DIDACHE: GENERATIONS

Robin Smith and Joshua Smith

Question #1: What is your current role?

Robin Smith
I am an adjunct professor and teach a variety of Bible and Christian ministry courses. I also teach
a weekly Bible Study at a local church. Teaching at the university and the local church has
proven to be challenging, rewarding, and thought provoking.

Joshua Smith
I am currently serving as the pastor of Mountainside Communiona church of the Nazarene
located in Monrovia, Ca. I am also working to complete a Doctor of Ministry program at Fuller
Theological Seminary in Missional Leadership. My most important role right now is being the
husband of Arianna and father of Caleb (6), Zachary (4), and Luke (2).

Question #2: Why did you choose this discipline?

Robin Smith
Ecclesiology is really the discipline that I have invested my life in. Although my job titles have
most often included Christian Education, it is really the study of the life and ministry of the
church that has been my focus. As a child and teenager I loved the Church. I loved being with
the church family. Even so, it came as a surprise when God called me to ministry as a full time
vocation because the tradition I grew up in did not allow for women to be in leadership, let alone
be ordained. But God faithfully kept his word in showing me how I would indeed make church
ministry my life work. As a pastor and educator my focus has been on equipping Christians for
service and faithful obedience to the gospel. Of course the truth always is that I, the pastor and
teacher, have been the one who has continually grown, changed, and been transformed in my
thinking, service, and understanding of what it is to follow Christ.

Joshua Smith
Much like you, ecclesiology is the discipline I am giving my life to. Thus far the roles have been
as pastor and student, but ecclesiology is what I study and practice. Like many pastors might
testify, I am not completely sure whether or not I chose this discipline or it chose me. Dad and
your commitment to raising us in the church provided a wonderful context of encouragement,
support, and formation for me. I always really enjoyed being a part of what God was up to in our
local body and was affirmed from an early age that leading a community of Gods people might
be something I was gifted for. In pursuing this vocation for the last ten years I have grown to
love and appreciate the role of a pastor and would certainly choose it as a discipline for myself,
but I still feel like it might have chosen me more than I chose it.

Question #3: What key contributions does your discipline offer?

Joshua Smith
It strikes me that if we are going to talk about the contributions that ecclesiology or the church
can offer, we need to acknowledge the culture that we are living in. Our world is experiencing
what missiologist Al Roxburgh describes as discontinuous change. This is not change that can
be predicted or controlled, but is change that we do not quite know what to do with. It might be
described as a transition or shift in the way things are. This transition is brought about by
realities such as global immigration, technological advancements, accessibility of knowledge, a
changing global economy, awareness of staggering need, and, of course, a loss of confidence in
primary social structures. When speaking of key contributions that our churches can offer we
must be thinking in terms of this changing environment that we are a part of.

Robin Smith
You are right but as you know, change has historically been difficult for the church. To make the
adjustments necessary for a faithful witness in these times I think we have to intentionally return
to the teachings of Jesus and take more seriously the way Jesus lived. Jesus said that the most
important commandment is to first love God with our heart, soul, mind, and strength; to secondly
love our neighbors; and to thirdly remember that on these two commandments hang all the Law
and the Prophets." (Matt. 22:39) His life embodied these commands. In spite of the cultural
changes we face, and they are significant, these three truths still provide the foundation and
primary compass for how we engage this new world we live in.

