christian friends would be open-minded enough to at least consider these very thoughtful, conservative, evangelical rationales for voting against this amendment.

Early voting in NC runs through May 5, and the primary vote takes place on Tuesday, May 8. I early voted already, and I voted against.

Matt Haughey is the founder of MetaFilter.com, and in this talk from the Webstock 2012 conference earlier this year in New Zealand, he focuses on starting with a long-term vision, rather than a desire for short-term success (“cashing in and bailing out”):

When it’s possible to get millions of dollars in venture capital funding, get a million users in just days, and then sell out to a larger tech company (what Haughey calls “the big fast route”), the slow and sustainable approach to growing a tech business that Haughey is advocating for is certainly counter-cultural.

Jason summarizes: “It takes longer but…

• you are able to develop authentic community
• which equates remaining authentic to the context and calling
• you remain a healthy model for those you lead
• you don’t have to be a wiz’ fundraiser to lead ministry”

It’s the last point that I want to flesh out further, as it relates to this question of funding the missional church.

Theoretically, a new church planter could get a bunch of VC money from a denomination to startup a new faith community. In reality, most denominations don’t have any (or much) money for this anymore. So the tech/church analogy doesn’t quite work.

The new reality is that church planters have to be entrepreneurial and think differently about how to fund new church starts, mostly by being bi-(or tri-)vocational and not working full-time for the church (or even expecting to in the short-term and possibly not even in the long-term).

But listen to what Haughey has to say:

• Self-fund to get started — “The hard part or the big question mark is, ‘Where’s the money going to come from?’ I wouldn’t necessarily focus on that on day one. I think it’s bad and sometimes leads to bad decisions if your day one worry is where some money’s going to come from. It helps to self-fund it for a while, let it grow a little bit at least. … I always have low goals, like paying for the [Web] server hosting.”
• Don’t be a free user — “Find mom and pop sites that will let you give them money, so there’s a chance they’ll stick around.” One could argue, based on this point, that you should be willing to invest your time and money into the new church start and ask/expect others who get involved to do the same. Create a culture of giving to support the mission of the community from the start. And, no, the mission of the community should not be paid staff, a cool building, etc. That’s old school thinking. Think different.
• Explore as many funding avenues as you can — On the Web, advertising (where appropriate) is the easiest, he says, but he also suggests funding drives, Kickstarter, merchandise, etc. I’d love to see a new church start launch a Kickstarter campaign tied to a creative project they plan to do, especially if it was something designed to bless and benefit the local community it was seeking to be a vital part of. Think local, contextual, blessed to be a blessing.
• Keep your day job — “I paid for my own sites for the first five-six years just by having a day job, and it wasn’t until the revenue really picked up that I could quit that.” Being bi-vocational is the new normal for people in ministry. Some communities will grow to be able to sustain having full-time paid staff, but many will not. And that’s OK.

As Haughey explains, “It’s a lot of work, it’s a lot of risk, [but] … having a long-term viewpoint makes a lot of dumb decisions really easy.”

There’s so much more to learn from Haughey as he unpacks WWIC? (why wasn’t I consulted?) and the values of being “platform agnostic and super flexible.”

I especially appreciate that Haughey says it’s not about staying small: “You don’t have to sacrifice growth, it’s just going to take longer. It’s not going to limit your impact. You’ll eventually get there, and you’ll have a more stable foundation. … You’ll have a community culture that builds up over years and years, instead of just ramping up from zero in a few months. It doesn’t necessarily shrink your aspirations.”

So just because you choose the slow and sustainable (and intentionally small to start with) approach to church planting/missional community formation doesn’t mean you have to give up the dream of changing the world!

Please take a look at the video and post your thoughts/reflections in the comments. And if you’re going to be in Minneapolis next week for Funding The Missional Church and/or Church Planters Academy, please let me know. I’d love to connect with you!

Phil and I will be co-leading a missional retreat called The River Gathering, April 23-25, at Tamaya Resort in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Early bird registration deadline is Sunday, April 1 (NO JOKE!), so make your reservations now!

Register now for The River Gathering

Without further adieu, here’s my missional conversation with Phil Shepherd:

This question was sparked by a conversation I had with two women who both had similar backgrounds to mine. They shared stories of having been raised in conservative evangelical households, but both are now engaged in interfaith social justice work.

I found myself being challenged again with the question of whether or not I could identify myself as an evangelical. I’ve actually given interviews explaining why I’ve felt I could no longer call myself an evangelical — mostly because the “gatekeepers” had cast me out into the outer darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth!

But I was challenged by these sisters to really consider the possibility of being a progressive evangelical, which is a term I’ve heard before but hadn’t really thought about in a great long while. Who are the progressive evangelicals? And how are they organized? Who are their leaders?

Marcia Pally’s new book seems to be talking about this. My friend Rich McCullen embodies this in his ministry. Frank Schaeffer is alerting mainline denominations to the very existence of these mythical progressive evangelicals — and inviting us all to gather this summer at the Wild Goose Festival.

In our conversation, I quickly defaulted to naming off the usual suspects — Jim Wallis, Brian McLaren, Shane Claiborne, Gabe Lyons, Rob Bell — but one sister quickly challenged me to consider that the era of big-platform leaders is over and that we don’t need a “great white hope” but rather grassroots networks of people committed to a common cause.

