Church Planting Seminar on March 26,27,28

I have been beating the drum on the upcoming Church Planting seminar with Stuart Murray-Williams for several months. Now I will offer my final encouragement to each of you: please seriously consider attending the Church Planting Seminar provided by EMU at Conestoga Mennonite Church on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday of this week under the instruction of Stuart Murray-Williams.

You can download the syllabus for the class here. I understand we all have commitments, that each of us must make choices with our limited resources, and that there are consequences in expending these resources. I hope you will pray this request and look for guidance from the Spirit as to how you can participate in this seminar. As director of Pax Ministry, I am available to assist you so that you may intersect your life with this important one time training event.

I will be attending the seminar as a participant, I have not been resourced for it; so my encouragement to you stems from my personal belief that God is now calling the Anabaptist imperative to be unleashed into the world after years of careful and faithful stewardship of the tradition as ‘the quiet of the land’.

I believe the Spirit will do great work at this seminar and you need to participate in this coming work and awakening. This training will point toward a future that seeks to plant Anabaptist Missional churches. If you are serious about church planting from an Anabaptist perspective in our erupting post-Christendom, post-Modern, post-Media context then you need to attend this seminar and Pax Ministry will help you do that.

Pax Ministry can cover the cost of the class for you, if financial resources are an issue. I can transport you, if transportation is an issue (Daniel and Marie survived riding with me). I will help locate child care resources for you, if child care is an issue. As director of Pax Ministry and as fully ordained and credentialed leader in the Atlantic Coast and Lancaster Mennonite Conferences I can provide a letter for you validating this training as a religious event (I’m sure Keith and Warren are thrilled for me to provide this service by placing the weight of our fellowship of people, congregations, and institutions, cooperating together in solidarity with you), if your employer or instructor is an issue.

Pax Ministry will walk alongside and materialistically assist, if you recognize a need for assistance; so that any wall preventing you from attending this seminar is dismantled. The only energy required from you is your life offered with us to God, in the time we spend together reflecting and dwelling in the Spirit.

I believe that we Anabaptist persons of Faith (yes, that includes you who is reading this email) have been stirred by the Spirit to awaken from history, establish churches, and revitalize congregations seeking life in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. This awakening I believe is occurring for us in the same manner as God stirred Jonah on his revitalizing mission to Nineveh. A Missio Dei (sending of God) to reconcile those whose lives and communities were demobilized and captured by the powers and principalities with God’s will for life in this world. Jonah resisted that call and God conspired for Jonah to awaken and live into this Missio Dei regardless of Jonah’s condition, reasons, or resistance. I encourage you to join with us in considering Faith’s claim on us at this seminar and how we might live into our Missio Dei known in the Gospel of Jesus Christ by planting churches for the world and despite the world.

The Church Planting Seminar with Stuart Murray-Williams occurs on Thursday March 26th from 6-9pm; Friday March 27th 8:30-4:30pm; and Saturday March 28th 8:30-4:30pm at Conestoga Mennonite Church.

I want to be extremely clear: I personally think this is your only opportunity to receive quality instruction and reflection on church planting from an unapologetically Anabaptist perspective for the foreseeable future. The limited resources nominally available in our regional MCUSA conferences are currently not able to match this one time opportunity to encounter, reflect, engage, and strategize as gathered believers in proactive conversation on Anabaptist church planting.

Redeeming Militarism

Recently I was asked for examples of how the social phenomena of militarism is rehabilitated in our culture. This is a classic example of how our culture lightens the impact of security forces in our midst.
This is an image of a secret service person frolicking with his dog in the snow.

It comes from the front page of the 'liberal newspaper' Washingtonpost on Jan 27th 2009.

Just a boy and his dog playing in the snow; except this boy will use deadly force if you enter his yard and his dog will attack you if you approach him, his yard or his boy tells him.

Notice that the dog is harnessed in an agitation muzzle primarily used to facilitate combat training for security dogs. Normally this involves teaching 'secure' biting which basically means clamping down on the victim until a handler gives a release order.

This may seem as a simple and harmless image; yet within the context of the article it promotes a notion of nostalgic and wholesome whimsy, for security forces who approach and attempt to resolve conflict situations from a position firmly rooted in violent force and Sarx.

So what are the implications for this type of reformist propaganda interlaced within our 'Mainstream Liberal Media'? How do such images intersect with an individual or community; particularly if such images (such as the one above) become enmeshed in the minds of folk conversing over the use of deadly force and how security dogs are used to control conflict situations, such as at the Christiana Care Center Emergency Department in Newark DE or elsewhere in our society?

Peace Gathering 2009 Handout with Answers

The handout for my class on Militarism, Veterans and Civil Society held during the Peace Gathering 2009 at Arch Street Methodist church in Philadelphia Pa is now online.

There are several resource articles available on the site also. I enjoyed our conversation and hope we will be able to continue our discussion in the future.

And Immediately Returns

Some may have noticed that And Immediately was down for a week. We pulled it down as part of review process as we considered how Pax Min can best apply its limited resources for ministry and witness.

The public response to the removal of the blog was surprising and supportive. This response underscored for Pax Min that And Immediately is a information resource for many people that initiates conversation and reflection.

Pax Min enjoyed receiving your feedback and invites and encourages you to continue posting your comments and critiques on the blog.

