{"id":2139,"date":"2010-07-30T08:09:26","date_gmt":"2010-07-30T14:09:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tonyjones\/?p=2139"},"modified":"2015-03-13T17:01:11","modified_gmt":"2015-03-13T22:01:11","slug":"almost-christian-missional-imaginations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tonyjones\/2010\/07\/30\/almost-christian-missional-imaginations\/","title":{"rendered":"Almost Christian: Missional Imaginations"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

I\u2019m blogging through Kenda Creasy Dean\u2019s new book<\/a>, a theological follow up to Christian Smith\u2019s <\/em>Soul Searching<\/a>. I hope you\u2019ll join me. Find all the posts here<\/a>.
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

In chapter five<\/strong>, Kenda continues a theme that she\u2019s already introduced: cultivating missional imaginations in teens is a strong antidote to moralistic, therapeutic deism.\u00a0 But what, exactly, is a missional imagination<\/em>?<\/p>\n

Well, what it\u2019s not<\/em> is a week-long summer mission trip to an Indian reservation.\u00a0 In fact, Kenda argues that the fact that we\u2019ve had to find an adjective \u2014 basically, to invent the word, \u201cmissional\u201d \u2014 \u201ctestifies to the American church\u2019s frayed ecclesiology.\u201d\u00a0 Be that as it may, missional is here to stay, and she finds it a helpful term.<\/p>\n

Kenda\u2019s definition of a missional youth ministry parallels her understanding of the gospel, and she uses some of the same characterizations: messy, indecorous, risky.\u00a0 \u201cMissional churches,\u201d she writes, \u201cratchet up expectations by consciously striving to point out, interpret, and embody the excessive nature of God\u2019s love.\u201d<\/p>\n

A ministry that exemplifies missionality for Kenda is Outreach Red Bank<\/a>, a one-time youth ministry that has \u201cblossomed into a multigenerational church.\u201d\u00a0 ORB and other missional ministries fashion their life on the cruciform pattern of Christ\u2019s life, death, and resurrection:<\/p>\n

\u201cIn short, the goal of missional churches is to imitate Christ in context, to participate in anamnesis<\/em>, a sacramental term that means \u201cremembering\u201d\u2026 As communities of memory, missional churches seek to re-member God\u2019s overwhelming love by enacting it in human form, whenever the community gathers and wherever God\u2019s people are sent.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In this chapter, Kenda leans on the theologies of Lamin Sanneh<\/a> and Andrew Walls<\/a>, and from the latter she borrows the rubric of the missional principle<\/em> being the result of a two-way move: the indigenizing principle<\/em> and the pilgrim principle<\/em>.\u00a0 To those, Kenda adds the liminal principle<\/em>: the paradoxical place where Christ meets us and where teenagers seem to exist.\u00a0 \u201cThe gospel\u2019s liminal principle represents Christ\u2019s ongoing revelation as he expectantly waits for us to recognize him and rejoice.\u201d<\/p>\n

My question for this chapter is not theological, since I very much agree with Kenda\u2019s characterization of the gospel, nor is it developmental.\u00a0 It is instead, the result of one sentence in the chapter, in which she describes Christian Andrews, the pastor of ORB, who \u201ckeeps his vocation\u2026in perspective by devouring Karl Barth\u2019s Church Dogmatics<\/em><\/a> and the Bible, cover to cover, a couple of times a year.\u201d\u00a0 Hyperbolic though this may be, I have met Christian and I can attest that he is extraordinarily gifted, both intellectually and charistmatically, which leads me to my question:<\/p>\n

Is the kind of missional and theologically-robust youth ministry that Kenda (and others) call for actually possible by the average youth worker?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m blogging through Kenda Creasy Dean\u2019s new book, a theological follow up to Christian Smith\u2019s Soul Searching. I hope you\u2019ll join me. Find all the posts here. In chapter five, Kenda continues a theme that she\u2019s already introduced: cultivating missional imaginations in teens is a strong antidote to moralistic, therapeutic deism.\u00a0 But what, exactly, is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,41],"tags":[52,370,375,383],"class_list":["post-2139","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-youth-ministry","tag-almost-christian","tag-karl-barth","tag-kenda-creasy-dean","tag-lamin-sanneh"],"yoast_head":"\nAlmost Christian: Missional Imaginations<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I'm blogging through Kenda Creasy Dean's new book, a theological follow up to Christian Smith's Soul Searching. I hope you'll join me. 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