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C. Andrew Doyle Biography

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“Paul’s mission was profoundly shaped by the way God called him and invited him to reject his life of violence to take on the yoke of peace. Paul became the voice of God to the Gentiles and all those in the wider community who had no place in the inheritance of Israel. Paul began to proclaim that God's narrative of grace, begun with Abraham and Sarah, was meant for all people. Paul's conversion was actually the reconversion of the community of shalom. The community was reminded to be different from other religious communities, and different from the powers and authorities of the world. The community did not repay violence with violence, but practiced peace instead.”

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“Paradoxically, the reformed churches embraced the criminalization of sin and shifted towards individualism as a means of freeing people from the onerous demands of the Church. The Church unwittingly propelled Western society into secularism and inaugurated the immanent frame, which remains our primary mindset in the West. Jesus endeavored to free people from a centralized, hierarchical, religious system of laws that benefited the few. As the Church became a principality, it created just such a system.”

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“Reclaiming neighborliness as part of the communal life is essential to Christ’s vision. No person can live unto themselves. It is simply impossible. But, more importantly the personalization of neighborliness returns authority to the members of the small community the local church serves. Its members start to care for one another again, which taps into the inclusive DNA of the Jesus Movement.”

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“Jesus was definitely not inviting these fishermen into a church job or an engaging hobby, which is how many of us understand vocation in the Church today. If we are not careful, our ingrained expectation of a professional class of clergy will quickly sabotage our ability to understand the ministry of Jesus and the disciples. Our bias builds churchy furniture into this story where there is none. We put our church goggles on and read the idea that the disciples called on that seashore were the first priests of the church back into the scripture. They used to make money as fishermen, then they made their money as ministers. (Luke 10:4-11) This was not the case.”

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“God calls God’s people to create a new community of shalom. We must take care not to simply make God's mission into a social ethic or universal morality. God’s call is not merely a means for achieving better wages and working conditions for the enslaved. It cannot be narrowly defined as a socio-political intervention or strategy...God did not give Moses a theory of justice. God wanted to foster real, transformed, and renewed relationships among the people of Israel and the people of Egypt. Remember, the story of Israel in the land of Egypt began with friendship between a lost son and a ruler, Pharaoh and Joseph. What is broken by Israel’s slide into slavery is that original relationship. A time had come when people did not remember the blessings they have been for one another. Shalom, peace, is not a political "symbol" or "myth," but a real action of relationship that has a communal/social function in building a different kind of kingdom than the reign of humanity”

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“God invites and God sends all of God's people. This is not a professional or clerical invitation. God's call to ordinary people undergirds all other work done in God's name. The core of everything else the Church does is peaceful human interconnectivity. Decisions about who will do what are marginal. The most important thing the Church does is hear God's voice of shalom. This calling finds its first home in ordinary people living ordinary lives.”

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“The meaning of vocation, as we have been using it, is a call to "go" on God's behalf. Vocation is about being invited to go be the voice of God. This is not a professional obligation, but rather a dynamic partnership of humans with God that has persisted from the very beginning. Adam and Eve worked with God in the caretaking of the Garden and creation. God walked with them in the evening to survey the work they were doing together. Humans have always been invited to join God and to "work it and keep it." (Genesis 2:15) We are possessed by God's invitation to speak and be a blessing to the world. We are occupied with undoing the violence of the world by ending the cycles of sibling rivalry. Humans are uniquely suitable to this vocation.”

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“The community of shalom is, by definition, a diversity of people living together. The community of shalom establishes an ethic of peace that incarnates the Body of Christ by going out into the world as the voice of God and rejecting the violence of the world. The polity of the community of shalom differs from the structures and powers of the world and stands as a sign of Christ’s judgment against those structures and powers by virtue of how different it is. The community of shalom embraces the sacrificial giving of self for the other.”

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“The work of an apostle, from the first ones sent out by Jesus to anyone aligned with the reign of peace, is to be God's loving word to every part of the world. Echoing the Word, they are sent out to confront the powers and principalities by rejecting state violence and revolutionary violence, and, instead putting on the armor of peace.”

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“Suffice it to say, the ecclesia, the community of peace, imagined on the Galilean seashore had changed. Like a pebble tossed in a pond with ever expanding ripples, the emergence of Christianity in the urban centers of the Roman Empire forced the Church to adopt new forms and structures for mission and ministry. Jesus’s movement became a thriving principality. At the close of the third century, an organized Church had replaced a disorganized but single-minded community on a mission of peace.”

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“There is a growing disconnect between those who lead and the grass roots movements of lay mission and service. The Church remains mired in culture wars, wringing its hands over shrinking attendance, and trying to save itself by better budgeting in the wake of shrinking resources. The institutional Church of today struggles to sustain aging structures, repeatedly tries to force uniformity over unity, and desperately attempts to create diversity by legislation at conventions. The world has changed, and we are at a loss for how to respond.”

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“A renewed gathering of the followers of Jesus must break into the world, and break up the world. The gathering where bread is broken, stories shared, and prayers are offered reminds the local community that they are implicated in a narrative of peace. Such a renewed gathering also breaks up the constant work expected by chrematistic institutions. The gathering in God’s name to proclaim the message of grace, reminding each other that all are invited into partnership with God, and giving thanks for a creation that has enough for all is an act of defiance in the face of chrematistic institutions promoting works righteousness, limited success for only the most devoted apostles, and a philosophy of private ownership and scarcity.”

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“The story of the golden calf is about the human tendency to believe that human-made items can resolve our fear, anxiety, sense of lostness, despair, and hopelessness. The calf was supposed to be a conduit of grace. But God’s work of shalom is about relationship. God invites God’s people directly to go on God’s behalf, so God can do mighty works through them. No golden calf is necessary. No object is needed for the relationship between God and God’s people to take root in the world--only a community of willing individuals.”

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“Partnering with God, we cease to see a partitioned world of buffered people. By rejecting this “I get mine you get yours” religion we stop mistaking our faith as a means of compelling others to become something they are not: me. At the very core saying “yes” to God is about becoming a whole of paradoxically interdependent parts.”

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“God’s invitation to vocation also erodes the compartmentalization between our religious and professional lives. In the biblical worldview, the way of peace requires full participation. We cannot claim to be one person in one particular context or set of relations, and then a claim to be a totally different person in another context. There is no such thing as professional holy people. We live complete lives in continuity with God and our vocation is equally operative in every space we inhabit.”

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