And Immediately is back and you can look forward to posts on a by-weekly basis on issues relating to Anabaptistism at the deconstructed intersection in contested space on life, theology, and counter-cultural reality.

Empire Now, Redux 2.0

We stand at a moment in time where the possibility for change can occur through authorities of power state based. President-elect Obama has made sweeping promises to shift the direction and current of USA policies domestic and foreign. Perhaps his administration will be able to wear the mantel of change that they claim to hold. Fundamental change is needed in our world that fixates on the defenseless and the least of thee; yet the prerogative of USA policy has been for over 100 years to sure up business and the needs of the powerful.

The bulk of the USA influence in the world extends beyond nationalistic chauvinism, it is bound in an imperial state security apparatus that seeks a hegemonic control over the world markets and resources through military colonies and capitalist trading blocks. Historically as citizens of the USA we have been apathetic to the rise of imperial culture within our political, economic, and cultural institutions. The church must speak into this reality, or I believe it fails to be the church.

The United States, with less than 5 % of the global population, uses about a quarter of the world’s fossil fuel resources—burning up nearly 25 % of the coal, 26 % of the oil, and 27 % of the world’s natural gas. We spent $547 billion on military expenditures in 2007 and are seeking an additional $450 billion increase over next five years. We outspent in military expenditure the next five countries combined. We have more troops deployed outside our national borders than any other time in US history. U.S. troops returning from duty in Iraq started this October carrying out homeland patrols within the US potentially helping with “civil unrest and crowd control", this is the first time active-duty combat troops have been dedicated to internal support of civilian authorities.

Economically we have setup a variety of trading blocks throughout the world which we dominate. We are the largest exporter of small arms to the world and consistently out export Germany, Russia and China combined. Domestically we are the largest market for domestic goods in the world, the bulk of which are manufactured in China in wage slave conditions with little or no environmental emission controls. Our media outlets export and homogenize US culture throughout the world. Children are introduced to war toys and capitalist practices at a very young age, consistently reinforced and recruited within the public and charter school systems.

Life within in the US Empire has been carefully crafted to seem as if this is the way things should be and have always been. It demobilizes the individual and their communities with the ideology that there is little anyone can do to challenge or prevent further imperial growth.

These realities are all marks of an Empire: militarism, hyper-capitalism and dehumanizing infotainment. They are negative and demobilizing. These are the realities that the Reign of God contests, reconciles and overcomes through the power of the Spirit as known through Jesus Christ. These are the prerogatives that all Christians must consider and Anabapatists must contest.

Empire Now

Those of who have heard me speak or preach know I often refer to the USA as an Empire.

I claim Christians living within the USA share in similar circumstances that faced our ancestors in Philippi, Galatia, and Rome. We face a decision between conflicting allegiances. Are we subject to the Reign of God living in the Empire as strangers and sojourners or are subject to the reign of empire living productive lives as wage slaves or architects of imperialism.

I am often challenged for employing the nomenclature of Empire on our society. Several academics have charged that I fail to grasp the notion of empire since it is dependent on a despot who holds a monopoly on power and a homogeneous population that agrees with the empire's overt militaristic goals.

Now I argue that the above basic definition holds true for the USA with the despotic position rotating among the oligarchy. I acknowledge that no one person or family controls the reigns of power in USA. These reigns are mitigated and vetted in a ritualistic way effectively nullifying the actual personality of the person or the agenda of the party that holds them The reigns of power in the USA are despotic not the person or party that momentarily controls them..

The military industrial, prison, and media complexes constitute the imperial nexus that assures supportive behavior from the only two political clubs allowed a legitimate life national. To be frank, the Democratic and Republican parties are in effect two poles of the same political conversation: pursuit of property and expansion of imperial markets. This nexus locks out all other debate in the political arena as either Utopian or juvenile. Further this nexus manages communication in our society so that it constitutes propaganda shaping and recasting militarism as peace and security. The gospel of the USA is rugged individualism and freedom of consumer choice. The Gospel of Christ stands in stark contrast to imperial doctrine rendering the gospel of the USA pale and impotent.

The empty cross of Christ is the ultimate symbol and reality of Christ’s Gospel and materialistically demobilizes empire. It declares the flesh, the forces of power and domination that attempted to crush and silence the life of Jesus and his teachings of holistic reconciliation, finite and finished. Nothing holds the will of God from action in this world not even the wall of death.

The Anabaptist tradition carries forward the Gospel of Christ not as a memorial or sacrament held till the Day of Christ but rather as a lifestyle enacting and proclaiming the Reign of God in contested spaces. Anabaptists are bodily erecting empty crosses in the empire, speaking truth to power and advocating for the broken and oppressed.

Pax Ministry and associated congregations seek to faithfully follow this reality by deconstructing the walls of separation through Peace, Simplicity and Community. We seek opportunities to share the Gospel. I will continue to point at the imperial reality and empire we live within, I will continue to contest those who seek to white wash rotten wood and call it hope for a new day.

Urban War

Never really fun to show this reality in war movies; civilians are the majority of causalities in Urban Combat, who typically have limited access to medical services.

Children live in cities

The destruction of Gaza is nothing but organized terror and genocide on an oppressed people trapped by statecraft and colonial ambition.