These days have found me (Bernie) spending much time at the Williamson County Public Library or Starbucks working on a couple of research papers I want to have finished by the end of the month.* This is not to say there are not other proverbial irons in the fire (I have this thing called “missions conference tour” that I keep hearing about), but that’s the focus at the moment. In reality, I’ve found the first months of home assignment to be refreshingly uneventful. I think ‘uneventfulness’ is something I needed more than I probably knew. Even recent mornings have found me waking up groggily at 10:00 AM, quite the rare event for those who know my early rising tendencies. Perhaps my perceived laziness is telling of my weariness. However, that said, it’s been a good couple of months to rest and write and think.

I’ve found my thinking often lands on the issue of community. Community, not in the sense of development or “centers”, but community in the sense of “living life together”.

Last week I went to a “Hutchmoot”. “Hutch” as in a cage for rabbits. “Moot” as in an old English word for meeting, used specifically with regards to the meeting of large tree-shepherds called “Ents” in the writings of JRR Tolkien. Strange name. Spectacular gathering (I almost wrote “meeting” but “meeting” could bring thoughts of board rooms and power lunches. This was more a gathering: dispersed people wandering to one place for an informal but glorious “moot”. Check out the web page and the Rabbit Room for more info and true etymology.) Weekend discussion focused on Gospel centered story telling through music, literature and other artistic expression. Lot’s of talk about books and music – which was fun. However, the core and essential matters, and the moments which moved me most were conversations which ended up centering on Christian community in relationship to Gospel storytelling. I came away with the seed of an idea that I am not sure I will ever move away from. The best ministry and creativity in a Christian and Biblical context will always sprout and grow to fruition in an environment of community. I am still playing with that sentence. I don’t know for sure. But I have this deep suspicion that it’s true. Truer than I know.

M. Night Shaymalan had a couple of decent films early in his career. The Sixth Sense and Signs were examples of good film-making; surprising, redemptive, even beautiful in their message and tone. That said, all of his films since those two have taken a serious turn for the worst. He’s become a “one-trick pony” and his recent films have been good examples of the uncreative and banal. In a recent conversation, we were discussing how someone could go from “Sixth Sense” to “Last Airbender” and I found out, interestingly enough, that Shaymalan works in alone. He writes alone. He has complete creative control of all his films, and does very little collaborating with others. He does not work in community. This answered many questions for me.

Community and creativity must walk together. Without community, creativity becomes a one-dimensional effort; limited; dull and what once was original becomes secondhand and worn out.

Contextual theology is creative work in much the same way writing a song or a novel is creative work. This is particularly true in a young church that doesn’t have 2000 years of church history to stand on. The Church in Mongolia is in the process of becoming “self-theologizing.” This is a critical and oft neglected aspect of mission. Right now Mongolian Christian theology has been nearly 100% imported. Some is fine. There are aspects of theology that are universal and timeless and cross all cultures. However, there is s great need pastors and teachers and thinkers and writers in Mongolia to learn how to theologize in way that is both Biblical and contextual. There is much more to be said about contextual theology than what can be put into a blog post, but I will say that this task of learning and doing will take a great amount of creative energy, much of which was sapped in Mongolia by seventy years of socialism. My Mongolian sisters and brothers will have to open new channels of thinking and creating in order to do the creative work of contextual theology. This is not a mere academic venture. It is as much artistic.

At the very center of this creative contextual theologizing, is a community of believers united by the Cross, the Blood, their faith and their story. Learning to live and work together, “striving to maintain the unity of the Spirit and the bond of peace.” (Ephesians 4:3) A group who is called “the Body of Christ” (I Corinthians 12:27) and “the Bride of Christ” (Revelation 19:7), and even “brothers” of Jesus (Hebrews 2:11). A group that Jesus has prayed for very specifically. “…that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.” (John 17:21) This group is called to tell the unique story of Mongolian Jesus followers to this generation and to the next. No one else can tell their story. The story must be told. Together.

I have to confess that this kind of community is something I’ve only tasted a few times in my life. I’ve written about it before, and, in recent days, have had so many good discussions with good friends on this topic. However, it is something that I dream for the emerging church in Mongolia. We return in 10 months. My hope and prayer is that next term we will have the opportunity to begin walking with the Mongolian church to a new age: Community-based, Biblical, creative, contextual theology propelled through the culture in the conduit of proclamation, story and song.

My hope is that if we work together with Mongolian brethren, and the church works together in community, we will see stories and films and songs in the Mongolian language that will rival the works of Lewis or Tolkien or Chesterton in the English language (and perhaps very little of everything “The Last Airbender” represents).

Now back to the library. I have a paper to finish.

