First Seminary DMIN cohort starts!

The first Wesley Seminary DMin cohort is now up and running with Bob Whitesel. It's a three year series of courses in Leadership, with a fourth year to do an individualized project.

Bob was built for this sort of thing and it is amazing the schedule he has put together. Next year, Lenny Luchetti is up with a Preaching DMin!

The Homogeneous Principle

Here are some very interesting reflections on the church growth's homogeneous principle, the idea that people are most attracted to groups that are like them. The idea has been used in the past to justify mostly white, black, or Hispanic congregations that are not very diverse.

Bob Whitesel has cleverly suggested that there is even a sense in which multi-ethnic congregations can be homogeneous in the sense that they usually attract people who most enjoy a multi-ethnic setting. He also argues that the homogeneous principle was never meant to exclude and that it applies best to subgroups in a congregation rather than to an entire congregation.

I don't think there is a one size fits all answer. Any church that does not look like the community in which it is located should probably do some self-examination. Certainly no one should be unwelcome at a church and a church should do everything it can to be welcoming to everyone in its context.

Want to come journey with me, Bob Whitesel, and Lenny Luchetti this Fall???

Although most of Wesley Seminary's students are online, you may not know that you can actually move to the central Indiana area and take classes here onsite in our new building!

• This Fall on Thursdays you can join Bob Whitesel and me for Missional Church.  He'll journey with you in relation to God's mission to the world. I'll process the Bible, theology, and church history with you in relation to mission.  It's a team taught course, face-to-face.
• ... and you can take Lenny Luchetti for spiritual formation on Thursdays as well--how does change take place in our lives?

You can live in Marion or as much as an hour or two from campus and still take classes from 9-4 in the new building on Thursdays.  We can work with you to connect with a church in the area if you need.  If you want to move to Marion, we'll work with you on housing.

Sure, you can do it online... but you don't have to turn in as many assignments onsite in the new building. :-)

By the way, I forgot to say to email dianne.clark@indwes.edu or you can email me too: ken.schenck@indwes.edu .

P.S. Did I mention that we have a new building!

Whitesels Waypoints 2

I'm reading through Bob Whitesel's new book, Waypoints, this month, Waypoints. The first post on it is here.

Bob's book has 16 points a person might be on the Christian journey. I strongly prefer not to think of these as the process, which is why Bobby Clinton's rigidly regimented leadership sequence gets on my nerves big time. I don't think Bob means it rigidly either. What I find Bob's book helpful for is to see the kinds of needs a person at a particular point might have and to see the kinds of things that might conceivably get such a person moving in the right direction.

Of course movement is a mysterious mix of grace and free will, so no promises that such tactics will work. Bob's advice certainly makes sense as the kinds of things that might, from a human perspective, facilitate change. And in the mystery of God's will, why wouldn't we try, especially if a person's heart is bent to cooperate with God's grace?

Waypoint 15 (you'll remember his chapters go backward) is "Awareness of a Supreme Being." This is the person who is not an atheist who disbelieves. This is the type of person who has a minimal sense of God or the possibility of God, but they are not at Waypoint 14, where a person has some awareness of the good news.

I like this chapter and we had Wesley Seminary @IWU students read it as part of our missional course. What I like about it is that it sketches out the levels of human needs a person has. A person who is starving is not likely to want to talk to you about theology. Maslow's hierarchy of needs can be sanctified. Bob suggests that unless a person's basic physiological and security needs are met, you will not likely get very far with them talking about God.

Bob suggests research first: 1) live among them, 2) meet in group settings, 3) don't clone someone else's ministry. Then design your ministry: 1) include non-churchgoers int he planning and 2) allocate sufficient money. Finally, connect and evaluate: 1) do a trial run, 2) be a good-doer not a do-gooder (don't give off fake vibes).

Waypoint 14 involves people who have some sense of God but 1) are skeptical or 2) tend to ignore Him. For those who ignore Bob suggests 1) help them to see the seriousness of God's existence, 2) help them picture the future. He backs these things us with several points: 1) injustice and poverty are the result of human activity, 2) humankind was put in charge of the creation, 3) humankind is in charge of caring for the needy, 4) God requires sacrifice.

He closes the chapter with an interview with Ron Sider, who is a good example of someone who balances spiritual with physical concerns.

Bob Whitesel: Spiritual Waypoints 1

The first professor Wesley Seminary had was Bob Whitesel, author of numerous books in the areas of church growth and missional leadership. His most recent book is Spiritual Waypoints and I'm reading it this month as part of the faculty integration of foundation and praxis. I'll return to Oden at some point in the future.

My two chapters today are the Introduction and chapter 16. He cleverly has numbered the chapters to go down to where chapter 0 is the goal. He is trying to think about our walk with God not as one moment in time, conversion, but as a process and a journey. Not everyone will cover this entire journey, and I don't think he means to say that all the waypoints along the way have to be visited. He is suggesting that the expectation that a person will jump from one end of the journey to the other can be problematic.

He's doing several things in this book at the same time. For example, he interviews key individuals on the missional scene throughout the book. In chapter 16 (the first chapter), he interviews Richard Peace of Fuller.

He is also trying to hold the balance between the Great Commission and the Great Commandment without leaving one or the other out. He sees the "evangelistic mandate" (souls) as primary if you have to choose--but you don't. It has to be both/and, both souls and the "cultural mandate" to help people in their material, earthly needs.

Chapter 16 is about a person who has no awareness of a Supreme Being at all. Bob--following Peace--strongly suggests that it is not problematic to think of movement to agnosticism as a good thing because it is progress on the journey. Looking at it from a particular Christian perspective, Bob thinks of agnosticism as having some awareness of a Supreme Being even though they have not committed to such belief. Of course some agnostics might define themselves as someone who does not believe we can know if there is a God, while not denying the possibility of God's existence.

Bob suggests three types of atheist who may demonstrate a ripeness for movement: 1) the unselfish activist, 2) the confrontational activist, 3) the self-absorbed artist.

He suggests two things to do to mobilize toward such individuals: 1) release your "organic intellectuals," by which he means Christian intellectuals who engage various spheres of public life; and 2) make sure whatever Christian community to which you belong models things like: a) truth telling, b) fair dealing, c) an "ask-assertive" environment that invites questions and discussion rather than shoving the answers down your throat and d) imagery of hope, that says we have something to offer in an often hopeless world.