Following (Pastoring for Life: Theological Wisdom for Ministering Well)

Jason Byassee

Description

"[An] insightful exploration of Christian discipleship in the digital age."--Publishers WeeklyThis book offers theological perspectives on the challenges of discipleship in a digital age, showing how new technologies and the rise of social media affect the way we interact with each other, ourselves, and the world. Written by a Gen X digital immigrant and a Millennial digital native, the book explores a faithful response to today's technology as we celebrate our embodied roles as followers of Christ in a disembodied time.

Sujets

• Philosophie et théologie

Informations

• Publié par: Baker Publishing Group
• Date de parution: 10 août 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781493430666
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

Cover
Endorsements
“This book embodies the Jesus way to see and be in the digital environment. Written as a partnership between a digital immigrant and a digital native, this book shows how the good news of Jesus affirms the good, critiques the dangers, and subverts some of the hidden assumptions of this new virtual land. It is therefore essential reading both for those who are disciples of Jesus and for those who want to know what twenty-first-century discipleship can be.”
— David Wilkinson , St. John’s College, Durham University
“Into this place the church is speaking through the real-time, ongoing conversation that is Following: Embodied Discipleship in a Digital Age . Jason Byassee and Andria Irwin speak into the space between digital utopians and digital skeptics, modeling biblically grounded, theologically informed wrestling with how the church and Christians live out our mission and vocations amid the current technological revolution. Affirming that Christian faith is an inherently mediated one, Byassee and Irwin provide pathways for us all to draw on some of the best resources of our tradition to live faithfully in the present moment.”
— Deanna A. Thompson , Lutheran Center for Faith, Values, and Community, St. Olaf College
“ Following envisions a journey with others toward an uncertain destination. Byassee and Irwin write to cast theological light for our feet in this awkward but exciting expedition of faith in our digital culture. As fellow pilgrims on the way, they invite us into an urgent conversation that is sober yet hopeful and that may land us at an Emmaus table or an online platform with surprise vistas of Christ.”
— Andrew Byers , Ridley Hall, Cambridge; author of TheoMedia: The Media of God in the Digital Age
Half Title Page
Series Page

