Tim Keel's Blog

Home again, home again...

Well, it's been a great week in Idaho. Mike and I are sitting in the airport surfing free wireless and waiting for our plane. I am tired and it is a good tired that is born of creative interaction and thoughtful engagement and dynamic conversations. Now the hard work begins.

Beyond the work described above (and below), it was a good week for me personally. Once a quarter I try to take a few days out of my normal routine (which has not been very normal for awhile) for a time of study, personal formation, planning and solitude. That is why Mike and I came out to this consultation early. We were able to stay and work at the Allelon Retreat House. I miss my wife and kids like crazy, but having such a great and productive time has been a consolation.

There were a lot of good things happening here, but a few highlights:

• Two late-night movies...
• Getting time with Malcolm Hawker, Australian missional leader and webmaster extraordinaire, responsible for the Allelon website, as well as the Ooze. Check out Malcolm's blog here...
• Starting to re-engage with Mark's gospel in preparation to begin again our community's journey through that story...
• Hearing Mark Priddy talk about the church as public space, then seeing the way that idea is being fleshed out in Eagle, Idaho in a community center called The Landing and a restaurant and coffee house called Rembrandts, among other emerging ventures...
• Gorgeous, gorgeous weather...
• Discovery a couple new books, one on the arts that looks wonderful...
• Having Mike and Ashley here working alongside me...
• Listening to Alan Roxburgh and Pat Keifert wax theological on the porch late at night

Here's the other...well, highlight is very much the wrong word...maybe activity of note would be a better description. It is 3:30 a.m., the wee-hours of Wednesday morning and I have woken needing to go to the bathroom. I slowly fall out of bed and try to walk quietly to the bathroom on the third floor of this ginormous Victorian home, graciously hoping to avoid waking my room-mate Mike, who happens to snore like a freight train. My business complete, I then go back into the bedroom, which is pitch-black. However, as I get to my bed and begin to pull back my covers, Mike comes flying out of the bed right at me. Contrary to what you might hear somewhere else, I did not scream. It was more of a mid-pitched grunt. Anyway, the freak crawled into my bed and waited for my return so he could scare the living hoo-ha out of me. So much for my attempts to be a good neighbor. Afflicted. He is afflicted and forsaken. And even as he sits here across from me at the airport, I plot, and lay in wait.

Blog Problems

We are almost done with a full redesign of our Jacob's Well web-site. Sco has been working hard for a couple of months and we are likely a week away from its launch. I am incredibly excited about what has been designed and how it will serve the life and mission of the Jacob's Well community. In order to accomodate this new web-site we have switched servers recently. And therein lies the difficulty. I have received a number of e-mails from people who have had diffculty or an inablility to post comments on my blog (thanks for the heads-up). We're in the middle of trying to figure out what is happening and getting it resolved. A couple of folks have e-mailed me their comments. If you want to do the same, I'll try to post them later, when I can. I always appreciate feedback and comments on my blog so if you have something to say, hang onto it.

Away in Boise

It was good to be home and worshiping among my community after being away for three weeks. I am excited to be there this Sunday. But this week I am on the road again, away in Boise, ID, staying in a retreat house owned by the Allelon Ministry Foundation. I am here for a consultation with a number of different folks who are asking the same kinds of questions about what it means to develop and release women and men as missional leaders and the best means by which to do it. This has been an ongoing concern of mine for a long time, as any one who reads this blog knows. I am more than hopeful that this week will be a productive and fruitful continuation of the dialogue many people have been in for quite some time. It intensified in some practical ways last year when I (re)connected with Alan Roxburgh at a consultation he and I were doing with Biblical Theological Seminary outside Philadelphia. Alan (and many others) have been seeking to reimagine theological education. In intimate connection with the Allelon Ministry Foundation (headquartered in Eagle, ID), Alan and a team of people have been developing a proposal describing a new kind of leadership formation process that is anchored philosophically and methodologically in the formation of a new kind of missional order. The proposal quotes words penned by Alasdair MacIntyre toward the end of the last millennium, stating,

“What matters at this stage is the construction of local forms of community within which civility and the intellectual and moral life can be sustained through the new dark ages which are already upon us …We are waiting not for a Godot, but for another — doubtless very different — St. Benedict” (After Virtue, p. 263)

I believe this is critical. If you are at all conversant in the dialogue of the emerging church, then you know that many of us have struggled intuitively with this dilemma. I believe that is why you hear so much in emerging church circles about a "way of life" or "a rule of life" or "discovering a common set of practices that equip us to walk faithfully in the way of Jesus." And this is why I think seminaries are so ill-suited to respond to the cultural context in which the church discovers itself. Apparently they are aware of this, too. The following is a quote from a study commissioned by four seminaries in the United States.

