Pilgrimage. The missions mindset is changing from a colonial/patriachical view of missions to something that resembles a pilgrimage - a journey of discovery and gift giving. It is more of a two way relationship than a grand act of benevolence to a lesser people. Perhaps it has always been that way - that our journey is one of giving and receiving. The first mission team that Jesus sent out (Luke 9) was told to seek hospitality and gifts from the people they were sent to. Peter was sent to Cornelius but Cornelius had a gift for Peter. It certainly was the case for the Celtic monks who travelled the world in search of knowledge and books. Everywhere their wunderlust took them they told the story of Jesus and people came into the Kingdom of God. In fact, some would argue that Europe became a "Christian" continent through the endevors of these wandering monks on "pilgrimage". Very few mission agencies understand that the next generation see pilgrimage as a necessary element of their spiritual quest. One of the few that acknowlege that desire and make provision for it is Servlife. Joel Vestal founded Servlife a few years back. Joel is from good missionary stock - his dad, Dan Vestal is a missionary and his grandfather was a Baptist evangelist. Servlife is a holistic missions agency that represents a new movement in the way missions is happening among young people. Journeys in missions are created around the teams that follow the leading of God. Art is embraced as a part of that expression. Justice for the oppressed and provision for the poor and needy are a part of the philosophy and practice. And rather than compromising the good story of God, Joel and his team insist that the gospel is enhanced through the practical outworking of service and compassion. http://www.servlife.org Business In the disjointed way of doing church that we have inherited from those who went before us, business and spirituality never meet. We do all things together except making a living. You can ask any question in a Bible study. You can even get so personal as to ask what secret sin someone struggles with. But you cannot ask how much money someone makes because that is none of your business and nothing to do with God or church. Well, believers like the members of the Icthus network in California, have broken down the barriers and share life on many levels, including business. It is often hard to distinguish where business stops and ministry starts. Members of this group interwine their lives together in sharing businesses, art projects and worship experiences. Even missions, in their understanding, is related to their businesses and their art. They run a gallery which is also where they host labyrinths, installations of sacred art and sometimes rave parties. There is a studio downstairs with more businesses and art projects. In fact, that studio is where the website for our event is being created. Labdesign Group is one of the businesses that form a part of the fellowship of this network of churches. Mixing business with church is nothing new.
-Viv Grigg, who creates urban monastic orders, told me that the old English word for "fellowship" means, literally, "half-shares in a cow". Apparently, we get the word "fee" from the same word.
-The Apostle Paul saw much of his ministry happen along the lines of tentmaking and the various businesses that connected around that trade.
-Missiologist Thom Wolf has stated that business will be the vehicle of missions in this new century.
-The Moravians did a splendid job in integrating business enterprises with mission activity. I read that missionaries in India got sick of washing their white clothes and so they invented a mud colored cloth. We know it today as khaki. The idea caught on and the Indian army decided to go with khaki as their official uniform. So did other armies around the world. And, of course, every deacon in Colorado - which is why many of us stopped wearing it. But the point is, that in the new way of doing church, doing business together is becoming another important way to share life, to have all things in common, as well as a vital means of creating new networks for the gospel to flow.

Citywide Church There are movements helping us to move away from denominationalism and embrace new ways to be the whole church in the city in which God has called us to be a transforming influence. I was in Portland, Oregon in the late eighties as two movements of God were forming. One was a movement in prayer which became the Prayer Summit movement that has been uniting pastors and people in prayer retreats now for over ten years. It is a fantastic movement that owes much to Terry Dirks who passed away last year. The other movement, also stemming from Multnomah Bible College, was trying to unite the disjointed ministries in the city of Portland under a project called Mission Portland. This idea took off and cities around the country began to pull together the efforts of the many churches towards a united effort and the sense that we were all part of one church, the Body of Christ, in one city. John Berryhill, after working with Jim Herrington of Mission Houston, came to Austin to implement the same strategy. Cityreach Austin is the resulting ministry. It is a part of the same movement but with a different name. John is helping to pull the Epicenter-Tribal Generation event together. I met him when he was in Houston, ministering in Montrose/Westheimer, the alternative area of Houston. He had already become a legend around the country through his act of reckless boldness - and I should really tell you the story. John Berryhill goes to the largest club in Houston, one notorious in reputation, and he says to the owner of the club, "The Lord has need of your club!" The guy is blown away by the request, and, long story short, gives the venue to John to have his worship service in. Not only that but he also provides radio coverage and makes the event something that people are still talking about. Way to go, John! Wolfgang Simson wrote something last week on this same idea of the City wide church. The City Church. Is God introducing a new chapter in Church History? Imagine Christians meeting in your area or city again in two places, just like in New Testament days: 1. "from house to house", decentralized in many housechurches, and 2. meeting repeatedly at a real big and central place, a modern version of "Solomons Colonade"; a big hall or stadium. In the houses they would authentically share lives together, live organic fellowship and thus be a true shopping window of God for their neighborhood. In the large citywide celebrations they would mark their unity in Christ, express the fact that they belong together, have a big festival together and allow as many housechurches as possible to click together for the big vision and take on the shape of a regional transdenominational gospel movement. That would, just like it did before, truly transform whole cities and regions through the gospel of the Kingdom of God. And nobody could deny that "you have filled Jerusalem with this teaching" (Acts 5:28).

Justice. "But to do justice, and love mercy and to walk humbly with your God." Ron King's church was recognized by Christianity Today as being one of the most innovative churches in the country. A few years ago, I had pizza with them in the New Jersey restaraunt that they met in for worship. They were explaining to me the plan for their new coffee shop. It would be used in the daytime for the ministry of mediation and justice. Restorative Justice is a movement that brings offenders and the victims together with their respective families and discusses the problem and its solution within the context of the community involved. Youth cases in their area were being reaassigned to Ron's church and they were actively and successfully involved in the ministry of mediation and community building. They told me that this movement in justice had started in New Zealand with an experiment in tribal, relational mediation, as opposed to the impersonal modern justice system. It met with substantial success in New Zealand and also in Australia, where a more structured version of restorative justice evolved. When I met with Ron, Restorative Justice was already happening in 200 centers around USA.

Listening Ron King is using the Native American talking stick as a tool to enable communication and listening. The person in possession of the talking piece has the floor and can speak uninterrupted. I see them popping up in American churches a lot. This weekend in Austin, James Bruce of The Branch http://crossbranch.org holds a worship drum circle and will be using a talking stick. Last month I was in California with the Ichthus network. In their home service, a Native American talking stick was passed around and people who wanted to share what God was doing in their life took possesion of the stick and spoke. Drew Rice of Dada uses a hackey sack but the idea is the same. Whoever has the hackey, has the floor. A movement in listening has been happening in the Anglican/Episcopal scene for some time. The movement in spiritual direction emphasizes listening to God. Margaret Guenther calls it "holy listening". One of the few Baptist Churches I have come accross that moves with confidence into the world of spiritual direction and transforming rituals is Austin First Baptist Church. Rev. Roger Paynter, who was a friend of the late Catholic priest Henri Nouwen, has been a guide for me in finding spirituality that is deeper and more real than the repitition of endless activity that used to characterize my walk with God. A book he lent me (opps, I still have it!) was Alan Jones's "The Soul's Journey". This is a book emerging from the spiritual direction stream of the Episcopal tradition. It is a challenge to embrace the full human experience and to avoid "stuckness" in the spiritual journey. It is based on Dante's Divine Comedy and it impacted me so powerfully that I decided to use Dante's picture of the spiritual journey as the basis for our worship installation at our Austin event two years ago.

Thinking Some of the thinking behind our worship event in Austin this year will come from Mark Scandrette. Mark moved to San Francisco with his uber-blond family a few years ago and has been getting lost inside the culture of the MIssion district. He has been rethinking what the journey with Jesus would be like in that environment and how church would happen. He is not alone. Others have moved to San Francisco in the past three years with a similar goal - to reimagine the church. Dieter and Val Zander, of Willow Creek fame, also moved there and form part of this group called Reimagine. Other key thinkers in the group include Eric and Linda Bergquist who are starting up churches designed with the unique postmodern flavor of San Francisco. One of these is a feeding program of the Page Street Baptist Community Center that is becoming a church. Urban missiologist Francis DuBose started this ministry many years ago for disadvantaged people to collect food. It has since become a place of belonging, spiritual counselling, prayer and community. Last year one of the young people died of a heroin overdose. He had no family except those in the feeding program so Eric held a funeral service there in the Community Center. People no longer call it a feeding program. They call it their "church". Reimagine is a place to think together and explore what church might look like if it were created from the ground up in the San Franciscan context. Needless to say, this group is coming up with some thinking that is vital to our ecclesiolgy in a postmodern world. A few months ago, Mark threw a party in his home that contained the seeds of a new way of doing church. I close with some thoughts about the event from Mark.

"We devoted three days to collaborating in the production of an art installation. After talking and praying about what we might do, we decided on a collective vision. We would:

1. Collect garbage from the neighborhood to use as building materials for the artwork.
2. Seek to understand and identify with the people on the street as an act of humility.
3. Incorporate spiritual disciplines in the art-making process (ie. Intercession, confession, etc.)
4. Work with the guiding metaphor of God's longing to see our lives found/put back in place/reimagined in the kingdom.
5. Utilize the art displayed to generate conversations about issues of faith.

During those three days 35 pieces of art were produced by a group of 12 people. Every morning we began with group sharing and prayer. The rest of the day was spent garbage collecting and creating artwork. Our house was a whirl of activity with people sculpting, painting, gluing, shooting 8mm film, taking pictures, and making sound recordings.

On Saturday morning we sat down to reflect on what we had learned through the art-making process. We used these reflections to produce a Collective Artist's Statement that would be handed out at the party. This was an effort to translate the spiritual lessons we had learned into language that would be understood by the people we had invited to the party (primarily artists and social activists). The collective artist's statement concluded with this paragraph:

A Metaphor of Hope

Perhaps, to some extent, we can all relate to a loss of perceived value or a sense of being out of place--and the accompanying yearning to be REIMAGINED. This project is displayed with faith in the divine remaking of all that has been made - a vision that all things [that] are pregnant with latent potentiality."
Mark Scandrette (Dec 2000)

May God continue His remaking in us

Andrew Jones
The Boaz Project

If you would like to respond to any of the issues raised in this article then go to MESSAGE BOARD: Epicenter