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Changing the Conversation: A Third Way for Congregations by Robinson, Anthony B. [Eerdmans Pub Co, 2008] (Paperback) [Paperback]
Changing the A Third Way for Congregations by Robinson, Anthony...
- GenresLeadershipChurch
Paperback
First published August 1, 2008
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About the author
Robinson
330 books2 followersRobinson is the pen name of a German illustrator, Werner Kruse, who in 1967 produced a book of ink drawings that show New York City's skyline and neighborhoods in intense detail. He described it as "an X-ray" style that showed the city's buildings from outside and inside.
The book, originally called "New York," was reissued in 2009 as "New York, Line by Line: From Broadway to the Battery." A review in New York magazine described the drawings as "scrupulously accurate, down to the tiny tripartite cornices on the brownstones."
Born in Berlin in 1910 and taking his name from the children's story "Robinson Crusoe," Robinson also made a similar book about Tokyo. He died in 1994.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robinson...
The book, originally called "New York," was reissued in 2009 as "New York, Line by Line: From Broadway to the Battery." A review in New York magazine described the drawings as "scrupulously accurate, down to the tiny tripartite cornices on the brownstones."
Born in Berlin in 1910 and taking his name from the children's story "Robinson Crusoe," Robinson also made a similar book about Tokyo. He died in 1994.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robinson...
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
January 3, 2018
Read this book with our church's governing board back in 2012. It leads you through "ten conversations" over the course of ten chapters that churches need to be having in the post-Christendom era in North America. Reads well and feels on point, especially for "establishment" churches that need to embrace the hopeful future God has in store for them. We used it to rewrite our mission and visions statements (conversations/chapters 5 and 6).
February 17, 2010
Wow, two books finished in two days! Haven't had that happen in a while. I think Goodreads inspires me to new guilt if I've had a book on my reading list for too long (and I'm sure the new unemployment also has something to do with it).
Anyway, I started this book as part of a monthly conversation with my old church, so it's a bit sad to finish it and not be a part of the conversations and activities that happen next, since it is, more than anything, a book that's focused on precipitating action and change. That being said, I found so many of the concepts and ideas that Robinson discussed incredibly helpful, and his analysis of the current situation of the church felt very insightful and true.
He begins with the idea of "Christendom" being dead--no longer is the church the dominant moral or political force in the community, no longer can we (and maybe we never could?) speak of America as a "Christian nation," no longer can we assume that the majority of people have some sort of religious instruction and formation, and no longer can we view the church as an institution that is "led" by the pastor/priest and exists primarily to religous services to its members in the same way that a gym does. He points out that the church has become a modern institution in the way that universities and libraries are institutions, and "were often the moral voices and the primary moral influences and custodians of the culture. But the churches, with some exceptions, were not centeres of mystery or miracle, ... or even of religious experience." (!) He argues that the purpose of the church, then, has shifted: "During Christendom the purposes of the church included: 1) being the conscience of the community; 2) serving as the instrument of aid to the less fortunate; and 3) being the center of family and community life. All of these made sense in their time, and they all persist in some ways; but non of them are fully adequate depictions of the purpose of the church for this new time... which is closer to that of the pre-Constintinian era: the church exists to change lives... to be and form disciples for the sake of God's world." The modern rationalism is fading and there is now a revived interest in spirituality, and churches are only offering morality and corporeality, and have forgotten how to do Christian formation because of the cultural assumption that everyone was Christian.
It was interesting talking about these ideas in a group because some of the members of the group had a real sense of loss (or even strong denial) that the Christendom era has gone and is not to be resurrected, whereas I felt more like "good riddance!," since I felt that a lot of the superficiality and the inaction of the church was due to some of the factors that Robinson mentioned. It was helpful, though, to recognize that there are parts of the old way of doing things that are good and should genuinely be grieved and missed (not that I felt that it was entirely irredeemable in the first place).
Chapter 4, I think, was one of my favorite chapters, because it talks about how, in most churches, what's needed is not "renewing" our faith, but "newing" it, since many church members who grew up in the "civic faith" stage have not had a genuine experience of God, but rather thought of church as something that they were obligated to attend to be good and do their civic duty. Without this first effort to experience God for ourselves and know God, any sort of evangelism doesn't make sense, because it's like, as Robinson puts it, illiterate people trying to go out and tell non-readers about the joy of reading! He also talks about the need to revise our view of God as either "an indulgent grandparent, loving but ineffective" or a God that's "powerful but picky: God only loves ... those who have the right faith, lifestyle, faith experience, or faith words," instead discovering "a living God who just might ask us to abandon our entire way of life." ("When God is reduced to our own wants, desires, or self-image writ large, God is no longer a living God, and God is no longer the God disclosed to us in Scripture.") He uses a great anecdote to illustrate this about a youth pastor doing a Bible study on Mark where the kids are responding with silence and sullenness to a verse in Mark that talks about how Jesus sees "the heavens torn apart":
"The pastor, eager to provoke some sort of response, said: "This is amazing, truly! Look at this: Mark says the heavens have been torn apart. Do you know what that means? That means that now we all have direct access to God. There's nothing between us and God! Isn't that wonderful?"
