The Boundary-Breaking God E-Book

Danielle Shroyer

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Serie: A Living Way - Emergent Visions
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 158

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2009

Beschreibung

A fresh, new exploration of who God is and what God wants forcreation A young pastor introduces us to a God who delights in breakingthrough boundaries, loves to pop up in unexpected places, andfavors the outsider over the institutional insider. Written foranyone longing for a more generative and loving God, this bookoffers a new paradigm through which faith can be understood. Thisboundary-breaking God engages life at every corner-social,economical, political, intellectual, ecological. Offers arefreshing view of God that is creative and expansive. * Written by the popular pastor of Journey Community Church inDallas, this fresh vision of who God can be is enlivened by winsomepersonal stories and anecdotes. * Seeing God's story as a story of boundary breaking opens ourimaginations and compels Christians to live as people of hopefulpurpose who attempt to change the world for the better. * Opens up the Christian "good news" for those who are tired ofthe same old, same old

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

A LIVING WAY

Dedication

Foreword

Preface

Acknowledgements

Chapter 1 - The Universe Is Moving Outward

A PEOPLE OF PROMISE

FINDING GOD’S HORIZON

Chapter 2 - The God of Green Lights

FAITHFUL DISOBEDIENCE

LEARNING TO BE FREE

CHOOSING LIFE

Chapter 3 - We Come Bearing Gifts

AN EXPANSIVE KINGDOM

THE GREAT BANQUET FEAST

Chapter 4 - From Gatekeepers to Door Openers

THE GOD SQUAD

CURTAIN CALL

PRIESTHOOD OF ALL OR PRIESTHOOD OF A FEW?

POINTING TO THE OPEN DOOR

Chapter 5 - When the End Is Just the Beginning

GETTING OUR LIVES BACK

UNLIKELY HERALDS OF THE WORLD’S BEST NEWS

PRACTICING RESURRECTION

Chapter 6 - Wind Power

CALLING PEOPLE TO GOD

WHEN THE SPIRIT HITS THE STREETS

THE SPIRIT OF THE LIVING GOD

TOWERS OR TURBINES?

CONVERTING TO WIND ENERGY

Chapter 7 - A Whole New World

LIFTING OUR VEILS

A WITHERED BUSH AND A TREE OF HEALING

Epilogue

Notes

The Author

Copyright © 2009 by Danielle Shroyer. All rights reserved.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Shroyer, Danielle, date.

p. cm.—(A living way : emergent visions series)

Includes bibliographical references.

eISBN : 978-0-470-52349-0

1. Bible—Meditations. I. Title.

BS491.5.S56 2009

242’.5—dc22

2009018601

PB Printing

A LIVING WAY

emergent visions

The New Christians: Dispatches from the Emergent Frontier,

Tony Jones

A Christianity Worth Believing: Hope-Filled, Open-Armed, Alive-and-Well Faith for the Left Out, Left Behind, and Let Down in Us All,

Doug Pagitt

Soul Graffiti: Making a Life in the Way of Jesus, Mark Scandrette

The Boundary-Breaking God: An Unfolding Story of Hope and

Promise, Danielle Shroyer

For Mia and Grant

A Living Way: Emergent Visions Series Foreword

I’m dubious of grand, historic-sounding proclamations, but when enough people say that we’re in the midst of a spiritual reformation—even an old fashioned revival—it might be time to pay heed. Americans, and people around the world, are not becoming less religious; headlines make that clear. But we are becoming differently religious. We’re thinking about God in new ways, and we’re pioneering new ways to seek after God.

Of course, not all innovations in spirituality are salutary. Some strain the very fabric of the human community. Some tear it.

But others are beautiful and helpful and salubrious. It’s these that we desire to publish.

For a decade now, a group of friends has been gathering under the banner “Emergent Village.” Officially, we describe ourselves as “a growing, generative friendship of missional Christian leaders.” But among ourselves, we know that we’re a band of spiritual renegades who have committed to live into the future together. We share life in profound ways, we care for one another, and we laugh a lot. I can’t imagine a better group of friends.

And out of this cauldron of friendship and disillusion with “religion as usual” have come some ideas and practices that have marked me indelibly. New ways of being Christian, of being spiritual, of following God have bubbled up in this group. We’ve tried, on occasion, to capture the magic before, like vapor, it slips away. That’s not always easy, but sometimes it happens.

Danielle Shroyer has been a faithful member of this group of friends for many years now. When we began, she was an intern at one of the first churches of our movement, and over the years, she has emerged as one of the most potent voices among us. The church she currently leads, Journey, in Dallas, is an exemplary group of Christ followers—a small band of renegades, really, in a city of big steeples and TV preachers. They have fashioned a communion of joy and challenge, and I treasure every time I get to visit them. For her own part, Danielle has brought one of the most potent theologies of the twentieth century, Jürgen Moltmann’s theology of hope—to bear on her faith community.