Joshua Smith
What I hear you saying is that following the Spirit and teachings of Christ gives us our identity
and shape as the Church and that this is true no matter what time and place the church is living
in. I really like that. I especially like the metaphor you use describing Jesus teaching as a
compass that guides us. I suspect that one contribution that the church will make by embodying
this message of Jesus will be in addressing the incredible loneliness that people feel these days.
One of the great forces in Western culture is individualism, and while it was probably birthed out
of a desire to honor people, it now breeds loneliness. I talk with more and more people who are
lonely. I think that one of the great contributions that churches can offer is redemptive friendship
and community. When transition happens, like the transition we are facing as a culture, there is
the possibility for community that brings about a new reality. In some ways this seems to be
what the social networking phenomenon is all about. Modes of communication like MySpace,
Facebook, and now Twitter are new attempts at friendship and community. And while these
social networks make some nice contributions of their own, they lack any sense of incarnation.
Aspects of relationships like embodiment, relational sustainability, connection to a particular
place or context are things that the local church can contribute that are extremely important for
life-giving and redemptive relationships. Practices like hospitality, welcoming the stranger, table
fellowship, and love of neighbor as you mentioned, are contributions that the church has to offer
that seem very important right now. I think that one of the greatest ministries a church could
implement is to move church potlucks into the neighborhoods. What contributions do you see the
church offering?

Robin Smith
I agree with you that people are lonely and I think they are also frightenedfrightened of
change, frightened for their future, even frightened of other people. Life-giving and redemptive
relationships describe well what Jesus offered and taught. Glen Stassen and David Gushee in
their book Kingdom Ethics, remind us that, Christianity is a nonsensical enterprise apart from
Jesus, its central figure, its source, ground, authority and destiny. Here is the problem. Christian

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churches across the theological and confessional spectrum, and Christian ethics as an academic
discipline that serves the churches, are often guilty of evading Jesus, the cornerstone and center
of the Christian faith. In my teaching and interaction with the Christian community I am
regularly surprised at how Jesus is interpreted and understood. The Sermon on the Mount as the
central teaching that sums up Jesus message from the beginning of his ministry to his ascension,
and yet it is often overlooked as a way of life for the church today. Jesus really meant what he
said and he said the same things over and over again through direct teaching, parable, personal
encounter and dialogue. He does not waiver.

Joshua Smith
Much of the missional conversation that I am a part of has to do with helping the church to
understand herself better theologically and allowing mission and ministry to flow from that. In
large part, the missional conversation is trying to move the theological discourse from colleges
and seminaries to the local context where the story of God is to be embodied. I think that your
thoughts on allowing the teachings and life of Jesus to shape us are in line with the missional
conversation and are very important. Like you are saying, the best contribution that the church
could make to the world that God loves is to follow Jesus. This sounds simplistic, but these are
important ecclesiological issues.

Robin Smith
I think that the culture has informed the life of the church more than she realizes. No generation
has ever been bereft of relying on the culture to identify and make sense of God, but it seems to
me that the culture of prosperity has blurred the vision of the church. Jesus does not back away
from his message to care about and give to the poor, to welcome the stranger, to love and pray
for our enemies, and to be very careful about judging anyone or any group of people because we
have logs in our eyes. These logs are often shaped by the national and local culture we live in.
These logs have to be acknowledged and removed or we will not be able to live out the truth and
grace of the gospel. I agree completely that we need to shape our life and ministry theologically
and it needs to be after the person and ministry of Jesus. This is the primary contribution that the
church can make to the world.

Question #4: What is the future of your discipline?

Joshua Smith
Much like the culture we are a part of, I think the church is going through some pretty intense
changes as well and I am not quite sure if anyone knows what the future of the church will look
like. My suspicion is that we are going to need to do a lot of listening and discernment in order to
imagine the future that God is calling us to. One thing that seems important will be to continue to
create opportunities like writing this article, where people of different generations and
perspectives are invited to come together and listen to one another. Again, practices like table-
fellowship will be important contributions the church can offer.

Robin Smith
What you are suggesting prompts me to remember again that Christ engaged the world he lived
in. He really looked at people and cared about their circumstances. He enjoyed getting to know
people, visiting in their homes, helping them when they had needs, and he regularly shared a

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meal with all kinds of folks. Jesus had friends who worshipped God and friends who did not. He
lived in the world confident of who he was and what his life was all about. I am concerned that
my generation lost sight of Christs down to earth, practical, and hospitable way of living. Jesus
became human; he lived among people; wherever he was he was a prophetic voice and presence
that was full of grace and truth. This kind of ministry cannot be programmed, it has to be
experienced and modeled. How do you think we can lead people toward this vision of ministry?