"No, that's not what that means," said a young man, shifting in his seat.
The pastor was nonplussed.
"What," he said to the young man, "you know Greek?"
"Yeah, said the kid. "Schizomei, torn apart. It means that now God can get at us. It means that now no one is safe."
In this chapter, he also talks about--regardless of how we feel about the schisms over interpretation of the Bible--reclaiming the Bible as "'the church's book,' a book and story that remind us who we are and whose we are. The church that forgets Scripture forgets who it is and who God is... [and yet:] our Scriptures are also the product of a thousand years of human life and history, and ... require study and interpretation." The last, encouraging point was to get the congregation, the common people, involved in theology rather than having it be something academic and untouchable.
The book then goes into discussions about church leadership, and how churches often put the entire burden of leadership on the priest's/pastor's/preacher's shoulders and/or on a board that gets endlessly bogged down with listening to reports rather than actually leading and providing purpose and vision. Throughout the book, he argues for more involvement from the congregation itself, with the congregation's members providing the leadership and the input rather than expecting to be lead as in times past. Especially for me as I'm looking for a new church, he also made a very salient point about the difference between a "culture of membership" and "culture of discipleship", where in the membership model, people are looking for their needs to be met and are expecting to be provided with certain services by the clergy while developing a very "clubby" mentality, and in the discipleship model, people are looking to serve and contribute and be changed by their interactions with the church, and are in some sense responsible for and working on their own spiritual development personally.
Robinson then talks about having a purpose as a church, and how knowing why the group as a whole exists is more important than knowing what its goals are or where it is going. I could very much identify with this point from non-profit work, because--as he points out--if there is no clear purpose, then you end up doing anything that seems like it's "good" or seems like you "should be doing," and resources and people get stretched to the breaking point. Having purpose, on the other hand, gives one the freedom to say no to activities and programs that are extraneous and don't contribute to the overall goal. He suggests as a general purpose "changing lives," with perhaps the ideal community having "community, direction, and purposeful action [that:] all find their place in the incarnational community, but ... do not become the purpose, which is to be a community of transformation." He then uses a distinction between "accidental" churchgoers (people who go to church--or don't, but identify as members of a church--because their family did/it's the thing to do) and "intentional" churchgoers, who are thoughtfully chosing to go to a church and try to contribute. This was the part of the discussions that we had at the church that was most interesting to me, because we talked about this dynamic and everyone ended up going around and telling their story of how they ended up in the church in the first place and whether they would classify themselves as intentional or accidental. It built a really interesting sense of community and of honesty just to hear people's reasons for coming to and leaving the church or different churches.
After tackling purpose, Robinson talked about writing the vision, or the action steps or goals, for the congregation. I thought his suggestions for doing so were helpful, but what interested me most were his ideas for specific areas of focus, "stewardship as spiritual practice" and "deepening adult spiritual formation." He made such a good and relevant point that a lot of mainline churches have Bible studies, etc. for youth, and then assume that, once someone's over 18, they no longer need any help answering spiritual questions and thus don't offer viable or quality options for people to really study together.
I'm rushing a bit now because I have to leave soon, but he then talks about re- or de-structuring the church accordingly to suit its purpose and vision, and not allowing the old bureaucracies that have built up to choke new movement and growth. He then goes into the church's role in the public sector: no longer as the definining moral conscience, but as somehow finding a third way between the extremes of "triumphalism" (the idea that America is a "Christian nation"/right-wing agenda and ideology that has co-opted the faith and "trades in moral absolutes and has no room for ethical ambiguity") and "tongue-tied quietism" where the church passes resolutions but takes little action or few noticeable public stands on issues (or merges with the Left/Right and just becomes another part of the Left/Right rather than anything that is distinctively Christian).
Overall, I feel like the book is full of very insightful analysis of the situation of many mainline churches today, and is a helpful starting point for trying to envision a more alive church that has God as its center rather than its governing board, making its members happy, or fulfilling some socially-prescribed role. It was a really interesting read, especially coming from a background outside "mainline" churches, but also very inspiring in terms of providing a vision of how the church could be and act.