Whether it’s evangelical dispensationalism or mainline hand-wringing over denominational collapse, hope seems in short supply in American Protestantism. Danielle’s Boundary-Breaking God provides a beautiful antidote to waning Christian hope. Herein, Danielle retells the story of God as recorded in the Hebrew and Christian scriptures—a story with which fewer and fewer are familiar—and she does so through the strong biblical themes of hope and promise. It is a story of God pulling us, and all of creation, forward, into the future that is promised by God and inaugurated by Jesus Christ. And as an added bonus, Danielle is a gifted and winsome writer. This book is destined to be praised as a guide to seekers, doubters, wonderers, and believers alike, and it will be read alone and in groups.

Slowly and carefully, we of Emergent Village enter into this realm, and we offer to you, dear reader, our humble attempts at what it means to follow God in this beautiful, worrisome age. We offer “a living way,” for we firmly hold that God is alive and active in the world today; our job is to cooperate with what God is already doing. And we offer “emergent visions” because, even as we embrace them as our own in the here and now, we lean into the future, toward which God is beckoning us.

We welcome the conversation that we hope the books in this series will provoke. And we look forward to meeting you down the road so that we can have this conversation together.

Grace and peace to you.

Tony Jones

Preface

Anne Lamott says she writes novels because some characters in her head just won’t leave her alone until she gives them a story. Ideas can be demanding like that. This book, though not a novel, came about in the same kind of way. I have spent a good number of years now reading Scripture, and the stories and themes I have written in this book would not quite leave me alone unless I gave them printed voice. It is such a big, beautiful story, this book we call the Bible. It is tragedy and comedy and human drama and political intrigue and mystery and everyday repetitiveness and a whole web of relationships that endlessly point backward and forward, weaving people and words and events together so that it begins to sound in my head like an old Shaker church choir, singing in the round, its many verses distinct yet harmonious. I have never been fond of religion that tries to make all the verses match.

Pierre Boulez was a French composer in the 1940s who introduced a form of musical composition called “total serialism.” It was groundbreaking in that it relied entirely upon mathematical patterns rather than the ear. Even the titles of his works, such as “Structure 1A,” insinuated precision over poetry. You have likely not heard of Boulez nor his Structure 1 A. That is because his music, though mathematically precise, is not very moving. Without tension and resolution, without a surprising change in octave or a sudden burst of instrumental passion, it ceased to have the transforming dimension that characterizes all truly good music.

Scripture is its own song, and it is a testament to God’s good grace that no efforts at “total biblical serialism” have drowned out the tensions and key changes that have always been part of our story.

I am not, in this book, trying to make all the verses match. I do not mean to imply there are not places in Scripture where one could make the opposite claim.The philosopher/debater living in my head had to be edited at every turn to stay on point, rather than traipsing off after every possible rabbit trail of dissent, peeking down into an endless burrow of Ifs and Buts. I do mean to say, and I hope rather convincingly, that there is something beautiful, central, even vital about these recurring themes of hope and promise and future in our family book. I do not want to make all the verses match, and I pray I have not (God help me) domesticated them to my own means. I imagine I could write another book structured in this same way, focusing instead on the theme of grace, or justice, or even human folly. As it is, the characters of hope, promise, and future have always been the ones nagging me in my head, so it is their story that I write.

If you happen to be a traditionally church-going person, you will probably notice the trajectory of the book follows the story arc of Scripture—covenant, exodus, and so on. If you happen to be new to this story, consider this a small crash course on some of the high points. These stories loop back toward one another, of course, but they always simultaneously continue forward, press outward, beckon toward the future, pulling each of the stories further along. I believe Scripture does this because in some ineffable way, this is who God is. God weaves people and histories and events and life stories together, referring us backward in remembrance and yet always pushing us toward God’s promised future. I hope by sweeping through the grand narrative of God’s tale of love with humanity we might see glimpses of God’s face in our own stories, too.

If you happen to be a theologian-type, you will probably notice very quickly that I have been influenced greatly by the works of German theologian Jürgen Moltmann. In 1964, his Theology of Hope was published. I did not happen upon it until much later, as a first-year seminary student, but I fell instantly into its pages as if it were a warm, well-worn blanket. All the things I desperately wanted to say about God were sitting on the pages in front of me with language that was roomy and hopeful, just as I believe language about God always should be. Moltmann’s works helped me find clarity to describe the story of the God I knew and loved and experienced, to preach the story, to live it. To fully make sense of these themes, however, I needed to comprehend them through the lens of Scripture’s narrative arc. In a way, this book is like Theology of Hope: Bible Edition. As Moltmann expounded upon these themes in theological structure, I have attempted to do so in narrative biblical form. It has been a delight, as these stories to me are like beloved friends.

Whatever your response to this book, I do pray that the God who has created an ever-expanding universe might be revealed to you in some way in these pages. I especially pray this is true for those of you who may feel that your stories of God have been taken over by something akin to Boulez’s total serialism, where doctrinal mechanics and mathematics have pushed out all the poetry that makes this story worth believing. I pray this book will help you find a way to push back, and to reclaim all the space God has given us to roam within the loving embrace of God’s sure promise.

Acknowledgments

As a person who juggles her time between spheres of family, church, and a mild semblance of a social life, writing a book does not simply happen on its own. I am grateful to everyone who filled in the spaces of my life to give me space to write this book. I thank my husband, Dan, first and foremost, who has supported me through this project as well as a long line of projects I have passionately thrown myself into over the years, and has done so with grace and a welcome dash of wit and sarcasm. Thank you for being such a steady comfort and such a good, good man. To my children, Mia and Grant, thank you for being so patient with me on the days I typed more than I played, and for making my life so much more beautiful just by being in it. I am not at all certain how I was given the unbelievable gift of being the mother of such fantastic, fun, bright, and big-hearted children, but I pray for grace as I do my best to honor it. I love you three more than words can say.

To my very large and wonderfully boisterous family, thank you for showering me with such love and encouragement, for sending me notes and e-mails and care packages, for leaving me voicemails to make me laugh, for running carpool duty and taking the kids on outings to give me that extra hour of quiet. I love you all so, so much. To Mom, Dad, and Darren, thank you for allowing me to share a few vignettes of your lives on these pages as well. For my friends, who did a dizzying array of things to make my life easier and functioning brain waves possible—thank you for showing me such love and support.

And of course, deepest thanks to Journey, my beloved community of faith, for being the kind of wonderful people who make pastoral life not only sustainable but truly life giving. It is such an honor to serve as your pastor and to call you friends. Thanks for letting me share glimpses of our life together here, and for all the conversations on Sunday nights, at dinner, and at the Old Monk that have so formed these pages. Special thanks to a wonderful team of leaders—Michael, Jen, Janalee, Dale, Rhealyn, Whitney, John, and Kate—for forcing me to offload some of my pastoral plate as I completed the book and for so joyfully picking up the pieces. And I’m grateful to friend and Journey member Carter Rose, who can snap a photo of absolutely anyone in absolutely any location and make her look like a million dollars. Thanks for sharing your talents so freely.

To Laura Fregin, Jamie Clark-Soles, and a whole slew of Journey members, particularly Bob Pyne and Dale Carter, thank you for providing much needed feedback and encouragement on early and late drafts. Your insights are evident in the final product (and greatly improved the book!), and I am so grateful to have such wise voices in my midst.

Thanks to my first companions at Emergent Village—Rudy Carrasco, Brad Cecil, Tim Conder, Todd Hunter, Tony Jones, Brian McLaren, Jason Mitchell, Sally Morgenthaler, and Doug Pagitt—who a decade ago let a twenty-something theology nerd into their ranks with open arms and showered me with encouragement, wisdom, and much-needed advice. Thanks especially to Tony, who has nagged me to write a book for so long he should receive some kind of medal—both for his persistence and his patience. And thanks to all the new Emergent Village companions I have met along the way, who are far too numerous to mention. I pray the Spirit continues to stir in us a hope for God’s world and all the grace and creativity we need to love it as Jesus loves it.

To the fantastic team at Jossey-Bass, thanks for honoring and supporting my words with your efforts. It truly has been a pleasure to work with you. To Sheryl Fullerton, you have made this process so enjoyable and have most certainly improved my words with your wise guiding hand. Your professional wisdom has been invaluable and your friendship a gift.

1

TheUniverse Is Moving Outward

I grew up in the wide open spaces of West Texas, where the horizon stretches for miles with nary a tree or building in sight. The word flat does not accurately describe it; it is technically a basin. My hometown is situated on what used to be the bottom of a sea floor, the sunken-down middle in a concave bowl of fossil fuels. In this part of the world, the earth is only ten percent of the landscape; the other ninety percent is endless blue sky. We West Texans are known for our unbridled optimism, our refusal to accept limits. The majority of us believe the world is a place where life is always bigger than the dust storm swirling around us, more triumphant than the dry oil well evidences. We believe this because the horizon tells us it is so.

This probably explains why as a child I pictured the world as if it were entirely horizontal. I can still remember learning the story of Christopher Columbus sailing to find the end of the world. Before my teacher could tell us what happened, I began to panic for poor, brave Christopher and his little Niña, Pinta, and Santa Maria