[rules-users] asynchronous processing in drools flow

Is there an out of the box way to start a drools flow asynchronously? I am running drools flow 5.1.0.M1 in JBoss and have a long running process to execute. The application that initiates the flow must start the flow asynchronously so the applications web request can complete in a timely manner. I don't want to create my own threads in the app server and would like to avoid introducing JMS, but wasn't sure if there are any other good options? Thanks, Todd