1933-2007
Robert Webber was one of those rare people who have made a profound impact on my life without my ever having met him. When we arrived in Olathe we began to hear his name because the founding pastor of Christ Community, Dave Pendleton, had modeled the worship of the church after the fourfold pattern of worship that Webber championed. We now use this same pattern in our worship gatherings. I thank God for people like Bob Webber who are aware enough to follow their passions and change many lives in return. I had expected to meet him in December at the "Call to an Ancient Evangelical Future" conference but his condition had become too severe for him to travel. I plan to attend the school that he founded beginning in January.
This is the press release from the Institute for Worship Studies in Orlando:
Noted theologian and author Dr. Robert E. Webber died Friday, April 27 in his home in Sawyer, Michigan, after an eight-month struggle with pancreatic cancer. He was 73 years old.
Dr. Webber was born in Congo of missionary parents, and was raised in the Philadelphia area. He earned the Th.D. from Concordia Theological Seminary. From 1968 to 2000 he served as Professor of Theology at Wheaton College, and was named Professor Emeritus upon his retirement in 2000. He was appointed William R. and Geraldine D. Myers Professor of Ministry and Director of the M.A. in Worship and Spirituality at Northern Baptist Theological Seminary in the fall of 2000.
Bob Webber founded The Institute for Worship Studies (now the Robert E. Webber Institute for Worship Studies) in 1998. The Institute for Worship Studies is a Masters and Doctorate level graduate school focused on the study of the theological, Biblical, historical, sociological and missiological foundations of Christian worship. The school is hosted by Grace Episcopal Church of Orange Park, Florida and combines distance learning with one-week on-campus intensive courses involving students, faculty and alumni from around the globe.
IWS Provost and President-Elect Dr. James R. Hart commented, "Bob Webber significantly influenced many in our generation with the understanding that worship is the key to the renewal of the church. We mourn the loss of our friend and mentor, but rejoice with him in worshiping the risen Christ."
Webber was noted for his numerous writings and workshops in worship and worship renewal. His books include such titles as Evangelicals on the Canterbury Trail, Worship Is a Verb, Worship Old and New, Ancient-Future Faith, Ancient-Future Time, Ancient-Future Evangelism, Journey to Jesus, The Younger Evangelicals, and The Divine Embrace. He served as editor of the seven-volume The Complete Library of Christian Worship (Hendrickson, 1993) and was a regular columnist in Worship Leader magazine.
Webber leaves behind a wife, Joanne, four children, John (Isabel), Alexandra (Jack), Stefany (Tom), and Jeremy (Susie), seven grandchildren, and a rich legacy of friends, colleagues and students.
A public memorial service will be held at Christ Church of Oak Brook, 31st and York Road in Oak Brook, IL (630-654-1882) on Wednesday, May 16 at 7:00 p.m., and at Grace Episcopal Church in Orange Park, FL on Friday, June 15 at 7:00 p.m. during the June session of the Institute for Worship Studies (800-282-2977).
In lieu of flowers the family has requested that donations be made to the Robert E. Webber Endowment Fund at the Institute for Worship Studies, 151 Kingsley Ave., Orange Park, FL 32073, or the Robert E. Webber Center for an Ancient Evangelical Future, c/o Northern Seminary, 660 E. Butterfield Rd., Lombard, IL 60148.
Grace and peace,
Jim Hart
Robert E. Webber
AEF-Lauren Winner
I haven't had much time since I've been back to finish posting about the specific speakers I heard at the AEF conference. This will be the last post specifically about the conference but I will continue to use this forum to work out some of the issues that were raised.
Saturday morning Lauren Winner was the keynote speaker and her session was entitled, "The Call and Recovering our Hebrew Roots". I was really looking forward to this presentation due to an increased interest in finding how we can connect to the faith of the first century.
Winner began by talking about the problem of supersessionism. This is the heretical idea that the Old Testament is no longer necessary because of Jesus. Winner stated that it is important for us as followers of Jesus to affirm the ongoing relationship between God and the Jews. This past week I needed to focus on the idea of Jesus being known as "Christ" or "Messiah". It occurred to me that these titles as much as anything else are the ties that bind the first and second testaments (I know this isn't a great revelation but it is something I've needed to help with my own bent toward the Marcion heresy).
Winner focused on two important aspects of Jewish culture that most of Christianity has unfortunately abandoned. We have, to our loss, forgotten the practices of Sabbath and bereavement. I have posted earlier on the fact that we as Christians need to rediscover the practice of a Sabbath rest and much of what Lauren presented is contained in that post. One thing that I thought was very important was that there are two basic commands of the Jewish Sabbath, no work and being joyful.
Lauren’s focus on the mourning process was very insightful. One of the observations she made was that death has been moved to the peripheries in our culture. The mourning process has been shortened so that the living do not have to dwell on the dead. One the other hand the Jews have a mourning calendar. At every step of the way the community is involved in the bereavement process. After a family member dies they begin a one week period of intense mourning where they do not leave the house and cover all the mirrors with black cloths. They also begin saying a short prayer that must be said with their community twice a day. After the first week the community arrives at the house and takes the mourner for a short walk to symbolize that normalcy is slowly creeping back into life. The mourner then takes another month where they attend no parties and listen to no music. They then take a year of recognized mourning. Lauren described this as a “communal choreography of mourning”. Instead of pushing people back into “normal” life this is much more natural and healthy process. Frederica Matthews-Green said that the Eastern Orthodox church has a similar mourning calendar. I think back on the mourning process Jenn went through when Lisa died and I see how our society has tried to do everything it can to avoid being faced with death. Just like everything else, we want to expedite a process that needs to take its time.
These two specific practices are great examples of how Western Christianity has adapted to culture rather than transformed culture. We have replaced the Sabbath with the weekend. We have replaced a “communal choreography of mourning” with individual suppression.
I couldn't help but notice the similarities, which I am assuming are intentional.
AEF-Martin Marty
Friday night's keynote speaker was Martin Marty. This was easily the most difficult of the sessions for me to follow. Marty went line-by-line and talked about how The Call is facing the future of evangelicalism. The structure was good and the presentation was deep and very academic. It was a stretch for my mind to follow Dr. Marty.
Marty's lecture was entitled "The Call and the Future of Evangelicalism". I didn't take any notes becuase Marty had a very detailed outline. So anything that stood out to me is now dependent on my memory, which is usually not good when it comes to lectures.
The first part of his speech was dedicated to the point that we cannot predict the future but we can project the future. We can form a plan as to what we think could happen but there is no way of knowing what will occur. One of the most interesting things that he talked about was the idea of "billions of particulars" leading to a specific reaction. He used the example of asking some of his students why and how the felt a call to ministry. Some gave clear answers but most couldn't give a specific instance when the "knew". He explained to them that it were possibly billions of particular events that lead to their decision.
In the next section Marty discussed how we could begin to project the future as North American evangelicals. Probably the most discussed topic over the weekend was this idea of narratives and specifically a meta-narrative. The Call states that, "The pressing issue is: who gets to narrate the world?" If I was following I believe Marty said that North Americans would not be in control of the meta-narrative much longer. The global south and especially China will hold this distinction. As far as Christianity is concerned Pentecostalism would be a smart bet to take over the position as most influential and largest segment of Christianity. 
Much of the rest of the presentation was very good but not reproducible by me. Marty did share an experiment to take back to congregations. I will take the liberty of shortening the story. He said at separate times take the American flag and the most visible cross in your sanctuary out while leaving the other in. He said then attempt to gauge the kind of response to both and see which one you get the most heat over and which one's absence is easier to explain. It's not hard to guess which one would cause more of and uproar in most evangelical congregations.
The following panel discussion was lively and very interesting. There was much more talk about the narrative issue and I will devote one post on that (narrative, meta-narrative, mega-narrative, redeeming-narrative) later.
The evening session was followed by a compline service. I don't know if I have mentioned it yet but the worship during the weekend was beautiful and this service was the highlight of the weekend for me. We chanted several songs and various other scripture reading, prayed, confessed and sang together. It was so focused and intentional and pure, beautiful.
AEF-Frederica Matthews-Green
These are some thoughts from my notes on Frederica Matthews-Green’s presentation on Friday morning. Her presentation was entitled “The Call and Christian Spiritual Formation”.
Frederica used various icons throughout her presentation that were used to highlight the points she was making. She explained that one of the most important parts of early Christian art was to express a certain attitude displayed by the saints’ faces. Many early Christians could not read but they could gain a wealth of knowledge just by viewing the postures and faces of the great Christians who traveled the journey before them. She explained that experiments show that from birth we are designed to read faces and the early Christians were providing that opportunity for those who were illiterate.
Frederica briefly explained the Christian disciplines of prayer, fasting and alms giving. She explained that of the three, alms giving (charity, love for other) is the antidote for the sin of narcissism.
She also brought up the idea of viewing sin as infection rather than infraction. This later lead to a great comment by Brian McLaren who stated that all too often we as ministers of the Gospel offer a transaction for the infraction rather than healing for the infection. Good stuff.
Frederica showed us the picture of the Christ of Sinai. As soon as the image was displayed I was arrested by his eyes and couldn’t really focus on anything else in the picture. Luckily for me she drew attention to the eyes quickly and explained that she believe this painting is showing the dual nature of Christ as physician and healer. If you cover the left half of the picture you see a Christ who nearly looks through you and exposes the infection of sin within you. If you cover the right half of the picture you see a merciful Lord who heals and gives peace.
As you can see these thoughts are slowly making their way to my blog. During the six hour drive home today I spent probably four hours in silence thinking about what all of what I heard means for me and my involvement in the church. There is still much to unpack in mind and there will probably be many more posts about this conference and it’s impact. I look forward to sharing those thoughts, and what is put into practice, with all who read this.
I listened to Midlake’s “The Trials of Van Occupanther” several times during my travels and it just gets better every time I hear it. I also need to mention my untitled playlist that included: Bob Dylan’s “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan”, Damien Rice’s “O”, Iron & Wine’s “Live Session (iTunes exclusive), Rocky Votolato’s “Suicide Medicine” and Sufjan Steven’s “Seven Swans”. I don’t know why I picked these specific artists or albums but I needed to listen to them all during my journey to and from Chicago.
AEF- Brian McLaren
These are some random thoughts about Brian McLaren’s topic, “Does the Emerging Church have an Ancient Future?”
One of the first things that Brian talked about was how we need to realize that we don’t all start with the same meaning for many of the words that we use. One in particular is the word “evangelical”. I mentioned this in my discussion with the anonymous commenter. Before we can begin the discussion we must first challenge our definitions, especially this one in particular.
Brian also mentioned the importance of the community of faith acknowledging the validity at all levels in the different expressions of the faith. I don’t see much middle ground here, you either know that all expressions of Christianity are working toward the same kingdom goals or you think that other expressions are foes to be conquered. God help us.
The final part of Brian’s presentation that stood out to me was a part that he mentioned briefly which is our temptation toward Christoencapsulation. This is that temptation to forget about the other two parts of the Trinity in our worship and theology. We must be followers of Christ with the understanding of how we then relate to the Father and Spirit. Without a relationship and communication with all three persons of the Trinity we are falling short in our attempts to be kingdom people.
Again these are my thoughts and do not represent McLaren’s opinions.