Joshua Smith
When I think of pastoral leadership, I think of a definition given by Mark Lau-Branson and Al
Roxburgh. They describe pastoral leadership as cultivating an environment within a congregation
where she is able to discern the missional imagination that God is calling forth. I understand the
pastoral role or contribution to be fairly poetic in that sense.

Robin Smith
I am intrigued by your choice of words. Your descriptions are so different than how we
understood ministry thirty years ago. I was trained to see the church in terms of particular
functions that had to be designed and carried out. There were absolutes like teaching, worship,
advocacy, service and fellowship that not only had to be specifically planned for, but we would
regularly evaluate these functions like goals that needed to be monitored. We did look at these
functions as overlapping, but nonetheless, cultivating an environment, discerning missional
imagination and poetic are new ways of thinking about the life of the church.

Joshua Smith
That is interesting. When I hear your description of ministry and the pastoral role, I think of
cultural heroes like CEOs and expertspeople that have the answers or know how and tell
everyone else what needs to be done or achieved. It reveals a conviction that we know what
church is supposed to look like if she is being faithful in following Christ. I suppose I am
pastoring out of the conviction God might be doing a new thing among us in the West and we
need to lead out of a posture of discovery and discernment rather than certainty. It has to do with
the transition we are in and an acknowledgment that we just do not know what the future holds.

Robin Smith
You are right in your sensing that our model for ministry required an expert or top
management to oversee the ministry of the church. As I think about that, I realize how reflective
of the culture that model was. Our generation understood and bought into the idea of having to
have specific, measurable, and timely ways of doing ministry. Talk to me about what a
discerning, poetic, and imaginative ministry would look like.

Joshua Smith
My hunch is that it involves leading a congregation into processes of listening. We need to listen
to the stories of Gods activity from the past found in scripture and our Wesleyan-Nazarene
tradition, understanding it as a grace of God that propels us forward and not as something we
need to replicate, and also to the other traditions that people in our congregations come from.
Along with all of this, we need to listen to the personal stories of individuals in our churches and
neighborhoods in order to get a sense of what the Spirit is up to there. I am finding that in
communal listening like this, the Spirit of Christ is faithful to call forth vision and imagination

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for the church. I would want to add that once this vision or imagination begins to take shape,
strategies and measurable outcomes like you mentioned, can be used to help the church move
towards the imagination that God has called forth through the listening process.

Robin Smith
Listening. That is a word and a spiritual discipline that is important for ministry yet too often
ignored especially in my generation. Speaking, directing, organizing, even controlling were the
primary means of understanding and doing ministry. I think this becomes very apparent when I
think about the metaphors we used for the church. In my lifetime, the American church
understood herself and her mission through metaphors such as Army, Hospital, School, and
Traditional Family.

Joshua Smith
Unpack those metaphors for me. How have they shaped the church?

Robin Smith
These metaphors were helpful and useful in creating a church that was organized, disciplined,
evangelistic, committed to Christian Education, an advocate for the traditional family, and
committed to keeping herself pure, safe, and secure. But these metaphors also contributed to
behaviors and values that oppose the Kingdom of God. For example, like an Army, the church
leaned toward control. We tended to understand our mission as being at war with the world, and
we became hierarchical. As a hospital we made the church a place where sick people could
come and be diagnosed, cared for, and rehabilitated. But in the process we became a bit like the
Pharisees of Jesus day that were continually trying to keep themselves clean and sanitary,
restricting who and what was allowed in, which ailments were worth treating, and relying totally
on our knowledge rather than grace for healing and care. The classroom and organized
curriculum became the primary means by which we discipled, too often ignoring the truth and
model that living among them, full of grace and truth is Christs way. And although we do and
always will affirm the goodness and value of the traditional family, the church lost sight of the
truth that in the Bible, God blesses and moves in the lives of all types of families. These
metaphors really made sense to us but I realize now that although they seemed helpful and
affirming of our faith, they also seduced us into an Us and Them and Church vs. World
identity and way of ministry. These dualisms are not helpful and do not reflect the teachings and
values of Jesus and the Kingdom of God.

Joshua Smith
It is really interesting to think about the different metaphors that we use to describe the church.
Metaphors that many people of my generation are using are words like exile, wilderness, and
journey. Obviously these metaphors are easily recognized in scripture, but they also reveal an
acknowledged lack of certainty in terms of what Gods future for the church is. Once again,
revealing the transition that we are in. I suppose this is why I think that skills in discernment and
listening to the Spirit are so important. This lack of certainty may feel scary for some people, but
as the scriptures remind us, this is not unfamiliar territory for Gods people. Like you said,
people really are afraid of the future, so helping the church remember Gods faithfulness in times
like this will be really important.

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I also found it very interesting that you talked about the dualisms that we often use to define the
church in relationship to the world. This is something that I have been thinking a lot about as I
try and lead our congregation in mission and ministry. On one hand I want to think of Gods
people as distinct and particular because of our striving to follow God in the way of Christ, as
you mentioned earlier. But on the other hand, I want to avoid the trap of taking on an identity
described as us and them or church vs. world.. Both of these descriptions seem problematic
in terms of following a boundary-crossing, world-loving, and people-welcoming God. I
guess I am most uncomfortable with the versus language. Some other ways of describing this
relationship that I have heard and feel better about are the church FOR THE SAKE OF the
world, though that can become somewhat paternalistic- or as David Bosch writes the church
WITH the world. These understandings of the relationship between the church and the world
seem more faithful to God in Christ. How does that sound to you?

Robin Smith
It sounds more descriptive of Gods relationship with the world and once again, Christs way of
seeing the world and living in the world. It also brings to mind your role as coach of Caleb and
Zachs T-ball team. My generation would have viewed your coaching as something you did on
your own time or in addition to your ministry at the church. But the relationships and
connections that are made in that contextthe conversations, laughter, and just being with the
peopleis ministry and it is life giving. I can only imagine all of the different ways that the
church could minister to and impact the world for Christ just by being present in neighborhoods.

Joshua Smith
I think that you are really onto something when you talk about the church being present with
people in neighborhoods. That description strikes me as very incarnational and faithful to Jesus
call to love our neighbors and to be stewards of creation. Many times I think we hear Jesus call
to love neighbors as pertaining to people like us or people that we like. I am sensing the church
is being called to practice love of neighbor with the actual people that live in our particular
neighborhoods. That is what is behind my commitment to coach the boys T-ball team. This is
also what is behind my familys commitment, and the commitment of other families in our
church, to move into the local community and be involved. Whenever I think about this kind of
thing I remember the annual Christmas Open House that you hosted for the people of our
neighborhood every year. In a context of suburban sprawl where people would pull in and out of
their automatic garage doors having very little conversation with each other, that commitment
opened up new realities in our neighborhood in terms of relationships of grace, support, and
hope. I suppose hosting that open house was cultivating an environment where Gods kingdom
might break in to our neighborhood. I think it was also a way for our family to be the church
WITH the world.

Question #5: What do you see proves a challenge to Wesleyan Higher Education?

Robin Smith
I suspect that higher education and other long-standing ecclesial institutions will face great
challenges as they help the church adjust to the cultural realities and changes we have addressed.
Our colleges, seminaries, and other denominational groups will be under a great deal of pressure
to keep things as they are and in the minds of many as they have always been. Living and

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teaching the Kingdom of God is very challenging because like the people of Jesus day, the
church in the Western hemisphere does not easily recognize the kingdom. The kingdom of God
was not a new concept for the people of Jesus day. The problem was the kingdom of God that
Jesus described, lived, and ushered in was radically different than what the people of God
expected. Their expectations for the kingdom were national power, religious power, and legal
authority. But as we all know, that is not what Jesus meant. There wasnt going to be Gods
nation. There was not going to be a templethat single place where God would reside. The
Kingdom of God was not going to be about dictating laws, political strength, military might, or
wealth and power. None of these things were, or are, evidence of the kingdom. Many who come
to our [Nazarene] institutions to learn and who look to church leadership for direction and
stability, find these truths and values foreign and troubling but our educational institutions must
help the church identify the differences and distinctions of the culture and the Kingdom of God. I
suspect that our educational and church leadership will face significant pressure as they continue
to help us make these distinctions but I believe they will continue to stay faithful to the teachings
of Jesus, and with grace and truth help the church have eyes to see and ears to hear.

I also think that the challenge of higher education will be to equip and empower men and women
to take what is studied, discussed, and critiqued in the academic arena into the local church. This
is similar to what you said the missional conversation is trying to do. In higher education we
freely and enthusiastically consider and discuss biblical truth, culture, science, the arts, and
ministry. But somehow these discussions get short-circuited and fail to connect at the local,
congregational, and personal level. What do you think the challenges will be?

Joshua Smith
I think that that the challenges you just named are primary for Christian higher education. In
addition to these, I would like to see more emphasis placed on ecclesiology and communal
spirituality in our academic institutions. This will be challenging though, in light of the
individualism of our culture. A final challenge that I see is the need to train pastors to understand
the importance of context for ministry when most students have to leave their context in order to
go to school.

Question #6: Where are you hopeful concerning Wesleyan Higher Education?

Joshua Smith
In response to the challenges we just mentioned, Mark Lau-Branson, who is a professor of mine
at Fuller, is experimenting with a few learning cohorts in an attempt to address these issues. The
students do much of their course work and their internships in a cohort, within a particular
tradition, and in a particular context. It is still very much in the experiment phase, but ideas like
this excite me and bring me hope in terms of the challenges that we face.

Another aspect of Wesleyan Higher Education that brings me great hope is some of the work
being done by Warren Brown, Joel Green, Sarah Marion, and Craig Keen. Within their different
fields, each of them are working with the concept of embodiment and understanding human
nature in holistic ways. I think that this has incredible implications for the mission of the church
and I am very excited to see where this leads and how it moves into the curriculum of our
academic institutions.

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Robin Smith
I am very excited about the high level of scholarship and missional vision that is being nurtured
in our Wesleyan institutions of higher education. I have been blessed to have been invited to
several of these schools and I am continually impressed and energized by the critical thinking,
engaging conversations, and wide range of literature that is being read and considered. The
students are better prepared than ever and the various faculties are home to some of the most
outstanding thinkers, researchers, and teachers anywhere. We also have incredibly bright and
gifted young scholars who are joining these faculties. I think that Wesleyan higher education is
well positioned to serve the church of Jesus Christ towards faithful ministry.

Question #7: Final words for future generations?

Joshua Smith
Mary Jo Leddy said it well in her book Reweaving the Religious Life in which she wrote, We
are living through one of those historical in-between times when a former model of religious life
(either traditional or liberal) is fading away and a future model has not yet become clear. One
could be tempted to flee from the dilemmas of this moment to some more secure past, to the
surface present, or to some arbitrary resolution of the future. These are real temptations and they
can be met only with the faith that this is our hour, our kairos [Greek for season or time]. This
is the only time and place we are called to become followers of Jesus Christ; there is no better
time or place for us to live out the mysteries of creation, incarnation, and redemption. These are
our times and, in the end, Gods time.

Robin Smith
My final words are, do not be afraid. Do not minister from a place of fear. Do not try to be the
great defender of God. God is our Savior and defender, not the other way around. There are
changes occurring but heed the Apostle Pauls advice: Do not be conformed by the world but be
transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to do the will of God; the good
and perfect will of God.

Didache: Faithful Teaching 9:1 (Summer 2009)

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