Thank you so much for this privilege to share with you some of the ideas that are starting to kindle a fire in my heart. As you may take note of the title of my presentation, the central metaphor is "heart," more particularly "burning heart." The most recent version of my presentation title is: "Burning Heart, Generous Spirit: Mission, Identity, and Stewardship."
Heart, both in Latin and French (cor and coeur respectively), means core or center.[2] The heart is the center or the innermost core of who and what we are. As the "center of all vital functions," says Rita Nakashima Brock, heart "is the seat of self, of energy, of loving, of compassion, of conscience, of tenderness, and of courage."[3] Heart, as a metaphor for center or core, unites body and spirit, reason and emotion, thinking and acting. Randi Jones Walker speaks of moving "our vision from our brain to our heart." By no means should this be interpreted, she argues, that we stop thinking clearly, but that our thought "serves our heart."[4] This resonates with what the great spiritual leaders of the church advocated when they spoke of "keeping the mind in the heart."[5]
Is it not true that what we know best, we "know by heart"? Is it not true that when we truly remember something, we "remember it by heart"? Is it not that when we take something seriously we "take it to heart"? Is it not true that when we speak with passion and honesty we speak "from the bottom of our hearts"? Heart-to-heart conversation means sincere and honest conversation. When one does something outrageously abhorrent, we say: "Where is your heart?" When we are discouraged, we "lose heart." Conversely, when we have gained courage we also have "found our hearts." When we are filled with joy, we "feel it in our hearts." And, when we have learned by heart we act on what we know.
Congregational studies are in concert in speaking of a crisis at the heart of "mainline" Protestant churches. Others speak strongly of a sickness. Statistical projections indicate that this is a sickness unto death. Mainline Protestant churches are losing members; Sunday worship attendance is down; financial giving in general is weak and the support for wider ministries in particular is on the wane.[6] A Newsweek article quoted Stanley Hauerwas as saying that "God is killing mainline Protestantism in America."[7] I do not believe a bit of the theological validity of this statement. Nonetheless, even more moderate voices are saying that unless a major turn-around happens, we will be seeing the gradual death of "mainline" Protestant denominations.[8] It may not be death in the literal physical sense of disappearance, for great institutions rarely disappear without a trace. But it may be a "death" from being the "mainline" churches they once were to becoming "oldline" churches. No doubt "oldline" churches continue to do great things and serve real needs. But, "as a group and on the whole," says John Cobb, Jr., they are "lukewarm" and "inspire no passion."[9]
Now, that really bites! A fire is raging in my heart. Part of me says NO, it is not true. On the other hand, I feel it is right on target and it needs to be expressed with passion. In the ups and down of life, "oldline" Protestant churches have been present as vendors of services to both members and non-members alike, but on the whole they have not been effective in producing passionate disciples who are committed to the mission of the church. If this is the case, "What on earth is wrong?" And, of course, the next question is: "What are we going to do about it?" Against the background of pervasive and contagious lukewarmness, how do we develop congregations with burning hearts for the mission of the church?
The Thrust: Seeking to Be a Church with a Burning Heart and a Generous Spirit
I raise the above questions not because I have ready and precise answers or prescriptions for the current malady. I do not see myself as a consultant on congregational life that has prescriptions for congregational health, but as a member of the church who is struggling to articulate as sharply as I can the urgent and matter-of-life challenges that we as a church are facing and to explore ways to start thinking about them. Maybe, in our common wrestling and discernment, not only would we inspire each other but also we might find concrete steps to actualize our dreams for the church we truly care about.
Burning hearts for the mission of the church: That is what we want our congregations to be. I take that challenge as the main thrust of my presentation: "Burning Heart, Generous Spirit: Mission, Identity, and Stewardship." This title reveals not only my hope for the church, but also the thrust of my presentation, the flow of my thoughts, and the basic points and their relationship.