Anyway, I started this book as part of a monthly conversation with my old church, so it's a bit sad to finish it and not be a part of the conversations and activities that happen next, since it is, more than anything, a book that's focused on precipitating action and change. That being said, I found so many of the concepts and ideas that Robinson discussed incredibly helpful, and his analysis of the current situation of the church felt very insightful and true.
He begins with the idea of "Christendom" being dead--no longer is the church the dominant moral or political force in the community, no longer can we (and maybe we never could?) speak of America as a "Christian nation," no longer can we assume that the majority of people have some sort of religious instruction and formation, and no longer can we view the church as an institution that is "led" by the pastor/priest and exists primarily to religous services to its members in the same way that a gym does. He points out that the church has become a modern institution in the way that universities and libraries are institutions, and "were often the moral voices and the primary moral influences and custodians of the culture. But the churches, with some exceptions, were not centeres of mystery or miracle, ... or even of religious experience." (!) He argues that the purpose of the church, then, has shifted: "During Christendom the purposes of the church included: 1) being the conscience of the community; 2) serving as the instrument of aid to the less fortunate; and 3) being the center of family and community life. All of these made sense in their time, and they all persist in some ways; but non of them are fully adequate depictions of the purpose of the church for this new time... which is closer to that of the pre-Constintinian era: the church exists to change lives... to be and form disciples for the sake of God's world." The modern rationalism is fading and there is now a revived interest in spirituality, and churches are only offering morality and corporeality, and have forgotten how to do Christian formation because of the cultural assumption that everyone was Christian.
It was interesting talking about these ideas in a group because some of the members of the group had a real sense of loss (or even strong denial) that the Christendom era has gone and is not to be resurrected, whereas I felt more like "good riddance!," since I felt that a lot of the superficiality and the inaction of the church was due to some of the factors that Robinson mentioned. It was helpful, though, to recognize that there are parts of the old way of doing things that are good and should genuinely be grieved and missed (not that I felt that it was entirely irredeemable in the first place).
Chapter 4, I think, was one of my favorite chapters, because it talks about how, in most churches, what's needed is not "renewing" our faith, but "newing" it, since many church members who grew up in the "civic faith" stage have not had a genuine experience of God, but rather thought of church as something that they were obligated to attend to be good and do their civic duty. Without this first effort to experience God for ourselves and know God, any sort of evangelism doesn't make sense, because it's like, as Robinson puts it, illiterate people trying to go out and tell non-readers about the joy of reading! He also talks about the need to revise our view of God as either "an indulgent grandparent, loving but ineffective" or a God that's "powerful but picky: God only loves ... those who have the right faith, lifestyle, faith experience, or faith words," instead discovering "a living God who just might ask us to abandon our entire way of life." ("When God is reduced to our own wants, desires, or self-image writ large, God is no longer a living God, and God is no longer the God disclosed to us in Scripture.") He uses a great anecdote to illustrate this about a youth pastor doing a Bible study on Mark where the kids are responding with silence and sullenness to a verse in Mark that talks about how Jesus sees "the heavens torn apart":
"The pastor, eager to provoke some sort of response, said: "This is amazing, truly! Look at this: Mark says the heavens have been torn apart. Do you know what that means? That means that now we all have direct access to God. There's nothing between us and God! Isn't that wonderful?"
"No, that's not what that means," said a young man, shifting in his seat.
The pastor was nonplussed.
"What," he said to the young man, "you know Greek?"
"Yeah, said the kid. "Schizomei, torn apart. It means that now God can get at us. It means that now no one is safe."
In this chapter, he also talks about--regardless of how we feel about the schisms over interpretation of the Bible--reclaiming the Bible as "'the church's book,' a book and story that remind us who we are and whose we are. The church that forgets Scripture forgets who it is and who God is... [and yet:] our Scriptures are also the product of a thousand years of human life and history, and ... require study and interpretation." The last, encouraging point was to get the congregation, the common people, involved in theology rather than having it be something academic and untouchable.
The book then goes into discussions about church leadership, and how churches often put the entire burden of leadership on the priest's/pastor's/preacher's shoulders and/or on a board that gets endlessly bogged down with listening to reports rather than actually leading and providing purpose and vision. Throughout the book, he argues for more involvement from the congregation itself, with the congregation's members providing the leadership and the input rather than expecting to be lead as in times past. Especially for me as I'm looking for a new church, he also made a very salient point about the difference between a "culture of membership" and "culture of discipleship", where in the membership model, people are looking for their needs to be met and are expecting to be provided with certain services by the clergy while developing a very "clubby" mentality, and in the discipleship model, people are looking to serve and contribute and be changed by their interactions with the church, and are in some sense responsible for and working on their own spiritual development personally.
