original source: Stone’s Hinge: The Return to Primal Restorationist Impulses in Post-Restorationist Churches. image: Post-Restorationist Radio by Adam Ellis, profile pic of the Facebook community found here.

“He was the harbinger of this restoration; a messenger of the Lord sent to prepare the way by calling men to repent, ‘for the restored kingdom of heaven is at hand.’ He was the John the Baptist of a new era of the gospel of the grace of God.”[5]   Such were the laudatory words of W. L. Hayden in homage to Barton Stone at the Churches of Christ, Disciples of Christ, and Christian Churches Centennial Address in 1909.  Within this scope it may be questioned as to why Barton Stone’s life and ministry receives consideration over that of fellow-leader Alexander Campbell.[6]  When compared with Campbell, Stone comes forward as a street-level church planter whose spiritual DNA can be witnessed in Post-Restorationist church planters today, as will be explored below.  Within the Stone-Campbell Movement, there was perhaps less Stone and more Campbell, especially as the Movement unfolded.[7]   So while Campbell—who Richard Hughes notes as the one who “emerged as the pivotal leader of the movement”[8] —had a more rational and scholarly bent, Stone could be said to have a more on-the-ground vocation. In contrast to Campbell’s scholastic orientation, Eugene Boring writes, “While Stone had a keen and vigorous mind, a good education by frontier standards, and saw the importance of disciplined study, he was busy farming, preaching, and founding churches”[9]  (emphasis added).

Indeed, Stone was no stranger to the apostolic way of “constituting, “forming,” “organizing,” “founding,” or “planting” new churches,[10]  as witnessed in his autobiography that tells of at least four accounts in which he planted churches.  The following excerpt offers a brief glimpse into one of Stone’s church planting endeavors:

At that time Georgetown was notorious for irreligion and wickedness. I began to preach to them that they should repent, and turn to the Lord. My congregation increased, and became interested on the subject of religion. Soon we constituted a church of six or seven members, which quickly grew to two or three hundred. I was every week baptizing, sometimes thirty at a time, of whom were a number of my pupils, some of whom became useful preachers afterwards. The work of conversion spread a distance round…The harvest was truly great, but the laborers were few.[11]

Notably, Stone was not merely “shuffling the deck” of Christendom, but his efforts here took root amidst a reportedly irreligious community, which speaks to Stone’s hardnosed evangelistic pioneering.  Further, Stone was working with rather small numbers initially—“six or seven”—which was enough for Stone to “constitute a church.”  Identifiable in this brief report are the marks of simplicity and organic beginnings, as well as discipleship, as Stone would turn his Georgetown pupils into gospel preachers.

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[5]   W. L. Hayden, Centennial Addresses Delivered in 1909, ed. W.L. Hayden (Indianapolis, IN: W. L. Hayden, 1909), 24.

[6]   From a class lecture (September 26, 2007) at Abilene Christian University, Restoration Movement historian and Professor Dr. Doug Foster notes that we know more about Barton Stone now than anyone in the Restoration Movement 100 years ago, as Stone had been historically conflated with the more dominant Campbell until work by Disciples of Christ historians resurrected Stone’s identity in the 1930s.  The Independent Christian Churches referred to the disappearance of Stone in Restoration History as “Stone silence.”  A recovery of Stone’s contributions have been invaluable to the Restoration Movement, largely in thanks to the work of Star Bible Publications’ reprint of the dilapidated manuscripts of Stone’s journal The Christian Messenger in 1978.

[7]  See C. Leonard Allen, “The Stone that the Builders Rejected” in Cane Ridge in Context: Perspectives on Barton W. Stone and the Revival, ed. Anthony L. Dunnavant (Nashville: Disciples of Christ Historical Society, 1992), 43-61.  Allen argues, “The legacy of Stone has been almost entirely lost among Church of Christ in the twentieth century.”  This was due to historic generalizations attributed to Stone based on the conflation of later leaders in the Stone-Campbell Movement.  Further, Stone died just 12 years after his followers joined ranks with Campbell’s Reformers.

[8]  Richard Hughes, Reviving the Ancient Faith (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996), 11.

