A Generous Community

C. Andrew Doyle

Description

Practical ideas for connecting and building communities of service.

Bishop Andy Doyle understands that the church must change. Every day, he presides over parishes that are no longer vital, that have not adapted to the “VUCA” (volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous) world of today — the world in which the church exists. The church still looks to hierarchies when it needs to build networks, and stays mired in arguments when it needs to find unity. With the experience of a bishop and the insight of a deep learner, Doyle points the way to the future with a vision for how we can learn, serve, and communicate with each other.

Sujets

• Religion
• Christianisme
• Christian Ministry
• Philosophie et théologie
• Evangelism

Informations

• Publié par: Church Publishing Incorporated
• Date de parution: 01 octobre 2015
• Nombre de lectures: 4
• EAN13: 9780819232311
• Langue: English

Extrait

A Generous Community
A GENEROUS COMMUNITY
Being the Church in a New Missionary Age
C. ANDREW DOYLE
Author of Unabashedly Episcopalian
Copyright 2015 by C. Andrew Doyle
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher.
Unless otherwise noted, the Scripture quotations contained herein are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Morehouse Publishing, 19 East 34 th Street, New York, NY 10016
Morehouse Publishing is an imprint of Church Publishing Incorporated.
www.churchpublishing.org
Cover design by Laurie Klein Westhafer
Typeset by Denise Hoff
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Doyle, C. Andrew.
A generous community: being the church in a new missionary age / C. Andrew Doyle.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-0-8192-3230-4 (pbk.)-ISBN 978-0-8192-3231-1 (ebook) 1. Church renewal. 2. Church renewal-Episcopal Church. I. Title.
BV600.3.D69 2015
283 .73-dc23
Contents
Foreword by Brian D. McLaren
Preface
Introduction
Chapter 1: Schr dinger s Church
Chapter 2: A New Missionary Age
Chapter 3: A Courageous Church
Chapter 4: Our Guiding Principles
Chapter 5: Autopoietic Communities
Chapter 6: A Renewed Mission Field
Chapter 7: Into the Cloud of Unknowing
Chapter 8: Communities of Service
Chapter 9: Generous Evangelism
Chapter 10: The Future of Stewardship
Chapter 11: Generous Community
Chapter 12: Self-Forming Creative Christians
Chapter 13: Making Change
Appendix: Lectio Divina
Notes
Foreword
In the past, uniformity sold products. It still does in many sectors. For example, it still matters that every McDonald s hamburger is exactly the same.
Uniformity sold religions too. The fact that every Catholic mass was, for many centuries, in the same historic (and dead) language that few Catholics understood was a plus. It was only those rebel Protestants who stooped to read Scripture, pray, and worship in tawdry living languages like English Of course, eventually Catholics joined the vernacular club too.
But uniformity has its drawbacks. If you specialized in vinyl records in the Sixties or 8-tracks in the Seventies or cassettes in the Eighties or CDs in the Nineties, you made a lot of money. The same was true for products in the film and camera industry. Who could have guessed that a day would come when music would be played and photographs would be taken on phones?
Religions face a similar challenge. Just as companies had to answer the question of whether they were in the record, 8-track, cassette, or CD business-or whether they were actually in the music dissemination business-religions have to grapple with what their true mission is: Gathering people to use a certain edition of a prayer book? Preparing clergy to fill vacancies in existing buildings? Convincing people to say certain creeds or transfer their money to the accounts of certain institutions?
Many religious leaders are loyal to the good old days when every church was more or less the same, when pastors or priests could be unplugged and transferred to another congregation like a module in a machine, when words like Presbyterian or Episcopal or Roman Catholic meant one thing and one thing only, when the church s liturgy was as predictable as a McDonald s cheeseburger.
God bless them.
Other religious leaders are saying something quite different. Others have learned to say: We re not in the LP or CD business-we re in the music dissemination business, or We re not in the camera and film business-we re in the image-sharing business, or We re not in the stamp, envelope, and mailbox business-we re in the communication business, or We re not in the hamburger business-we re in the nourishment and health business.
So these religious leaders are saying: Beneath our traditions and conventional structures, there is something deeper running like a current, pulsing like a heartbeat a mission, a calling, an adventure, a challenge, an opportunity. And that s what we re about. To pursue that deeper mission is what matters most to us, even if that means recycling some of our traditions and revolutionizing some of our conventional structures.
Bishop Andy Doyle is helping lead the way in refocusing on the deep current and spiritual heartbeat of Christianity. He is using his position in the Episcopal Church not to clamp down and impose uniformity, but to open up new possibilities and stimulate creativity. He knows that doing so will upset some people-especially those who are intimidated by changes in so many areas of society and who want their church to be the one place in the world where everything stays exactly the same (They don t realize that what they re asking for is not a church but a museum. Or maybe a cemetery?)
He has written this book to help congregations face the challenge of change not simply as a necessary burden (like quitting cigarettes, maybe, or losing those fifteen pounds that somehow snuck onto your frame in recent years) but as a creative opportunity, vocation, and adventure.
The content of this book is transformational enough, but then add the resources for group interaction and you have a combination that-with your energetic engagement-can mean a brighter future for your church, your life, and the lives of your grandchildren s grandchildren.
So here s my hope: that you will read this book, and about halfway through, decide to form a reading group. Then you ll invite four to twenty of the most interesting, creative, and energetic people in your congregation to gather every week to discuss a chapter-maybe over a meal. Amazing things could happen
Or maybe you re one of those people who is part of such a reading group. Bring all of your creativity and energy to a conversation about the future-of your church and of our world. Engage the questions, do the exercises. Amazing things could happen
I expect that within a few paragraphs or pages, your imagination will start generating some truly exciting possibilities.
Brian D. McLaren
Preface
A friend reminds me that publishing is like performing-it s never perfect. I am grateful for that reminder. Church: A Generous Community Amplified for the Future was fun to write. It is long and an in-depth look at our missional history as a church. Part of its imperfection lies in its inaccessibility to the person in the pews. This is the reason for A Generous Community: Being the Church in the New Missionary Age. This book is not perfect, but I had fun writing it and am glad to have had many individuals walk along the writing path with me as friends and companions. It is a distilled and tight text which offers a more accessible vision to the church. My prereaders have been honest when in my exuberance I was too strong. They let me know when my hope was too subtle. With friends and colleagues such as these, we will most assuredly steer our Church into the future faithfully.
The Rt. Rev. Neil Alexander reminded me of the movie The Color of Money and pool hustler Fast Eddy Felson (played by Paul Newman) who says, Pool excellence is not about excellent pool. It s about becoming someone. This is true in book writing too. This book is about me becoming a better bishop from having thought and dreamed about the future. We will become a better diocese and a better Church from having had this conversation. We are always on the road to becoming the person and Church that God dreams.
I am grateful to conversation partners who, over the last two years, have helped me think about the future of the Church and how to take steps forward and march into it: Margaret Wheatley, Bob Johansen, and Rachel Hatch, among many others. Their own imagination and foresight have given me space in which to think and imagine. The result is two books with much in common but intended for different conversation partners. It is my hope that this book, A Generous Community: Being the Church in a New Missionary Age, will be used in congregations of the Episcopal Church and beyond to spur conversation about the role the local Christian community is called to fill, now and in the future. Its companion, Church: A Generous Community in an Amplified Age, is intended to help the leadership of church bodies, institutions, and seminaries understand the times in which we live and how we can act effectively in the future. Together these are valuable tools for the church as it sets sail into the sea of change which is ahead.
I am especially thankful to the Rev. John Newton, who wrote the discussion questions, reflections exercises, and suggestions for lectio divina that follow each chapter, as well as the guide to lectio divina in the appendix. His ability to help reflect on and lead people into formative action is a gift to the Church, my diocese, and to me.
I have many good friends who have been supportive during the writing of this book. There are three who deserve special mention. When I first publicly talked about the book, it was at a lunch with my friend John Price. I realize now his interest and encouragement enabled me to have that first bit of faith to continue the work of thinking and writing. As I neared the halfway mark, that place where all good books go to die, I had drinks with a new friend Matt Russell. It was Matt s excitement that encouraged me forward. Finally, as I worked on the footnotes, I realized that the two most important influences on my thinking are Daniel Kahneman and Nassim Nicholas Taleb. The Rev. Patrick Miller introduced me to both of these authors and their books. He also has been an excited conversation partner over the last year of writing, and for his support, encouragement