“While our institutions continue to pursue theological scholarship and research with a high level of academic rigor, they often appear to have very little impact upon the actual situation of the congregations and their ability to address the massive changes within our culture. This finding would suggest that our seminaries are not adequately preparing students for this aspect of their vocation.... [If] the North American context has become a mission field, then theological education that generates leadership for the churches in this mission field must take seriously the realities and demands of the missionary church God is calling and sending into that field. The new situation of the church is a new situation for theological education.”

A radical reimagination is necessary and it is increasingly the conviction and the conclusion that local incarnations and expressions of missional life in the forms of community must be the starting point - that is local churches connected as part of a larger missional order and embodying a set of practices and a rule of life that invite women in men into a deeper way of living while at the same time providing serious and rigorous theological training and holistic spiritual formation. But that is a lot to ask of a local community and is the reason why deep and real and diverse connections are critical. It is toward that end that the Allelon Ministry Foundation has been working to network an initial group of people, churches and organizations. And that is what we are doing here this week. In addition to the different people from Allelon, Pat Keifert from Church Innovations is here, as is Alan Roxburgh from the Missional Leadership Institute. Three churches are here as well: two pastors from Cedar Ridge Community Church in Spencerville, MD (Brian McLaren's church), a church in Vancouver, BC, and Jacob's Well. I am here with two elders from our community: Ashley Cleveland and Mike King (pictured working at an amazing coffee shop in Eagle called Rembrandts). Ashley is a chiropractor, the dean of students at Cleveland Chiropractic College, and currently working on her PhD in religion and sociology at the University of Missouri Kansas City. Mike is the CEO of Youthfront, an innovative youth ministry network and resource in Kansas City. Mike is likewise working on a degree currently, an MA in Christian Thought and History from Nazarene Theological Seminary. I am really hopeful to get beyond the discussion aspect of this and to begin experimenting. The weekly barrage of e-mails I receive from young women and men across the country who are seeking resources to respond to the call of God on their lives is staggering to me. So is not being able to offer them much. I will conclude this post with a final quote from the missional order proposal that is inspiring to me.

The church is the pilgrim people of God; it is on the move as a journeying people who live in varied contexts where their life together witnesses to the reconciling mission of God in the world. To form missional communities which sustain lives of imaginative witness in a changing world we need to form an order of leaders committed to developing the practices, skills, habits and frameworks to re -imagine the nature of Christian life and witness in our time.

Amen and may it be so.

Further Reflections on "Goodness"

A number of things have conspired this week to get me thinking again about the nature of the "good." The violent death of Brother Roger has reminded me of the passing of Pope John Paul II. It is my understanding that these two men had a great deal of affection for one another and would meet yearly. That two such potentially powerful men were so gentle and generous of spirit is a great witness in a world obsessed with power. That they should have deep affection for one another is beautiful and not surprising. I am reminded of the Christ hymn in the second chapter of Philippians. When the pope died I was inspired to write a brief meditation on his life and the nature and surprising power of simple goodness. I had been surprised by the amazing media coverage around his death and the way his goodness was consistently described in one way or another. Given the often suspicious way the media covers religious news I guess I was expecting some kind of cynical deconstruction. Maybe we really do reap what we sow after all. Regardless, this theme is again on my mind this week. The other part of this equation is that the movie "Constantine" was released on DVD in the last week or two. In the original post I linked to above I contrasted the approach to battling evil represented in that film and the kind of goodness modeled by the Pope and now by Brother Roger. I read a quote this week by George MacDonald that captures my heart as it relates to defeating evil and gets more quickly to the point than does this meandering post.