Theological Wisdom for Ministering Well Jason Byassee, Series Editor
Aging: Growing Old in Church by Will Willimon
Birth: The Mystery of Being Born by James C. Howell
Disability: Living into the Diversity of Christ’s Body by Brian Brock
Friendship: The Heart of Being Human by Victor Lee Austin
Recovering: From Brokenness and Addiction to Blessedness and Community by Aaron White
Title Page
Copyright Page
© 2021 by Jason Byassee and Andria Irwin
Published by Baker Academic
a division of Baker Publishing Group
PO Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287
www.bakeracademic.com
Ebook edition created 2021
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any mean s—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
ISBN 978-1-4934-3066-6
Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright © 1989 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Dedication
For Leighton Ford, who mastered high-tech evangelism and then gave it up for face-to-face friendship
And for Fleming Rutledge, surprising and surprised social media preacher —JB
For Alli son, Marc, and Jennifer, whose collective counsel helped free my voice —AI
Contents
Cover i
Endorsements ii
Half Title Page ii
Series Page iv
Title Page v
Copyright Page vi
Dedication vii
Series Preface xi
Acknowledgments xiii
Introduction: The End Is Near 1
1. Putting on the New Self 13
2. A Pastoral Personality 35
3. The Opposite of Technology 47
4. Jesus’s Own Family 67
5. Undistracted Friendship 89
6. The Internet Is (Kind of) a Place 109
7. Virtual Virtue 129
8. Daring to Speak for God 151
Conclusion: No Unmediated God 161
Notes 169
Index 181
Back Cover 186
Series Pre face
One of the great privileges of being a pastor is that people seek out your presence in some of life’s most jarring transitions. They want to give thanks. Or cry out for help. They seek wisdom and think you may know where to find some. Above all, they long for God, even if they wouldn’t know to put it that way. I remember phone calls that came in a rush of excitement, terror, and hope. “We had our baby!” “It looks like she is going to die.” “I think I’m going to retire.” “He’s turning sixteen!” “We got our diagnosis.” Sometimes the caller didn’t know why they were calling their pastor. They just knew it was a good thing to do. They were right. I will always treasure the privilege of being in the room for some of life’s most intense moments.
And, of course, we don’t pastor only during intense times. No one can live at that decibel level all the time. We pastor in the ordinary, the mundane, the beautiful (or depressing!) day-by-day most of the time. Yet it is striking how often during those everyday moments our talk turns to the transitions of birth, death, illness, and the beginning and end of vocation. Pastors sometimes joke, or lament, that we are only ever called when people want to be “hatched, matched, or dispatched”—born or baptized, married, or eulogized. But those are moments we share with all humanity, and they are good moments in which to do gospel work. As an American, it feels perfectly natural to ask a couple how they met. But a South African friend told me he feels this is exceedingly intrusive! What I am really asking is how someone met God as they met the person to whom they have made lifelong promises. I am asking about transition and encounter—the tender places where the God of cross and resurrection meets us. And I am thinking about how to bear witness amid the transitions that are our lives. Pastors are the ones who get phone calls at these moments and have the joy, burden, or just plain old workaday job of showing up with oil for anointing, with prayers, to be a sign of the Holy Spirit’s overshadowing goodness in all of our lives.
I am so proud of this series of books. The authors are remarkable, the scholarship first-rate, the prose readable—even elegant—the claims made ambitious and then well defended. I am especially pleased because so often in the church we play small ball. We argue with one another over intramural matters while the world around us struggles, burns, ignores, or otherwise proceeds on its way. The problem is that the gospel of Jesus Christ isn’t just for the renewal of the church. It’s for the renewal of the cosmos—everything God bothered to create in the first place. God’s gifts are not for God’s people. They are through God’s people, for everybody else. These authors write with wisdom, precision, insight, grace, and good humor. I so love the books that have resulted. May God use them to bring glory to God’s name, grace to God’s children, renewal to the church, and blessings to the world that God so loves and is dying to save.
Jason Byassee
Acknowledgments
I (Jason) am grateful first to An dria Irwin for being willing to write this book with me. As I sent her internet link after internet link I realized what I had become—the weird elder relative who thinks everything on the web is interesting and passes it right along. Thanks for letting me be your weird uncle. I love that moment when I was on my phone in Epiphany Chapel during worship and you turned to me and said, “You know you’re terrible with that thing, right?”
I had the benefit of being the youngest staff member at several media outlets early in the digital era and so being forced to figure out blogging. The Christian Century nudged me to start what was then called Theolog and what came to be the Christian Century network of blogs. It has some really good writers now. For a time, it just had me and whomever I could manipulate into writing for me for no pay. Wondering what we were doing online got me asking questions about what digital technology is for. I am grateful for those opportunities (and I owe some friends some money!). Thanks to my longtime colleague and friend there Amy Frykholm for her help editing this volume.
My next calling was to Leadership Education at Duke Divinity School where I edited (you guessed it) a blog for faithandleadership.com. Here I started to write about life online versus life in-person for the Christian Century , for Faith & Leadership , and for other outlets, like Christian Reflections at Baylor University and First Things . I tried out the ideas that appear in this book with audiences at Duke; at St. Olaf’s conference on worship, liturgy, and the arts; and at Western Theological Seminary, and I am grateful for the hospitality in each place and the patience of my listeners. Then I became pastor at Boone United Methodist and nudged the congregation to do more ministry online, though nothing compared to what we’re all doing post-COVID-19. I am grateful for the chance to speak about my ideas for Andy Langford’s Connexion13 gathering at Central United Methodist in Concord, North Carolina, and for Andy Crouch’s invitation to Laity Lodge in Kerrville, Texas, to discuss technology with the great Eugene Peterson and with Albert Borgmann, the Yoda of this conversation. Audiences at Bay View Chautauqua in Michigan and the Western Pennsylvania Conference of the United Methodist Church were also patient in hearing me out and correcting me often. Thank you all.
My profound thanks go to Verity Jones, who won a Lilly grant to explore technology and the church with the New Media Project, housed for a time at Union Theological Seminary in New York City and then at Christian Theological Seminary in Indianapolis. Every idea I ever had about technology was tested out, challenged, and refined by my fellow Fellows: Kathryn Reklis, Monica Coleman, Lerone Martin, and Jim Rice. Thank you, Verity and friends.
As with everything I do, I am grateful to Jaylynn Byassee and to our sons, Jack, Sam, and Will. Thank you to Richard Topping for his remarkable leadership of the Vancouver School of Theology, gatherin