[9]  Eugene M. Boring, Disciples and the Bible: A History of Disciples Biblical Interpretation in North America (St. Louis: Chalice, 1997), 13.

[10]  See Barton Stone, The Christian Messenger, reprinted (Fort Worth: Star Bible, 1978).  Such are the plurality of phrases found scattered throughout Barton Stone’s Christian Messenger used to describe the phenomenon that today is called church planting.  The Christian Messenger was, of course, Stone’s popular print publication, which was published from 1826-1844 while working with very limited resources.

[11]  Barton W. Stone, “A Short History of the Life of Barton W. Stone Written by Himself,” in Voices from Cane Ridge, ed. Rhodes Thompson (St. Louis: Bethany, 1954), 99.  Within his autobiography, Stone twice mentions the planting and multiplication of a plurality of new churches, again mentions planting two churches, and also mentions planting one church—all at different points along his timeline and in different geographies.  Knowing of Stone’s humility, old age, and the family audience to whom he was writing, it can be assumed there were other church plants he did not mention.  Any self-hagiography in this context would seem highly unlikely.

where it all went down, and from whence we emerged

Whether in the diverse Northeast metropolis of New York City, NY, the Deep South seat of Birmingham AL, or the edgy Southwest city of Austin, TX, the Restoration Movement is undeniably birthing new expressions of church in the USA. Recent church plants that are moving beyond the “Churches of Christ” label—both in name and in practice—may actually be faithfully returning to Restorationist roots rather than defiantly departing from them [1]. Such church plants, referred to here as being “Post-Restorationist,” are showing marks of primal Restorationist impulses, especially as witnessed in the life of Restoration Movement leader Barton Warren Stone. It is the intention of this work to explore common impulses between Stone as a church planter and a sample of 21st Century Post-Restorationist church plants, and to put forward some modest projections based on the parallels that are discovered herein.

Such a task as connecting the two very different worlds of Stone’s context and present contexts is inherently problematic. Needless to say, the democratized, revivalist, and populist zeitgeist in which Stone lived and moved is far removed from today’s post-Christian, postmodern, and increasingly globalized society in which Post-Restorationist church planters find themselves [2]. Keeping in mind the radical changes that have taken place in our world over the past century and a half, any substantial connectedness whatsoever between Stone and church planters today should be at least surprising.

On a sidebar, Stone as an apostolic church planter has received very little if any scholarly attention at all [3]. Judging by the content of The Christian Messenger [4], Stone spent much of his time doing the tedious and grueling work of doctrinal debate and dialogue—in his day a necessary endeavor toward the pursuit of unity. Here we depart from Stone’s in-depth doctrinal conversations and seek to look deeply at the practice of Stone—his spirituality and intellect in missiological and ecclesiological action. This will be accomplished through reading the margins, that is, the virtually untreated side of Barton Stone as a vigorous church planter.

Admittedly, in surveying Post-Restorationist church planters, questions may have already been loaded in a way that seeks to prove initial assumptions. Further, the survey of Barton Stone’s life could be tainted as read through the lens of current categories. Such tendencies are acknowledged here. What is more, “Post-Restorationist” (defined below) is a label that will be imposed upon recent church plants in a way that is too broad to capture the nuances of each community. There is no uniform agreement as to the definition of “Post-Restorationist” in describing the church plants mentioned here. Yet broadly defined, “Post-Restorationist” seems to capture the common ethos prevailing among such church plants. The aim here is not to impose commonalities but to reveal an authentic alignment of Barton Stone’s practice with recent church plants coming out of the Churches of Christ. Perhaps in some way, Stone’s life may both affirm and further energize such church planters today. We will begin by considering the life of Barton Stone, not only as a key leader in the Restoration Movement, but also as a prototype church planter.

___________________________________________________________________________________________________

[1] Within this work, “Restoration Movement” and “Stone Campbell Movement” are phrases used interchangeably, while particular interest is given to church plants coming from Churches of Christ, or churches planted by leaders with a substantial connectedness to the Churches of Christ tradition.

[2] See Nathan O. Hatch, The Democratization of American Christianity (New Haven: Yale, 1989). Though he paints with broad brushstrokes, Hatch paints a clear picture of the zeitgeist in which Stone lived and worked, speaking directly of Stone’s populist preaching, his rejection of Calvinism, his religious press writings, his restoration of primitive Christianity, and his millennial outlook—all of which Hatch ties back the fervor of the age of democracy.

[3] This is in part due to the polity of the Churches of Christ moving away from a Stoneite apostolic polity to a more Campbellian polity.

[4] Barton Stone, The Christian Messenger, reprint, (Fort Worth: Star Bible Publications, 1978), vols. 1-14.

the man, the exile, the forerunner

If you’re an emerging underling like me, you do what missiologists/anthropologists with PhD’s from Fuller tell you. So the next few posts will be pieces from a paper I wrote that started with some research I did in graduate school as Chris Flanders’ graduate assistant. Initially, he had me heading down to a remote part of basement of the ACU library blowing the dust off of Barton Warren Stone’s volumes of The Christian Messenger. I poured through all 14 volumes reading Stone through the lens of church planting and missional behavior. It was tedious, eye-reddening and paper-cutting work, but I hashed through all 14 volumes because the pay was really good because the research began to pique my curiosity, similar to Brian McLaren’s experience in his pursuit of a new kind of Christianity:

I began to feel like one of those rumpled detectives on TV who finds a clue that opens up a whole new twist in the plot. Or better, I began to feel like a scientist in a movie, doing a routine run of experiments. I’m looking over my data and this icy feeling starts back between my shoulder blades and crawls up my neck, and I think, “Something’s not right here. This pattern in the data just doesn’t make sense.”

(A New Kind of Christian, Jossey Bass, 2001, p. xii)

In my exploration I stumbled across some pretty interesting stuff, but at the time nothing that seemed to substantiate material for an academic journal paper that Chris had in mind. At this point, there were significant dots, but none of them were connected. My research, it seemed, availed a rather paltry bit.

The next year I enrolled in Doug Foster’s much-spoken-of (and feared) Restoration History class. It was then that I began to connect the dots. What if the stuff that I had mined from Barton Stone’s life could inform church planters from the Churches of Christ tradition today? And then a light bulb seemed to go off. What if there are church plants from within this tradition that already embody Stoneite impulses? Sure enough, I began to see that Stone’s recessive DNA was resurfacing in a handful of church planters and new communities I had come to know. And my excitement grew.

These church planters (Greg Newton, Kester Smith, Jared Looney, and Ben Cheek among a growing list of others) represent a re/emergence of new/old school missional theology and ecclesiology that seemed to lay dormant in the One True Church heritage for a couple of centuries. It is now my thesis that these kinds of theologies/ecclesiologies—what I label as post-restorationist—are the glimmer of hope beyond the dead-end fork in the road: either the bland melding into the “pool of anonymous evangelicals” (HT Nic Acosta) in the suburbs , or the circling of the wagons and eventual death of the rural church.

So in the next few posts, I’ll essentially be re-posting my paper into smaller pieces. We’ll consider Barton Stone’s life as a stateside missionary and church planter. Then we’ll consider new expressions of Barton Stone’s impulses as seen in the post-restorationists. And somewhere down the road, we’ll make some conjectures about the future. (Aside: Isn’t that what Lectureship is all about, anyway? A time where we get all panicky about “the future of the brotherhood” and the “identity crisis” among our fellowship. And then we end up looking backwards to the glory days. Yeah, you know what I’m spittin.)

Well, here’s to beginning/continuing a new conversation that is forward-looking, missionally hopeful, theologically informed, and historically broader than the paths we’ve once known. Feel free to offer your reflections along the way.

Hey B’ham area friends,

You’re invited to come along on a guided tour of Rural Studio this Friday, July 11th. We’ll be leaving bright and early at 7:15 a.m. from the Disciples’ Fellowship abbey (2970 Lorna Rd). We’ll return around 5 p.m. Bring $10 for gas money and a picnic lunch.

Auburn University’s Rural Studio in western Alabama draws architectural students into the design and construction of homes and public spaces in some of the poorest counties in the United States. They’re creating beautiful and economical structures that are unique in the world — and that nurture sustainability of the natural world as of human dignity.

–Speaking of Faith on Rural Studio

Drop a line if you’ll be joining us!

The Rural Studio model for architecture has so many parallels with Christian community, and the vision was born of the late Samuel “Sambo” Mockbee, a man of radical faith. Rural Studio is incarnational, as students who are working on projects actually live within the community that they are hoping to bless. It is relational, as students are commissioned to get to know families and the surrounding community in order to better see and meet needs. It is missional, as students seek to transform the world around them by going out, discerning needs, and bringing a bit of heaven to earth. It is social, as students seek to offer a bit of decency for those who had no other way out. It is redemptive, as RS recycles and reuses materials, putting new use to old things without consuming more than necessary.  And RS is holisitic, as it seeks to bless not just individuals but communities, and seeks not just to build structures but physically bless lives.

this site tells the story well.

SOF podcast is here.

we’ve been hosting a yoga group here at the abbey. i’ve been itching to go, but John MacArthur persuaded me not to haven’t had much time to get into it. well, the group is moving on to a different site. but the super nice yoga lady was really warmed by the hospitality her group had been shown for letting them have a free space for yoga. for us it’s nothing. we host like a baker’s dozen recovery/12-step groups throughout the week, so there’s always something going on up here. but today as she was wrapping up her final session, she disclosed to Greg and I,

You know, a lot of us have noticed that there’s just, i don’t know…there’s just a really good energy here.

good energy. tru dat.

I have a fascination with My Morning Jacket. And it seems the front man Jim James has a fascination with Jesus. Which would mean we’d hit it off. As far as dropping JC bombs, he doesn’t make it too explicit, but poetically, it’s hard to miss. This, along with the ambient rock/classic country with steel guitar/jam band (think Phish or String Cheese Incident) and all kinds of other lesser influences, and you’ve got a recipe for enthralling, wonder-evoking music

Helen the Lovely treated me to my first MMJ concert back in March in Houston before the stop off at SXSW. It rawked. They played stuff from their now 1-week-old album Evil Urges, and I knew it would be brilliant. It is. MMJ  goes in some mature and still experimental directions.  Barrels of fun with that classic Jackets wild jamband sound.

Below are the lyrics to the messianic “Look at You.”  I don’t get much of a worship buzz these days, but this song evoked a deep sense of worship within me. Listen to it here (song 11) and you can download a most righteous live recording of M. Ward with Jim James live at St. David’s Church just a few blocks from the madness of SXSW. Beautiful stuff.

look at you, you
such a fine citizen

look at you, you
such a glowing example
of peace and glory, glory, glory
of peace and glory, glory, glory
let me follow you

we believe in your power to lead
without fear
not above in some tower
but here, right down here
with us in this world

look at you, you
everywhere at once
you
such a glowing example
of peace and glory, glory, glory

of peace and glory, glory, glory
let me follow you

And here’s a vid of Evil Urges, the title track. Helen and I were maybe 12 feet from where this guy was standing…

Following up on our conversation from the previous entry, it seems there are several who would be on board with gathering for conversation at the intersection of the Churches of Christ tradition and Emergent. The problem is addressing how to facilitate something that could be accessible to folks from a broad geographical reach. Talking earlier today with Greg, it makes sense to do something in the shadow of a larger institutional arrangement (i.e. Summit Lectureship @ ACU, Zoe Conference @ Woodmont Hills, etc). If we were to gather during ACU’s lectureship (Sept 21-24), we could simply meet at a public space, whether on campus or just around the block. And we could pull in folks during their downtime for conversation. At ACU, McLaren comes to mind as someone who’d be great to connect with at some point (although that may be difficult). And from our tradition, Mark Love and Chris Flanders would be very helpful to snag for some conversation.

[aside rant] The problem with stuff like lectureships is that folks with emergent sensibilities are asking completely different questions than the majority of attendees. Panicking questions like “What is the future of our heritage?” have not yet given way to questions like “How might a deconstructive/prophetic hermeneutic give way to a more faithful reading of the Scriptures that addresses particular societal injustices?” Case in point: last year at ACU’s lectureship in the shadows of keynote events, I attended a missional church panel conversation. Chris was the moderator and Greg was on the panel as a practitioner of “missional” church. The conversation went almost nowhere because the audience hung the whole thing up by asking milky questions like “What is missional?” For those still nagging for a definition, I offer one here. But this is one reason to keep conversations like this under the radar. For those interested but new to this line of thought, my sense is that having some on-ramps are necessary.

Anyway, feel free to blog out your thoughts a al Mark and Fajita or leave a reply.

Oh yeah, it sounds like “restoramergent” or some variant thereof may be the preferred cognomen of our pursuits…On that note, I’ll post a few other comments from the walls of Facebook (I’m a double-poster):

from Drew W:
I enjoyed reading this! +1 point to you.

My submission: Ironymergent. We’re finally accepting that we are a distinct group with a heritage and a culture of our own, and are thus finally able to have meaningful conversation with other Christian groups. I.e. it has been through the acknowledgment of groups, not the elimination of groups, that has been most successful in making advances towards unity.

from DPS:
I did not see “First Centri-re-emergent” or “Usheremergent”. The first being a recapturing of the First Century ideals, filtered through ritual and history and the latter being a partner with God in ushering the Kingdom into existence - also filtered through ritual and history.

I look forward to reading what the Gospel Advocate has to say about this facebook topic… :o)

from Mahfood:
COCmergent? (pronounced “cee-oh-ceemergent”)

Hey friends and fellow post-restorationists,

I’m playing with this idea and thought I’d kick it around. After taking an Emergent Village survey earlier this evening, the idea of creating an emergent-ish network from the Churches of Christ heritage re-emerged in my mind. You know, there’s Anglimergent, Cathlimergent, Methomergent (no, not a new drug), Presbymergent, etc, which are national networks of those sharing a kindred heritage and aligning with the Emergent conversation.

When I was last in Abilene this past May, Mark Love and I briefly batted the idea around after the graduation ceremony. The conversation was encouraging. Thinking back, initially I gravitated toward Adam Ellis’ “Post-Restorationists” however no linkage to Emergent is inherent in the title. And with the old podcast and the Facebook group, The Post-Restorationists in some ways has become its own thing, so I don’t want to co-opt anything.

So in the vein of getting the name just right, the following are some ideas of what we could call ourselves…

Stone-Campbymergent. A bit of a mouthful, but this helps distinguish our heritage from others and gives us a historical context. But who would have thought that such a democratized, grassroots, commonfolk movement would be best remembered for two (or really just one) figureheads?

One True Emergent. Betrays the orthodox belief that we are the only ones, and if not, that we’re at least the closest to getting it “objectively” right. However, I’ve learned that we were not the only ones to think we were the only ones. Perhaps this title is not distinct enough, but it’s got a tickle of sarcasm.

Christimergent. Appeals more to the broader Christian Church-DOC/Indie/CofC heritage and traces our streams to the hopeful fountainhead of the Stone-Campbell Movement. Although these groups went very different directions (one in an urban direction, another in a rural direction), it would be good to bring our conversations back together in this way. However, the word Christi unfortunately reveals the Latin word for Christ, thus disqualifying this title for being “too Catholic.”

Arminimergent. Upon de-constructing the outdated metaphors, philosophical determinism, and mechanistic worldview of Calvinism, our religious ancestors gave us a valuable way forward with a more generous and open view of God. This is something I have come to truly appreciate about my heritage. In the midst of what I perceive to be a sizable movement that is militant neo-Calvinist with a postmod dress, I’m grateful to come from a tribe that has positioned us beyond such theology.

Fundymergent. While acknowledging part of our fundamentalist background, this title again fails to distinguish our heritage from other fundamentalist groups, of which there are plenty. This submission reminds me of TSK’s other emergent groups: Neveremergent and Shuttheheckupaboutemergent.

CaneRidgeymergent. That’s where it all went down, folks. The Holy Ghost was in the house. There were barnyard noises coming from humans. Holy laughter. Jerking exercises. The glory of up yonder dreweth nigh. In true postmodern historical analysis, this title reads the margins, bringing to light our formative beginning at a wild gospel revival in KY. What was once swept under the rug is now exposed by the light.

Immersemergent. Baptism, baptism, baptism. With a rather selfish hyper-concern for personal salvation that saves us from the fires of hell, our movement turned the start line into the finish line and used this issue to divide more than save. As a result, many turned away, and for many others the journey of faith ended at the epic decision-making age of 12. We replaced the grace of God with a legal bath. It reminds me of an old avatar I created (which I can’t find) for on some old message boards. It was a pic of a Campbell’s (changed to Campbellite) soup can with this bold phrase stretching across the label: “Just Add Water.”  [ok, I'm being a bit harsh here.  i do deeply appreciate the attention our tradition has given to baptism, as well as holy communion.]

Scottymergent. Who’s that, you ask? Well, none other than Walter Scott, known best for his five-finger exercise, which the Churches of Christ later turned into the five rungs on the salvific ladder. This title also incorporates our Scottish Presybyterian roots inherited from the Campbells. “But,” asks one concerned reader, “you’re saying we have a traceable history?!”

Oh, wait a minute. I couldn’t find any of the above titles in the Bible. Well, I guess it’s back to the drawing board. But no so fast—that leaves us with one final submission:

Biblimergent. We’ve rescued the Bible out of the hands of the clerics and delivered it into the hands of the plebeian folk. Now it’s time to start proof-texting, ripping things out of context, and claiming to have an objective reading of the Scriptures. Ah yes, “No creed but the Bible” was our sola-scriptura creed, and this title certainly gives attention to that bulwark of our heritage.

So what do you think? Any new suggestions? Is there a common lean toward a certain title? Once we agree upon something, perhaps we could have our first convention in Nashville in the shadow of the World Convention July 30th-August 3rd. To really connect with our heritage though, I was thinking we could meet in David Lipscomb’s old log cabin off of Granny White Pike. As apolitical as he was, something tells me old Dave, as well as many other Restorationist innovators (JW Garrison comes to mind especially), would have joined the Emergent conversation had they been around in our day. Or would some instead have said, “We’re Christians only”?

Lift up your voices and shout for joy because of our Lord, holy people.  For those whom he is redeeming, it’s the right thing to do.  Give thanks to the Lord with the piano; make melody to the Lord with the guitar of six strings, the bass guitar of 5 strings, and the djembe.

Sing to the Lord a new song; play skillfully on the instruments, with joyful shouts.
For the word of the Lord is honest, and all that the Lord does is out of faithfulness.
The Lord is a lover of righteousness and justice; the world is filled with the relentless love of the Lord.

By the very word of the Lord, the skies were constructed, and by the breath of his mouth, all of the stars and planets were flung into their place.

The Lord gathers up the waters of the oceans like a heap; in power, the Lord stores up the deep.
Let the whole globe revere the Lord; let the citizens of earth stand in awe of our Lord!
For the Lord spoke, and it came to pass; the Lord commanded, and it stood firm

The Lord messes up the schemes of the nations—the Lord brings their ploys to nothing.  The Lord frustrates the plans of the peoples in power.  The counsel of the Lord stands forever; the plans of the Lord’s heart are unshakeable through all generations.

Blessed is the kingdom whose God is the Lord, the very people he has claimed to be his own.  From the heavens the Lord looks upon us—he sees all of humanity.  The Maker of our hearts is deeply concerned with everything we do.

No national leader is saved by the size of his military; no soldier escapes the casualties of war by their own strength.  An army tank is a vain hope for deliverance.  Despite all it’s strength it cannot save.  But the eyes of the Lord are on those who look to him and revere him, on those who hope in his unwavering love, to deliver them from death and sustain them in tough times.

We wait in expectation for the Lord; he is our ally and our defense.  In him, our hearts rejoice, for we trust in his character.  May your unfailing love be with us, Lord, even as we put our hope in you.

is a comin’ round the mountain to Birmingham: