Beyond the "Re" to the "Formation"
My whole experience at the National Youth Worker's Convention last weekend was eye opening. It became very clear to me all over again how much we are drowning in a consumer culture that creates and feeds our "felt needs" with gimmicks and techniques. If we spent half as much time being the hands and feet of Jesus as we do learning how to be entertainers....well...I'll leave that for later.

In the midst of this consumer carnival, there was something that struck me to the core: the brokenness and lostness of so many youth leaders. It seemed to me that many youth workers (young and old, novice and experienced) seem to know that something isn't exactly right in western Christendom, but they don't know what it is or what to do about it. They've heard rumors that change was in the air...They've seen the Emergent stuff, and it brought them some hope, but now it seems like the same old stuff.

How do we move past this?

I think there is a place for the critique of old concepts and practices. Afterall, that's what the majority of our site has been. But the question for me has become "when do I move past the 're' (backwards, revisiting) to the 'formation' part of change?" Is the ecclesial anarchy of non-organized Christian community enough for me? Must I throw the baby (organized community) out with the bathwater (broken systems of Church?)? As my friend David Welch asked me last weekend, "What was good about the past?" By which he meant, "what were the good things you found inside the institutional church"?

I find that I have tendencies for organization that are built on a desire for sacrificial communities focused on helping people. Mike King shared on our panel in Dallas that he knew he found the right church (Jacob's Well in Kansas City) when he was served communion by a prostitute from their outreach ministry. When he made that statement I felt a surge of envy...that's the kind of community I desire. The kind of community of which I've grown skeptical, but it does and can exist.

I don't know what all of this means for me. I no longer want to be trapped by the past. I want to be formed. I want to have something to say not built upon the hopelessness of systems that have run their course, but to speak out of a hope founded and formed by a present community living out the values of God's Kingdom. However, I have a lot of fear that attempts to be formed...to be created into something new...will just turn into some form of Frankenstein's monster: an uncontrollable, angry, re-animated version of something already dead.

So I'm left with another question David asked me, "Where do you want to be"? Which for me becomes "Where does God want me to be?" Are these desires for the type of community Mike King described the hand of God forming my intentions, or are they my own unhealthy, idealistic visions. I'm acutely aware (and I think agree with) Bonhoeffer's language about the idealistic dreamer who destroys the community of God because of his own unattainable illusions. I've become so confused about these issues that making any type of step with certainity is difficult. So I'm left with two things: faith and the community of believers in my life. And that's where I'm going to start...I'm going to consciously share my desires with God's people and see what happens. And I guess that's the process I'm starting here.


posted by Jimmy at 7:54 PM | |