If there is a connection between declining membership, low Sunday worship attendance, lukewarmness, and waning support for wider ministries, in like manner I say that there is a connection between burning heart and generous spirit as well as connection between identity, mission, and stewardship. A generous spirit flows from an experience of a burning heart; and acts of generosity fuel the burning heart/center. Moreover, I say that the formation of a burning heart is related to the quest for identity, which is inseparable from mission or reason for being, and which then flows into stewardship. The flow is not linear. It spirals to nourish the process again and again.
A Heart that Lets Go and Takes Risks: Venturing Into New Ways of Thinking, Dwelling, and Acting
It is easy to fall into false panaceas in moments of profound crisis. Too eager for a quick turn-around, many declining or plateaued congregations are ready to grab for any silver bullet or a "faithful fix" for the illness. As in most quick-fix solutions, the diagnosis is often inadequate. What kind of solution can we expect from an inadequate diagnosis? It is a solution that does not address the root cause of the illness, but simply treats the symptoms. Thus the illness remains or keeps on coming back.
Mainline Protestant churches can live again! But it requires major rethinking, letting go of old habits of thinking and taking risks. No mere return to old-time religion will suffice to form a burning center. As it is commonly understood, return to old-time religion, to use the words of James Luther Adams, "restores only the ashes and not the fires of faith."[10] A revitalized church is possible, but a fundamental and paradigmatic change of our perceptions need to happen. The time has come to take a serious look not only at what and how we are doing, but why we are doing what we are doing. Asking why we are doing what we are doing may trigger a shift in perspective and help the church to move beyond maintenance.
There is no complete assurance of a revitalized congregation, but letting go and taking risks need to be undertaken. The choice is not between maintaining ourselves by avoiding serious questioning of our deeply-held practices and commitment on one hand and losing members by engaging in critical reflection and taking a stand on the other. Rather, as Cobb puts it starkly, the choice is between having losses caused by decadence and having losses caused by faithfulness. If we continue to perform as at present, the losses may be gradual, but there is no end in sight. Though there is no guarantee of numerical growth if we follow Christ faithfully, there is, however, a "chance that the renewed authenticity will attract new people and become the basis for a new beginning."[11]
Reorienting the Church: Mission, Ministry, Context, and Stewardship
It seems to me that the first step in our efforts to develop congregations with burning hearts and generous spirit is to question the very reason for the existence of the church, or the very reason for the existence of our congregation. Do we have any reason for being other than the fact that we have always been here and our church members feel at home? If there is none, then we do not really have purpose other than continuance or survival. If this is the case, why not close our doors?
Asking these questions is basically asking about what we commonly call the mission of the church. I know that it has been more and more common for congregations to have a mission statement, but having a mission statement is not identical to having grappled with the matter in a radically demanding way. Very often, after the mission statement comes to its final form, it sits somewhere and is forgotten. Discernment of mission must be a regular part of the life of a congregation. Every one must be on board with the mission.
Mission, in the way I understand it, is not so much about what the church does, whether overseas or within our neighborhood, but the church's understanding of who it is and what it is called to be. It is not one program as distinct from another program; rather, it saturates all that a church cares about and does.[12] Mission is about the very reason for the existence of the church in general and for a congregation in particular. It speaks of the very identity of the church. We know the church by its mission and how it carries out its mission, which in the proper sense is what we call ministry or ministries. When it is identified with what the church does, it is confused with ministry. So what is ministry in relation to mission?
Ministry flows from the church's understanding of mission or reason for being. It seeks to embody the mission. To put it differently, ministry is the incarnation of mission. Ministry turns mission into flesh and blood. In this manner, ministry is not a separate activity apart from mission (and vice versa); rather ministry is missional. All ministries of the church must be carried out in the spirit of mission and of its mission. Hence, we must speak of missional ministries.
But ministry can only become a concrete embodiment of mission when we take seriously another critical dimension--context. Only in dialogue with context can relevant missional ministry emerge. Taking the context seriously is a practical ministerial demand: It is a requirement for developing sound and effective ministry. Good intentions are not enough. As a common saying goes: "Even the road to hell is paved with good intentions." More than a practical necessity, there is something theologically at stake in taking the context seriously: An error in understanding the world leads to an error in understanding God.[13] I say this because we know God only through the world. God is revealed (also hidden) in and through the world.[14]
To put the three together: Ministry is guided by mission and is informed by context. Or, to put it differently, ministry is defined by mission and shaped contextually. Viewed from the angle of context, context is the locus of ministry and target object of mission even as it informs ministry and calls for the re-articulation of mission. For its part, even as mission guides ministry and targets the context as an object of mission, mission is mission only in relation to context and is good news only in the concrete embodiments of ministry. Moreover, the demands of the context and the practice of ministry fuel mission and call for its re-articulation.
A crucial element that must be woven with mission, ministry, and context is stewardship. Unless stewardship is woven with these three, I am afraid we are not going to give birth to a vital church with a burning heart and a generous spirit. Unless stewardship is woven into the very fabric of the church's mission or reason for being and its concrete embodiment in specific contexts, it is going to be felt as an "extra thing." With this premise, I say that stewardship is not primarily about our activity of fund-raising to support the programs of the church as about our participation in the care, nurture, and cultivation of the whole web of life, and orienting our whole being so that we live lives of radical gratitude, extravagant hospitality, and overflowing generosity in the service of God's mission, which the church has been called to take part. Having the church's mission understood in relation to this grand notion of stewardship, I say that we are Christian stewards when we are faithful to the mission of the church.
With stewardship attached to the very purpose or reason for being of the church, we have put it at the center of the church’s identity. If mission is not so much about what we do (though expressed in what we do) as about who we are, likewise stewardship is about who we are. It is an expression of our very center--of our very identity. Our gifts to and through the church emerge from who we are. This is not an inversion of the scholastic adage: Agere sequitor esse, "action follows being." Rather, it is the identification of acting with being: Esse est agere, "to be is to act."[15] Or, we act because we are.
Following this line of thinking, discipleship and stewardship go together. Real stewardship leads to faithful discipleship. And faithful discipleship requires the cultivation of various gifts or charisms (stewardship) for disciples to carry out the mission of the church through concrete embodiments of ministries as called by the various contexts.
Goal Displacement: Re-Articulating the Mission of the Church
I have argued for the critical importance of mission in relation to ministry, context, and stewardship, but I have not dealt with the specific content of what mission is. If mission is the church's reason for being, what is the mission of the church?
Broadly, I define mission as the church's participation in God's transforming act (liberating and reconciling love), which was embodied to us in the most radical way through Jesus of Nazareth's commitment to live and proclaim the reign of God in the midst of a broken world. The orienting horizon of the mission and ministry of Jesus is the reign of God. Taking this orienting horizon seriously in relation to the church, I say that the church’s reason for being can only be properly understood in relation to the reign of God. The church arises out of its proclamation, lives according to its message, and organizes itself in its direction.[16] From this broad definition and against the background of the orienting horizon, it is clear that the mission of the church is transforming lives and making disciples to carry out the ministry of liberation and reconciliation in the world.
This, for me, is the broad and constant meaning of the mission of the church. But there is also the contextual and changing dimension, for the reason that the general and enduring statement of mission must be re-articulated in response to the call of the context. Thus, each congregation, the embodiment of the church universal, must re-articulate this mission in more specific ways in relation to the challenges it is facing in its own time and place. A mission statement must be specific enough to give direction as the congregation navigates in the world. When it is not concrete and specific enough, the congregation is more likely to get entangled in messy details of survival; it experiences what is called goal displacement.
