Post-Restorationist Perspectives

Check Out My Guest Post about Faith and Doubt on Jason Boyett's Blog

2010-07-30T11:53:00.001-04:00

Several weeks ago, I wrote a review of Jason Boyett's new book, O Me of Little Faith: True Confessions of a Spiritual Weakling. Jason recently asked me to write a guest post for his blog on the subject of faith and doubt. Check out my contribution HERE.

At His (Glenn) Beck and Call?

2010-05-24T13:11:00.000-04:00

Author's Note: Matthew Paul Turner asked me to write this response to the video linked below. My response was originally posted at his blog, Jesus Needs New PR. There was a good bit of discussion in the comment section there, if you are interested.

OK. It makes my wife nervous when I wade into these kinds of discussions, especially when I do it publicly. Now, for the record, I claim no affiliation to any political party, as I think political parties tend to demand a level of allegiance that I’m not willing (or at liberty) to give.

That being said, this most recent clip of Glenn Beck “teaching” us about social justice and partnership is abhorrent in my opinion. Of course, it would be merely ridiculous and laughable if I were simply judging it based on content alone. But that’s not the only issue here. What bothers me is the blatant attempt to co-opt Christians for a political agenda (as well as for ratings). What bothers me more is how wildly successful it’s been. To that, some of you might say, “But isn’t that what they are arguing against?”

Yes, it is. And that’s the hypocrisy of it all.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think scripture mandates government-enforced socialism or communism (which are not the same thing). However, it should be noted that under the Mosaic Law, redistribution was actually mandated in some ways i.e. “leaving the edges of your field unharvested for the poor,” and the “year of Jubilee”. But scripture doesn’t advocate unregulated free-market capitalism, either.

The theme that I read over and over again in scripture is God’s concern with what kind of a people we are becoming–both collectively and individually. Are we becoming the kind of people who actually care about the other person…the poor and the oppressed…the widow and the orphan?

Are we becoming the kind of people who find ways to demonize and devalue other people, so that we can justify hoarding wealth and resources for ourselves?

Do we look for ways to baptize selfishness, or is the unconditional love of God that we’ve accepted making us more loving and generous people? Is grace something that we merely accept, or is it something that we embody?

Do we care more about the government trying to take our “hard-earned money” to help the poor and oppressed than we care about the fact that they are poor and oppressed?

Do we use one verse (out of context) from Second Thessalonians to justify our way out of more than 2000 verses of scripture that deal with our responsibility to the poor and oppressed?

(SIDE NOTE: Did you realize that the prophet Ezekiel identifies the “sin of Sodom” as the fact that they were “arrogant and overfed” and that they “did not care about the poor and the oppressed”?)

Are we so troubled by the plight of the poor and oppressed that we wrestle with the complex nature of the problem and the inadequate solutions offered by political leaders on all sides, or are we suckers for T.V. personalities whose confident, righteous-sounding rhetoric gives us ways to justify our selfishness, greed, and/or prejudice?

You see; the term “social justice” was coined because the word “justice” became obscure over time. That happened because the legal, punitive meaning of “justice” began to dominate society’s understanding of the term. But in the Bible, the dominant meaning of “justice” is more akin to what is currently meant by the term “Social Justice.”

(Glenn Beck badly mis-characterizes “social justice” in the video clip.)

Sadly, we Christians have a very pervasive tendency to remake God in our own image instead of the other way around. And we use Scripture as a tool to prop up what we already want to believe rather than allowing God’s story to change our hearts.

That’s why it saddens me to hear Jerry Fallwell Jr. and George Lillback happily lend their support and “wisdom” to Beck’s propaganda. In this clip alone, they oversimplify issues that are deeply complex (Biblical and otherwise), and even poorly reveal the actions and words of historical figures (like Rauschenbusch, for instance, which will be clear to anyone who has actually read his works) and concepts they cite. I’m unclear if their actions are because they haven’t taken the time to adequately research these issues, or if they think they’re serving some “greater good”.

To me, it seems they’ve allowed themselves to be co-opted and used. Multiple positions could be intelligently and compellingly argued by people of faith, if they would simply admit the complex nature of the argument. Instead, we get people passing themselves off as experts to support what is little more than political, social, and media propaganda.

Sure, I’m disturbed by the fact that Glenn Beck is presuming to tell people where they should and shouldn’t go to church. But you know what bugs me the most? The fact that so many Christians actually buy into Beck’s message. Where’s our discernment? Why are respected Christian leaders standing next to him and supporting his propaganda?

And why in the world do so many people of faith feel the need to be at this man’s beck and call and serve his agenda rather than the agenda of Christ?

O Me of Little Faith (Book Review)

2010-05-11T14:12:00.001-04:00

Note: This review was originally posted on my friend Matthew Paul Turner's blog. Be sure to also check out the follow-up discussion at Jason Boyett's blog.

I have always enjoyed Jason Boyett’s writing. I became familiar with him when, on a whim, I picked up his “Pocket Guide To The Apocalypse”. His good-natured sarcasm, combined with the fact that he takes the time to “know what he’s talking about” had me at “Hello”. Since then, I’ve read several of his other “Pocket Guides” and I follow his blog. When Boyett announced that he was releasing a new book with the provocative title, “O Me of Little Faith”, it would be an understatement to say that I was interested in reading it.

Now that I’ve read it, I must confess that Jason Boyett has created a problem for me. On one hand, he seems to have unknowingly written his book about me. I am a confirmed doubter. For me, faith and doubt are like eternal dance partners. It seems to me that “faith” is more closely related to words like “trust”, “confidence”, “hope”, “commitment”, and has less to do with words like “certainty” or “convinced”. I can’t turn off the questions. I don’t generally find books on apologetics helpful. I resonate with the man who cried out to Jesus “Lord, I do believe. Help my unbelief” in the gospel account. On the other hand, not everyone is like me. I’ve found that some people aren’t given to such incessant questioning, and that the things that are issues for me aren’t issues for them.

So here’s my problem: Jason Boyett has written a beautiful, hopeful, gut-wrenchingly honest book for people like me. I can’t even begin to tell you how refreshingly helpful it was, and how much life it breathed back into my faith. But, at the same time, I realize (as Boyett seems to) that for people who aren’t like me, this book could be devastating. He doesn’t shy away from hard questions, and he doesn’t answer them. He doesn’t defend the status-quo. He doesn’t whitewash problems. He makes no attempt to win any debates. He speaks with poignant honesty as one who is deeply committed to hope. I can’t recommend this book to every Christian I know. However, I know that I will, without hesitation direct my fellow faithful doubters to this beacon of hope. It is a well of living water that I will return to again and again.

When going back is unfaithful…

2010-04-09T06:22:00.002-04:00

For those in the American Restoration faith stream, it is axiomatic that the way forward is to go back. I recently saw a Facebook post by one of my friends who quoted C.S. Lewis as saying, “We all want progress, but if you're on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive.” That quote, I suspect, resonates with many people in the Restoration heritage. Yet for all the passages offered about “seeking the old paths” there are other texts, also in the Bible, that warn us not to go back, but to go forward – deeper into the walk of faith, deeper into the heart of God.

The prime example, of course, is Israel’s experience in the desert immediately following the exodus from Egypt. God’s plan seems to have been to keep Israel in the desert for a few months and then to lead them into the promised land. Unfortunately, Israel had other ideas. God called them to faith, based not on some pie in the sky wish, but on the hard evidence of God’s provision and deliverance from Egypt. Israel persisted in grumbling and complaining, allowing the needs (and they were real needs) of the moment to overshadow their trust in God. In incident after incident Israel entrenched themselves in the habit of complaint and murmuring rather than prayer and expectant faith. They also developed a quote to express their lack of faith – “Let us return to Egypt. At least there we had all the food we wanted!” It is staggering, really, to imagine a group of people who could so quickly rewrite their history of slavery and the accompanying misery into a memory of a well stocked buffet. Of course the Egyptians fed them, how else would they have the energy necessary to work each day. But it is highly doubtful that there was ever a day when the food supply was “all we wanted.” (Exodus 16:3)

On the eve of entering the promised land the spies returned and reported that the land was truly amazing, but there were obstacles. The cities were well fortified and the people were ready to fight for their land. In addition, there were also giants there and “we seemed as grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked the same to them.” (Numbers 13:33) Rather than answer the call of faith, Israel decided to choose new leaders and head back to Egypt.

The impulse to “go back” can, of course, be a wise decision. But it can also indicate a devastating lack of faith. The path of faith always leads to unfamiliar territory. The only thing familiar about the path of faith is the uncertainty in creates in the hearts of the people who walk that path. The way to God’s will is to trust enough to keep moving forward in faith, even when every fiber of your being cries out to return to the known quantity of the past. It is not just ancient Israel who finds their reconstructed memory of Egypt more palatable than the path that God is calling them to walk.

I once sat on a bed in Gorlovka, Ukraine with my wife, Lora, holding our return tickets to America. We had been in Ukraine about two weeks and it was nothing like we imagined it would be or like it had been promised to us. We stared at our return tickets, wanting desperately to use them, then prayed that God would bless our decision to keep our commitment to what we believed was his call in our lives. The path of faith is never easy, and I have discovered that it seldom leads me back to a comfortable past (whether real or imagined). Instead it continually beckons me forward to a future that God knows and I can only dream about.

What is the primary direction of restoration? I believe that there is value in going back – back to the Bible, back to Jesus, back to the early traditions of our faith. However, I would offer this caution: we do not go back as an escape from going forward. That is the road that leads to death in the desert and a wasted generation. We only go back to get our bearings, to get the courage we need to say yes to God’s call to walk into his will for our future. The call of faith is always forward to the very heart of God. Faith is the spiritual preparation that allows you to say with Jesus, “not my will, but yours be done!”

Another Book Review: A New Kind of Christianity by Brian McLaren

2010-04-08T13:05:00.000-04:00

Check out this great review of Brian McLaren's new book, by my friend Matt Wilson

AE

Book Review: A New Kind of Christianity by Brian McLaren « Dream to Reality

"A New Kind of Christianity" by Brian McLaren

2010-03-08T12:49:00.003-05:00

Though I'm quite sure he would deny that anyone owed him anything, I owe Brian McLaren a debt of gratitude. Over the years, Brian's writing has breathed fresh life and vitality into my faith. To say that I was excited when Viral Bloggers offered an opportunity to review his newest book would be an understatement along the lines of claiming that Bono is kind of interested in social justice, or that Glenn Beck exaggerates a little.

Reviewing the Reviews

As I was finishing the book, I watched as reviews began to pop-up on the internet. The less-than-surprising news is that hard-core Calvinists (including the "New-Calvinists") hate it with a white-hot hatred they normally reserve for child abusers and made-for-TV movies on the Lifetime Network. Reading their reviews, you would think that Brian had done something to them personally, or had betrayed them in some sense (which is weird, sense they haven't liked most of his books). I was disappointed to pick up on this vibe even in a review by Michael Wittmer, whom I had generally considered to be one of the more level-headed thinkers from that perspective. Scot McKnight, whom I have a great deal of respect for, and who is not really thought of as a Calvinist, wrote a review for Christianity Today that, while much kinder and more respectful in tone, claimed that Brian wasn't really saying anything new, but was simply re-packaging the Classical Liberalism that was typical of German Theology before the 2nd World War as typified in Adolf Von Harnack. This struck me as odd, because Brian clearly intends to transcend such polarized categories (not merely repackage one category in a fresh way as "the right one"), and the point at which Brian's thought draws this criticism from McKnight, is actually closer to the much more contemporary (and 3rd-way) thinking found in the work of Peter Enns.

Most of the critics' objections essentially stem from concerns about orthodoxy. Maybe it's because I'm from a non-creedal tradition, but I've never quite resonated with the orthodoxy/heresy argument. (I realize I may have just painted a target on myself...but that kind of illustrates my point, doesn't it?). For starters, an enormous amount of what has historically been defined as "heresy" was so classified by people who were publicly executing people they disagreed with, in the name of the crucified Christ! I'm fairly sure that misses the point of the Gospel to a much greater degree than having different ideas about whether God and Jesus are made out of the same substance. Secondly, when certain subjects are off-limits for questions, it looks like we're not actually interested in "truth", but rather merely maintaining the status quo. Additionally, for large portions of church history, the "orthodox positions" were precisely wrong (slavery, women's rights, etc.) I could go on and on...but I won't.

The Actual Book

A New Kind of Christianity, is the book that many of us have been wanting McLaren to write for years. Ever since he sparked our imaginations with the fictional conversations between Dan Poole and Neil Edward Oliver in A New Kind of Christian, we've been dying to see those ideas teased out in non-fiction. He structures the book around 10 crucial questions, identifying the first 5 as theological in nature, and the remaining 5 as practical.

The Narrative Question: What Is the Overarching Storyline of the Bible?
The Authority Question: How Should the Bible Be Understood?
The God Question: Is God Violent?
The Jesus Question: Who is Jesus and Why is He Important?
The Gospel Question: What Is the Gospel?
The Church Question: What Do We Do About the Church?
The Sex Question: Can We Find a Way to Address Sexuality Without Fighting About It?
The Future Question: Can We Find a Better Way of View the Future?
The Pluralism Question: How Should Followers of Jesus Relate to People of Other Religions?
The What Do We Do Now Question: How Can We Translate Our Quest into Action?

McLaren's approach isn't coercive. He explains that he isn't attempting to answer these questions definitively but rather is responding to them and inviting us, as readers and willing participants into the conversation. He is seeking to get conversation out of the polarized deadlock that it is so often bogged down in, because of the bounded categories (liberal, conservative, etc.) imposed in modernity that serve to insure no real conversation can ever take place (which reminds me of the state of a certain country's political system...but I digress).

What Brian offers here is a beautiful and thoughtful way forward. Is it perfect? No. And he never claims that it is. Will his responses satisfy everyone? Uh, I've never read any book that did that. However, to Brian's credit, he doesn't pander to any particular category's concept of "orthodoxy." A New Kind of Christianity transcends unhelpful categories and sparks hopeful conversation that I believe could point the way forward. That is, if we have ears to hear, and eyes to see.

"Postdenominational"?

2010-02-27T10:38:00.008-05:00

I've been running into the label "postdenominational," and it's got me thinking about the meaning of "undenominational" in the SCM context. In a sense, it seems that postdenominational church is really post-institutional church. "Institutional church" has in fact become something of a dirty word in the same literature where I find postdenominational presented as a positive description. While undenominationalism certainly carried with it some problematic attitudes in our history, like so much else it began conceptually as an upshot of the plea for unity, not as fuel for sectarianism. I don't think postdenominationalism is about Christian unity at its core, but unity is certainly an apologetic implication for many who feel that institutional church presents a bad face to the world regarding its fragmentation and bickering about patently institutional concerns.

While I would argue that the Restoration Plea (RP) was initially about a variety of things that I'm in favor of--things I believe postdenominational churches are about at their core--I also believe the RP was intrinsically tied to a particular hermeneutic that Churches of Christ have demonstrated to be untenable (whether they wanted to or not). In other words, I don't think what remains once we excise the RM hermeneutic is properly still the RP. Yet, many of the RP's motivations and agendas ought to remain--I would contend that the predilections often demonstrated on this site are a rediscovery of those (that's the continuity aspect of "post-restorationist" that goes beyond the merely historical, imo).

So, the question for me is this: On what basis do post-restorationist churches unite with postdenominational churches? I ask this for two reasons. First, I believe truly post-restorationist churches still have (or ought to have) their own agendas and their own tradition, which they should not forsake in the frenzied pursuit of the pop-evangelicalism that has gripped the American ecclesial scene (even though there may be significant points of similarity in motivation and agenda). I suspect that point is debatable for many. Second, given that forsaking continuity with the restorationist aspect of post-restorationism is a poor option, I believe that unity is not achieved in facile terms. It is a difficult question.

I started to post these thoughts elsewhere, but I figured it would be more provocative on a site with "friend of emergent village" and friend of missional" logos on its home page, because the currently faddish means of achieving facile unity (or at least cross-denominational commonality) is to append one or both of the adjectives "missional" and "emergent" to one's ecclesiology. I would like to suggest that that is a very problematic move. At the same time, I think it points in the direction I would like to go on the road to unity with postdenominational Christianity.

In the Jan. 2009 issue of Missiology Darrell Guder, one of the leading "missional church" thinkers, pointed out that the term "missional" has become "a cliché, a buzz word, a catch-all phrase that could mean everything and nothing." This is the state of the discussion. The "motivational" posters I've posted here are the way some conservatives have devised to pour salt on the wound that is vogue yet hackneyed Christian culture. I appreciate both their concern and their sense of humor, if not their stance. Obviously, I'm lumping together "missional," "emergent" and "postdenominational" here. I think that's fair enough, though I'd be open to fine-tuning. My point is that a truly missional theology and lifestyle seems to me the best basis for unity between those who are "postdenominational" on purpose (rather than just because they are postmoderns and don't like the institutional)--including ourselves. By on purpose I mean: because of God's telos, his mission. Yet, a challenge faces us to articulate and demonstrate what that really means. Post-restoration churches cannot continue to be the worst of what we were, should not forsake the best of what we were, and yet moving forward with the vision of unity among our core values poses a question we have yet to answer. For my part, I hope that we will not acquiesce to the mainstream, because merely calling ourselves "postdenominational" no more takes up past the theological and sociological reality of denominational differences than calling ourselves "undenominational" did. We've already learned this lesson. Nonetheless, the trend is a hopeful one insofar as it is corresponds to a thorough, substantial recentering upon the mission of God.

One of the most interesting implications of a missional post-restorationism is that forms matter. Forms (by virtue of said hermeneutic) were what really united the RM and gave it its identity. Recentering upon God's mission frees us to embrace the implicit restorationist belief that forms matter and transform it into a radical commitment to contextualization. While I've been prone to argue, as a reaction to my restorationist heritage, that function matters rather than form, I've been driven missiologically to believe that such an argument is a false dichotomy. Contextualization demands forms that serve function. Could it be that post-restorationist churches are in a place to redeem the concern with forms and use it for the good of the kingdom?

Another angle I've considered only briefly and need to flesh out more in my own thinking is how to shift consciously and intentionally from the foundational framework of Campbell's "Christian System" to a post-institutional model in light of contextual concerns. In other words, again, while "missional/emergent" stuff is pointing a way, as post-restorationists we have a particular road to pave in order to get from point A to point B. Perhaps it's as easy as just doing it another way, but that doesn't seem likely to me at this point.

Thoughts . . . ?

2 Brian McLaren Videos

2010-02-25T12:17:00.002-05:00

I recently read A New Kind of Christianity: Ten Questions That Are Transforming the Faith, by Brian McLaren. I received my copy from The Ooze's Viral Bloggers Network, and I am working on a review that should be up in the next couple of days. In the meantime, TheOoze.tv has begun posting a series of videos featuring Spencer Burke interviewing McLaren about the major ideas in the book. I'm posting the first 2 here. If you have time, watch them and let me know your thoughts/reactions. I'm really interested in knowing what you think.

The Narrative Question

The Authority Question

So, what do you think?
AE

Hopeful Fruit #5 - A Strong Theology of the Local Church

2010-01-19T17:10:00.000-05:00

A few years ago I learned that the area in which I grew up has fewer congregations of Churches of Christ than nearly anywhere else in the United States (see Mac Lynn's Churches of Christ Around the World). I haven't looked at this book in quite awhile, and I am not sure if it has been updated recently, but Lynn used to include statistics for the most populous counties in the country that did not have a representative congregation of the Churches of Christ. Several of the counties (Putnam and Hancock it seems to me were two) were in northwestern Ohio. This reality meant that growing up, by and large, I was completely unaware of the vast number of congregations like mine that existed in other parts of the country.

One of the most peculiar characteristics of the Churches of Christ have been their incredible uniformity while at the same time complete lack of any kind of national governing or organizational body. As I argued previously in the section on autonomy, our localized nature may be our strongest attribute for effective ministry in the postmodern world. In a world that eschews "the man" and nebulous bureaucracy, the localized structure (or better said: lack of structure) that describes Churches of Christ is of great value, not to mention its biblical foundation. In this last of the five "Hopeful Fruits" for the Churches of Christ ,I argue that our autonomous nature has created a legacy of strong, localized ecclesiological theology, or, more simply put - we have a strong, positive view of the local church. There is a correspondingly negative that has accompanied this strength (a weak concept of the univeral church), but we'll tackle that at another time.