* For those who are not aware, I am doing graduate work through the University of South Africa. I hope to finish phase one of this work the first week of February. More on this in another post…

I don’t remember the exact day it dawned on me that the Mongolian populace really doesn’t care whether I live in Mongolia or not. There are in fact some Mongolians who would just assume that I stayed here in Franklin, TN. I don’t remember if it was a day my ignorance of the Mongolian language was taken advantage of and I paid way more for a shoe shine than I ever should have. It may have been the day I punched a guy for trying to steal my camera, or the day I nearly came to blows with another man in the market because of his mistreatment of my wife. Whichever day it was, I know that the Mongolian people are not gathered rejoicing that the Anderson family lives in Ulaanbaatar (at least four out of five years). Hard to believe, I know. But it’s true.

I’ve figured something else out (I’m slow and incredibly egocentric when it comes to these things). The same is true when it comes to living in America. There are no ticker-tape parades celebrating the fact that a former pastor, missionary (err… International Worker) family is now living Stateside. There may have been a day when that would have been different. Possibly. Frankly, I am happy there were no parades and I despise the celebrity making of Christian workers who are supposed to be servants. So it’s all good.

As we reconnect with Southern US, Franklin, TN culture, I am seeing the obvious: things have changed and are changing. I am not an anthropologist or a sociologist or an any-kind-of-ologist. I have learned over the years that Christian ministry requires skills in exegeting the Word as well as exegeting the culture. The Word and culture must connect in a way that both heaven-reaching meaning and oak-rooted truth live peaceably with each other. This is contextualization, and is necessary work in both Franklin and Ulaanbaatar.

American culture has shifted in the past four years. It’s not really even that subtle. People are generally satisfied with their lives. There is little “need” at a conscious level. We are a truly post-Christian age. Albert Mohler makes this observation in a Newsweek article that was published last year:

“The post-Christian narrative is radically different; it offers spirituality, however defined, without binding authority,” he told me. “It is based on an understanding of history that presumes a less tolerant past and a more tolerant future, with the present as an important transitional step.” The present, in this sense, is less about the death of God and more about the birth of many gods. The rising numbers of religiously unaffiliated Americans are people more apt to call themselves “spiritual” rather than “religious.”

There are interesting similarities between post-Christian American spirituality and the potpourri of spiritualities present in post-socialist Mongolia. For the most part, anything goes and tolerance reigns supreme. (Sidebar: Please don’t misunderstand. I am not for intolerance in the unloving, graceless, bitter way that the “God hates fags” crowd is intolerant. I am for finding the Biblical balance of grace and discernment). We need to seek how we are to engage a culture that is as interested in hearing about Jesus as they are about inner workings of the government in the Czech Republic. I once asked a woman in an Outer Mongolian countryside ger if she had ever heard about Jesus. She said she had heard of Jesus, but he “wasn’t interesting”. She followed the “yellow religion” (that is Tibetan Buddhism). I have a friend who works at a cafe’ in Franklin, TN. She has tried to share Christ with her coworkers, and they are no more interested in Jesus than the Yellow-Religion following Mongolian. One guy at the cafe’ believes in Kharma. Another believes all roads lead to heaven. There is a satisfaction in being a good heathen. Hardworking. Tolerant. Not a bitter anti-Christian. Simply satisfied to include Jesus as nothing more than another totem on the pole. People here and there will not be characterized by banging down the doors of our churches any time soon.

That’s what I see, culturally speaking. However, I am also wondering what the answer might be. How do we bring attention to need without carrying signs and yelling at people on street corners? I am pretty sure that Jesus will not generally be received this way. Nor will we. On the other hand, we must engage people in the conversation. People are not going to hear about Christ nor receive His grace because we simply exist.

I told a story at our church’s VBS last week. It was a story Jesus told about two men, a religious-worker-pastor-missionary-type who thought he had it all together and a worldly-wise thieving tax collector who had clearly blown it with his life. One prayed extensively with extreme gratitude that he was better than everyone else and one wouldn’t lift his eyes to heaven for the shame of what he’d done with his life. One was ignored by God and one “went away justified.” It’s a potent story for those who trust “in themselves that they are righteous and treat others with contempt.” It was powerful when I told it to church children. It had to be powerful when Jesus told it to religious Jews. (See more at Luke 18:9-14)

I don’t know for sure, but it seems to me that current cultural shifts are making way for the rediscovery of the power of story. Perhaps this is the day for artists and poets and photographers and moviemakers and singers in the church to use their gifts alongside the preachers and philosophers to tell the Gospel story to this generation in a way that is subtle, surprising and powerful. It seems to be true in Mongolia as well as in America. What would it look like if the church became something of a community of story tellers, missionally proclaiming the Gospel in Christlike humility? I’m convinced this a conversation we should be having in the world-wide Christian church of 2010. What will this kind of community look like in Mongolia and Franklin and the million other communities around the world where the church currently exits, and is disturbingly absent? Grace is much more subversive than we would have ever expected and the story must be told. Will we be bold enough to tell it?