Which I completely agree with, and yet … We still need leaders, right? Perhaps leaders who function more as organizers or hosts, if you will, but leaders nonetheless. (Even starfish communities/organizations have leaders, after all — they’re just called different things.) So assuming that much …

Where are the grassroots networks for progressive evangelicals? And what are the common causes we can/should be engaged in?

I went looking, and I really couldn’t find many networks or places of connection for those who might self-identify as progressive evangelical. I found one lonely Facebook group with two members. (I became the third.) The closest thing to an existing network for progressive evangelicals (besides Sojourners) that I could find is the New Evangelical Partnership for the Common Good, founded by Rich Cizik, David Gushee and others. What else is out there? or should be out there? What perhaps needs to be born?

So what do you think? What would happen if progressive evangelicals were better networked with each other?

The conference began with an agreement by all in the group to abide by 14 “Covenants of Presence,” and these covenants were revisited each morning as we began our time together again. All 14 of these statements are useful for facilitating any kind of group discussion, and they are helpfully fleshed out further in FTE’s own document (unfortunately it’s not available online, or else I’d link to it):

1. Be 100 percent present, extending and presuming welcome.
2. Listen generously.
3. Author your story.
4. We come as equals.
5. It is never “share or die.”
6. No fixing.
7. Suspend judgement.
8. Turn to wonder.
9. Hold these stories with care.
10. Be mindful and respectful of time.
11. Practice confidentiality care.
12. Welcome discomfort and dislocation.
13. Love the questions themselves.
14. Believe that it is possible for us to emerge from our time time together refreshed, surprised and less burdened than when we came.

I Wonder …
It’s the eighth item on that impressive list that really caught my attention and imagination this time (this was my second time through the VocationCARE training): Turn to wonder. As the FTE “Covenants of Presence” document states, “If you find yourself becoming judgmental or cynical, try turning to wonder: ‘I wonder why she shared that story or made those choices?’ ‘I wonder what my reaction teaches me?’ ‘I wonder what he’s feeling right now?’”

This notion of catching ourselves becoming judgmental or cynical and intentionally turning our minds to wonder is really powerful. I learned two related things from talking with David Isaacs, and that was this:

• “Individual leaders have a hard time admitting they don’t know, but leadership teams can.”
• “We need to shift from asking ‘How to’ (fix things) to ‘What if …’”

What If …
We closed our time together with a world cafe hosted by David Isaacs, and we were invited to craft our own “What if …” questions. Opening ourselves to the wonder of asking “What if …” was really powerful. Here are some of the “What if” questions that emerged from our group:

• What if I had the courage not to remain invisible?
• What if we really are enough?
• What if we listened as if we were fearfully and wonderfully made?
• What if we really took a Sabbath?
• What if we believe we are made in the image of God and lived into the role?
• What if we stopped apologizing for being Christian?
• What if we let consequences happen and grow in our own compost?
• What if we are the change agents we’ve been waiting for?

I want to follow-up and go further into two of the “What if” questions that emerged for me during that time, but for now, I just want to say how grateful I am for the work of FTE in putting together these VocationCARE practices and for sharing them with so many leaders across the Church. And I want to add a huge Thank You to Juanita Brown, David Isaacs, and Ashley Cooper for sharing the gifts of their presence and hosting with all of us!

David LaMotte graced us with a concert Thursday night in the Century Room upstairs at Pack’s Tavern, and one song in particular is lingering with me, “We Are Each Other’s Angels” (by Chuck Brodsky). Wonderful …

What are the “What if …” questions you are asking these days? What are some of the “What if …” questions we should all be asking right now?

This month I’m looking forward to chatting with Bruce Reyes-Chow about his latest bold initiative — developing a new Presbyterian church on the Internet. As Bruce is very clear to point out: “Not an online church. A church that meets online.”

Bruce and I will be talking about this new church experiment and how Bruce’s views about “missional” are informing this process.

Join us on Twitter via the hashtag #missionalchat at 9pm ET tonight!

cross-posted from Emergent Village Voice

“A/theism aims to rupture, not the actual beliefs of a person, but the way those beliefs function as a crutch to prevent the individual from actively participating in the difficult challenge of embracing the world. In short, this critique is not concerned with the content of our mind but is aimed directly at our involvement with a game that many of us do not believe in yet continue to support by our participation.” (p.72)

Rollins goes on to discuss how “the radical Christian” can “participate in the power of the Crucifixion” through structures, practices, and communities that “ritualize the full range of human emotions, bringing radical doubt, ambiguity, doubt, mystery, and complexity into the very heart of the liturgical structure itself.” (p.73)

It’s a pretty, well, radical vision for a new kind of faith community. However, Rollins cautions against being too optimistic that this kind of community would even “work,” because even if the new structure succeeds in “bringing radical doubt” to the center, there will still be individuals in the community who aren’t willing or able to fully participate: “There will always be those who act more like the critic, those who seek to protect themselves by avoiding full emotional involvement in any liturgical practice that seeks to bring us into contact with our pain and suffering.”

As Rollins’ ideas continue to make inroads into existing and new faith communities, I wonder what the implications will be — and whether anyone will actually take him up on the challenge in the first place.

What’s your take on Rollins and his merry brand of “a/theism”?