[easyazon-image align=”left” asin=”0802868940″ locale=”us” height=”333″ src=”http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51Ux1IdhjJL.jpg” width=”222″ alt=”Created and Led by the Spirit” ]Rooted and Yet Accessible
A Feature Review of
Created and Led by the Spirit: Planting Missional Congregations
Mary Sue Dehmlow Dreier, Ed.
Paperback: Eerdmans, 2013
Buy now: [ [easyazon-link asin=”0802868940″ locale=”us”]Amazon[/easyazon-link] ]
Reviewed by Joe Walker
We hear Ralph, a city bus driver in Rochester, Minnesota, expressing both excitement and some frustration as he participates on a team drafting the mission statement for the People of Hope Church: “Give it to me in bus language. I’ve gotta be able to use it on my bus, so I can tell people about Jesus and our church!” (16). Ralph’s exclamation captures the challenge that Created and Led by the Spirit: Planting Missional Congregations seeks to address: how do we speak of the creating presence of the Spirit in ways that are both rooted in our biblical and theological tradition and yet accessible and life-giving in contemporary missional contexts?
In his foreword, Craig Van Gelder, Editor for the Missional Church Series of which Created and Led by the Spirit is the fifth volume, eloquently asserts the need for this book that explores the Spirit’s initiating, guiding, and sustaining power in planting new missional communities: “The church’s identity has to do with its very nature, what the church is in light of its being created by the Spirit. So much of the writing about missional church today tends to assume that this territory is self-evident, and thus it moves all too quickly to focusing on what the church is to do on behalf of God in the world. This approach can be hazardous to the missional discussion in terms of shifting the focus too quickly away from the agency of the Spirit in the midst of the church and re-directing it toward the primacy of human agency and responsibility” (vii).
Created and Led by the Spirit, is a collection of presentations from the 2009 Missional Church Consultation of the same title, hosted annually by Luther Seminary, St. Paul, Minnesota. This volume reflects its Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) roots in both theology and language. Readers from some traditions may have to pause to appreciate the beauty and significance of less familiar historical references such as the Apostles Creed, lex orandi, lex credendi, and perichoresis.
For instance, in her opening chapter, Mary Sue Dehmlow Dreier, Editor, proposes, “The nature and mission of the Trinitarian God shapes the mission development task in two significant ways. First, the mission of the church is rooted in the sending nature of the Triune God active in the world… Second, the Holy Spirit draws church planters and new missional congregations into the relational life of the Trinity (often denoted by the Greek word perichoresis). Perichoresis is the circulation of divine life within the Trinity in mutuality and fellowship, openness, and neighborly sharing, maintaining individuality and yet fulfilling one another” (13).
Lest one think this is strictly an academic exercise, it is noteworthy that five of the nine contributors have participated in various ways in planting churches in a wide range of settings and the authors engage in theological reflection flowing from their personal experiences and/or research. One of the most interesting perspectives is provided by African-born Harvey Kwiyani. Kwiyani is from rural Malawi and was raised in a charismatic African village church. He now serves in the mission fields of the Europe and North America. Kwiyani writes, “…my culture continues to believe in a cosmology that allows for close interactions between the spirits and humans; therefore, I never questioned what the Holy Spirit would do with and in a community” (152). He cautions those of us steeped in Western thought that, “Even though mission makes good use of many other disciplines of discourse, such as sociology and cultural anthropology, to make sense of the world is a primarily and inherently a spiritual endeavor. It is a work of the Holy Spirit” (155). Pointing to a new opportunity within our culture, Kwiyani perceives an openness to the Spirit in the Western world where, “There has been a paradigm shift that has resulted in increased interest in spirituality, even though many still would not want to be identified as religious” (158).
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