Goal displacement has been the encounter of many congregations that do not have clear mission direction. A congregation may be busy doing a lot of good things, but it seems not moving in one direction. It may be bubbling with activities, but there is no passion that drives it toward something. Congregations are more vulnerable to goal displacement in moments of crisis. To cite an example, in the face of declining membership, growth has become the overriding goal of mission of many congregations. While growth in membership is important, it is an outcome or byproduct of institutional health, not our primary objective. Hadaway is clear on this: "Vital churches that are clear about their reason for being tend to be growing churches, but growth doesn't lead to vitality. It's the other way around."[17]
Our mission is the transformation of lives and making disciples for the sake of transforming both church and society. As an expression of mission and ministry, a congregation may render various forms of social services to church members and the wider public, but its mission or primary identity is not that of a vendor of services. A congregation is not like a bank, a fire or police department, and its motto is not, "Call us when you need us." "In truth," contends Keith Russell, "what we in congregations have to offer is not a variety of services but an invitation to a new life with a distinct identity, a membership in a new community."[18] Inviting people to a new life (identity) and helping them to live differently, that is what congregations are called to be and to do. It is not only about giving services or striving to be the "nice" church out there, at the corner of First Avenue and Main Street. This gospel of "niceness" is so pervasive and I am finding it more and more to be "offensively nice."
An average homily for children as well as adults is just as likely to suggest that God's main attribute is being nice, or such equivalents as easy to get along with and helpful when needed. Let us imagine the extreme makeover this would give of Isaiah's vision of God: "...I saw the Lord sitting on a lawn chair, close and friendly; and the emblem of his ballcap said [Minnesota Twins]...Seraps ...called to one another and said: "Nice, nice, nice is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his niceness" (Isaiah 6:1-3, altered).[19]
Mission that Matters: Embodying a Mission Identity
The rearticulation of mission as crucial to the formation of a church with a burning heart and generous spirit is a step in the right direction, but something more has to happen. A certain way of understanding one's identity in relation to the world and a sense of call to witness to the good news of a transforming event are of critical importance. The witness must embrace the message as critical, urgent, and that his or her commitment to the message really matters to the world. This is the kind of insight we can garner from the early Christian communities and from so-called alternative communities.
The New Testament Christians adopted the term paroikoi to speak of their identity in relation to the world (Acts 7:6; I Peter 2:11). As resident aliens they not only have a specific identity, task and burden, but also a specific promise and destiny. They are expected to behave in accord with their identity. Following the Johannine rendering of the other-worldly identity of Jesus ("not of this world"), resident aliens know that they are "in" the world, but not "of" this world. They do not escape from this world, but affirm both being in the world and not letting the world define them.[20]
Being "in" the world but "not of this world" is a challenge to the church that seeks to be faithful. It seems to me that part of the lack of passion of mainline Protestant Christianity to witness the good news is its absorption or identification with the mainstream culture. Perhaps, in the effort to make Christianity acceptable to the world, liberal Christians tend to minimize or polish the tension between Christianity and the world.[21] Such a posture exacts a high price by blurring the salvific message of the Crucified One, which is a stumbling block to its "cultured despisers." As a "culture-religion" of mainstream America, liberal Christianity has lost its power to disturb middle-class values and its ability to articulate a strong Christian vision of who we are and what God calls us to do.
When there is no difference in being a church member and not being one, then what is the point of staying in the church? William McKinney and Wade Clark Roof suggest in their sociological study of congregations that people drop out of church life altogether because the mainline churches have become "something of a `culture religion,' captive to middle class-values, and somewhat lacking in their ability to sustain a strong transcendent vision."[22] Because mainline churches are closely identified with mainstream culture, this means that church members can "drift off into that culture without the sense of having suffered any serious loss."[23]
There is no doubt that the church is called to be a "contrast society" or a "counter-cultural community."[24] However, the church can be a contrast society without being a fortified colony of resident aliens. Creating a fortified colony is not the answer; neither is the idea of escape. Exodus, understood as escape to another place, seems not an adequate metaphor. The challenge, I believe, is to devise ways of faithfulness and resistance while living in the same space. Instead of escape or conquest, Marianne Sawicki appropriates the metaphors of salt and leaven. Like salt, the church must be a corrosive and preservative presence, and it must be "infectious, expansive, and profane like leaven." Both salt and leaven express a theology of "digging in and staying put"; they both express an "ecclesiology of infiltration" or a stance of "subversive cohabitation."[25]
Identity: Creating a Narrative Community
Without a powerful narrative that defines its daily life, there is no doubt that a congregation is going to be swallowed by the world. A church with a burning heart is possible only when it has a strong narrative identity. Narrative is formative of a congregation's life and identity. The congregation's "self-perception," says Thomas Edward Frank, "is primarily narrative in form" and the mode of "communication among its members is primarily by story.” A simple question: "How did you happen to become a member of this congregation?" will draw members to share their stories. These stories, both individual and collective, are the yarns that make up the dense and colorful fabric of congregational narrative.[26]
As an embodiment of the worldwide church throughout the ages, a congregation, no matter how young in years, has a narrative whose roots are deep. A congregation must reclaim or anchor its narrative into the tradition of the early pioneers of the faith. This means finding a sense of continuity with biblical stories and the history of the church in various times and places. When a congregation does this, its narrative rootage is deepened and its sense of identity broadened.
Who are we? Whose are we? And what are we called to be and to do? What kind of religio-moral formation have we received from our churches? Has our church of membership done something beyond the buffet style Sunday School to embark on the ministry of Christian identity formation? What is the main narrative that is informing our lives?
The church must recover its own narrative, for it is a community defined by a unique narrative.[27] This narrative is not only a guide for its life; it is also a form of witness to the world. We can find this narrative by rediscovering what is at the heart of its tradition. The church must rediscover its central story if it is to regain "the courage to be itself," as Paul Tillich would put it.[28] I say that the church can claim itself as a Christian church only in relation to what God has done in Christ through the life and witness of Jesus of Nazareth in light of the coming reign of God. Following Sallie McFague's categories, this is characterized by acts of radical deconstruction (parables), reconstruction (healing ministries), and a radical vision of life abundant (prospective--egalitarian meals).[29] This is our narrative as much as it is the narrative of God. It is a narrative of God's liberating and reconciling love in Jesus, which has found embodiment in the life of the church throughout the ages. The church must articulate and inculcate this narrative to its members through sermons, Christian education, worship and liturgical celebrations, etc.
Translocal Identity: Making Our Hearts as Large as the World
Our concern is not only about developing a burning heart, but also about developing a heart as large as the world. At this point I am reminded of a scene in a play in John Drinkwater's Lincoln, the World Emancipator.[30] Mrs. Blow, a zealot of the Northern cause, asked President Abraham Lincoln if there was any news regarding the Civil War. "Yes," said Lincoln, "they lost twenty-seven hundred men--we lost eight hundred." Mrs. Blow was ecstatic, saying: "How splendid!" Registering a deep dismay, Lincoln responded with a point: "Thirty-five hundred." But Mrs. Blow interrupted: "Oh, but you must not talk like that, Mr. President. There were only eight hundred that mattered." With sadness, Lincoln spoke to Mrs. Blow with measured emphasis: "The world is larger than your heart, madam."
"The world is larger than your heart," says Lincoln to Mrs. Blow in the dialogue. Sadly, her heart was small. The well-being of the other group was not in the embrace of her heart; it was outside of her heart's concern. But Mrs. Blow's heart is not unique to her. It also speaks about our hearts.
Making our hearts as large as the world requires more than listening to a good sermon or reading about travels to some exotic places. It requires creating the conditions under which a new heart may grow and a creative moral imagination may arise. Making our hearts as large as the world and funding our social imagination require locating ourselves in unfamiliar places, confronting our fears, and making ourselves porous to the revelatory encounter with the other.
In a Philippine exposure trip that I led, a revelatory event took place. In the house of one of the fisherfolks I noticed an aquarium with very small fish, like the size of a toothpick. I asked our hosts what kind of fish they were. The fisherfolks of Laguna de Bay started to tell our group that the fish in the wider lake (the siblings of the fish in the aquarium) already weighed around two pounds. There was a big difference in size between the fish in the aquarium and those that were out in the lake. Then I turned to my students and explained the parable: Just like the fish, if we stay within our aquariums we will not grow; our world will remain small and narrow. But if we take the risk and venture into the wider world, we open ourselves to the possibility of making our hearts as large as the world.[31]
Living as one with a heart as large as the world is always a challenge, especially in a climate where hearts are constricting and walls of division are rising. Wall-busting, bridge-building, and moving fences of divisions are the tasks that await a person whose heart is as large as the world. To carry out these tasks may at times demand being willing to go to hell for the sake of busting walls of division and creating inclusive communities. That was what Huck Finn did with his friend Jim, a runaway black slave. Raised in a culture that preached that helping a runaway slave was equivalent to spitting in the eye of God, Huck was faced with a difficult choice: betraying his friend Jim or suffering eternal damnation in hell. In what is arguably one the greatest lines in Western literature, Huck decided: "All right, then, I'll go to hell."[32]
What do fence movers and wall busters of divisions do? They are willing to go to hell for the sake of busting the walls of societal division. Fence movers and wall busters dare to dream, dare to hope, dare to struggle to break idolatrous fences of divisions and dare to forge more just, inclusive and sustainable communities, both locally and globally. They are boundary crossers in the good sense, overcoming fences of race, class, and gender divisions. Fence movers and wall busters are the new human beings whose hearts are as wide and as large as the world. Busting stereotypes and bridge-building come alive in this story.
On the eve of Yom Kippur, Rabbi Leila Gal Berner preached to her congregation about a 21-year-old Pakistani Muslim person who worked in the World Trade Center. This young man described his experience of evacuating Building 7 and running to escape the Towers. As people continued to run, he fell with people running all around him. He was wearing a pendant around his neck with an Arabic prayer for safety. While he lay on the ground, a Hasidic Jewish man came to him and read the pendant in Arabic out loud. Then, he spoke in a deep Brooklyn accent: "Brother, if you don't mind, there is a cloud of glass coming at us, grab my hand, and let's get the hell out of here." As the young Pakistani told his story, he added that the Hasidic man "was the last person I would ever have thought who would help me."[33]
The church with a heart as large as the world has a translocal identity. It adopts a translocal consciousness. This is not something new, but a recovery and re-articulation of an ancient notion of the church's catholicity. The translocal is one that is both locally rooted, yet globally open and connected. The various congregations around the world point to the universality of the church through its particularity. In its very identity the church embodies the local and the global, the particular and the universal.
The church as a translocal community has serious implications for ministry. A congregation that is conscious of its translocal identity carries out its ministry by interweaving local and global connections and actions. Also, this congregation is aware that it must do ministry in partnership with others at the local, national, and international levels. Moreover, this congregation performs its ministry with humility because it knows that even its ability to do excellent ministry is often funded by the crucified labor of exploited workers both near and far.
Burning Heart, Visionary Heart: The Church as a Community of Moral Imagination
A heart as large as the world is also a heart burning with an empowering vision and a creative moral imagination. Re-imagining the church is an immensely difficult. It does not arise simply by the wave of a magic wand, nor does it arise simply by sitting and imagining a better world in a meditation center. A crisis may provide the impetus for imagination, but it may also lead to its opposite: imagination shrinks when fear dominates. Rather than creativity, defense of the status-quo becomes the posture. This, unfortunately, is the posture of many churches of our time. They may put on the appearance of business as usual, but deep inside are churches, says Douglas John Hall, that are "trying very hard to keep christendom alive--to put that Humpty Dumpty together again."[34] It is only in the sprouting and flowering of creative imagination that we can move from the posture of defenders of the status-quo to harbingers of fluxus quo--toward new ways of thinking, dwelling, and acting.[35] But fertile soil and right conditions must be in place for creative imagination to sprout. I agree with R.B.J. Walker that the challenge of social imagination or cultural creativity is not only a matter of creating visions of a better world but of reconstructing the conditions under which the future may be imagined. Cultural creativity does not occur in abstraction. It arises from concrete everyday practices, from people able to make connections with each other and engagingin dialogue about the meaning of their experiences.[36]
Truly, the task of social imagination, or more particularly, ecclesial imagination, requires creating the conditions under which the "once and future