For the most part, our churches are good at being the church, locally. Now, even as I type that, I admit that I have witnessed much evil conducted in local churches. Our understanding and practice of local church is positive and offers hope . . . it is not, however, perfect - nor has it ever been. While certain theological traditions in the Churches of Christ have led to some very ungodly characteristics in many of our churches, our understanding of what it means to be the local church, in my experience, has been mostly positive. While the individualistic swagger of evangelical soteriology (study of salvation) [which Stanley Grenz so adequately describes in his history and critique of evangelicalism in Renewing the Center] has certainly crept its way into the thinking of those in Churches of Christ, I do not believe that it has to the same as it has in evangelicalism.

The centrality of local theology is perhaps most predominant in the sacramental theology of Churches of Christ. The high place of baptismal theology in Churches of Christ continues to have an important ecclesiological function: baptisms are done in church buildings, surrounded by church families and almost always in public. While often lacking an overt pedagogy of community, the weekly celebration of communion also maintains some emphasis of the visible, local church. We remember the Lord's sacrifice . . . and we remember it together. This is perhaps taken to the extreme in the celebration of communion with one cup by the one cup churches still in existence. (I understand the doctrinal emphasis of the one-cup churches isn't necessarily ecclesiological - they opt for pattern theology's dependence on the example of one cup in Scripture - but the practice cannot help but emphasize the togetherness and oneness of the local church.) I use the example of the fringe one-cup group of Churches of Christ not to say that we should celebrate communion in such a manner, but instead to illustrate how even our most conservative groups maintain a high vision for the local church.

Churches of Christ are good at being the family of God. While I differ theologically with many in our heritage, I think most have a pretty good grasp of what it means to be a church. (Consequently, many think that they have a pretty good idea of what it means to be the church . . . and with that I strongly disagree and see a need for pruning sheers, but we'll get to that at another time.) Congregations of Churches of Christ pray together, pray for each other, have potlucks and eat together, they share their wealth with the needy, and establish important community missions and projects. We do many good things in our communities and for our local contexts. Any discussion involving a critique of this body of churches must first acknowledge the good that we are. No group of churches is perfect, but equally, I think all groups of churches bring something important to our understanding of who God is (here I still hear the ringing in my ears of Stanley Grenz's idea of a generous orthodoxy from the book Renewing the Center that I just finished reading over the weekend), and ours is no different.

By limiting our hopeful fruit to five, I am in no way claiming to present the exhaustive list. I think that Churches of Christ have positive fruits in other regards: some of our churches have been on the forefront of youth ministry since its inception (Steve Joiner's graduate thesis from ACU on the history of youth ministry in Churches of Christ is a good look into how long we've been at it). Winterfest is a premiere youth event attended by over 10,000 people in Gatlinburg alone and has expanded to Arlington, TX. NCYM has grown into a nationally respected youth ministry training event. Dudley Chancey is a visionary and has done much for our churches in this area. Our colleges, by and large, are incredibly healthy and vibrant. Lipscomb, ACU, Pepperdine, and Harding have all grown and established themselves as world class institutions, with Lipscomb and Abilene Christian especially moving forward in the academic world. These schools continue to grow in their influence and stature in the world of academia. As long as these schools maintain a focus on training church leaders, the future of Churches of Christ will continue. More could be said of our theology of baptism and communion - our unique perspective on both maintaining areas of great theological value for the broader Christian community.

But all is not bright for Churches of Christ. As I've noted in each of these sections, our hopeful fruits all have an accompanying reason to be concerned. Call them viruses or attacking foreign insects, there is reason to believe that the Churches of Christ as we know them need some work from some pruning shears. Over the next several posts, I'll offer some areas in which I believe the Churches of Christ must address as our tradition has developed some unbiblical obstacles to the Gospel that have become problematic for our ministry to the postmodern world.

A few words regarding Tiger Woods...

2010-01-05T14:34:00.002-05:00

Several months ago, I was troubled by the almost gleeful judgment and condemnation that was heaped onto Michael Jackson upon his death...often by people who claim to follow Jesus. Now, in the wake of the Tiger woods scandal, I am experiencing a sense of deja vu. Woods' actions were certainly immoral and he violated both his marriage vows and his wife's trust. This is between him and his family...not us. The truth is, he is a fallible human being, just like the rest of us...who seems to be struggling to put his life and maybe even his family back together. The second we can no longer feel sympathy for him, his wife, and his children as human beings, is the second we stop being human ourselves. Followers of Jesus are to be people of grace. We have received grace, and we are to embody it. Grace. Healing. Redemption. Reconciliation. Shouldn't people who have received (and are receiving) such things be the first to reflect it back to those who need it most?

Sorry if I'm rambling, but it really bothers me. I'm reminded of a passage from David Dark's book The Sacredness of Questioning Everything:

"Pervert is a verb, and we do it all the time. To pervert is to degrade, to cut down to size – and we do it to people in our minds. We devalue them. We reduce them to the limitations of our appetites, of our sense of what might prove useful to us, of our sense of what strikes us as appropriate. We often only file them away – these living and breathing human beings – into separate files of crazy-making issues-talk. When we think of a person primarily as a problem, a potential buyer, a VIP, a celebrity, or an undocumented worker, we’re reducing them to the tiny sphere of our stunted attention span. This is how perversion works. Perversion is a failure of the imagination, a failure to pay adequate attention.
While perversion appears to be the modus operandi of governments and the transnational corporations they serve – and the language both speak in their broadcasts – the reductionism implicit in perversion doesn’t ultimately work. It doesn’t do justice to the fullness of what we are. We, the people, are always more than our use value. Like the God in whose image people are made, people are irreducible. There’s always more to a person – more stories, more life, more complexities – than we know. The human person, when viewed properly, is unfathomable, incalculable, and dear. Perversion always says otherwise. Perversion is a way of managing, getting down to business, getting a handle on people as if they were things. A person reduced to a thing has been, in the mind of the perverter, dispensed with, taken care of, filed away. Perversion is pigeonholing…
I tried to share some of this with my high school students, and a fellow who’s always quick with an encouraging, conspiratorial smile walked up after class (always a rewarding experience) and said, “So we’re all perverts then.”
“Yep,” I said. “But we aren’t only perverts. We certainly underestimate each other, misperceiving and misrepresenting other people from one moment to the next. But we also get it right sometimes. We aren’t just perverts. In fact, if we say of someone that he or she is a pervert and nothing but a pervert, we’re being perverts speaking perversely as perverts do.” Here I had to pause to take a breath. “Like calling someone a fool or an idiot. It’s one of those things Jesus tells us to never ever do. Calling someone a pervert without acknowledging our own inner pervert might lead to the destruction – or at least the perversion – of our own soul. We become perverts in our determination to catch a pervert.”

Grace and Peace,
Adam

Hopeful Fruit #4 - A Tradition of Pacifism

2009-12-15T12:58:00.001-05:00

It was a trip to Columbus, OH that sealed my fate as a pacifist. I live in Columbus now, but at the time I was living, working, and going to school in Nashville, TN. I was working for a church in Nashville and had been invited to join a couple other former Buckeye residents to their yearly trek to the Ohio State - Michigan football game. I'll spare you the details (Buckeyes lost, John Cooper fired . . . really, really cold), but the connection to pacifism had to do with the car ride back to Nashville from Columbus. Two friends from church invited me, and one of the friend's brothers also came and provided our transportation.

Our foray into politics began while we were overnighting Friday at a friend's house and the topic of the recent election came up. Somehow, (I don't remember the details of the conversation, but if it was anything like most political conversations I've taken part in with Christians, the beginning presupposition of everyone present being a registered Republican probably played a role), the other men found out that I had voted for Al Gore. This (absurd, in their eyes) reality, opened us up to a weekend of political conversation and debate.

Even at that time, I had my suspicions about the benefit of a Christian being involved in the political process (even the less evil democratic political system), but had continued to meddle in the quasi-liberal-slanted perspective of my upbringing. Attending a private Christian school in the South immediately placed me in a smaller minority than the ethnic minorities at the not-long-ago-segregated campus of my alma mater.

It takes approximately six hours to drive from Columbus to Nashville, and that Saturday, after the game was over, our six-hour commute was solely focused on politics. The conservation moved from light joking about the parties, to the serious concern they had over my vote . . . and as I came to find out, my soul. The most tense moment came when the driver challenged anyone to, "Name one good thing Bill Clinton did for this country!" As a college student, that was pretty easy to do because the former President had help sign into legislation a huge college education assistance program that I had benefited from. "He had gotten me a few extra thousand dollars to attend college." Sounded like something good to me. Turns out, my traveling companion did not see this as in any way "good." His response began sternly, and grew louder to the point of a yelling crescendo, "It's my money and I worked my ass off for it, and why should I be paying for your college tuition?" The car sat in silence for quite awhile. Finally, as the tension began to lift a bit, I tried to make the point that I really had no dog in the fight. I wasn't card-carrying for anyone. My point was simply to force my companions into considering the biblical texts that didn't easily jive with their political views. "What about Acts 2 and 4 where the Christians met together and sold all they had and shared all they had?" I asked. "And how does the Old Testament practice of jubilee connect with your Right wing political stances?" These were questions they had never been asked before - really, they had never been asked these questions!

I relay this story not to characterize everyone with one broad-sweeping stroke. Certainly, politics are complicated and generalizations are seldom helpful. This experience, however, opened my eyes to the negative side of politics and the divisive and explosive discussions that often result. These events occurred nearly a decade ago, and the United States has grown even more divided along political lines. What a breath of fresh air a church who focused more on kingdom politics than on the tirelessly fallen politics of the nation would be! Never has the world needed the prophetic voice of the church to live out a nonpartisan politic who concerns herself with matters of justice, mercy, and righteousness.

In recent years, pacifism has grown in attention paid by Christian theologians. Shane Claiborne and Chris Haw brought some more academic concepts from people like John Howard Yoder and Jacques Ellul to a more popular-level, lay Christian audience through their book: Jesus for President. Other scholars and pastors like Gregory Boyd, Lesslie Newbigin, and a host of others, are receiving wide readership and extensive exposure. As the West continues to broaden its perspective through the advances of technology and mass media, global concerns are becoming prevalent, and for many Christian traditions, their theological structure is incapable of productive dialogue in this setting.

In my years in seminary at Lipscomb University, it came as a huge surprise that this private Christian school with an overwhelming pro-Republican undertone, actually bears the name of one of America's most important Civil War-era Christian pacifists (and I don't think this is overstated): David Lipscomb. In fact, it turned out, Churches of Christ have a ripe tradition of pacifism. Lipscomb's 1913 work, Civil Government, represents what might be one of the most overlooked and under-appreciated documents produced in America on the topic of pacifism. [The full version of Lipscomb's work is available online here.]

Scholars in Churches of Christ continue to maintain this longstanding tradition - most notably through the work of Lee Camp (Lee has written the very popular Mere Discipleship, and hosts the Tokens program at Lipscomb) and Michael Casey ("the topic about which he was most passionate and which forms the largest corpus of his published materials was that of pacifism in Churches of Christ . . ." from preface of And the Word Became Flesh, essays written in his honor published this year.) Lipscomb University also has faculty member Richard Goode who teaches in the history department who has been especially formative in my experience, even in my limited interaction with him. In short, the pacifist tradition in Churches of Christ is alive in well . . . at least in the academy.

The challenge before us as ministers within the tradition is to bridge the gap between the isolated tower of academia and the every-day life of the church. In my early years of ministry I see no message as desperately needed in the face of mounting political divisions as this one. At the same time I have experienced the loudest and most acute backlash from conversations in this vein. Nationalism has become the most uniting characteristic of our churches: progressive and conservative churches are equally as likely to sing patriotic hymns in their service and display the American flag prominently in their building.

Certainly, pacifism stands as one of the more hopeful fruits of our tradition. It is also, however, one of the most challenging in teaching and discussing. It is widely said the two topics to avoid in public conversations are politics and religion. What this topic does is jump head first into them both. When it comes to our political allegiances, Churches of Christ are as guilty as any other Christian group of losing our way. It is important for us to rekindle the thoughts and ideas of our pacifist forefathers . . . and be reminded that these are not novel ideas - as the accusation sometimes is made. Not only is there a great history of pacifism within the broader Christian church, closer to home, Churches of Christ share in this rich tradition. We must learn to not be afraid of talking about politics, but we must reframe the conversation. We must overcome the unnecessary obstacles that we have placed in front of those who differ politically and open our minds to a new political reality, a politics of the kingdom of God.

This is not a call for being anti-political (a charge I have been accused of). Quite the contrary, this is a call for a renewed orientation, for allowing God to set our political agendas instead of our governments, and for realizing that our politic is our life, not our vote. We must allow our political agendas to be caught up in the vision of God, not the latest candidate to ascend to power. May Christ grant us some sanity when it comes to charged political matters. May he grant us the confidence and vision of the prophets to speak the Word of God. Those of us in Churches of Christ stand in a great tradition to be able to do so, may we be bold in taking up that calling.

Christmas Gift Book Recommendations...

2009-12-15T12:14:00.000-05:00

For those of you who are looking for last minute gifts for your bookworm friends and family, I offer a list of my current favorite books (and book related products).

Kindle Wireless Reading Device--If you are looking to spend a little more cash, I actually do recommend the Kindle. I know what you are thinking, but hear me out. I originally thought the same thing. However, consider the following benefits: There's a ton of free content available. The innovative screen technology is very easy on your eyes, as opposed to computer screens. Free web browsing. Text-to-audio feature for most books and documents via internal speakers or headphones. MP3 (music on random shuffle) and Audible (audiobooks) supported. I am very impressed with this device.

Strength in What Remains by Tracy Kidder--This was singularly the most engrossing book I read this year. I literally couldn't put it down. This is not a particularly "Christian" book (for those who care about such a designation), but there is something so inspiring and true about this book, that it strikes me as "holy". Read my full review HERE.

The Sacredness of Questioning Everything by David Dark--I have probably promoted this book more than I have ever promoted any other. What Dark does here is nothing short of brilliant. This is an engaging, mind-bending read. Read my full review HERE.

Churched: One Kid's Journey Toward God Despite a Holy Mess by Matthew Paul Turner--In this witty and insightful memoir, Turner manages to channel himself as a child growing up in a fundamentalist Christian subculture. "Churched" is both insightful and genuinely funny. Read my full review HERE.

A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life by Donald Miller--A great gift both for fans of Blue Like Jazz and for those who are newcomers to Miller's work. In this profound and entertaining book, Miller applies the principles of "Story" to his life and invites us to do the same. Profound and hilarious. Read my full review HERE.

God's Dream by Desmond Tutu--This is the only children's book on my list...but what a book! This simple and beautifully illustrated book is a poignant expression of the Christ-like love that characterizes the great man who wrote it.

Advent Conspiracy

2009-12-05T15:47:00.001-05:00

Spend Less. Give More.

Go to http://adventconspiracy.org for more details.

Mosaic Bible Giveaway Winner...

2009-12-02T16:05:00.002-05:00

The winner of the Holy Bible: Mosaic NLT (Meditations) Giveaway is...

Veronica Leaptrott!

Congratulations Veronica!

Winner was chosen using the List Randomizer tool at www.random.org

Mosaic Bible Giveaway and review

2009-11-27T10:29:00.003-05:00

The Holy Bible: Mosaic NLT (Meditations) is a treasure, particularly for those of us with a religious heritage that tended to be somewhat isolated from other traditions. The Mosaic bible intentionally calls together voices from across the spectrum of Christian traditions and from across the ages to provide commentary and devotional meditations. The first section of this edition of the Bible is organized around "church time", beginning with meditations on advent. Coming from a non-liturgical tradition, I found this section to be fascinating and quite helpful. Additionally, I love the fact that they chose the New Living Translation for this edition. The NLT is one of my favorite Bible translations because of its accuracy and readability. Believers from all Christian traditions will find a valuable resource in beautiful devotional Bible.

We are giving away one copy of Holy Bible: Mosaic NLT (Meditations). The winner will be randomly selected on Wednesday, Dec. 2, and no entries will be accepted after noon on the day of the drawing.
You may enter...

once by commenting on this post
once by re-tweeting this post on Twitter (tag your RT with @adamellis)
once by linking to this post on facebook (tag your fb post w/ @adamellis)

Good luck!

*Disclosure: Tyndall House Publishers provided a copy of this book for review free of charge, and provided are providing an additional copy for the giveaway.

Hopeful Fruit #3 - The Populist Insistence

2009-11-20T15:38:00.000-05:00

One of the marks of the Protestant Reformation, of course, has been the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers. As a direct result of a priesthood that had become thoroughly corrupt and overly powerful, believers found life and hope knowing that Scripture was for all and shouldn't be reserved for the most educated and annointed. There are few groups of Protestant groups that have realized this as significantly as the Church of Christ.

I always find some humor in explaining to pastors from other denominations how our churches find their ministers. When you really step back and think about it, it is quite humorous . . . and yet, somehow strangely, refreshing. In a postmodern world where skepticism abounds and trust of "The Man" has all but deteriorated, it seems as though this tenet of our churches just might push us through a difficult transition. It seems to me that outsiders will be excited to know that our ministers are not the product of some denominational appointment or designation, but that this is who the local congregation chose. There is a great connection with our populist emphasis and our insistence upon autonomy.

I find myself talking out of both sides of my mouth on this topic. On the one hand, I am encouraged by our desire to level the playing field of interpretation and leadership. Regardless of education, background, or perceived expertise, everyone pretty much comes in on a level playing field. This is overstated, a bit, obviously, in that we still maintain some hidden or unwritten "weights" based on family demographic in the congregation (more prevalent families often have a more vocal place), socioeconomic bias I'd like to think we are free of, but are just as susceptible as other groups to injustice there, as well as racially and culturally. However, finding no perfect system, we may just have something to offer here.

I am writing these words as the Sarah Palin circus has come to town. They are expecting 5,000 to 8,000 to attend the Columbus-area bookstore where she'll be promoting her book. The Sarah Palin political entry last year has proved to be an interesting example of the power of populist appeal. Regardless of your political leanings, you can't help but find something attractive to the "normal person" who takes on "the Man." This is the heart and soul of Palin's attraction. She speaks for all the soccer and hockey moms - her now famous self-identification. And the response? A great outpouring of support (at least in the Midwest and Southeast . . . she's not surprisingly avoiding the coasts in her book tour - now there would be some interesting events!) In any case, I bring Palin up here because she illustrates the power of the populist voice still today. People like the story of the underdog. They like to think that no office is too big for the common folk.

Sociologically, Churches of Christ fit this mold for the religious sects perfectly. We don't ordain our pastors. The local congregation maintains the criteria and job assignment for the ministers. Worship assemblies are overseen equally by "clergy" and "laymen" (and maybe someday "laywomen" - we'll get to that into the pruning portion of the posts!) Ministers are generally appreciated and respected for their unique Bible knowledge and ministerial expertise . . . at least generally.
It is here I find myself speaking out of both sides of my mouth. On the one hand I believe the populist appeal of our Movement speaks volumes for how we can traverse the postmodern matrix. However, at the same time, I feel as though it has been one of our most signfiant liabilities. In my ten plus years of ministry, now, I can assert that one of the most challenging aspects of working for churches is leadership. I have taken special interest in leadership in the past three or four years, seeing it as such a glaring weakness of my own, and many ministers I have worked alongside and known. It is tough to know how to lead a church.

However, I believe in the midst of such a populist driven church, the issue is ampiflied. Suddenly, the minister's voice is watered down, and his significance dulled a bit. "He makes some interesting points, but let's hear what lukewarm member who doesn't do anything but warm a pew has to say," and we have to keep in mind that so and so just isn't there yet" and those kinds of comments abounds. It seems, from my experience, that the power and influence of a minister in Churches of Christ is truncated even to a greater extent than those in other denominations. This makes the task of leadership extremely difficult and probably says a lot about why our churches tend to remain pretty small.

Again, I see this populist approach as both a potential bonus for our involvement with non-Christians. Realizing the only folks setting doctrine and making decisions and excommunicating members and hiring and firing ministers are those folks you worship right beside on Sundays. However, it has potential risks as this populism can just as easily make us lazy and myopic in our understanding of our role in the invisible church. Group think can (and I think has) set in quickly under populist-driven congregations. Looking around at congregations of Churches of Christ throughout the rural parts of the United States, I think this is exactly what is ailing them.

Brian McLaren on moral absolutes and certainty

2009-11-19T12:49:00.002-05:00

The following question and response is taken from a post on http://brianmclaren.net

What are your thoughts on his response?

Here's the q:
Please help! I am currently taking a graduate class on church growth and we are using your book More Ready Than You Realize as an example of "friendship evangelism." You book has caused much discussion...which is what I guess you were wanting.... [details of class discussion removed] Here is my problem. I consider myself a postmodernist, but I can't really give a good answer why. What I do know is that the modern way (while once extremely effective) of evangelism is no longer effective. The following criticism is what I hear as an attack towards postmodernism, "they believe that there are moral absolutes." Is this true? I find it hard to believe that you would not take any moral stances. Also, I do not get this when I read your books.... I'm rambling, but if you could help me with the question on moral absolutes it might help me in the quest of better understanding postmodernism.

R: Thanks for your question. The discussion in your class sounds like a classic case of how a postmodern viewpoint looks to sincere modern-minded people. To modern-minded folk, postmodern people seem to be moral nihilists, relativists, compromisers, with no moral compass. No wonder they get so upset!

And you can't blame your fellow students for seeing things this way. This is how they've been taught by most of their pastors, youth leaders, and other authority figures - who were in turn taught this way of thinking by their authority figures.

As I've written elsewhere on this blog (just search on "postmodern"), the term "postmodern" is often defined in the worst possible light by modern-minded folk, so defending it will make you look like a kook (or worse) to them. So, I won't try to speak for "postmodernism," but let me speak for myself.

Of course I believe that some things are morally good and others are morally evil. Of course!

But I do not believe that Christian fundamentalism (or Islamic fundamentalism, or secular fundamentalism, etc., etc.) has a superior record of identifying what is moral and what isn't moral in contested situations. For example, in my lifetime Christian fundamentalists have been among the last to release racism, sexism, a careless attitude toward the environment, a careless attitude toward the rights of Palestinians, a fear of science, and a fusion between the gospel and American nationalism.

Go back farther in history, and there were a majority of Bible-believing Christians in the South who were pro-slavery - and held that as an "absolute truth" or "absolute moral principle" that they could quote chapter and verse to defend. (I'll explore this in some detail in my upcoming book.)

Go back still farther, and our Christian ancestors refused to believe Copernicus and Galileo - again, based on their conception of moral absolutes based on their readings of the Bible. The same was true regarding the age of the earth, Darwin, etc.

So here's my concern: If a person or group pushes the "we've got moral absolutes absolutely figured out" button too fast or too often, they run an increased risk of behaving in immoral ways, and they are the last to know it because of their excessive self-confidence. If conservative Christians would acknowledge this pattern at work in their own history more openly, and if they would show how they have taken corrective action to avoid similar patterns of misjudgment in the future, a lot of us would feel more confident in their moral judgment.

I'd also add that I do think moral standards change - but not in the direction of going down - just the opposite. That's why Jesus said, "You have heard it said ... but I say to you..." in the Sermon on the Mount. Over time, I believe God calls us to higher and higher standards of morality. Let me state this very clearly: the goal isn't to lower moral standards, but to raise them as we grow more morally mature. So - before it was don't murder. Now it's don't hate. Before it was only one eye for an eye. Now it's seek reconciliation, not revenge. Before it was love your neighbor, hate your enemy. Now it's love everyone - including enemies.

So - perhaps we can put this question to rest for good: the issue isn't morality - with some "fer it" and others "agin it." We're all for morality, as we understand it. The issue is two-fold. Postmodern-leaning folks are concerned whether this or that preacher's claims to have "absolute certainty" about this or that moral viewpoint of his are "absolutely justified," and whether his confidence will increase the chances of behaving immorally. Modern-leaning folks are concerned whether leaving the door open to the possibility that "we" have been or are wrong will lead to moral collapse. If you let an absolutist system go, there will be nothing left, they fear.

I'd say there are dangers on both sides - the danger of excessive moral confidence on the one side and the danger of insufficient moral confidence on the other. I'm seeking a proper confidence ... one that is aware of both dangers on both sides.
In my view, only God has absolute moral knowledge. Human beings have shown a remarkable propensity to misinterpret God, all the while claiming to speak for God on morality, which (sadly) often degenerates into speaking as if they were God. I hope that helps! (Feel free to share this with your class.)

Hopeful Fruit #2 - The Passion for the Sacred Text in Churches of Christ

2009-11-10T10:58:00.000-05:00

Perhaps it is one of the most enduring qualities of the Churches of Christ that we have managed to be unapologetically Bible-focused and Bible-centered, while at the same time remaining outside the limiting circles of Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism [Richard Hughes argues that this may no longer be the case for much of the movement in his Reclaiming a Heritage (a great read for any reader of this blog!) ACU Press, 2002 - see especially chapter seven entitled: "Why Restorationists Don't Fit the Evangelical Mold; Why Churches of Christ Increasingly Do" Another topic for another day]. In compiling the "Heart of the Restoration Series," ACU Press was quick to release a work centered on the place of the Bible in our heritage [volume 2 in the series is entitled God's Holy Fire: The nature and function of Scripture, 2002.] Gospel meetings, mission statements, sermons, and classes echo from congregations of Churches of Christ the world over with the message of "Back to the Bible." Any study taken upon by her students inevitably begins with the question, "What does the Bible say about that?" Stated simply, there aren't many groups who know the Bible as well as our people do, and to not recognize that as a hopeful fruit would be disingenous and a disservice.

Brightly hanging down from the branches of the Churches of Christ tradition is their abiding love for the story of God. I remember sitting in Bible classes learning the books of the Bible, the 12 Tribes of Israel, the 12 Apostles, the chronology of the Old Testament . . . just about everything that's in those 66 books, we covered it. Bible bowls, Sunday school, lectureships, Vacation Bible School, and Gospel meetings still retain the undeniably Bible-focus even today. From the smallest, most rural congregations to the largest suburban megaplexes among Churches of Christ, these churches love to teach the Bible.

Among members of Churches of Christ, a person's age, education, and life situation all are considered secondary to how well she or he knows the Bible. Bible knowledge is often directly equated with spirituality - the more Bible you know, the more spiritual you are. Quoting Scripture is sometimes seen as paramount to a spiritual gift. These latter case points illustrate some worms that lay underneath the skin of a perfectly healthy piece of fruit, but shouldn't take away from the fact that Churches of Christ hold steadfast to the biblical text.

It is widely held that children within Churches of Christ are not learning as much Bible as they did in bygone days. Biblical literacy across denominational boundaries is suffering and the Churches of Christ are certainly not immune to this phenomenon. However, there remains, by and large, an incredible commitment to teaching our people the Bible. While there may be a general laxity in the general audience when it comes to the biblical literacy, it also should be noted that scholarship in Churches of Christ has gained an increased audience in recent years and is more widely respected by the broader theological community than ever before (could this be evidence of an increased Evangelical leaning??)

While the commitment to being biblical and Bible-people should be seen as hopeful fruit, the good fruit has not come without potential worms. Often, in Churches of Christ, the story about God has been elevated to a higher plane than God Himself. Bibliolatry has become the golden calf for many in Churches of Christ - this excessive emphasis on the bonded leather and gold-tipped pages to the neglect of the mysterious Creator and Savior of all that is in existence. Too often we have bound God to the ink on the pages instead of allowing Him the freedom to work apart from the Scripture itself (we seem to have overlooked Paul's point in Romans 1 all too often).

Just as damaging, we have often married our love and emphasis of the text to our love and emphasis of "necessary" antiquated interpretive devices. The thoroughly modernistic hermentuic evolving from Enlightenment philosophy is often valued equal to the text it seeks to interpret. Churches continue to be taught the interpretive system of command, example, and necessary inference both directly and indirectly. The limitations of this foundational philosophy has been exposed over the past several years (see the work of Michael Casey, John Mark Hicks, along with others). Unfortunately, for many in Churches of Christ their love for the sacred text is married to their love for their interpretation of the sacred text. The certainty demanded of foundationalism has created skepticism of alternative voices and a myopic view of the hand of God. As the Churches of Christ engage the world of postmodernism, nothing has been more harmful to her cause than the lack of place for alternative voices and this begins at the table of biblical interpretation.

I believe we must reinvigorate our love and passion for the story of God, and not find ourselves so committed to one interpretive device or another. Instead, we need to find our way beyond the need for certainty and past the place of answers, as very difficult as that is going to be. If we will once again fall in love with the text and, in the spirit of Psalm 119, meditate over it, take it to heart, allow it to sink into our very ethos . . . and allow part of God to be revealed in the text, but not limited to the text. Our churches should be filled with people who love the text and love to learn about the text and engage in long discussions about what the text means. Churches of Christ must become a place where conversation is encouraged and facilitated instead of streamled monologue and uniform teaching dominate the floor. May diversity abound and the unity of the Spirit be what unites us instead of the unity of thought and homogenous hermeneutics.

"Drops Like Stars" WINNERS

2009-11-09T13:08:00.002-05:00

Here are the winners of our "Drops Like Stars" Book Giveaway:

1. Blair Andress

2. John Wilson

3. Lee Taft (Taftastic)

If you won, please contact me within the next 3 days with a mailing address or I will have to give your book to someone else. Congratulations! Enjoy the book.

AE

Giving away 3 more copies of "Drops Like Stars" by Rob Bell

2009-11-02T14:39:00.004-05:00

Surprise boys and girls! Zondervan publishing noticed our recent giveaway of Rob Bell's book, "Drops Like Stars: A Few Thoughts on Creativity and Suffering", and has authorized me to give away 3 more copies. You have until noon, Monday, Novemeber 9th to enter.

You may enter...

once for commenting on this post (on the actual blog, not facebook)
once for retweeting this contest on Twitter or posting a link to this post in your Facebook status message.
once for mentioning this contest with a link to this post on your personal blog.

Good luck! Winners will be announced on the afternoon that the giveaway ends.

AE

P.S. If you aren't interested in the book, don't feel compelled to comment. I really have no desire to read about how you know that Rob Bell is a heretic...even though you've never read anything he's written or heard him speak...but you know because some "discernment" watchdog website told you so.

The Hopeful Fruit #1

2009-10-28T17:14:00.000-04:00

As I looked over the apple tree in my backyard, considering the harvest cycle that was now coming to an end, there were a few apples that actually made it to fruit. Not all these apples, to be sure, were created equal. Most of them died off before they became edible. A few of them made it some time further, but then were attacked by squirrels realizing their demise at the hands of these neighborhood pests. There were exactly three that made it long enough to actually become part of our dinner one night recently. As I assess the hope-filled fruit dangling from the apple tree of the tradition of Churches of Christ, I see an equal disparity in the fruit. While each of the fruit I mention offers hope, they do so at differing levels. So, I thought I would begin here with what I believe to be the most promising of the fruit.

I have become convinced that the single-most promising characteristic of the Churches of Christ as they engage in their ministry in the postmodern world is their commitment to congregational autonomy. From my earliest days in Churches of Christ, I have known that the Bible taught "autonomy." I think I was in college before I really understood what that meant. In a nutshell, our autonomy in Churches of Christ can be well-illustrated in business-terms: each congregation is locally owned and operated.

While the basis of this self-understanding in Churches of Christ stems from the belief that the autonomous churches in Acts serve as an example for how churches should operate today, the richness of a locally-run congregation is quickly becoming realized throughout Western Christianity. As culture deepens in its skepticism and distaste for globalization and cookie cutter development, hungering for creativity and authenticity, it seems to me that an autonomous church offers an organic structure that is both biblical and culturally significant. In Christian leadership circles, a localized approach to church dynamics is gaining momentum across the denominational spectrum (just a few recent examples are : Doing Local Theology, Preaching as Local Theology and Folk Art, It Comes from the People, Organic Leadership and Finding Organic Church).

What many see as innovative, Churches of Christ have maintained throughout its relatively short history. One of the most enigmatic qualities among Churches of Christ have been their relative homogeneity despite their autonomous claims. Although we have claimed to be autonomous, our practice has not been fully so. Congregations of Churches of Christ in settings as diverse as Boston to rural Pennsylvania, Texas, coastal California, Florida, and the Midwest all, for some time, have looked eerily similar. While there is no organizational hierarchy declaring edicts on church policy, the schools, literature, and lectureships training our leaders clearly have had a great deal of influence throughout these churches. But, should autonomy be limited to describing the lack of a denominational head quarters? Is there not more implicit in the reality of autonomy? Haven't we missed a great deal of our freedom?

Today, many in Churches of Christ find their Mecca in the Bible Belt of the South East or on the prairies of central Texas. In my ministerial interaction with those in Central Ohio, I am amazed when I come across ministers and elders who seem more concerned with what is happening at a school or lectureship hundreds of miles away than with the decisions of the local governments and churches within minutes of where he lives. I conclude that autonomy very well may be the best thing we have going for us . . . but it also may be the most widely misunderstood and undervalued.

I challenge us in Churches of Christ to take the autonomous heritage of which we have been the benefactors, and explore its deeper implications. What would it look like to be a truly autonomous agency of the kingdom? No denominational boundaries. We would be just as interested in the preaching and teaching of the Vineyard Church here in Columbus as we would the others who share our name. We would be willing partners in worship and fellowship at any time and with anyone whose sole aim was to lift up the name of Christ. And we would invite others to the table with no strings attached. We would converse and share, listen and learn. We would be more engaged locally allowing our theology and ecclesiology to emerge from within the voices of people we love and share with and worhsip beside. The oldest and the youngest would have equal say with great theological forefathers who are also part of our tradition. Our conversations would begin with empathy and care instead of doubt and hesitancy.

The future will be bright in Churches of Christ if we can further grapple with this notion of localizing our theology and practice. We can be proud of our heritage when we are about forming disciples instead of creating adherents. That is the duty of the church . . . and far too often we have gotten in the way. There is much to be said for the baggage that denominational structures bring. This post simply touches the surface of what I believe to be our most enduring and important characteristic. We live in a world who is much less interested in the position our denomination takes on homosexuals - though they will make judgments based on that (what edict has been sent down from your ruling body?) than in our local manifestation of the love of God (do you love homosexuals? can I tell that you love them?)

With the emergence of micro-narratives and village theology, the localized, contextual congregation has as much potential as ever. However, in order to embrace this potential, we must learn to listen, open ourselves, and be ourselves: here and now.

The Apple Tree In My Backyard

2009-10-07T16:07:00.000-04:00

My wife and I moved into our house on Main St. five years ago. Like all young married couples, we were excited about this major future-defining purchase that we had made (OK, major understatement). As we considered the number of bedrooms and bathrooms and squarefootage among other house-suitors, I was always drawn to the backyard. Growing up on a sprawling lot in the country surrounded by trees, I knew the metropolitan setting of suburbia was going to be a challenge for me. Sprawling country acreage was never within our financial means, so I settled for a big backyard, and our first house on Main St. has a nice big backyard where I spend as much time as I can.

One of the most striking features of our neighborhood is the trees. There is a sign on our street that decrees Westerville, OH as "Tree City USA." I'm not exactly sure what that means, but what I do know is that we have many large and beautiful trees in our neighborhood. As we visited potential houses five years ago, we saw many houses that were nicer, newer, and larger than ours but few had trees as large as the ones at our house. Directly behind our house is a beautiful silver maple tree that seems to stretch forever towards the sky. It has such beauty that I am willing to ignore the numerous large branches it has lost since we moved in - even the ones that have scraped our gutters. Behind the silver maple is an even more impressive sugar maple - a beatiful sight particulaly in the fall. In the back corner of the yard are two pine trees that shade our hammock in the summer. And just a few feet from one of those pine trees is a large apple tree.

When we first moved into the house, the trees hadn't been trimmed in many years. My first mowing experience was similar to running an obstacle course dodging hanging branches and low-lying limbs. The overgrown limbs greatly hid the beauty of our backyard. As a matter of fact, during our first year in the house, I didn't even realize we had an apple tree. Fall came and went and there were no apples on the tree. However, thanks to my pruning, when the next spring came around, the apple tree was full of the most beautiful blooms filling the air with their sweet fragrance. The scent was no guarantee of the apple harvest, however, as the blossoms gave way to small fruit. The fruit never matured, and we ended up with a tree full of rotten half-grown apples. Upsetting to us tenants, but great news for the local squirrel community.

The half-grown apples were a disappointment, but it was encouraging to know that we had made some progress. I was committed to giving the tree constant TLC and to willing it on towards a more bountiful future. And the tree reponsded. Unfortunatley, just as the tree seemed ripe for a large harvest, it was nearly destroyed by Ohio's first hurricane. (Really, Ohio had a hurricane!) One large gust sent the top-part of the neighboring pine tree right on top of the apple tree I had been caring for. So much for the progress!

This year I have done my best to salvage our apple tree. I trimmed all the branches that were damaged by the pine tree. I cleaned out all the dead branches and limbs. This spring there were but a handful of blossoms, but it looks as though it is going to make it. The handful of blossoms gave way to exactly three apples. Because there were only three, I gave these apples special attention. I did my best to nurture them keeping them free of insects and harm. Slowly, across the summer, all three of these apples matured right in front of our eyes. It was the most beautiful sight - these three apples hanging alone on this large, damaged apple tree.

I want to use this apple tree as a metaphor for the Churches of Christ. The tree has been beat and battered by the weather. It has been split by the storms life has rained down upon it. In the same way, the Churches of Christ have been beat and battered with storms of their own: divisions, scandal, and tension. And these churches have not been left unharmed. Unity has been the chief victim, but there are others. As I sat looking at my apple tree last fall after the hurricane, questions that I have had about the Churches of Christ seemed dually applicable - is she going to make it? Will she continue to bear fruit in the future? Is this the end? Has she finally been beaten into irrelevance? Does she have anything left to offer? Am I wasting my time trying to save her?

It's important to note here that in my analogy there are other, larger, more healthy trees in my backyard. Sure, they all have their problems: the silver maple has a disease that my kill it one of these days, the pine tree that took out the apple tree is missing its top half, and the sugar maple badly needs pruned. These are the other denominations. There are other, older, solid parts of the kingdom living out the Gospel alongside us. There are also some smaller shoots that have taken root and they that may or may not make it into adulthood - other denominational movements that continue to grow and shoot off from the others. In this analogy I am certainly not concerned that the church is by anyway defeated. This is an intramural dialogue for those of us associated with Campbell, Stone, and the boys.

There are some reasons to throw in the towel and give up hope - any Google search of "Church of Christ" can affirm that. And yet, like my apple tree in the backyard, there seems to me to be a few pieces of beautiful fruit still hanging from the tree, not ready to completely fall to the ground, giving up. This fruit needs nurture and attention. It needs time and care.

In the work that I have proposed, and will be fleshing out here in the months to come, there is some productive fruit still hanging from the group of disciples who call themselves "Churches of Christ." This group increasingly grows diverse and discussions about them grow increasingly complicated - but perhaps, considering the complicated postmodern matrix of the Western world, that in and of itself is one of those pieces of hopeful fruit.

In the next several series of posts I'll be addressing what I believe to be the most hopeful pieces of tradition in the Churches of Christ. This work will be divided into two sections: Hopeful Fruit and Pruning Shears. While there may be some hopeful fruit dangling from our tradition, there remains at the same time some major obstacles to our growth that will require pruning. In the coming months I'll be soliciting fellow ministers who are in a similar place to me to reflect on these areas offering practical and timely suggestions on how we might save our apple trees - if that is in fact what God wants us to do.

I would invite those of you in these churches to post thoughts and ideas about some of the hopeful fruit you see in our movement as well as other harmful limbs that you feel need to be pruned. I am continuing to assemble a group of writers with topics on this issue and would benefit greatly from hearing the ideas of others. I'll be copying this post throughout on the like-minded group site: Post-Restorationist Perspectives. I hope you enjoy!

The Unhelpfulness of Categories

2009-10-06T12:17:00.001-04:00

If you want to prevent meaningful dialogue from taking place, here's a tip: Apply categories. Get at least one of the people involved to think of their position as the "conservative" or "liberal" position. Better yet, get them to start thinking of themselves as "liberal" or "conservative". This works in virtually any setting (theology, politics, etc), and really only requires one of the dialogue partners to apply the labels to be effective.

If preventing meaningful dialogue doesn't go far enough for you, here's another tip: Polarize the argument. Convince at least one of the people involved to define their category so narrowly that to differ on any point, or even to question any point places one in the opposite category. Cultivate an us/them mentality. Make it about "winning", or even about "not letting the other win", more than substance. Cultivate the idea in an individual (or group) that the position they currently hold is the one that any sensible person would naturally come to if they would only be objective about the matter. Once a person becomes convinced of the obviousness of their own position, they will naturally assume that anyone who disagrees with this position is obviously stupid, or an evil person who is intentionally misleading others.

Make sure that these categories get reinforced frequently, perhaps by employing overbearing media personalities who can boldly and consistently articulate the intelligence and rightness of their own position. Note: these personalities should never be self-critical, never recognize anything good in the other, and should only have anything resembling a sense of humor in reference to those they seek to ridicule (they should never be self-deprecating).

Follow these steps, my friends, and I guarantee that you will prevent any empathy, understanding, and progress. Remember, you don't have to win the debate to maintain the status quo. You just have to apply categories and polarize the argument.

A few warnings though. For this to work, you must avoid the following at all costs:

Asking questions
Engaging with the questions of others
Listening to the best articulations of other perspectives
The idea that there even can legitimately be other perspectives
spending time with others who are unlike you
Humility
Compassion
Grace
Anything beyond a Gospel of "sin-management"
Jesus

Lord Save Us Movie Find a Theater

2009-09-30T17:02:00.001-04:00

Lord Save Us Movie Find a Theater

Click the above link to see if Dan Merchant's Film "Lord Save Us From Your Followers" is playing in a theater near you. If it is, you should definitely go see it. I can't say enough good things about this film.

"Drops Like Stars" WINNER...

2009-09-22T13:25:00.002-04:00

The Winner of Rob Bell's new book Drops Like Stars: A Few Thoughts on Creativity and Suffering is Melissa Howell. Your book will be in the mail soon. Enjoy!

Win Rob Bell's New Book

2009-09-15T09:43:00.004-04:00

We are giving away 1 free copy of Rob Bell's new book, Drops Like Stars: A Few Thoughts on Creativity and Suffering. Here's how you can enter the giveaway:

You may enter once by commenting on this post (on the actual blog...NOT the facebook repost)

You may enter your name additional times if help promote this contest by posting a link to this post on facebook, twitter, or your personal blog. 1 additional entry per method (tell me which methods you used in your comment) Here is a direct link to this post: http://postrestorationist.blogspot.com/2009/09/win-rob-bells-new-book.html

The winner will be randomly selected and announced Tuesday, Sept. 22.

If you'd like more information on the book, I recently reviewed it on my personal blog.

Speaking a Missional Gospel? (part 4)

2009-09-14T12:35:00.004-04:00

Preaching as Missional Proclamation To The Church

In congregations operating from an attractional model of church, the identity of the church is centered on the worship gathering, and this gathering tends to be centered on the sermon. Whereas the major emphasis in this model is bringing people in, sermons tend to revolve around meeting “felt needs” with Biblical principles, with an occasional presentation of the gospel in transactional terms. Such an understanding of preaching is so prevalent, that it can be difficult for those who do not adhere to an attractional model to see a relevant place for preaching in the life of the church.

But, is preaching inherently attractional, or is it possible that “attractional” is merely one form that preaching can take? Guder offers a helpful reframe in a discussion of missional worship gatherings:

“Thus we join together the various expressions of Christian ministry in community, which are so often distinctive and unrelated to each other. We will experience and proclaim the sacraments as equipping means of grace. We will understand the music and discipline of worship as the supreme form of preparation for the work of ministry outside the walls of the church. Preaching will become the powerful Word of God equipping, challenging, correcting, and commissioning the people for their incarnational witness in the world.”[1]

If the church exists for God’s mission, her gatherings should revolve around preparation for that mission. If we are a sent people, then preaching in our gathering should serve the purpose of equipping the people of God for further and deeper engagement in our cooperative mission with God in and to the world.

Generally speaking, preaching in the attractional church was shaped toward the “seeker”, or the uninitiated. The shape of the message was usually something along the lines of “this is how God’s way benefits you”. This framing is decidedly unhelpful, and based on mistaken assumptions. First of all, the typical worship gathering is comprised mainly (if not totally) of those who already claim to follow Jesus, and who are supposed to be maturing as His disciples. Secondly, to perpetually gear the thrust of preaching to the uninitiated (as this is understood in an attractional model), is to reinforce a static faith, offering no encouragement to mature. It should also be noted that we aren’t called to a consumeristic, “what-can-God-do-for-you” Christianity in the first place. As Guder notes:

“Failure to grasp this essential link between benefit and mission results in the one-sided evangelistic preaching so characteristic of today’s Christian church. We tend to present the gospel as God’s way of getting the individual saved. We call upon people to come to Christ to be saves as though that were the ultimate purpose of our proclamation…Our savedness is not our privilege but our responsibility. To reduce the saving work of God, to say that Christ died “to save me,” is to say far too little, and thus to distort the gospel.”[2]

Our assumption in preaching should be that those gathered are the people of God, and that the main engagement that the church has with the world will be through their lives outside our walls. Our emphasis must therefore be on equipping the people of God for living witness-bearing lives, as God’s partners in his mission to the world. In other words, if the point of our gatherings is to encourage one another “toward love and good deeds”[3], then we must allow our gatherings, and our preaching to take its form from that function.

Lee Wyatt suggests a helpful model for missional preaching in our postmodern culture. He provocatively calls it “Agnostic Preaching”, though his emphasis is on the “struggle” implied by the Greek root of the word, and is not meant to imply the more popular definition employed today. Wyatt explains:

“The fundamental shape of biblical faith is narrative. The non-narrative portions…all grow out of, or respond to the gracious story of what God has done, is doing, and will do in human history. If we allow the shape of this Story to inform our preaching, then we will be primarily storytellers…Specific texts will be embedded in a larger Story. We will tease out the ways in which the non-narrative portions of the Story gain their coherence and intelligibility from the baseline established by the narrative. And the Story will be told again, and again, and again, in as many different ways as we can imagine. It is important to be clear about this. We need to allow the shape of the Story itself to determine both the form and function of our preaching.”[4]

Wyatt identifies three forms for preaching in this model. First, he argues for preaching as “re-telling”. This form of preaching serves to provide a broader, fuller understanding of God’s story as revealed in scripture for the purpose of reframing how we view and interpret the world around us, the church, and our own lives.[5] As discussed earlier, I would contend that the biblical narrative is not a metanarrative, and I stand by that statement. It is not a metanarrative, nor is it intended to be one. However, it is a “framing story”. Though related, these terms are far from synonymous. While all metanarratives are framing stories, not all framing stories are metanarratives. Brian McLaren helpfully defines a “framing story” as:

“a story that gives people direction, values, vision, and inspiration by providing a framework for their lives. It tells them who they are, where they come from, where they are, what’s going on, where things are going, and what they should do.”[6]

This is exactly the business of the gospel, the biblical narrative and, therefore the business of preaching. When preaching takes the form of “retelling”, it addresses the question of who we are, and is thus reframing our identity and setting our trajectory.[7]

Secondly, Wyatt suggests that preaching can take the form of “Forth-telling”. In this form, the function of preaching is “bringing the insights and implications of reframing to bear on our current situation.”[8] Here, the preacher is facilitating an exploration of where we are as the people of God. When done well, imagination and creativity are ignited for missional responses in our own contexts. However, it should be stated that this “forth-telling” is only really possible in light of “re-telling”. We must understand who we are to even be able to see the problems to engage in our immediate context, but it is impossible to truly understand who we are and not feel the pull of God’s mission to our world.

Finally, Wyatt suggests a third form for preaching, which he calls “Fore-telling”. In this form, preaching is a means of “retooling”, and seeks to address the question of what we are to do.[9] If the church exists for God’s mission, then the church takes her shape from that mission. Form follows function. But, if God’s mission is to the world, and that world is ever-changing, then the church’s form is never static, but rather fluid and dynamic, as relative to the demands of her mission. This would be a difficult situation for any organization. In the form of “Fore-telling”, preaching can encourage the church to think in terms of the future. God’s mission is on-going and in process. As those who have wrestled with our identity as the people of God and located ourselves in His story, we must remember that the story is still unfolding. Whereas “forth-telling” ignites the flames of creativity and imagination, “fore-telling” fans those flames into a holy inferno. Preaching can remind us that our story is going somewhere, and so are we. As N.T. Wright is fond of saying, we are the people of the “already and not yet”. Wright explains:

“What I am saying is, think through the hope that is ours in the gospel; recognize the renewal of creation as both the goal of all things in Christ and the achievement that has already been accomplished in the resurrection; and go to the work of justice, beauty, evangelism the renewal of space, time and matter as the anticipation of the eventual goal and the implementation of what Jesus achieved in his death and resurrection. That is the way both to the genuine mission of God and to the shaping of the church by and for that mission.”[10]

Preachers must help the people of God to see themselves individually and as a community as called by God into his future. As a people who have been formed by God’s action in the past, engaged in God’s action in the present, and oriented towards God’s restoration of all things in the future, we enter into that future unafraid, but rather characterized by faith, hope and love.

Conclusion

The church is the people of God, redeemed for the purpose of partnering with God in his mission to the world. The gospel we proclaim is fundamentally narrative in nature, and to be proclaimed, it must be both embodied and spoken. The church is called together in order to be sent out. As such, both our gatherings and especially our preaching function to further equip us for that mission. Thus preaching serves to clarify our identity, ignite imagination and creativity, and instill faith hope and love as we walk with inspired confidence into God’s future.

[1] Guder, Be My Witness, 234.

[2] Ibid., 11.

[3] Hebrews 10:19-25

[4] Gelder, Confident Witness--Changing World, 161-162.

[5] Ibid., 161.

[6] McLaren, Everything Must Change, 5-6.

[7] Gelder, Confident Witness--Changing World, 161.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Ibid., 162.

[10] Wright, Surprised by Hope, 270.

Speaking a Missional Gospel? (Part 3)

2009-09-08T10:46:00.002-04:00

Evangelism as Missional Proclamation

If the gospel finds its truest form in narrative, then it would follow that our best articulations of it would come in that form as well. But, if the gospel is this particular narrative of reconciliation and restoration, our practice of telling that story is shaped by it all the more. The postmodern ethos of contemporary culture has a much-noted distain for metanarratives. For many in the Christian faith, this appears to create an impasse in terms of evangelism, for they believe that our story is grand, overarching and true. Indeed, many so-called “evangelism training” programs now include a section defending metanarratives, seemingly suggesting that those who don’t yet believe must be converted to the concept of a metanarrative before they can be converted to the gospel. However, I would suggest that this concern is unnecessary. For the record, I affirm that the narrative of the gospel is grand, overarching, and true. At the same time, I would argue that the gospel narrative is not a metanarrative at all.

In a discussion of Christianity in light of Lyotard’s self-admittedly oversimplified definition of postmodernism as “incredulity toward metanarratives”[1], James K. A. Smith explains:

“…many assume that metanarratives are the target of postmodern disbelief because of their scope, because they make grand, totalizing claims about reality and have universal pretensions...But this is not what Lyotard means by a metanarrative. What is at stake for Lyotard is not the scope of these narratives, but the nature of the claims they make. Put another way, the problem isn’t the stories they tell, but the way they tell them (and, to a degree, why they tell them). For Lyotard, metanarratives are a distinctly modern phenomenon: they are stories that not only tell a grand story…but also claim to be able to legitmate or prove the story’s claim by an appeal to universal reason.”[2]

Smith goes on to explain that that the problem with metanarratives is that they are a particularly modern phenomenon. They claim to be legitimated from an objective, universal standpoint that is above all perspectives and outside all stories. Thus, they function as power-games that coercively demand compliance. The problem is that while they attempt to dismiss all other narratives, they are, in fact, narratives themselves, and proceed as such, while denying their own nature.[3] The gospel is an invitational narrative, and as such does not act coercively. The gospel is not a story of a God who exercises “power-over”, but rather it is of a God who humbles himself, who takes the form of a servant, who saves by exercising “power-under”. As such, those who would bear this God’s image must do no less. When the gospel is spread by coercion or even by intellectual bullying, it ceases to be the gospel. Byron Stone explains:

“…when a hearer’s acceptance of the Christian message becomes obligatory, when witness is no longer surprising but coercive because it is presented as undeniable, the good news is neither news nor good. Weakness, vulnerability, incarnation, and refusability are all markers of faithful Christian witness.”[4]

Thus, evangelism is not about winning debates about the “rightness” of the gospel. It is about bearing witness to good news, embodying good news, and speaking good news to the world.

There is a powerful and pervasive temptation to define the gospel as merely information, and thereby to render “evangelism” as the successful transmission of that information. This is deeply problematic. Scot McKnight argues that while the gospel must certainly be proclaimed, it must also be performed. He explains:

“The first without the latter is hypocrisy; the second without the first is not the gospel. But, together they tell God’s story so satisfyingly that others are compelled to join along.”[5]

The story of the gospel is hollow and irrelevant if it is not embodied by individuals and by communities of faith to the world. The imperative to bear witness to the gospel is not simply an imperative to speak testimonies. It is a commission to live as witnesses in and to the world. In short, when a person becomes a follower of Jesus, this should be good news to everyone around them on some level, due to the kind of person they are becoming. As those who begin to live lives that bear witness to God’s unconditional love, grace and forgiveness, they will thus embody those things to the world around them regardless of agreement or reciprocation. This is not to say that bearing witness never calls the witnesses to speak prophetically or stand in opposition or protest, for there has always been tension between the people of God and the “powers that be”. However it is to say that even in protest, the “power-under” stance of those who would bear witness looks more like the nonviolent resistance of Jesus, Martin Luther King Jr., Desmond Tutu, and Mother Teresa than the coercive, “power-over” methods so often employed in our world.

Modernity presented us with a further temptation that tends to obscure our approach to evangelism. It comes to us in the form of our obsession with measurable results. While I certainly affirm there is a body of research in the field of marketing that can be quite useful in terms of clarifying our communication, there is an obsession with church marketing among many church leaders (and members) that reveals an apparent syncretism between Christianity and consumerism. Darrell Guder rightly cautions that focusing on things like measurable results and numerical growth tempts us to “dilute the gospel in order to ensure success”[6]. Guder believes that such a focus necessarily conflicts with the practice of incarnational ministry. Emphasizing the role of God in evangelism, he explains:

“The response to the gospel is in the realm of spiritual mystery. We can no more produce faith as the manipulated result of our proclamation than the farmer can make the seed sprout once it is planted. Thus we may properly understand effectiveness as obedient witness, which God uses to present the gospel in power and truth.”[7]

Such an understanding is true to the cooperative impulse within the gospel narrative itself. God has invited us to partner with Him in His mission to the world. God is already at work reconciling the world to Himself, and he invites us to join Him. Our call is to bear faithful witness placing our confidence in God’s action. However, this is not to advocate a ham-fisted, unthinking approach that actually distorts the gospel. Many missional leaders have been raising precisely this concern, and there are several recent books exploring this theme from a missional perspective. Pointing to a Christian subculture that exists as a direct result of an attractional understanding of church, Dan Kimball plainly states:

“…please understand, I affirm that the gospel is a radical message that entails faith in the risen Jesus, the denial of self, and repentance to align with God’s will. I know that this message is a stumbling block and that there will be those who reject this good news. Yet I am convinced that we have created a new stumbling block with our Christian subculture that keeps people from even getting to the gospel at all.”[8]

In short, there are those who will certainly reject the gospel. However, as those who are called to bear witness, we also bear a responsibility for presenting the gospel with our lives and our words as accurately and as clearly as possible. Ours is a story that must be embodied as well as heard. May we resist the urge to promote a god created in our own image. May we faithfully bear the image of the God of hope, who never gave up on his dream for creation, and who even now is working to reconcile all things to Himself.

(To Be Continued...)

[1] Lyotard, The postmodern condition, xxiv.

[2] Smith, Who's Afraid of Postmodernism?, 64-65.

[3] Ibid., 66-69.

[4] Stone, Evangelism after Christendom, 232.

[5] Mcknight, Embracing Grace, 3.

[6] Guder, Be My Witness, 138.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Kimball, They Like Jesus But Not the Church, 238.

Speaking a Missional Gospel? (part 2)

2009-09-03T09:29:00.002-04:00

The Missional Nature of the Gospel

As Christians began to drink deeply from the wells of modernity, they began to place a much higher value on things like objectivity and human reason. Additionally, the Biblical text and even the gospel itself seemed to be presented in a manner that proved unwieldy, cumbersome, and frankly inefficient. With modernity’s lenses firmly in place, thinkers began to mine the text for eternal truths in the form of propositions. These propositions were then systematized in an effort to make them more accessible and understandable. Thus, the tendency was toward a simplified gospel that articulated how individuals can make sure that their souls can go to Heaven (and/or not Hell) after they die because of the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus.

Such an approach is problematic to say the least. While, proponents of such a definition can point to key passages[1] in Scripture that (devoid of context) seem to support their case, the meaning of the death, burial and resurrection (not to mention life, teaching, and ministry) of Jesus is virtually incomprehensible outside the context of the broader scriptural narrative spanning from creation to consummation. Additionally, it is difficult to reconcile such an individualistic focus with the God who is revealed in Jesus. Indeed, as Dallas Willard quips in a discussion of what he calls “the Gospel of Sin Management”,

“Can we seriously believe that God would establish a plan for us that essentially bypasses the awesome needs of present human life and leaves human character untouched? Would he leave us even temporarily marooned with no help in our kind of world, with our kinds of problems: psychological, emotional, social, and global? Can we believe that the essence of Christian faith and salvation covers nothing but death and after?”[2]

Such an unconcerned, escapist gospel seems not to be very good news for a lost and dying world. Indeed, it seems to require one to become convinced of contextualizing “bad news” before it can even be heard as “good”.

The Biblical accounts of the life of Jesus repeatedly tell us that he and his disciples preached “the gospel”. This is quite significant, since none of the disciples really understood what was going to happen with the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus yet (as evidenced by their confusion when it actually happened). Additionally, in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, “gospel” is routinely associated with the concept of the Kingdom of God (or Kingdom of the Heavens). For Jesus, the Good News seems to be that God’s Kingdom is breaking through. It seems to be that God has not given up on us, or his dream for all Creation. It seems to be that through Jesus, things are being set right. Some might object that Paul doesn’t use this “Kingdom language”, but as Brian McLaren rightly points out (after pointing out 13 overt references in Paul’s writing to the Kingdom message),

“…we should consider that Paul may be dealing faithfully with the new situation Jesus has created. In this light, we can read Paul carefully and see if his message actually does deal with new problems and opportunities created by Jesus’ success.”[3]

Additionally, we find all of this language rooted in the OT scriptures, and particularly in the prophets. Language permeates most of the NT documents that points to the “restoration” “reconciliation” of “all things”. The gospel is essentially a true story that begins with God creating all things out of love, including human beings who are charged with bearing his image. It is a story of humanity’s selfish choices that shatter the harmony of God’s creation, and of the God who calls humanity back into relationship with Himself so that they may partner with Him in the restoration of all things. It is the story of a God who becomes a human being in order to free them from sin, death, fear, and their own selfishness so that they might embrace their destiny as the children of God and their mission as partners in God’s dream of restoration. It’s a story that ends with God making “all things new”, the lifting of a curse, and the healing of the nations. It’s a story of hope, peace, and abundant, eternal life. Chris Wright astutely reminds us that:

“…we must not rest content until we have included within our own missional response the wholeness of God’s missional response to the human predicament—and that of course includes the good news of Christ, the cross and resurrection, the forgiveness of sin, the gift of eternal life that is offered to men and women through our witness to the gospel and the hope of God’s new creation…Mission may not always begin with evangelism. But mission that does not ultimately include declaring the Word and the name of Christ, the call to repentance, and faith and obedience has not completed its task. It is defective mission, not holistic mission.”[4]

[1] for example, 2 Tim. 2:8-9

[2] Willard, The divine conspiracy, 38.

[3] McLaren, The Secret Message of Jesus, 94.

[4] Wright, The Mission of God, 319.

Speaking a Missional Gospel? (part 1)

2009-08-31T09:52:00.004-04:00

The most visible manifestation of the North American church in recent history has generally adhered to an “attractional” model. Put simply, in this model, the church is in the business of organizing events and activities that are to be attended. This understanding of “church” is so commonly held, that it functions for many as a largely unquestioned presupposition about what the “church” is supposed to be, both historically and biblically. Additionally, congregations and church leaders who embrace this model may become what Brian McLaren refers to as the “purveyors of religious goods and services,”[1] as they attempt to use marketing principles to engage a culture that is increasingly consumeristic and entertainment-oriented. From the perspective of an attractional understanding of “church,” the “worship service” becomes the main focus, and the sermon acts as the clear centerpiece. The main thrust of evangelism tends to be encouraging members to invite their un-churched friends to this event that is designed to encourage conversion experiences.

While the attractional model relies heavily on the idea that conversions mainly take place in the context of worship events, interpersonal evangelism is encouraged (though possibly not expected). However, even this interpersonal evangelism tends to take the form of a micro-event where the Christian sits down with the non-Christian for a semi-formal gospel presentation. Additionally, the thrust of this presentation tends to be transactional (not to mention coercive), focusing on mental assent to certain propositions and steps/actions to take in order to avoid eternal punishment and thereby secure eternal bliss after death.

Though these assumptions about the attractional nature of the church and the transactional nature of the gospel are commonly held, they have also arguably led to a church that is unquestionably in decline[2]. Frost and Hirsch lament that,

“The church is in decline in almost every context in the First World. The Church is worse off precisely because of Christendom’s failure to evangelize its own context and establish gospel communities that transform the culture.”[3]

This situation has led many to reconsider their previously unquestioned assumptions about the shape and nature of church. Voices from Biblical Studies, Theology, and Missiology have begun to suggest that the church is essentially “missional” in nature, and that perhaps her forms were always meant to follow her function or, as Chris Wright eloquently states,

“Certainly, the mission of God is the prior reality out of which flows any mission that we get involved in…it is not so much the case that God has a mission for his church in the world, but that God has a church for his mission in the world. Mission was not made for the church; the church was made for mission—God’s mission.[4]

Thus, the church exists precisely for participation in God’s mission, and God’s mission is precisely to and for the world. Whereas an attractional understanding of church tended toward the idea that members were the primary beneficiaries, a missional understanding insists that the church exists for the benefit of non-adherents.[5] In a missional understanding, the church sees itself as existing “for the sake of the world”.[6]

A Missional understanding profoundly reframes what it means to be church, particularly for those steeped in the attractional model. At the risk of overstatement, an attractional understanding of church, and a transactional understanding of the gospel, centered church around speech, cognition, and a certain level of piety. A pendulum-swing-style overcompensation that rendered speech, cognition and morality/behavior as irrelevant would be huge mistake. However, it would also be a mistake to view “being missional” as a strategy for church growth or renewal. It is a reframing, a different understanding of church that is characterized by its external focus, its holistic engagement, and its view of mission as primary rather than secondary. In such a context, what is the role of proclamation? If the gospel is to be in any sense spoken, how is it to be done? Is there a place for the Biblical practice of preaching if an attractional model of church is abandoned? How is the gospel to be communicated interpersonally from a missional understanding? What is the Gospel if it is not primarily transactional?

(I will continue my thoughts on all of this in subsequent posts. I would love to hear your thoughts and reactions (particularly if you'd like to respond to the questions that conclude this post)

[1] McLaren, A new kind of Christian, 156.

[2] “American Religious Identification Survey 2008.”

[3] Frost and Hirsch, The Shaping of Things to Come, 12.

[4] Wright, The Mission of God, 62.

[5] McLaren, A Generous Orthodoxy, 111.

[6] Barth and Michielin, A shorter commentary on Romans, 97.

Book Giveaway Winners

2009-08-26T13:32:00.001-04:00

Our winners are:

Chris Lockhart and Mark Willis.

Contact me through email or facebook with your addresses so that we can mail your books.

Congratulations!

-Adam

Book Giveaway: Ron Martoia's Transformational Archietecture

2009-08-20T16:05:00.004-04:00

Occasionally on this blog, I will do a book giveaway. For our first giveaway, I'm offering a chance to win Ron Martoia's excellent book, Transformational Architecture: Reshaping Our Lives as Narrative. We have 2 new copies of this book to give away.

From the Zondervan Product Page:
Author Ron Martoia is one of today’s keenest Christian observers and thinkers. And in his latest book he explains why evangelism is more difficult now than ever before: postmodern society has lost its overarching stories. People today are disillusioned, disenfranchised, and less open to the biggest “story” of all: the message of God’s redeeming grace.

Description:
“How Can I More Effectively Reach People of My Generation with the Message of the Gospel?”
Start the story where God starts the story.
In other words, it’s not about “lifestyle evangelism.” Or being cleverer than the person with whom you’re talking. Or knowing everything there is to know about the Bible.
It’s about knowing what’s most important to your friends, family, coworkers, and others you meet along life’s journey. It’s about, to use author Ron Martoia’s words, discovering the “story” each of us lives every waking day of our lives. Once you know that, you’ll know how God’s story fits into our human stories.
Jesus spread the Good News this way. He talked to people, asked them questions about who they were, what they were doing–in short, he found out what made each person get out of bed every morning. And then he shared with them a bigger story–and how they fit into it. Jesus knew that when people grasped God’s big picture, they felt compelled–even overjoyed–to be a part of it.
In today’s increasingly individualistic, disenfranchised world, it’s never been more important to know God’s story and how one fits into it. Let Transformational Architecture be your guide to reaching those around you with God’s life-changing message of hope.

HOW TO ENTER:

NOTE: There has been some confusion over this due to a lack of clarity on my part. We are not referring to Google Reader or the Facebook Post-Restorationist group. You must press the "follow" button for "Google Friend Connect" on the far right sidebar of this blog (under the heading of "Followers") or by using the "Networked Blogs" application on Facebook (which can also be reached through the far right sidebar). If you have already entered the giveaway indicating Google Reader or Facebook in general before 9:30 EST on August 21, your entry will still be counted as is. However, all entries from this point on must indicate whether you follow through "Google Friend Connect" and/or "Networked Blogs". My apologies for the confusion.

Follow these 3 steps...

1. Follow this blog through "Google Friend Connect" or through "Networked Blogs" which is associated with Facebook. See the sidebar of this blog for links.

2. Leave a comment on this post indicating which of these 2 methods you are using to follow this blog. You may only enter once for each method you use to follow the blog. (max of 2 times, if you use both methods)

3. Winner will be randomly selected next Wednesday, Aug. 26th. Winner will be contacted and asked to provide a mailing address, so that the book can be shipped to you free of charge (be sure I have some way of contacting you).

That's it. Good luck!
AE
P.S. Keep watching. Rumor is that we may be giving away a copy of Rob Bell's new book, Drops Like Stars: A Few Thoughts on Creativity and Suffering, some time in the next 2 weeks.

Quoting David Dark on Politics/Offendedness

2009-08-17T11:30:00.003-04:00

I have mentioned David Dark's excellent book, The Sacredness of Questioning Everything on this blog a couple of times before. I simply can't recommend this book enough. The health care "debate" has re-ignited a climate of mud-slinging and rancor that I thought was reserved only for presidential elections. I already posted McLaren's call for civility from Christians. I also wanted to post a few quotes from Dark's book, that speak to such an ethic. As always, I welcome your thoughts and comments.

"...no one gets to insist on the right to not feel silly. We will treasure one another's testimony, even past the point of feeling offended. We'll risk it in the hope of truth. And we might even go so far as to confess that actual conversation, genuine listening, and authenticity aren't states toward which many of us tend. Instead, we ought to seek out the company and conversation of folks who'll dare to disagree with us, people who will tell us (perhaps with our encouragement) when they think we're wrong, confused or hateful. The risk of feeling offended comes with the territory. It's worth it." pg. 52-53

"To keep it all simple and safe, we often become selective fundamentalists. We know where to go to have our prejudices explained as just and sensible, our convictions strengthened, our group or party reaffirmed. We process whatever already fits the grid that is hardwired (or re-hardwired) in our heads. It's difficult for anything else to get through." pg. 57-58

"If we've deluded ourselves into thinking that our angry mass emails or conversation-stopping talking points serve as a ministry or carry out the purposes of God, we need to slow down and take a breath...Perhaps our big ideas (religious, economic, political) take a murderous turn when we think they're more important than people's lives--the lives of those who aren't convinced of the rightness of whatever it is we get all trembly about. When we're ready to hurt someone, if only in our minds, for not getting in line with what we take to be our values, we need a gadfly (a Socrates, a Jesus, a Stephen Colbert) to make fun of our vanity, our arrogance, and our pretensions toward Godlikeness." pg. 60

"To confess that I play Tetris religiously isn't to say anything pro or con about religion. But to do it more than once a day, visit the Drudge Report every hour, check my cell phone every three minutes, and listen to Rush Limbaugh more often than I listen to any other human voice and then to claim that these things have absolutely nothing to do with my religion is to be, to some degree, delusional. My religion is my practice. It's what I do." pg. 34-35

Thoughts?

AE

Brian McLaren's Open Letter to Conservative Christians in the U.S. on Healthcare

2009-08-11T09:44:00.002-04:00

Reposted from http://brianmclaren.net

Thoughts?

Dear friends,
Although today I would not call myself a political or social conservative, I am grateful for my heritage as an Evangelical Christian: my faith is rooted in a personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ, I honor and seek to live in harmony with the Scriptures, and I love to share the good news of God's love with others. Since my teenage years when I decided to follow Jesus, I have pursued wholehearted discipleship, and my life has been shaped by that commitment. After completing graduate school and teaching college English, I became a church planter and pastor and served in the same congregation for twenty-four years.

But for almost that many years, I have been growing more and more deeply troubled by the way so many from my heritage in conservative Christianity – in its Evangelical, Charismatic, and Roman Catholic streams - have allowed themselves to be spiritually formed by various conservative political and economic ideologies. It's been disturbing to see how many Christians have begun to follow and trust leaders who live more by political/media/ideological codes than by moral/spiritual/biblical ones.

As a result, I sometimes think that Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, Glenn Beck, and Fox News may now influence many conservative Evangelicals, Charismatics, and Catholics even more than Billy Graham, Rick Warren, T.D. Jakes, Pope Benedict, or even the four gospels.

Now in a free country, people certainly have the right to choose their ideology. But Christians of all sorts, I think we all can agree, have a special calling - to increasingly harmonize our lives (including our lives as citizens) with the teaching and example of Jesus. My concern is that many of my sisters and brothers, without realizing it, have begun seeing Jesus and the faith through the lens of a neo-conservative political framework, thus reducing their vision of Jesus and his essential message of the kingdom of God. As a result, too many of us are becoming more and more zealous conservatives, but less and less Christ-like Christians, and many don't seem to notice the difference.

Thankfully, many Christian leaders are far more thoughtful and nuanced in their integration of faith and public life. They don't jump on talk-radio's latest conspiracy theory bandwagons, nor do they buy flippant talk of "death panels" or inappropriate comparisons to Hitler and so on. But still, so many of them remain silent about what's going on, and thereby grant it tacit approval.

I too was silent for a long time during my years as a pastor. But during the lead-up to the Iraq War, as I saw how little discernment was being exercised regarding the moral logic of pre-emptive war, I began taking risks that I hadn't taken before. I was similarly moved to speak out when, in the aftermath of Abu Ghraib, relatively few Christians in America took a stand against torture. (In fact, according to survey data, Southern White Evangelicals were the group most likely to support doing unto others as they would never want done to themselves.) And when I heard Christians (mis)using the Bible to argue against environmental responsibility, again, I could not be silent.

Now, in the debate about health care, I am similarly disheartened to see the relative silence of thoughtful Christian voices as counterpoint to the predictable rhetoric of the more reactive voices. Over the last few weeks, I’ve been getting mass-emails and weblinks from Evangelical and Charismatic organizations that present frightening and outlandish claims about what President Obama is planning to do regarding health care. I’ve checked into these claims, and in case after case, they are simply false. They’re based on rumors spread by certain dramatic radio and cable-tv personalities, but they are not based in truth.

Again, people are free to disagree humbly and respectfully with their fellow Christians and their government. (As readers of my books know, I take this freedom seriously in my own life). But we Christians, it seems to me, have a high calling – to be radically committed to integrity and civility, even (especially) with those with whom we disagree. God, after all, is merciful, generous, and kind to "the just and the unjust": how can we not have that same obligation regarding those with whom we disagree? Even if others resort to dirty political tricks and distortion of the truth through exaggeration and fear-mongering, we simply cannot. At the very least, we should be seekers of truth, seekers of wisdom, not consumers (or purveyors) of propaganda – even if it comes from members of our own political party and people who quote a lot of Bible verses (often out of context). We have a higher calling.

So, without going into health-care reform specifics (which is still difficult to do, since there are many fast-changing proposals in play and the process of developing a vote-able proposal is far from over), I would simply like to plead with conservative Christians – conservative Evangelicals, conservative Charismatics, conservative Catholics, and so on – to take a stand for integrity and civility in the health care debate, alongside and in solidarity with those of us who love Christ just as you do but do not rally around the conservative political banner.

If you take this stand, you will be heard by your fellow conservatives in ways that some of the rest of us can’t be heard. And lives could be saved as a result of our joint calls for Christian integrity and civility: we've already seen what happens when people translate religious and ideological passion into violent action. Recalling the words of that great 19th century British conservative Edmund Burke, think of what could happen in the next few years if too many good conservative people sit back and do nothing ... while less scrupulous and more desperate conservative people whip their followers into a frenzy through fear and inaccurate information.

I will continue to speak out on these issues as I have done in the past. But I don’t expect the most extreme Christian conservatives to listen to me much. Since I was an outspoken supporter of President Obama’s candidacy, and since before that I was equally outspoken against torture, against the invasion of Iraq, for environmental stewardship, etc., many of them have written me off (sometimes with quite spicy language). But if you are a conservative Christian who cares about integrity and civility in communication and debate, perhaps they will still listen to you when you call them to a higher standard. I hope you will take the risk of speaking out with that in mind.

As my friend Jim Wallis recently said so eloquently (http://blog.sojo.net/2009/08/06/truth-telling-and-responsibility-in-health-care/), we may have honest differences with our fellow Christians on the issue of health care and many other issues too, but even in our differences we can agree that debates should take place in the light of truth and civility, not in the shadows of misrepresentation and prejudice.

Be assured, I am no uncritical supporter of health care reform. I am no more in favor now of rushing into expensive health care reform without sufficient debate than I was a few years ago when we rushed into an expensive pre-emptive war without sufficient care and discernment. I’m eager, like many of my conservative friends, to see the kind of reform that encourages small business and entrepreneurship. I'm interested in the kind of reform that reduces the power of both unaccountable mega-corporations and unaccountable government bureaucracy. I’m eager to see the kind of reform that doesn’t pave the way for powerful health insurance companies to do to the public in the next few decades what "too big to fail" Wall Street debt-repackagers did to us over the last few. I’m eager to see the kind of reform that in the long term reduces rather than increases our growing national debt and that truly helps our poorest neighbors without creating reductions in real service for our more prosperous neighbors.

Getting the kind of reform we need won’t be easy, especially with so many powerful interests spending huge amounts of money to achieve their own ends, with too little concern for justice, the common good … or the truth. That’s why, for there to be the kind of debate that produces good results, we who call ourselves Christians - conservative or otherwise - need to stand for full integrity in communication, whatever our political leanings. We need to be sure that the best arguments on both sides are heard ... not being satisfied to compare "our" best with "their" worst, as unscrupulous politicians and media personalities so often like to do, and not reducing the views of others to absurdity, even if we disagree with them vehemently.

The moral authority of Christians has been severely compromised in our culture in recent years. The most serious kinds of sexual scandals have rocked the Catholic, Evangelical, and Charismatic communities, not to mention financial scandals, ugly denominational lawsuits, and high-profile divisions. Studies have shown that some kinds of Christians are not only more likely to support torture - they are also more likely to hold racist views, to engage in domestic violence, and to end their marriages in divorce. No wonder young people are turned off as never before to a hypocritical face of Christianity that radiates shame, anger, and judgment rather than grace, love, and truth.

Even if we disagree on health care reform and other political issues, I hope we can agree that it is time for us to start walking - and talking - more worthy of the calling to which we have been called, to use Paul's words, to speak the truth, and to do so always in love. Or as James said, we must remember in this fire-prone political climate that the tongue can set off tiny rhetorical sparks that create huge flames of unimagined and unintended destruction. It can spread a false wisdom that sounds good on the surface, but beneath the surface is driven not by love but by bitter envy and selfish ambition. In contrast, he said (3:13 ff),
"The wisdom that comes from above is first of all pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere. Peacemakers who sow in peace raise of harvest of righteousness."

Wise and needed words to guide us in the weeks and months ahead as health care reform is debated for better or for worse. May both the debate and the outcome bring us to a better place.
+++++

By the way, if you’d like to do some fact-checking about the health care debate, here are some faith-based sources that I believe can be trusted to avoid uncritical and inaccurate reporting about health care. I understand they will be offering correctives to rumors and misinformation in the months ahead.
http://blog.faithinpubliclife.org/
http://www.sojo.net
http://www.catholicsinalliance.org/

Tent City Benefit with Phil Keaggy

2009-08-10T09:22:00.000-04:00

Hi all. I wanted to invite all of you to a benefit for Tent City on Wednesday night at Otter Creek Church of Christ, 409 Franklin Road. There will be a reception for Tent City residents at 6pm, and then a concert by Phil Keaggy from 7 - 8:30. As a part of the evening as well, an art show of pictures taken of Tent City residents will be given to the Temple, a Jewish synagogue in Nashville, for display.

It will really be a great night and I hope as many of you as possible can be there.

A Night for Tent City - Ministry Moment Video from David Woodard on Vimeo.

Campbellite Education

2009-07-28T14:39:00.002-04:00

I've been reading through Nathan Hatch's The Democratization of American Christianity, an incredibly important study of the early populist American movements, and had some thoughts spurred that I thought would be relevant for discussion here. Hatch's work is interesting in that he compares some early American Christian groups that we typically may not connect in discussions today (especially in throwing in Joseph Smith's Latter Day Saints group) and considers the sociological implications of what was going on in the new republic. There is so much good in this book it is difficult to focus on just one aspect. However, there is one subject matter that I have been thinking about lately that Hatch spurred me on further.

One of the most consistent tenets of the early populist Christian movements was a thoroughgoing resistance and outright dislike for traditional theological academia. Nearly all of these early reformers were reacting against the clerical establishment that they believed had become overly corrupt. Much as Luther and Calvin reacted to the papal establishment, these early American groups saw the same corruption and shortcomings in the Protestantism.

Alexander Campbell has a rather unique place in this setting in that he was one of the only "products" of the established theological training. The vast majority of these early Christian leaders were self-taught and self-trained, decrying the established centers of theological training. Campbell was so committed to this anti-academia philosophy of theology that when he established his college at Bethany he made sure that no chair of theology would ever be established.

Hatch's whole discussion on this matter has helped me better understand my experience in Churches of Christ. I graduated with my M.Div from Lipscomb back in 2003, and while I in no way believe that I have some kind of special insight into any text or concept, I did spend about seven years of my life entirely focused on theological training. I have found, that for the most part in churches, that training is pretty insignificant to folks. Sure, people respect my opinion, and generally appreciate listening to what I have to say on things, but when it comes down to interpretive weight - we're all on equal footing.

I suppose my question is . . . is that a good thing? More specific to the issue at hand, was Alexander Campbell correct in leveling the play field of biblical interpretation? Should everyone have equal say in the meaning of a text? Hatch notes that this was a major component of each of these early groups, in his great chapter (worth the price of the book to me!): "The Right to Think for Oneself."

I feel the pull in both directions here in considering the situation in Churches of Christ. On one hand, we seem perfectly poised for the postmodern matrix of meaning and interpretation without a central governing body to cast decisions down the denominational ladder. On the other hand, so much of the discussion taking place within the leadership of churches is making a theological degree more and more important. I, sometimes, find myself using language that those without the "formal theological training" can't follow. I then realize I'm a dope. Beyond that, I hope to pursue a D. Min degree next year and am forced to ask myself - why? Does that further the problem of distance between myself and my congregants? Am I muddying the waters of simple matters as Alexander Campbell and others were so skeptical and worried about?

I don't know if I've put this post all together in a way that makes any sense, but let me try to boil down the situation I'm trying to comment on.

Theological education in the Churches of Christ seems to be rising at a fast pace. Scholars within Churches of Christ seem to slowly be making inroads into the broader theological conversation. Education is seen as more and more of a priority in potential ministers' perquisites. Discussions of philosophy, sociology, and other disciplines have joined the ranks of theological discourse and are common place among bloggers. This all seems to imply one of two situations that I would propose for discussion:

(1) Alexander Campbell failed. His grand project of calling Bible things by Bible names and throwing out creeds and -ologies was a well-intended project, but has failed the test of time. Churches of Christ have gotten off course and need to be brought back on. It seems to me, this is where the extremely conservative/traditional Churches of Christ fall. They remain very skeptical of formal education. They remain committed to Bible School and Preacher School training centers, still believing just the Bible and only the Bible should be the object of our study.

(2) Alexander Campbell was wrong. Perhaps we are better-suited to state that Alexander Campbell was wrong, or at least mostly. Perhaps he over-reacted to the shortcomings of the theological situation of his day. Sure there was corruption, and sure there were shortcomings, but wasn't there still a place for the trained clergy?

This is where Hatch's insight is invaluable. The real driving force behind where Campbell and the others were coming from is this: the democratic voice of equality. It was within the construction of the federal republic of democracy these early leaders formed their thoughts on Christianity. The church structure they had inherited from the forefathers was so . . . undemoctratic! Politcally, the people had been taxed without representation, spiritually, the people were taught and led by spiritual elites and lofty liturgy.

It seems to me a real rub in the development of localized postmodern theology will be the interface of democracy and theology. Does majority rule in matters of interpretation? Is that our guiding light in biblical studies?

In the end, I keep coming back to this question that first emerged in my thinking in grad school: how does a Christian group who was formed at the height of modernity, firmly upon modernistic principles survive the downfall of modernity?

Derek Webb Bringing The Controversy?

2009-07-14T22:41:00.002-04:00

Lots of controversy about Derek Webb's new song. Derek is no stranger to controversy, but he seems to have upped it a notch with the new album and this song in particular. I'll save my reaction for now, except to say that I don't think he'll be getting much airplay on Christian radio.

What do you think? I'd really like to hear your reactions.

WARNING: EXPLICIT LYRICS!!! (well, ok...there are like two words you wouldn't want your kids to say, but I've given you fair warning.)

Lyrics (unedited):

What Matters More, by Derek Webb

You say you always treat people like you like to be
I guess you love being hated for your sexuality
You love when people put words in your mouth
'Bout what you believe, make you sound like a freak

'Cause if you really believe what you say you believe
You wouldn't be so damn reckless with the words you speak
Wouldn't silently consent when the liars speak
Denyin' all the dyin' of the remedy

Tell me, brother, what matters more to you?
Tell me, sister, what matters more to you?

If I can tell what's in your heart by what comes out of your mouth
Then it sure looks to me like being straight is all it's about
It looks like being hated for all the wrong things
Like chasin' the wind while the pendulum swings

'Cause we can talk and debate until we're blue in the face
About the language and tradition that he's comin' to save
Meanwhile we sit just like we don't give a shit
About 50,000 people who are dyin' today

Tell me, brother, what matters more to you?
Tell me, sister, what matters more to you?

Rob's Mission of God Statement

2009-07-14T20:23:00.001-04:00

It is strange for me to think of myself in terms of Post-Restorationist, because part of me wants to respond (to myself,) “Hey, wait! We just got here to Restorationist!”

To make a spiritual autobiography cut to the chase – I was raised in a Catholic neighborhood in New York City, the son of two former clergy (a monk and nun) who were very spiritual liberal pacifist liberation-theology churchgoing christians. I had fantastic models of Christian living in my life, many of them clergy and former clergy (what we called “religious”…ugghh.) Jesus was pure love and good-stuff; there was no fire and no brimstone. I never heard most of the stories of the OT, considered eschatology or knew anyone who had been “born anew.” I’d only read the passages of the Bible that were read aloud during the liturgical-calendar readings, and what I was given to read in studying for my Confirmation.

At the age of 15, while working in our church rectory at nights, I realized that I did not believe in any of it, or God. I still took it seriously, though, so out of respect for the Mass, and the earnestness of people like my parents, I stopped going to church. There was another 15 years of that, with a brief and pathetic attempt at buddhism about halfway through that time. If someone called me an agnostic or a lapsed catholic, I would argue vociferously that I was neither. I was a secular humanist atheist.

To try to make a conversion story short, about seven years ago, I realized that I did, in fact, believe in God, and needed him in my life. I still was probably just a theist, until actually reading the Gospels, by myself (on the bus!) a number of times, which converted me to the Way. I was baptized in the Long Island Sound, with my house church family watching from the rocky little Bronx beach, on Easter Sunday 2006.

I have struggled, in my “amateur missiology,” to rectify the scriptural narratives of human origins with my strong belief in the general Truth of anthropology and biology. Without getting into the whole debate, I do believe that there are many passages in the apocalyptic writings of the OT and NT which point toward a restoration of an “original paradise,” but I cannot connect that desire and prophecy to my belief in the science of human origins, which would not ever allow for any time in early human history as having been better, in almost any way (with the possible exceptions of pollution and processed foods.) In terms of the ethics of God, it has never made sense to me that God’s Creation would be perfect, and then an immediate failure, that we and all of creation would continue to pay for the sin of Adam (or that this could be removed with a sacrament.)

I see, when I am true to my personal worldview, a general slow progression of morality and the practical application of “loving one another” in history. Finally reading the stories of the OT reinforced this view, the brutality and almost absurd immorality that was normal in the ancient world is described in detail in the Jewish scripture (although it is vividly described in pagan writings as well.)

In my view, God created a people, the Hebrews, through Abraham, who were ready for Him to intervene more directly, as a Witness for Him to the world. They also chose Him, though like most things in history, there was always the dialectic of a counter-force in their society. That counter-force was Satan, who always offered the hedonism and power-pride of the mystery cults. The mystery cults were the norm, but God re-cast them as the temptation of the Enemy. He was elevating the standards, guiding the moral progress of the peoples that He had chosen, at the crossroads of the Indo-European and African worlds, to be His Witness. (Isaiah 43:10)
People who were going to, for no apparent reason, write this struggle down and preserve it.

His Mission, in this age of human history, was to create a Witness to Himself, to speak through the Prophets and intervene more directly in the history of this people, so that their struggles and moral triumphs would speak to His true intention for humanity, which was far above His beautiful creation of Nature and the Cosmos. We are meant to be His triumph, because we, unlike the animals or plants, will have freely chosen to be better than we were before. Not out of competition or mutation, but rather out of collective Love and Reason.

Dare I say all of this… but I will…. His chosen people failed to even try to spread that Truth of Him and His need for a better humanity. Humanity needed a much more direct intervention, or the hedonism and power-lust of the Evil One would simply prevail, even within the chosen people. God was probably angered by the lack of effort to spread knowledge of Him, I am okay with that, but that anger, to me, would have to do with a certain….lack of understanding of His Creation. (I know that sounds heretical, but hear me out…)

How does the creator of the Universe know…what it is to not know? It creates a logical conundrum – how does an all-good omniscient Being know what it is to be a tempt-able, cosmically ignorant human? There is only one good, but still surprising, solution to that problem for God – Incarnation.

God came into this realm to be one of us, to tell us what He’d really wanted us to do, redirect the chosen people, and understand “where we are at.” He showed us the depths of His own self-sacrificial Love as a model for us to follow. He showed us what a true King is, not a lover of power and lust and control, but rather a Suffering Servant, one who conquers through self-assured Sacrifice. It became necessary for Him to plant the seed which offered the alternative Way to the way we were headed, the way of evil self-destruction.

In the End, as Jesus stated, many will still follow the Evil One, many already have, all of humanity is judged via the Inspiration behind Romans 2, and we are all judged by the Law which God has placed in our hearts, as humans. God’s Mission, and ours, as christians, is to increase the awareness of Him and His higher calling to moral Love and societal Justice. Many of us people will ignore this, and when God’s story reaches its climax, He will end it with a spectacular final scene; in which the opposing forces of Satan and Goodness will conflict in a way which will end all things as we know it, and judge what we know and have been. His Mission, christians know, is fulfilled in the Resurrection, that triumph which is reserved for His ultimate command of our story.
Then we will have our Eden.
This makes perfect sense….. to me. :>}

Another Perspective on the Mission of God

2009-07-03T21:53:00.004-04:00

I grew up in a number of Church of Christ congregations ranging from highly traditional (i.e., rural, patternist, and sectarian) to middle-of-the-road (i.e., urban, attractional, and kind-hearted but essentially traditional in form and thought). If, in younger years, I had been forced to say what Christian missions was, I would have said something about teaching the Bible so people could be saved from their sins in order to avoid the punishment of a God forced by his very nature to deal out retributive justice (Hell). Not that he wanted to; the nature of holiness forced his hand. God was basically saying, “Don’t make me pull this car over!” and missions was getting people the right knowledge (proclamation), which led to being legally off the hook (or off the cross, if you like)--through Baptism by immersion for the forgiveness of sins, of course. The mission of the church, then, was to effect verbally in the lives of individuals the imputed forensic justification available through the substitutionary death of Christ. Although there were other restorationist elements involved, this way my basic view of what God was after.

By virtue of my biblical studies I began to see more clearly what was at stake and to shed many old assumptions. Further experiences in short-term missions simultaneously opened my eyes to the inadequacy of a technical-salvation-from-sin-driven mission. I mention the generalized movement of my own thinking before launching into a brief description of my present understanding of mission, because although our stories are personal, they may be indicative of the whole community’s movement to something post-restorationist in terms of mission. Although my early belief was actually very evangelical in contour, there is plenty of discussion as to whether the SCM has been or is basically evangelical and thus implicitly whether post-restorationist also means post-evangelical in some sense (see Kevin VanHoozer, The Drama of Doctrine for a great discussion of “post-evangelical” theology).

As I see it now, it is necessary to start with the notion of missio Dei--that the mission is essentially and properly God’s. That God is doing something is the basic datum, and that the people of God are permitted and expected to participate is the corollary that emerges in the narrative of Scripture. What we perceive God to be doing, therefore, is determinative for our articulation of mission. One of the most insightful terms I have encountered in the conversation about mission is coined by Chris Wright in his Mission of God. It is “teleological monotheism,” which handily sums up a number of things at the core of mission. Most basically, mission is about a telos: a goal, purpose, or aim. Movement toward an end characterizes everything God does. He does not simply sustain to sustain, for example, but sustains purposefully. This is the Christian sense of reality that makes “missional” a hopeful framework for emerging God-talk. Also, the particularly Christian nature of mission is rooted in the narrative that assumes the only God, Yahweh of Israel, is the one working his agenda, calling and sending his people to bring it to fulfillment.

Like many, in the course of my theological formation it became evident that a latent Platonic dualism had shaped my assumptions about what God is doing, and having challenged that dualism, a whole new vista emerged that made much more sense experientially. If from a “biblical worldview” (how’s that for a metanarrative?!) it makes no sense to think in terms of salvation of the “soul” or “spirit” apart from the body, then God’s redemptive work must be understood holistically. What he is doing is saving the whole creation, including the whole person. God’s mission is holistic.

But there is more than one way to come at this, as I see it. On one hand, we may look at the ministry of Jesus as paradigmatic (“As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world” Jn 17.18) and thus understand the proclamation in word and deed (as well as the proleptic realization) of “the Kingdom of God” to be the definitive representation of God’s mission. On the other hand, a comprehensive biblical theology of salvation lays bare the variety of language (often metaphors) used to designate the multifaceted telos of God sometimes described blandly as salvation. This is seen in Paul alone, in fact, where ideas ranging from inclusion in the covenant people to forgiveness of guilt to relational reconciliation to resurrection into new creation are present, to name a few. Accordingly, as this realization has gained acceptance, a broad but representative phrase has become common currency in English: God is “setting things right.” Indeed, the Kingdom on earth as in the heavens is creation set right--the restoration of all things. This is truly biblical restoration; this is God’s mission.

A Perspective on God’s Mission

2009-07-02T14:08:00.003-04:00

For at least 2/3 of my life, I had an easy answer to the question “What is God’s mission in the world?” I thought the answer was obvious. I honestly can’t remember anyone overtly teaching me the answer I would have given. It was easily assumed, and commonly held. After giving a blank stare and blinking a few times, I would have responded, “Saving souls.” If I had been asked to unpack my simple answer, I’d have wondered what rock you had been hiding under, and then said something like:

People have an immortal spiritual essence (component) called a “soul”. Because of the bad choices that all individual humans make, this spiritual essence is bound of an eternity of after-life torment in Hell. However, God has made a way through Jesus for our “souls” to be saved from this fate, and instead experience an afterlife of disembodied bliss in Heaven. One need only believe, follow the prescribed “steps” to accept one’s salvation, and stay out of trouble to change their eternal destiny. That’s all God’s really after in this world. He wants individuals to agree with the right ideas, and behave themselves, so that their “souls” will have a desirable afterlife.

My handy little definition of God’s mission served me well for a while. The really nice thing was that my main responsibility in regards to the mission was to make sure that I personally agreed with the “right” ideas, followed the “right” steps and reasonably behaved myself so that my fate in the afterlife was secure. Everything else seemed irrelevant. Even the idea of somehow participating in God’s mission to others, while a “good” thing to do, was rendered superfluous. I was oblivious to the more holistic Jewish understanding of a “soul”, and more oblivious to how much the definition that fed my spirit/matter dualism owed to Greek philosophy.

Eventually though, my simple and self-serving definition began to crumble. Among other things, as a sophomore in college I accompanied my father on a month-long mission trip to Ukraine. It was a paradigm-shifting, life-altering event that shook me to my core. Upon my return to the United States, I found my self-absorbed, afterlife-centered faith to be unsustainable, and the anemic, ethereal “god” it served to be unworthy of both worship and devotion. Unfortunately, both that version of faith and that understanding of God appeared to be prevalent in the church in North America. I thus came to a fork in the road: one path led away from Christianity and church altogether, and the other was the rocky and dangerous path of an active catalyst for change. One was a path of abandonment, while the other was the path of exploration. I chose the later.

My exploration of Scripture, Theology and history has led me toward a different understanding of God’s mission in the world. Theology enabled me to begin to see the narrative of scripture as a whole. No longer content to mine scripture for propositions and steps, I began to see a thread that ran throughout the entire story. In the Creation narratives, God tasks the human beings He created with bearing his image to the rest of his creation. Those humans make a selfish choice that throws the harmony of God’s creation into fractured chaos. Prior to that choice, creation is characterized by perfect harmony; between God and humans, between humans and other humans, and between humans and God’s creation. Human beings were able to find their value from the harmony that characterized their existence. After the choice was made, that harmony was shattered in all of its dimensions, and the world became a very different place. However, God would not be undone. As the world descended into chaos, God called a man we know as Abraham into a special relationship. Through Abraham, God would bring forth a people for Himself. God would bless them, and they would BE a blessing to the nations. In short, they were to bear God’s image; to reflect who God is. In spite of their noble calling and miraculous beginning, the people of God tend to be more interested in getting blessed than being a blessing to anyone else. Things don’t go so well for them in general because they tend to see their election as indicating favored status rather than as a commissioning. Even so, God does not give up on either his people or his mission in the world. God delivers them again and again, that they might live into their destiny. Eventually, God acts in a way that defies their imaginations, in order to move beyond the impasse. As his people cry out under the iron-fisted oppression of Rome, God became a human being. The Creator of all that is came into the world as an embryo in the womb of a teenage girl. Her song in the gospel of Luke, proclaims the redemptive work that she believed was being enacted by this incarnation. She believed that things were being set right; that the powerful would be torn down from their thrones while the humble are exalted; that the overfed would be left empty while the hungry would have their fill; that God was remembering His people and His promise. Her son grew into the man we know as Jesus, and powerfully proclaimed and enacted the Good News that God’s Kingdom is at hand; that it is “near”. He looked forward toward a time when “all things” would be “renewed”. Eventually, he was executed by the empire and the religious leaders of his own people. However, the grave doesn’t hold him. Whereas his life modeled the Way God intended His mission-oriented people to live, his death and resurrection open the door for all humans to become a part of this missional community, and free them from both the cycle of their sin and the threat of death. Liberated from guilt and fear, they are thus enabled to partner with God in His mission of the restoration of all things to the harmony that was lost in all of its dimensions. They are free to join God in reconciling the world to Himself.

Video: MPT's "Letter to God"

2009-06-29T18:49:00.001-04:00

Check out this video of my friend, Matthew Paul Turner's "letter to God"

Matthew Paul Turner-On Questions from Cross Point Church on Vimeo.

Recommendation: The Sacredness of Questioning Everything

2009-05-05T09:41:00.002-04:00

Every once in a while, I encounter a book that breathes life into me by the way it communicates profound truth. The interesting thing is that books like this almost always take me by surprise. Zondervan sent me David Dark's new book, The Sacredness of Questioning Everything, with the request that I review it if I liked it. I had heard of Dark, but had never read anything by him. The title intrigued me, so I opened to the table of contents...which intrigued me all the more:

Table of Contents

1. Never What You Have In Mind--Questioning God

2. The Unbearable Lightness of Being Brainwashed--Questioning Religion

3. Everybody to the Limit--Questioning Our Offendedness

4. Spot the Pervert--Questioning our Passions

5. The Power of the Put-On--Questioning Media

6. The Word, The Line, The Way--Questioning Our Language

7. Survival of the Freshest--Questioning Interpretations

8. The Past Didn't Go Anywhere--Questioning History

9. We Do What We're Told--Questioning Governments

10. Sincerity As Far As The Eye Can See--Questioning the Future

End Note: That Means To Signal a World Without End

That was enough to get me to start reading immediately. Halfway through the first chapter I was hooked. Dark artfully articulates faith in the context of what Lesslie Newbigin calls "A Proper Confidence"...faith that is not (cannot be) the equivalent of certainty...faith that recognizes our finite nature, our tendency to re-craft God in our own images and religion into self-justifying dogma. At times, he seems to be virtually channeling Kierkegaard in the context of 21st century Western culture. Dark offers us a thing of beauty, a life-giving breath of fresh air. His book invites us to take God a lot more seriously by taking ourselves a lot less seriously. Drawing from diverse voices (from Augustine and Aquinas to Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert to U2 and Arcade Fire) and various disciplines (Theology, Philosophy, Literature, Film, Music, etc.), he revives the Biblical tradition of questioning...as an act of humility in the pursuit of truth. He calls for us to cut through the propaganda, and resist any "powers that be" that would seek to subvert or co-opt the Way of Jesus. He beckons us to journey down a path that is characterized by faith, hope, and love (rather than certainty).

Pick up this book. You won't be disappointed.

Just in case you wondered

2009-05-04T21:36:00.002-04:00

I was invited to join a facebook group a few minutes ago by someone that we used to "go to church with" in another city. She doesn't know that a few years ago we left the fold of The Lord's Church. So I was invited to attend a group called The Lord's Church For those of you not on facebook, I will copy the description I found (which was what I feared). The groups says,

Anyone is invited to join this group if you are a member of the church of Christ. Please tell everyone about this group.
I am going to try and keep up with different events concerning congregations, camps, singings, gospel meetings, lectureships, etc. Please post anything happening in your area.

I bring this up because in the discussion of how to move forward as Post-Restorationist's, many, many of the members of Churches of Christ still deeply feel and believe they are the only ones.

I find that these comments and what I perceive as arrogance and superiority are extremely offensive to me. Just wondering if others see much of this and how you deal with it?

Amen, Methodists. Thank you.

2009-05-02T22:25:00.002-04:00

Wow! Check out this new Ad campaign from the United Methodist Church. Seriously...Wow.

May more churches, including ours, catch this kind of vision.

The Challenges on the Horizon

2009-04-30T13:47:00.002-04:00

One of my elders brought the following blog to my attention yesterday: www.graceconversation.com. It's a pretty interesting idea - four guys write the posts - two from the Conservative wing of Churches of Christ (Greg Tidwell - hey, he's a Columbus guy . . . at a church here in town . . . that I've never even met in nearly six years of ministering here . . . only about twenty minutes away from here . . . (there's about 10 Churhes of Christ of any size here in Columus) and Phil Sanders, who used to preach at the Concord Rd. Church of Christ in Brentwood, TN where my wife went before we were married and where we were married) and two guys from the Progressive wing of Churches of Christ (Jay Guin, an elder for the University Church in Tuscaloosa, AL (a church we stayed at on the way to New Orleans a few summers ago) and Todd Deaver (the only guy I can't play two degrees of separation with - but I bet I could get him in three!!)- all four falling within the spectrum we could probably look upon as "mainstream congregations" (read: no extremists).

So, anyhow, I ventured over there and the site has gotten quite a flury of action in the few months in been up and running (putting our conversation here to shame! :-) The idea behind the site seems noble - bring folks - who share a similar heritage - from differing ideological backgrounds together to have civil dialogue on important matters in regards to the Churches of Christ. So I spent a few minutes perusing the comments today over lunch. I'm curious if other contributors to our Post-Restoration site have been there, but I wanted to make a few reflections based on what I read there.

I applaud their efforts at bringing a converstaion that is often riddled with inflammatory and slanderous language to the point of being counterproductive to a format that promotes mutual edification and respect. Now, I feel totally ridiculous having to point that out since we are all Christians, you'd think it'd be a given . . . but I think we know our flesh better than that!

And while applaud their efforts and hope that they are blessed, I cannot help but read the conversation as an outsider. To me, the dialogue seems riddled in modernly constructed arguments and logic, and frankly, I have difficulty following them - or even caring to. I may just be using all this post-modern stuff as a way to wash my hands clean of some really important stuff, I don't know, but I'm not certainly not trying to take some high and mighty ground here. It may very well be that I have become numb to much of these kinds of discussions - something I would count as another of my many personal flaws. But, I can't help but wonder it if it is something more.

I believe the "Progressive" response to the often-oppressive and legalistic tradition that many in Churches of Christ grew up with 20 and 30 years ago was a purely (for the most part) modern response. And that response, rooted in a thoroughly modern epistemological thought-structure has sown for many of us in the next generation of leadership, some major problems. The dialogue that ensues between these groups seems to be pretty linear (from what I can see in the responses I read on this blog). Point - counter-point kind of stuff. I find myself, however, coming from a totally different thought-structure that doesn't catch much in these circles.

From my perspective, conversation at-large has greatly changed for those outside the church and for those connected at an arm's length, but we, in our churches, continue to muddle through so many archaic and unrelated minuteia. I still believe it is important. I still believe it is necessary. I just don't think that it is as central as we have made it. Making it central has made it divisive, something that has become our identity more than even Christ, himself. It's almost like we feel we need to get our in-house stuff figured out before we can allow our conversations to venture outside into the "real world." Unfortunately, I think we would be much better served by taking these conversations to the streets and allowing those outside the church to help form our understandings, instead of the inbred group think we seem to be better equipped to promote in our current structures.

I, personally, am interested in the relationship the Christian faith as to other faiths of the world. I believe there is salvation found in those other faiths . . . just not sure how, or why, or to what extent. I'm interested in the redeeming qualities portrayed in the arts and how we can better incorporate them into our identity as a redeemed people. I have a great interest in ecology and its connection to faith and theology . . . an area of theology that has been dormant for so long in the halls of academia. I have an interest in being part of a community that is diverse and hetergeneous so that I can learn from people who are different than I am.

And yet, I find in my own tradition (both macro & micro) a people who are consumed with making a homogenous, uniform reality built on stoic mantra and stodgy, esoteric -ologies. Certainly, I think the aforementioned blog is a positive move toward dialogue, but I find the coversation morose and overly internal. I find a people who would rather ramble on ad naseum (myself included!!) about God, instead of meeting Him in the realities of the world around us - this is a message to me!

I suppose, as a means to promote discussion, I'm asking you reading, is this a personal character flaw. Am I being some kind of academic snob claiming "no one gets me"? Certainly, that is not my intention. Looking ahead at things in Churches of Christ, where is postmodernity taking us? A pressing question that lingers since my days with Dr. Hicks is, How does a tradition "born and bred" in a thoroughly modern intellectual construct survive the desconstruction of that base without losing its identity altogether?

Torture and The Follower of Jesus

2009-04-24T10:35:00.000-04:00

Cross Posted from my blog

Obviously, the big talk for the last couple of weeks is the release of the torture memos by the Obama administration, as well as the waffling that the President and his administration have done about the prosecution of individuals who either participated in the practice of "enhanced interrogation techniques" or the people who wrote legal opinions justifying it.

I'm not going to talk about the dissembling and fracturing of language participated in by the Bush administration because of these legal opinions ("these documents say that what we're doing isn't torture so I can go in front of America and say we don't torture.") or the waffling by the Obama administration ("No, we won't prosecute the people who did this. Um... when I said 'we,' I meant the White House. Anyone else can do what they want.")

What I will say this. If we claim to follow a Jesus who told us not only to love our neighbors as ourselves (Matthew 22:39), but also to love our enemies (Matthew 5:43-45), if we claim to have the same attitude of Jesus and put others needs ahead of our own (Philippians 2:5-11), if we claim to follow a Savior who was tortured to death by the most powerful empire at the time, then as those followers we cannot condone or support this activity.

I honestly don't care what having committed torture says about America. I'm much more concerned that there are people who would view America's use of torture as a tantamount approval by Christians that torture is acceptable.

It's not.

Can torture gain information about potential terror attacks to prevent the loss of innocent life? Maybe. But the truth is that if we resort to tactics that those we consider evil use, then we are saying the (good) ends justifies the (evil) means. Here's the clue though. Almost everyone that we would consider evil, considers themselves good. A dictator typically thinks that he or she is doing what is best for their people and the means to accomplish that are unimportant.

If we claim to follow Jesus, we cannot be people who support torture. We simply cannot.

Quoting Theology: Good Friday Edition

2009-04-10T09:04:00.002-04:00

"So it is impossible to speak of an incarnation of God without keeping this conclusion in view. There can be no theology of the incarnation which does not become a theology of the cross. 'As soon as you say incarnation, you say cross.' God did not become a man according to the measure of our conceptions of being a man. He became the kind of man we do not want to be: an outcast, accursed, crucified...

...When the crucified Jesus is called 'the image of the invisible God', the meaning is that this is God and God is like this. God is not greater than he is in this humiliation. God is not more glorious than he is in this self-surrender. God is not more powerful than he is in this helplessness. God is not more divine than he is in this humanity."

--Jurgen Moltmann, The Crucified God pg. 205

Competition and other selfish pursuits

2009-03-31T04:55:00.003-04:00

I teach at a Language Institute in Gorlovka, Ukraine that has several buildings spread across the city. Recently I was at the main building to place an advertisement for a class I am teaching and I saw an interesting sign. It read - "Main building, main people!" It really got me to thinking.

The various departments of the Institute are highly competitive with one another, obviously to the point of absurdity. This is their "normal stance" - to compete with other faculties at the school. Yet once a year they change their focus and enter a national competition. During this time there is a strong sense of unity among the departments at the Institute because they want their Institute to be the best in the country. Intramural strife becomes inter-collegiate battle.

Curiously there does not seem to be a time in their calendar when they recognise that their struggle is not against other faculties at their Institute, or even with other Institutes and Universities in their country, but against the ignorance which education seeks to diminish. Perhaps "Main building, main people" is a slogan that simply perpetuates the ignorance and hands foolishness an easy victory. What would it look like to replace that sign with one that says "Preparing ourselves to join the fight against ignorance" or "Spreading knowledge and good will."

Too often Christians are like the students at my Institute. We fuss and fight with one another as if that is our divine calling. We are just like the early disciples who continually asked Jesus and each other, "Who is the greatest among us?" (Everyone already knew the answer to that question before they asked it, by the way). We congratulate ourselves on being like James and John, who saw a man driving out demons in Jesus' name and commanded him to stop - "Because he was not one of us!" (It is extremely ironic that this event occurred shortly after the disciples failed to drive out a demon!) Jesus had a consistent answer to these questions and actions - "Get over yourselves and start serving others."

Jesus the loving servant - now there is a pattern that is worth following.

More than Morality

2009-03-26T13:44:00.002-04:00

This note is for those who have doubts, who have struggles, who have fears and questions; and for those who have been left behind from their faith communities because their thoughts and views are considered to be taboo, heretical, lofty, or just plain crazy. Maybe together we can discover a new depth to our faith…maybe, together in our journey we will find that there is more to God than we have ever imagined.

For many, the Christian faith has become equivalent with leading a moral lifestyle, a lifestyle which is rooted in 1950 America. Faith is less about adventure, conflict, and freedom and more about pious abstinences; such as abstaining from alcohol, controlling the radio station and popular music, and removing ourselves from anything or anyplace that bears any semblance to a secular culture. This is not a new concept or habit, but has been lived out from the foundations of organized religion.

While this may seem like a harmless practice, and may even have some roots in good intentions, the fact remains that those who buy into this system of faith are completely missing the point of the Jesus life. To reduce faith to a culturally moral lifestyle is to remove Jesus from the equation in two ways: (1) I can lead a moral lifestyle without God’s counsel, intervention, or discipline, and (2) this reduction automatically makes the teaching of Jesus elementary at best, and irrelevant
at worst.

There is within us all a hunger to taste a grand scheme to life. All of us have a yearning for life to be effective – for our breaths to make a difference, our hands to create a lasting thing, our minds to produce lasting results – all to say that our lives have not been merely lived out, but that they have been experienced, important, and meaningful. The message of Jesus while on this earth was a direct relation to that yearning. His message was there is more to this life than just existing. There is more to religion than just ritual, tradition, and new styles of worship. There is more to sin than just doing something bad. There is more to forgiveness than just a relieved feeling in our guts. There is more to sacrifice than just giving something up. There is more to relationships than just surface level conversations. There is more to conflict than just arguments. There is more to compassion than just mission trips and service projects. There is more to holiness than abstinence.

The message that sentenced Jesus to death, the message that brought humiliation to the dark forces when Jesus arose from the dead is: There….is….so….much….more.

There is so much more because there is God. The King has come and made His home among the dying. He is here. He is present. And He is able. So then, the answer for those who are entrapped in the ritual of their tradition, the answer isn’t to quit the faith or find a new one, but rather to awaken their hearts to a new perception and understanding of their Creator. The answer for churches who are struggling and declining in this new season isn’t to create new programs and logos, but to journey together into a new understanding of the Father and His dream for creation. The answer for the searching unbeliever isn’t to just join a faith community in the hopes that a magical transformation will alleviate all their fears, doubts, and concerns, but instead the answer is to authentically pursue God and follow His leading.

May we all awaken to the glory of God in such a way that we are completely satisfied in only Him.

the weight of the Uninspired...

2009-03-26T12:47:00.001-04:00

I hadn’t been to this particular place in a very long time and I knew what to expect, but it was worse than I thought. Its’ tiredness had become exhaustion and its’ usualness had become a grind. My little ten minute speech earned some smiles, handshakes and a “thanks for that”, but the weight of that room seemed to cloud around me with an “is that all you got” smirk on its’ face. I went away a little different, it stayed the same.

I am not looking for hype. Hype is easy to find, but somehow in some Christian circles (churches, universities, camps…) it seems that creativity, expression and ingenuity have become suspect. While we could undoubtedly compile a long list of theological and ecclesiological conclusions that have fostered this distrust, here is my take on one.

We have more than compartmentalized that which is spiritual by saying it is only these “things” and not “those.” We have taken it hostage and placed it in a secure location guarded by men in suits, with high walls and typically a steeple. I believe this has sincerely been born out of our desire to control it. We want to control it because we can’t trust others with it. We fear that if what we call spiritual were to be open-ended to some degree then anyone could do with it as they pleased at anytime. So it has been stripped down, disarmed and assessed. Some have got it down to 5 acts while others go a little further adding in sub-points, but the distinction between what is “spiritual” and “everything else” is made clear. In this type of environment, creativity, expression and ingenuity are the exact things that could corrupt a sterile, hushed and controlled spirituality. Those things are fine when it comes to the “everything else”, but in regards to “spirituality”, creativity, expression and ingenuity create concern and apprehension. That day in that room, I felt the heaviness of human beings fed a regular and bland dose of so-called spiritual practices.

In the midst of Paul dealing with more “missing of the point” from some early followers, he makes a statement that is packed with freedom and possibility. He tells them that neither side of their argument has any value. He tells them that the only thing that avails, has value, or matters is “faith expressing itself (or working) through love.” That statement is bursting with potential. Those that would rather keep spirituality tied up are afraid that a free spirituality is a dangerous one destined to foolishly slide down a “slippery slope.” Conversely, I truly believe that anyone with honest intentions in following this way of Jesus can with some time and work find their way in it. They will undoubtedly make mistakes, but the power of their mistakes is not like the power of His grace (Romans 5:15-16) and the piling up their mistakes cannot overtake the piling up of His grace. (Romans 5:20) The fear we often articulate of allowing each of us the freedom to “express his or her faith in love” is not one I am buying into.

Jesus calls us into this new beautiful way of living full of graciousness, mercy, redemption, sacrifice, and justice. These things have no boundaries and are not only found in church. As I have said in a previous blog, His goal for us is not to hold worship services according to some preordained pattern. We are called to something much bigger than what is typically included in “going to church.” We are called to live in a new kingdom now finding ways to bring graciousness, mercy, redemption, sacrifice, and justice to this world full of bitterness, revenge, selfishness and injustice.

Yet we will never even begin to move in the direction of this goal if people are not freed to explore it…freed from restraining conclusions that serve better as reference points in the past instead of “periods” marking the end of discussion…freed from our current paradigms that teach us how to be observers rather than engagers…freed from overemphasizing bible classes, worship services and church programs to the neglect of bringing the solutions of the kingdom of God to the problems in the kingdom of men. We are created beings made by a Creator and given the ability and responsibility to create. Yet we are not following our own whims on this exploration. We believe in His Spirit, His essence in us moving. Maybe His creativity through us can dream up that possibility. Maybe His expression through us can communicate that love. Maybe His ingenuity through us can solve that problem.

I often wander what Jesus would say to those limiters of freedom who leave no room for individual faith expressing itself through love outside of their predetermined acceptable practices. Probably the same thing he said to the Pharisees who were concerned by the actions of the sinful woman who through her creativity gave even more meaning to the tradition of washing feet and expressed her faith through love by doing it with her tears and hair.

A "Dark" Perspective...

2009-03-23T08:32:00.006-04:00

Last week, Zondervan sent me a book in the mail to consider for review. I'd never heard of the book, but the title grabbed me immediately. It's called, The Sacredness of Questioning Everything, by David Dark. I have heard of the author, but I've never really read anything by him before and really didn't know that much about him. Imagine my surprise when I read the following in the first chapter:

"In no small way, I think I owe my ability to hear and interpret stories to my Granddaddy Dark, a farmer, minister, and a math professor with precise ideas concerning the way the parts of the Bible all add up into the irrefutable, always logical word of God. He saw no use of musical instruments in the New Testament accounts of the early church, so worship services he conducted did not use them. It was rumored that he once broke with a congregation when a kitchen was added to the church--there was no mention of attached cooking facilities in his King James Version.

But near the end of his life, my grandfather spake unto my father a saving word that was handed down to me. Seated in the car with my father, he observed that all the straight lines he'd drawn in the sand concerning what God wanted and What the Bible said were drawn because, as far as he could tell, this is what the Lord had spoken. 'But,' he told my father, 'if it ever turns out that I'm wrong about these things, any of it, move on.'" pg. 15

I do not know for certain that Dark has roots in the Restoration Movement, but it certainly "walks and talks like a duck", doesn't it? (UPDATE: I got a chance to ask Dark about this via facebook. His grandfather was a math professor at Lipscomb once upon a time!). I'm only about a chapter into the book, and I plan on posting a full review on it later. I am, however, already finding a ton of resonance with the thinking that Dark is presenting here. Here are a few snippets for you to mull over and interact with (if you like):

"It is only when we're blessed by a feeling of finitude that we can begin to perceive the holy, that sense of a whole before which our limited understanding is dwarfed." pg. 22

"Religion is born out of questions, not answers. Only a twisted, unimaginative mind-set resists awe in favor of self-satisfied certainty." pg. 22

"More humility might characterize our talk of God if we believe that the whole truth can never be entirely ours and that our attempts to nail God down are always well-intentioned human constructs at best, and idols at worst." pg. 23

"When we don't speak agreeably to someone with whom we disagree and don't know how to ask questions because we think we already possess most answers, we're practicing bad religion." pg. 23

Please feel free to interact with any of the above quotes, as I'd love to hear your thoughts on them. I'm not sure where else Dark is going in this book, but the first chapter, in many ways, is a beautiful articulation of where I feel I "am" right now.
AE

Choosing to Err on the Side of Grace

2009-03-19T08:08:00.004-04:00

Within the last couple of decades, many in our fellowship began to rediscover the concept of grace. In my opinion, this was a fascinating and much needed conversation that didn't go far enough. Many of us moved from a version of Christianity that often devolved into an earned and maintained salvation, to a version of Christianity that received salvation as a gift...that can often devolve into a subculture of entitlement, who's mantra is "I don't have to!" It never occurred to us that the question we were seeking to answer, might actually be a poorly framed question, suggesting a limited selection of anemic answers. We didn't notice that we were simply selecting the other side of an inadequate coin. We focussed on what grace freed us from, but stopped short of exploring what grace freed us "to".

Biblically, grace seems to be a proactive, transformative reality. It is a gift, but it is a gift that, once received, must be reflected and modeled to the rest of the world. As Scot McKnight suggests in his book, Embracing Grace: A Gospel for All of Us, once we embrace grace, we are to become an "embracing" people who exhibit grace toward the other...precisely because it is unmerited. It is less a benefit for members of a club...and more a new reality that they have bought into. To accept it for myself and refuse to extend it to others betrays both the gift of grace and the Giver. Don't just take my word for it, Jesus actually has quite a bit to say about this in the gospels (i.e. his comments on forgiveness after "The Lord's Prayer" and the Parable of the Unforgiving Servant...just for starters)

It's usually at this point that the fear impulse kicks in. What if we're wrong? This is the fear that haunts those raised in our tradition. Let me clear it up for you. We are. We have 3 pound brains and we dare to speak of an infinite God. When asked if he would fellowship a "brother in error", Fred McClure used to routinely respond "I don't have any other kind. We're all in error on something." N.T. Wright regularly begins his lectures by saying something to the effect of "I'm wrong about roughly 1/3 of what I'm telling you. I just have no idea which 1/3 that is." And thank God for His grace that washes over sin and "error" as he is actively working to form me into the image of His son...into the future where His dream for me and the world are reality.

The Bible is quite clear that the measure of judgment we apply to others will be applied to us. While I highly doubt that the Bible's concept of judgment is as equivalent to the American judicial system as we tend to presuppose in these discussions, the implications are hard to miss. We are going to be wrong about some things, but if, when it comes to judgment, "the measure I use" will be "measured to me", I want to "err" on the side of grace.

Inside the Restoration Studio

2009-03-16T23:57:00.000-04:00

Two things:

1) I have linked to a book that might be interesting to someday discuss. If someone has read it and would like to comment, I would be interested to hear some thoughts on it.

2) I thought it would be interesting to post some quotes and see what discussion comes from it (the quotes were found on a Google search and this blog).

“We will not hearken to those questions which gender strife, nor discuss them at all. If a person says such is his private opinion, let him have it as his private opinion; but lay no stress upon it; and if it be a wrong private opinion, it will die a natural death much sooner than if you attempt to kill it.” -Alexander Campbell-

“I have tried the pharisaic plan, and the monastic. I was once so straight, that, like the Indian’s tree, I leaned a little the other way. And however much I may be slandered now as seeking “popularity” or a popular course, I have to rejoice that to my own satisfaction, as well as to others, I proved that truth, and not popularity, was my object; for I was once so strict a Separatist that I would neither pray nor sing praises with any one who was not as perfect as I supposed myself. In this most unpopular course I persisted until I discovered the mistake, and saw that on the principle embraced in my conduct, there never could be a congregation or church upon the earth.” -Alexander Campbell-

I think these quotes bring to light a few things worth discussing especially with these quotes coming from one of the great thinkers and shapers of this movement. Also, how do these quotes change or come into light from a Post-Restorationist perspective?

mw

Change Agents!

2009-03-12T11:00:00.000-04:00

Let me give you just a peak into my childhood.

The church I grew up in was pretty dang conservative. Without going into unnecessary ruminations over things long since gone, one particular concept in this church has sparked my interest as of late. It’s the two words that struck both anger and fear into the hearts of even the most staunch and legalistic.

“CHANGE AGENT”

Beware the accursed label for, much like a pirate’s “Black Spot”, once it has been given to you, you will wear it to your grave. Because the church brotherhood I grew up in believed that the church was perfect and fully “restored” to the pristine blueprint of the New Testament (is there only one model of church in the NT?), anyone who attempted to change the model or expression of how church was done or developed was labeled with attempting to derail the entire holy experiment. For this particular group, “be-holding the pattern” was of utmost importance, and anyone to varied from this pattern was heretical.

It is ironic how God brings people to terms with their own terms. Over the last few years, “change agent” has become a life goal of mine, and I pray regularly for “change agents” all over this continent. Not just the church needs changing either. I’m praying for change agents who change the world. For scores of people who, with eyes fixed on a completely different culture, subvert the culture they’re working undercover in.

I’m hoping to partner and network with as many change agents as I can in Chicago. I think the church is in deep need of change; maybe the supposed “pattern” of the New Testament is about change anyway! What I mean is - wasn’t Jesus a change agent? Weren’t his followers agents of transformation that eventually swept across an Empire stuck in its ways? Isn’t the Kingdom of God itself an agent of change?

Where would this world be today if more of us refused to sit back and let things rot as they are? Why is complacency revered? Why are whole systems built on the assumption that no one will have the gumption to do something about the wrongs they see? When will there be justice? When will there be creative life bubbling over into the church? Our schools? Our homes? Our government? We desperately need change agents to break the pre-conceived “blueprints” and perfect ideas of our world.

Change agents were chided and run out of town in my church growing up - but I say we kick out the squatters. This world is a changin’.

Post-Restoration Sightings #1 (and thoughts on the previous post)

2009-03-11T15:38:00.001-04:00

It's very interesting to me that we haven't been able to find a place in the ancient-future emphasis in the emerging/ent church. I mean, that's right up are alley. I am fascinated how often I am reading material (non-Restoration material that is) and find blatant first-century appeals - however, the appeals are different than Restoration pleas. It seems that our restoration fathers focused on their understanding of the "forms" of church and reinstating them. They were ecclesiologically driven (which most of the current conversations have been), but a renewed christological emphasis is needed, and hopefully, beginning.

While they (the leaders in our movement) probably would have been quick to say, "We need to do what they did" we limited that (extremely?) to what they did in their worship gatherings - often misunderstanding their gatherings to be pretty much like ours already. I think one of the biggest flaws in the Restoration mentality (besides believing that we had already put the theological puzzle together leading to a theology of defense and protection - thanks Dr. Hicks), is how we limited our understanding of church to the four walls of buildings. I don't think this was the case at first - however, it became such an ingrained part of our movement, that it is difficult to isolate that from some of the more positive elements. This particular issue, you have hit on, I believe, is at the crux for us in understanding who we, as the Restoration Movement are/can be in a postmodern, experiential world.

One more note, we can make the same mistake today, and I'm as inclined as anyone to make it. Today we are much more apt to read into the life of Jesus and the church this radical message and life of action and social justice. We can see the life of Christ and the early church and make it all about this. (Even as I write this, I am tempted to castigate myself - but he hung out with Zaccheus, Abraham, Moses - all the patriarchs were extremely wealthy and powerful). However, this seems to be as incomplete as the other (while, perhaps, closer to the center).

In the coming weeks, I plan to post "Post-Restoration" sightings from books and works that I am reading. The most recent dose came in ReJesus by Alan Hirsch and Michael Frost. I was amazed how often they made the plea: "Look at the first century church!" (Really, they were more focused on Jesus and their understanding of living out their faith in him). They even suggest that we should empty our theology and make it less complicated and closer to what the early church fathers adhered to - wait a minute, that's what I've heard my whole life. Here are two of the most visible leaders in the missional church movement stealing our thunder! With that said, here is the first installment of "Post-restoration Sightings."

Alan Hirsch & Michael Frost
"Missiologically speaking, it is also essential that we travel lighter than we have in Christendom in the past. We believe we need to be as theologically unencumbered as possible so that we may more approximate the way the early Christians understood their relation to God." (p. 136)

Wow . . . I wonder what they would say about "No creed but the Bible"?

Validity of the Restoration Plea?

2009-03-11T01:05:00.001-04:00

If you've run in Restoration circles (whether being born into it, or catching up on the conservative side through online lectureships, like me), you've probably heard about the Restoration plea on which a lot of the fundamental aspects of our movement have been founded. The basic idea is that if the 1st Century church can somehow be restored in form, then the results of the early church will be replicated.

I can't speak for everyone who reads this blog, but I would bet that most of us see the logical fallacy behind that, i.e. results don't always follow a replicated form, especially if that form is replicated 1800 years later, since the world manages to change some in that time.

So is the Restoration plea sill valid today? If not, are there aspects of it that are?

So if the Restoration plea is not a valid one for the 21st Century, what are we trying to do? Do we start with a blank slate and create organic communities out of a desire to worship the Risen and Saving Christ, and seeking to emulate him in word and deed?

Or do we become "like the other nations," adopting their methods and manners in congregational structure and hope that people like our children's ministry enough to stick around until their kids graduate?

Theology and Pop Culture...an experiment

2009-03-10T09:40:00.000-04:00

I am embedding an episode from the current season of the television series "House". I know that some of you (Matt Wilson) don't like the show, and some others might be offended by some of the language or content. I went online and watched this episode after my friend Chris Thompson told me about it. One of the things I enjoy about the writing on this show is that they tend to allow complex issues to be complex. This episode deals with faith, worldviews, and even a little philosophy. If you can find the time, watch the episode and then either a) post your reaction/theological reflection as a blog post if you are a Co-Author on this blog, or b) post your reaction/theological reflection in the comment section of this post. I hope some of you find the time to participate because I think it might be interesting. I'll post my thoughts later in the week.

Translucent Church Leadership

2009-03-06T13:32:00.001-05:00

One of the things I like best about Churches of Christ is our denominational leadership structure.

We don't have one.

Each church is autonomous (pretty much) and has the ability to make decisions within itself. We're not bound to denominational strictures or fiats. Within a fairly loose set of doctrines, the individual congregations are not governed by a larger denominational body, but by elderships within each individual church. Which is where the fun comes in.

Through the latter part of the 20th Century, elderships were viewed almost as a board of directors. They were appointed for life (typically chosen by the other elders) and had basically unquestioned power of the church and its direction. This is still pretty much the case in more of the traditional churches of Christ. The shift that was happening in more progressive churches was from a director to a shepherd. And I think this is a very, very helpful shift.

Instead of being viewed from "on high," the elders lowered themselves into a position of guidance and counseling, while still acting as leaders. And the leadership styles went from being opaque into more of a translucent. As opposed to just giving directives, elders talked about why decisions were being made.

This is a style that I think really functions well, especially in the 21st Century. People like me (whether of my mindset or generation) don't want opacity from our leaders, we want to know why decisions are being made and that they've been thought through. We also want our opinions to be considered and heard, whether or not they're adopted or not. I think we would love complete transparency from our leaders, but recognizing that that's not always a possibility, we'll settle for translucency. We want to be assured that we're being led by people who love Jesus and want to be like him in their leadership, and will guide people to be disciples. I feel like I'm at a church where we have that, even if I don't always agree on how to do that.

I know our elders at Otter Creek are pursuing that and I am grateful for their leadership. I hope they continue be as transparent as they can be, guiding the congregation to look more like Jesus, both on a corporate and individual member levels.

Living (Not Solving) the Mystery

2009-03-06T11:38:00.000-05:00

Mystery. The very word seems like an invitation. Paul speaks of mystery as if it is a marvelous thing – a way of entering into the purposes of God. For Paul this long awaited mystery is simple to state, if not to comprehend – it is Christ in you. (Colossians 1:27 NIV)

Those in the wake of the restoration movement in North America probably have a love/hate relationship with mystery. We crave to be engaged in the mystery that is God, yet we long to “solve” the mystery and settle into certainty. In Bible class as a child I gladly entered into the mysterious world of the Bible – hearing stories that quite simply baffled the imagination and pushed the edges of credibility. I was much like the little boy in the following story…

A child leaves Sunday school and is asked by his grandmother what he learned in class. He said, “The story of Moses leading the people out of Egypt.” When grandmother asked for details, the little boy continued. “Well, they got to the edge of the Red Sea and Pharaoh’s army hemmed them in. So Moses called in the Israeli Air Force to lay down some cover fire and the Navy to send boats for a rescue.” Surprised the grandmother asked, “Is that really what they taught you in class, son?” The little boy replied, “Well, that’s not exactly what they said, but if I tell you their version you would NEVER believe it!”

I was taught that God most certainly was a wonder working God – but only back in those days. It struck me as strange that God suddenly changed his operational methods after so many centuries, but I could swallow it because my larger culture denied any activity on the part of God – in the unlikely event that God even existed. It was a bizarre experience to hear people try to explain how God loved to create everything from nothing, to send powerful wonder working prophets, to display his incomparable power in the life of Jesus and his disciples, and then to claim that God suddenly stop doing anything that was detectable by our senses. It made me immediately question whether we should even pray. I was told that God still works “providentially” – whatever that means – to answer our prayers (but just to be safe do not expect too much).

With the next breath I was told that I should read and believe my Bible. And on every page I bumped into outrageous claims about what God had done, was doing and was planning on doing in the near future. I was encouraged by Jesus to have faith, because a person with faith as small as a mustard seed could effectively say to a mountain – “Go throw yourself into the sea” – and it would obey. I was told by Paul that God can do more that I “could ask or imagine.” And I felt a yearning in my heart to develop a “holy imagination” that simply allowed God to be God without trying to get all the answers lined up and codified.

In our fellowship that was a difficult place to sit, because we tried diligently to chart and graph everything – to domesticate God to a size that anyone could understand. The only problem with all those efforts was that God refused to be domesticated. God is a wild, unpredictable and powerful God. All attempts to domesticate God simply end in idolatry. Better to take Scripture at its word and join the journey with the God who calls but is always a mystery to those who answer that call.

A New Episode!

2009-03-05T09:49:00.000-05:00

It actually happened! Against all odds and general not getting things done, Adam and I recorded a new episode of the PostRestoration Podcast! And it's available here, http://postrestorationist.podomatic.com/entry/eg/2009-03-04T22_01_43-08_00, and hopefully through iTunes soon again, if it's not already.

In this episode, we discuss some of thoughts based on the Christian Chronicle article about Churches of Christ in Decline, found here http://www.christianchronicle.org/article2158685~Church_in_America_marked_by_decline.

We look forward to hearing your thoughts and interacting with you both here and/or on the Facebook page.

peace.

Phil

Old High School Pictures, Puberty, and a "Post Restorationist" Perspective

2009-03-04T20:42:00.000-05:00

I will never forget when my wife, Meghan, found an old high picture of mine at my parents house. It was slightly embarrassing at the least. I am sure that there are many that can resonate with having to identify with a very awkward time captured in a nice little photo, for our loved ones to see.

How awkward could it have been? Let me just put it this way, I had spiked hair that had way too much gel, a nice layer of oily skin on my forehead, braces, and a goofy version of facial hair that is known as peach-fuzz. I think it was fair to say that I was a disaster at best. So as my wife gazed at this picture of me, then her eyes gazed at mine, I knew exactly what she was thinking. She was probably attempting to understand how that could have been me!

I tried explaining to her that my eyes haven't changed that much, my hair is still brown. I also explained to her that I haven't gained too much weight, and if you look closely you can still see what you see in me today. I don't think she bought it. As of a matter of fact, she explained jokingly (at least I hope) that if she would have known me in high school, things between us would be much more different.

This awkward phase is an amazing time of transition. Puberty, as the text books call it, is a sign of emerging adulthood. And how cool is it to experience the ups and downs, the joy and frustrations of so much change. I will never forget when my voice could not decide to stay deep or not. It was an experience to see my spotted peach-colored facial hair come in. It was also absolutely frustrating to tame the oily skin, to harness desires. The excitement of it all came with mixed emotions and a lot of self examination.

I would like to think that I have emerged out of puberty as more of a whole person. I sometimes look back and cringe at my old pictures, while still having fond memories. The ultimate satisfaction of the puberty process, isn't so much the process, as it is what I've become because of it.

I am very proud of my Restoration heritage. It brings me such joy to see the spirit of this movement, where it all started, and where it is going. With my whole life, rooted in this movement, I am very much aware of the areas that absolutely frustrate me in many ways. With that said, there is much I am excited about as well.

I am tempted to say that the Restoration movement is in some sort of puberty stage. There is a natural tension and joy within our movement because of the transitions, not only within our culture, but within our churches as well. I feel very blessed to be living in such a time of self-examination and progress. With this, there will be pains and frustrations. But even more then this, it is a time of great hope within our movement.

I am still coming to grips with the "post..." terminology and theology that is floating out there. To be honest, I don't know if I ever will understand the complexity of these conversations. I, myself, still believe I am in this "puberty" stage in Jesus. There is still a lot to be learned. With that admission, I would be happy to share my limited knowledge and thoughts on these conversations.

I want to thank Adam Ellis for introducing me to a whole new world within our heritage. He is a powerful witness to the hope of an emergence of a "Post Restorationist" perspective. I would also like to thank him for the opportunity to share within this context.

Let me end with this.

As we dust the old restoration photographs and peer into the eyes of the the church today, let us find hope in our high school snap shots. It is powerful what can be done through awkward times of transition. But just maybe, God will allow us to see a glimpse of what it means to enter in adulthood. If we look closely, I am confident we will begin to see glimpses within this forum as we share and discuss together on what exactly does it mean to be apart of a Post-Restorationist perspective.

-Dan Jones

It's a condition more than a position

2009-03-03T23:22:00.001-05:00

When I first heard the term "Post-Restorationist," I had already been primed by the likes of Brian McLaren, and other articulate authors, to resonate with such a label. Thanks to Adam Ellis, the word has given many of us a sort of leverage point from outside the box that allows us critically examine the stuff of Restorationism that has shaped us, and to somehow jettison the bad, but appreciate and indeed carry forward all the good we find therein. And to re-appropriate the words of Peter Rollins in describing the "emerging church," to be Post-Restorationist is more of a condition than it is a position. It goes without saying that there is no "Post-Restorationist statement of faith," but we do find ourselves having learned so many of the same lessons from our past, having so many of the same conversations today, and excitedly dreaming new dreams of a hopeful future for the church in her many contexts.

I leaned heavily on Adam's term "Post-Restorationist" in a paper I wrote for Stone-Campbell Movement historian Dr. Doug Foster at ACU, which was entitled "Stone's Hinge: The Return to Primal Restorationist Impulses in Post-Restorationist Church Plants." In that paper, I attempted to define what I intended by the label "Post-Restorationist." I offer it here, hoping that this small piece will allow folks with the condition known as "Post-Restorationist" to better locate themselves.

Without argument, the Churches of Christ departed from Barton Stone’s way long ago and pursued the “hard style” of the “radicalizing” Campbell. Yet there is of late a sense of return—whether intentional or not—to propensities more aligned with Stone. This “Post-Restorationist” movement can be witnessed most clearly in recent church plants moving beyond the Churches of Christ heading. Before pursuing such interconnectedness, however, we will move toward a definition of “Post-Restorationist.”

Writer Brian McLaren, himself raised in a strand of Restorationism (Plymouth Brethren), contends, “Beneath these squabbles over distinctives, one nearly always finds an idealism among restorationists.” It is that idealism that McLaren believes should be preserved, while the “less helpful static” should be jettisoned. Post-Restorationists seem to be capturing this (dis)continuation of Restorationism. The Post-Restorationist, as blogger and doctoral student Chris “Fajita” Gonzalez puts it, has “moved from a theologically loyal position in relation to the Restoration Movement to a theologically critical and explorative position” which Gonzalez argues was modeled by Stone and Campbell within their own initial movements. Avid blogger, youth minister, and wordsmith Adam Ellis coined the descriptor “Post-Restorationist.” He defines it best by adapting Dallas Willard’s take on “Post-Evangelical”:

Post-Restorationism is by no means ex-restorationism. There are, of course, ex-restorationists, and even anti-restorationists, but Post-Restorationists are Restorationists, perhaps tenaciously so. However, Post-Restorationists have also been driven to the margins by some aspects of Restorationist church culture with which they cannot honestly identify.

Just as Barton Stone was in some sense driven to the margins in being eclipsed by Campbell and his followers, likewise Post-Restorationists find themselves on the fringe of their heritage. Paradoxically, it is my thesis that there is an identifiable return to primal Stoneite impulses in Post-Restorationist church plants, and such a departure from the label “Church of Christ” in these church plants may actually be a faithful recovery of the vision upon which Churches of Christ originally built their identity.

For the complete pdf file of "Stone's Hinge," click here.

Tyler Priest also blogs at http://thepriesthood.wordpress.com and looks forward to connecting with more Post-Restorationists.

Launching A New Blog

2009-03-02T13:16:00.000-05:00

Welcome to Post-Restorationist Perspectives! Several years ago, my friend Phil and I launched a podcast called Post-Restorationist Radio, and were surprised at how many people seemed to resonate with such a perspective. We did the podcast for a while, but then took a 2 year hiatus due to the general craziness of life. (In the meantime, we also launched a facebook group). We are in the process of relaunching it as "The Post-Restoration Podcast", and have already recorded the first episode. This blog is an attempt to provide people who find resonance with this conversation an outlet. I'll be posting here frequently, but I'm also inviting several of my friends to be contributing authors as well. If you would like to be a contributing author, please email me with the text of your first post, and I'll add you.

To my knowledge, I coined the term "Post-Restorationist" a few years ago in a blog post. By way of explanation, I am re-posting it below." Welcome to the conversation.

Thursday, October 07, 2004
The Post-Restorationist
My religious tradition (the churches of Christ) is a part of what has historically been known as the American Restoration Movement. It was a movement dedicated to both unity and "the restoration of 1st century Christianity." Interestingly enough, the term "Restoration Movement" was not used by either Campbell or Stone (founders/leaders of the movement) and was applied in retrospect to describe it by others. Campbell prefered to think of it as a new or continuing reformation. Campbell, however was a thoroughly modern fellow, and truly believed that if everyone would simply put aside their preconceived ideas and approach the Bible objectivly, they would all reach the same conclusions on key issues. There is much that I admire in both Campbell and Stone, but I believe that human beings simply do not have the ability to approch things with complete objectivity, nor were the scriptures written that way.

I recently have been thumbing through a book called "The Post-Evangelical" by Dave Tomlinson. In the introduction, Dallas Willard says "To correctly appreciate this, you have to start with the realization that what Tomlinson calls post-evangelicalism is by no means ex-evangelacalism. There are, of course ex-evangelicals, and even anti-evangelicals, but post-evangelicals are evangelicals, perhaps tenaciously so. However, post-evangelicals have also been driven to the margins by some aspects of evangelical church culture with which they cannot honestly identify."

There has always existed some confusion over whether or not churches of Christ are evangelical or not. The best answer seems to be "sort of." However, this comment resonated with me as I read it. I realized that it kind of sums up my feelings about the restoration movement and restoration thought. It's like I told a friend of mine a while back when he asked me "What are you still doing here (in the churches of Christ)?" I believe in the movement. I believe in the spirit of continuing reformation that Campbell and Stone bought into as opposed to crystalizing their beliefs (or the agreed upon beliefs of the majority of the churches) at any given point. I disagree with the modern/Enlightenment based assumptions of the "Restoration Movement" such as unity based on total agreement of the meaning of the scriptures in matters of (arbitrarily chosen) core doctrines. I also would say that instead of the forms of the 1st century church, it is their spirit and ability to redeem and subvert the culture they existied in for the kingdom of God that needs restoration. Forms are almost always relative to context. So, here I stand as a Post-Restorationist in an awkward loving relationship with the movement that has nurtured my faith since I was born, desperatly wanting it to live up to its potential, unwilling to settle for the mediocrity, compromise, and lethargy that its founders and indeed Jesus himself would not have settled for, and unwilling to leave it to an anemic and pathetic fate.