Annihilation itself is no death to evil. Only good where evil was, is evil dead. An evil thing must live with its evil until it chooses to be good. That alone is the slaying of evil.

Founder of Taize Stabbed

What horrifying news. Scott Raymond just sent me this link to a news story concerning the murder of Brother Roger, the founding monk of the Taize community in France. I was there in the summer of 2003 with Mike King and Tony Jones and was blessed by Brother Roger at the conclusion of one of the daily prayer and worship services. In fact the stained glass pictures that periodically load in my banner/gallery are pictures I took in their sanctuary. That such a peaceful man should have his life ended so violently is tragic. I pray for the Taize community and ask God to bring healing and joy to the people who will grieve their loss in the coming weeks. I also pray that his life and ministry will continue to overflow into the life of his disciples, animated by the Spirit of Jesus Christ, that their work may continue. Here's a summary of what happened from the linked news story above.

Brother Roger, one of the 20th century’s leading ecumenical figures, was stabbed to death by a woman during a service on Tuesday at the Taize community he founded in eastern France, local police said. Police said a woman stood up during a religious ceremony attended by some 2,500 people and stabbed Brother Roger three times in the throat. The 90-year-old died immediately.

Semi-Reflective Catching Up

I've noticed over the last 15 years or so that my life has rhythms that are operative regardless of my intentions. That is, certain kinds of things happen without my determined efforts (and certain kinds of things don't happen despite my most determined efforts). Maybe a couple of examples would clarify... In winter, I read more. I don't set out to read more. I don't think "I ought to read more." I just read more. I suppose it's winter and it is a form of hibernation. I don't know. When it's cold I consume books. In the summer I still read but the kind of reading I do changes. I read fiction. Non-fiction is really hard - I still slug away at it, but I modify my expectations. I don't think about these decisions, I just follow the path before me. Exercise has its own rhythm in my life, too. At times in the year I don't think about it - I just, proverbially, do it. At other times in the year, I couldn't exercise if I was staring down the barrel of a certain heart attack. And I love to exercise. Another example (and one that is close to the heart of this post) is that in the summer, I am generally less reflective. This probably has something to do with why I like fiction: open a book and submerse yourself in a story - easy. For me blogging comes out of a place of reflection and paying attention to what is happening inside of me and what I am observing externally. In the summer I just live. Thus, the dearth of blog posts. But I have been living. I am hoping to be more reflective here fairly soon. The fall does that to me. But I can't make any promises, and actually, it's not as if anyone is asking me to anyway. So, until such time as I feel the urge to post, here's a brief summer update of the living that has been happening around my household... We finally moved into our new home with the help of a great many friends. We moved twice in a couple of months and I am glad that that is over. It will take awhile to make this new place home, but even so, it is home. The most exciting aspect? I am actually going to have an office. It's a mess like the rest of the house...but an office! We had a health scare with Mimi in July and were relieved and grateful to be told after a surgical procedure that all was well. In addition, Mimi has joined the staff of Jacob's Well as part of the team called to help shape the spiritual formation of children in our community. It has been amazing to see her in action using her gifts and connecting with people about something she has so much passion for. Also, we just returned from a family vacation/speaking engagement. I was invited to speak at the Sunday worship gathering at Mars Hill Bible Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan on August 7. We flew up to Chicago on the 4th and spent a couple of days messing around in the city before renting a car and driving to Grand Rapids. We had a great time at Mars Hill and felt like we were at home in many ways. Thanks to Denise, Shauna, Nate(s), Matt, Brad and all those who made our time there so fun. After I fulfilled my speaking responsibilities, we loaded the minivan back up and drove north to Traverse City. We home-based from there in a hotel right on the beach shore of Lake Michigan. I'll tell you what - it is gorgeous there. Our two highlights were our time at Sleeping Bear Dunes National Park/Lakeshore and the day we spent on Mackinac Island biking around and eating fudge. We drove back to Chicago on Friday and flew home Saturday afternoon. It was a great trip. Unbeknownst to me, however, I brought home an unwanted souvenir: a summer cold.