Back to the Future: Visionary, Entrepreneurial, Missional Anglican Leadership for Today's Church
2010; SAGE Publishing; Volume: 92; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
2163-6214
Autores Tópico(s)Religion, Society, and Development
ResumoThe Open Secret is a Tuesday afternoon. My iPhone rings. a priest on phone Virginia. Someone Tve never met. Priest on phone: Are you Karen Ward? Me: That's me. Priest on phone: I read about your in a book. Tm interested to reach adults. what do you guys do? Me: Come again? Priest on phone: kind of things do you do to attract adults? Me: don't. Priest on phone: But your is full of adults. What kind of music do you use? Is it contemporary? Me: no. Priest on phone: So you must be doing something. Me: 'What we are doing is trying to participate with God in God's redemption of world. We celebrate weekly Eucharist. We confess oursin and receive absolution. We baptize neto disciples. We pray Daily Office. We follow liturgical year. We practice hospitality. We soothe suffering. We tend sick. We shield joyous. All for God's sake! Priest on phone: That seems like basic Anglican stuff. Me: It is. Priest on phone: So how is this different any other Episcopal church? Me: It's not. Priest on pilone: must be something different, as your demographics are. Me (thinking): there is anything, its that we radically hang our lives on this stuff at center our common life and this matters to adults you speak of. My name is Karen Ward and I'm die Abbess and Vicar at Church of Apostles, Seattle, a six-year-old mission of die Diocese of Olympia, Washington. Because around 70 percent of our membership are people in tlieir twenties, we are often called emerging church or young church. When we describe ourselves we say we are an intentional, sacramental community in way of Jesus Christ. There is no mention of adults, and nowhere on our website or in any of our literature do words young adult appear. The Episcopal Church is at a missional crossroads, which Brian McLaren calls the Episcopal moment.1 If we can embrace missional change and renew our identity, purpose, and participation in God's mission, many more adults will join with us, and perhaps in droves. Into Wild Political economist Francis Fukuyama describes what has taken place in our culture as die Great Disruption. Beginning in 1960s we have undergone a huge cultural shift from one world to another.2 Management guru Peter Drucker says it this way: Every few hundred years in Western history there occurs a sharp transformation. . . . Within a few short decades, society rearranges itself - its worldview; its basic values; its social and political structure; its arts; its key institutions. Fifty years later, there is a new world. . . . We are currently living through just such a transformation.3 Hundreds of books have been written to describe characteristics of postmodern turn (the massive shift that has happened in how people view and navigate world). We have moved beyond Enlightenment era and its credo of science, progress, truth, and reason, and into a new world in which iife is not better, truth is relative, diversity is normal, objectivity Ls mythical, science can't save us, power is distributed, hierarchy is flattened, knowledge is networked, life is chaotic, reality bites, mystery happens, and reason is highly overrated. One of my favorite movies is called Into Wild. In many ways it explores circuitous journey of spiritual seekers in postmodem world. The movie tells true story of adventures of Christopher McCandless, a twenty-four-year-old man who leaves behind his troubled family, his identity. He changes his name, gives away all his worldly goods, and sets off to find himself on a long solo journey to wilds of Alaska. To make a long story short, in his solo journey, he discovers diat life is better lived in community, and that identity and heritage you try to downplay is a foundation for your belonging. …
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