Robinson then talks about having a purpose as a church, and how knowing why the group as a whole exists is more important than knowing what its goals are or where it is going. I could very much identify with this point from non-profit work, because--as he points out--if there is no clear purpose, then you end up doing anything that seems like it's "good" or seems like you "should be doing," and resources and people get stretched to the breaking point. Having purpose, on the other hand, gives one the freedom to say no to activities and programs that are extraneous and don't contribute to the overall goal. He suggests as a general purpose "changing lives," with perhaps the ideal community having "community, direction, and purposeful action [that:] all find their place in the incarnational community, but ... do not become the purpose, which is to be a community of transformation." He then uses a distinction between "accidental" churchgoers (people who go to church--or don't, but identify as members of a church--because their family did/it's the thing to do) and "intentional" churchgoers, who are thoughtfully chosing to go to a church and try to contribute. This was the part of the discussions that we had at the church that was most interesting to me, because we talked about this dynamic and everyone ended up going around and telling their story of how they ended up in the church in the first place and whether they would classify themselves as intentional or accidental. It built a really interesting sense of community and of honesty just to hear people's reasons for coming to and leaving the church or different churches.
After tackling purpose, Robinson talked about writing the vision, or the action steps or goals, for the congregation. I thought his suggestions for doing so were helpful, but what interested me most were his ideas for specific areas of focus, "stewardship as spiritual practice" and "deepening adult spiritual formation." He made such a good and relevant point that a lot of mainline churches have Bible studies, etc. for youth, and then assume that, once someone's over 18, they no longer need any help answering spiritual questions and thus don't offer viable or quality options for people to really study together.
I'm rushing a bit now because I have to leave soon, but he then talks about re- or de-structuring the church accordingly to suit its purpose and vision, and not allowing the old bureaucracies that have built up to choke new movement and growth. He then goes into the church's role in the public sector: no longer as the definining moral conscience, but as somehow finding a third way between the extremes of "triumphalism" (the idea that America is a "Christian nation"/right-wing agenda and ideology that has co-opted the faith and "trades in moral absolutes and has no room for ethical ambiguity") and "tongue-tied quietism" where the church passes resolutions but takes little action or few noticeable public stands on issues (or merges with the Left/Right and just becomes another part of the Left/Right rather than anything that is distinctively Christian).
Overall, I feel like the book is full of very insightful analysis of the situation of many mainline churches today, and is a helpful starting point for trying to envision a more alive church that has God as its center rather than its governing board, making its members happy, or fulfilling some socially-prescribed role. It was a really interesting read, especially coming from a background outside "mainline" churches, but also very inspiring in terms of providing a vision of how the church could be and act.
July 22, 2011
Everyone who does church should read this book. I especially appreciated Robinson's contextualization of the crisis of "Mainstream" Protestantism in the end of Christendom (compulsory or assumed Christianity) and then in postmodernity. If Robinson is correct in his diagnosis, then he is also correct in his "treatment": guidance through the process of utterly rethinking who and what church is, and what it does. He points out, for example, that a church is not a group of social justice activists. Yes, it needs to involve social justice, but that is not its root identity. Churches need to talk about faith and about work in the world; focusing on just one of those aspects cuts us off from our source of strength.
There's lots more to say, but I'm still digesting. Especially the end bit, where he talks about not being afraid of death, in the context of discussing churches who try every possible cure for their ills, when what is really need is a gentle, accepted death . . . with resurrection at the other side. His case studies in that chapter were especially inspiring.
There's lots more to say, but I'm still digesting. Especially the end bit, where he talks about not being afraid of death, in the context of discussing churches who try every possible cure for their ills, when what is really need is a gentle, accepted death . . . with resurrection at the other side. His case studies in that chapter were especially inspiring.
December 22, 2015
Sharply disagree with author in many areas but it was worth reading for the difference in perspective. He clearly has concerns with evangelicals so it was a nice contrast to my regular reading.
August 9, 2013
Tony Robinson, a UCC pastor living/serving in Seattle offers the reader a most helpful look at the context and issues facing the mainline Protestant church today. He seeks to change the conversation away from the typical left/right version that trips up churchs to one that addresses real issues including the changing landscape of religious life, patterns of leadership, and the role of the church in the public square.
One of the key points that runs through the book is the need for mainliners to reclaim theology. Indeed, he challenges the therapeutic focus of much modern Christianity, wherein the focus is on caregiving rather than preaching the good news of Jesus!
One of the key points that runs through the book is the need for mainliners to reclaim theology. Indeed, he challenges the therapeutic focus of much modern Christianity, wherein the focus is on caregiving rather than preaching the good news of Jesus!
August 23, 2012
Great book for our Church today.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews