Sunday, 06 January 2008
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It Is What It Is
A lot of Christian books on the market today deplore the present state of the church or "Christianity" and offer a better way forward. Invariably, they all say that their way (missional, house, simple, mega, etc.) is the most "biblical" way to do church. My point in this post is that we need to get over being scandalized by the church. It is what it is.
The book I recently reviewed here (The Forgotten Ways by Alan Hirsch) looks at the church between the apostles and Constantine and then at the Chinese church and considers these to be two examples of when the church was what it should be. But is that wise? Yes, there was phenomenal growth in both cases as well as other great characteristics, but would either of them have been able to navigate the difficult waters of the Christological or Trinitarian controversies of the early centuries? I'm impressed that what they hammered out then is what we still follow today.
Does it even make sense to try to ignore the force of history and culture and the way it sifts and shapes Christian faith? The way the church defined itself in most times in history was inevitable. I think we need to give history more respect and stop second-guessing our brothers and sisters in the faith who went before us. Truth be told, we are pretty clueless as to what it would have been like to walk in their shoes.
Some today like to make a comparison between the attractional church and the missional church. If you're really with it, you'll go to people instead of expect them to come to you. OK, fine, but the attractional approach has impacted BILLIONS with the gospel in a very real way. I'm not going to knock that. In fact, I'm not going to knock most expressions of our faith. God is too big and his human creation too diverse to expect that we will all see eye to eye or expect God to be comprehended by one perspective alone.
Why are we so hard on ourselves? Look, most people in reached places have access to the gospel. While we are responsible for getting the word out, we are not responsible for their choices. Are there millions of Western people who reject Jesus only because the gospel hasn't been presented more relevantly? I have a hard time believing that to be true, but that is what many would have us believe. People reject Jesus because they want to live their own lives and I'm not sure that a hip worship service or a tattooed preacher is going to change that. If it does, I wonder about the validity of such a decision.
It is also popular to scorn the "institutional church". I like how Neuhaus describes an institution - it is simply a structure that stays in existence over time. Would it have been better if the church never institutionalized and died out instead? I think many Christianity/church knockers have valid points, but history has yet to show whether their solutions will work any better. We are frail and fallen human beings trying to take on the mantle Jesus gave us. What are we expecting to be the outcome here? Hello?
As far as the church goes, it is what it is. You can find the sublime, the surreal and the very very sad, but in each case there are people in the midst (mist?) that have genuinely encountered Jesus. So I think it will continue pretty much unabated. There will be flourishings here and there when large portions of the church finally "get it" regarding some fundamental truth. There will also be money made from the shenanigans of those seeking "filthy lucre" (or my personal favorite "ill-gotten booty"). The wheat and tares will grow together. And when that final day comes, we will realize just how many light-years away we were from Kingdom reality.
Let's get over our collective dismay and break out of our apathy and uninvolvement. That doesn't win people to Jesus either.
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Comments (4)
"but would either of them have been able to navigate the difficult waters of the Christological or Trinitarian controversies of the early centuries? "...
Well, no because people who are busy "doing the gospel" don't have time get bogged down with the "quarrels over words" that Paul warned us against. Isn't it George Patterson that says most heresies are born in seminary? Requiring intellectual assent to explanations of "the mystery of the gospel" (which, by definition, is "mysterious") drives people out, it doesn't draw people in.
At the ISFM conference one of the speakers from the International Missions Board gave an impassioned message about how seminarians and professional clergy "are distancing ourselves from lostness". The IMB made a requirement that Seminary professors spend some time out in the trenches, rather than dwell entirely in their ivory towers, to keep their "missionary status". Most refused! They'd rather go home to argue hermeneutics than interact with the lost in Outer Mongolia.
We must ask ourselves: Is it more important for converts to be able to articulate the Trinity according to some extra-biblical verbal consensus standard? Or for sinners to embrace the forgiveness of God and walk in newness of life?
My biker-chick-rodeo-cowgirl/my-brothers-are-in-jail-for-mafia-crimes neighbor will hardly benefit from our dialog concerning transsubstantiation. Nor will she be wowed by our MTV-style worship. But she seems to be pretty responsive to us "loving our neighbor as ourself" - which we never had time for when we were trying to do MTV worship.
Then again, that's just me!
Keep talking, Dave. We'll drill down to the church God wants yet!
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i think the existence of the hierarchical institution, seminaries, heresies, creeds, etc are all good, like you say. but they are only good when they arise from and are the result of and are paired with the common life and fellowship among believers. if you have one without the other you have half of something, you have propositional truth (which is so essential), an institution capable of mobilizing and influencing thousands if not millions, but the average spiritual condition of the believer will be like a tug boat tossed about on the sea, he is not a crewman of a great ship, he is trying to captain his own boat and he is spinning the wheels in vain - he cannot go at it alone.
i am so burnt out for these reasons:
1. god deigned is should not work out my life in america, and i was getting "fed up" with american culture in general as much as the american way of churching. i was a square in the circular hole. i think on your campus you guys refer to apostolic calling.
2. this common life is lacked by the evangelicals. they do not know how to leave the individualism of american culture and come together and share their lives together. i need this aspect, and i will reject any institution however hallowed that does not contain it.
3. a purposed life is lacked by the evangelicals. they don't know what to do other than go to church, and they are fumbling about the idea of evangelism, community, etc because those elements are not natural, they are foreign. i was tired of programs to fill these voids, creating a list of more "stuff to go to".
also, living in egypt i've started to think of evangelicals as a denomination. when i was in california i thought of them as christians. but now i see the differences between them, catholics, other protestants, orthodox, melkites, coptics, etc. the plain truth that there are differences in forms and structures should allow us to not hold tightly to them - but to reform and revolutionize these structures (a la martin luther) when need be. but there is always resistance. i will quote randolph bourne (if the comment space permits). i agree we should sometimes work to find common ground though, while we revolutionize everything as we find need.
[Y]outh is the incarnation of reason pitted against the rigidity of tradition; youth puts the remorseless questions to everything that is old and established – Why? What is this thing good for? And when it gets the mumbled, evasive answers of the defenders it applies its own fresh, clean spirit of reason to institutions, customs and ideas and finding them stupid, inane or poisonous, turns instinctively to overthrow them and build in their place the things with which its visions teem. . . .
Youth is the leaven that keeps all these questioning, testing attitudes fermenting in the world. If it were not for this troublesome activity of youth, with its hatred of sophisms and glosses, its insistence on things as they are, society would die from sheer decay. It is the policy of the older generation as it gets adjusted to the world to hide away the unpleasant things where it can, or preserve a conspiracy of silence and an elaborate pretense that they do not exist. But meanwhile the sores go on festering just the same. Youth is the drastic antiseptic. . . . It drags skeletons from closets and insists that they be explained. No wonder the older generation fears and distrusts the younger. Youth is the avenging Nemesis on its trail. . . .
Our elders are always optimistic in their views of the present, pessimistic in their views of the future; youth is pessimistic toward the present and gloriously hopeful for the future. And it is this hope which is the lever of progress – one might say, the only lever of progress. . . .
The secret of life is then that this fine youthful spirit shall never be lost. Out of the turbulence of youth should come this fine precipitate – a sane, strong, aggressive spirit of daring and doing. It must be a flexible, growing spirit, with a hospitality to new ideas and a keen insight into experience. To keep one’s reactions warm and true is to have found the secret of perpetual youth, and perpetual youth is salvation.
Thank you Laurie Ann - your comments are ALWAYS thought-provoking and appreciated.
Josh - dude! What you wrote was prophetic, haunting and profound. I think you've put into words the thoughts of many. May God give us all the courage to live influentially for the glory of God, whatever form it may take.
the last four paragraphs were a quote if you're referring to that i must defer to author himself randolph bourne
thx tho (: