Monthly Archive for March, 2007

Emerging theology

Published
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Graeme
on March 30, 2007
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Many of the books I’ve been reading in recent months are by the authors who are firmly in the ‘emerging’ camp of the church. On the whole they are written in a style I like and have some very, very good things to say. They are thinking long and hard about the Church and their faith and are trying to rethink church for the 21st Century.

Whilst there are some aspects of the emerging church theology I am not particularly comfortable with, I do applaud their attempts at trying to reach beyond the boring type of church that is prevalent for many. I’ve been very fortunate in that the last 3 corps I’ve attended have been far from boring. Each had their issues, but at least one of them was emerging without ever needing the label.

Anyway, a few weeks ago I was involved in a conversation over at another Army blog following the asking of the question:

What is it about emergent church that means that it needs to re-write classical evangelical theology? Why can it not emerge with classical theology?

To some extent I do agree with the questioner. There are some elements of evangelical theology that are, at least to me, fundamental to my belief. However, I’ve realised that a lot of theology is the cause of much grief within the Church. Schisms have been based almost always on different interpretations of theology. It’s almost always the people with the new ideas who end up splitting off from the mother church and going their own way.

For well over a decade now I’ve been learning through interaction with other church traditions. Much of what I see in them I find difficult, but that is hardly surprising for a guy brought up firmly in the Wesleyian Holiness tradition. I’ve looked at the mystery of God that is evident in the Orthodox traditions, and the Holy nature of God that comes through in some Roman Catholic traditions, and I ask myself why can’t we be prepared to accept each other’s viewpoints more.

There are so many people who are ‘emerging’ from so many different expressions of the Church. The majority of these are dissatisfied with the shallowness that they feel surrounds them in their local congregation, or in the larger church. This at least is something that I can associate with because this is where I was 13 or 14 years ago. What’s more they are looking and asking why we do things the way we do and whether they are still relevant today. Surely there is a great deal of good in this? Surely the deepest truths that are fundamentals will survive a little scrutiny?

Renewal

Published
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Graeme
on March 29, 2007
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“The renewal of the Church will come from a new type of monasticism which only has in common with the old an uncompromising allegiance to the Sermon on the Mount. It is high time people banded together to do this.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

I’m not even sure where I saw this quote now, but I was struck by the different emphasis that Bonhoeffer places on how renewal will come to the Church. Now, I believe that the source of true renewal in the Church is the Holy Spirit, but this quote made me think the signs that should be seen in the life of believers.

True renewal within the Church is not simply about the signs and wonders that are often trumpeted as the proof of revival, although these are part and parcel of it. Instead, true renewal should bring about significant changes in the lifestyle of of the individual believer. If the signs and wonders experienced by people don’t result in a commitment to the teaching of Christ that is deeper than what has gone before then surely they have no real meaning.

Love as a verb

Published
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Graeme
on March 28, 2007
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Ok last post out of Exiles which I finally finished on Monday night!

Frost says:

Love then, in the Christian framework, is an action. It is a verb, not a noun. To love is to do something for others, not necessarily to feel something for them. It is to desire their spiritual growth, so that they might blossom and grow and become everything that God intended them to be in the first place. And, interestingly, this is also how we love God, by serving God’s creation.1

Frost is speaking on this subject from the aspect of some of the modern worship songs that express the love we have towards God as being of a romantic type of love. I tend to agree with him on this, although I still find myself singing the lyrics to some of these songs without worrying about it. Two people I respect have made similar comments in the last year. Firstly Geoff Ryan in an article on theRubicon.org said:

… more often than not the lyrics bear an unnerving resemblance to those of a 16-year-old girl mooning over her boyfriend. The sentiments of being “desperate for you,” “longing for you” and wanting to be “found in your embrace” are more telephone talk than theology, I reckon.2

Secondly, Eleanor Burne-Jones comments about her son that:

Just try getting a twelve year old boy to engage with romantic songs about being in love with Jesus. So I went out searching for some good crunchy ones themed on social justice and creation care and - guess what - nobody could point me to any.3

This move towards a romantic love in our worship songs shows one of the problems we have. When we talk about love within the Church we can reduce it to an emotional understanding. We are urged to love our neighbour and to show that love through actions, but the reality is that this is not an easy thing to do, because our first thought of love is an emotion. Due to our life experiences this is usually in respect of either romantic love or the love we feel for our family.

This understanding instantly causes a problem when it comes to loving our neighbour as David Fitch points out in a recent post on his blog. Using a quote from Dostoevsky’s “The Brothers Karamazov”:

The idea of loving one’s neighbor is possible only as an abstraction: it may be conceivable to love one’s fellow man at a distance, but it is almost never possible to love him at close quarters.4

Now I’m not as cynical as this, but it is difficult to love our neighbour in the same way as we love those who are closest to us. This is why we need to understand that loving others is more about doing things for them, rather than feeling something.

One thing to consider is that when we start doing things for other people we begin to see the inherent worth that every individual has. Every man, woman and child in this world is made in the image of God. As we start to do things for them, not only do we begin to see them as God sees them, but it is also an act of worship.

1 Michael Frost, Exiles: Living Missionally in a Post-Christian Culture, pg 310

2 Geoff Ryan, Real Men Don’t Sing, theRubicon.org accessed 28 March 2007

3 Rural Planting, Evening Beaches blog accessed 28 March 2007

4 Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov quoted on Reclaiming the Mission accessed 28 March 2007

Worship as fellowship

Published
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Graeme
on March 27, 2007
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After almost 2 months I’m finally reaching the end of Michael Frost’s Exiles book. This isn’t really a sign that its a tough read, but more in relation to the things that have been going on in my life over the last 5 weeks.

Anyway, Frost’s last two chapters are about Worship and it’s place in the ‘Emerging’ church. Reading through these chapters there is nowhere near the amount that I disagree with or question in comparison to the rest of the book.

When looking at how worship has developed over the years, Frost has this to say:

… worship services ought to be corporate expressions of the overflow of the regular life of a community that churches together at some level every day.1

By doing this our primary gathering place moves away from the church building itself and becomes the places that our most private interactions happen; our homes. This is fast becoming my understanding of how we should be involved in church.

The first 8 years of my adulthood were spent in a succession of rented bedsits across England. At the time I was crying out for a deeper fellowship within the corps I attended, but continually failed to find it. This led me into a lifestyle that became far more about finding that fellowship outside the church, whilst continuing to attend on a Sunday and go through the motions. Only occasionally did I glimpse the possibility of something deeper being available, and it was always in the homes of others.

I’ve realised that this is something that not only I have suffered from. I’ve been blessed for the last 10 years with real deep friendships amongst the fellowships I have made my home. At present I probably feel the greatest fellowship with other believers in my house group. It is where the real church stuff happens. Coming together on a Sunday with others is great for celebrating our wonderful Lord, but the house group is where “the rubber hits the road”.

Our homes are becoming fortresses in the western world. Places of safety to retreat to away from our hectic lives, but I think that this is where the real worship is done, especially when we throw open our homes and lives to share with our fellow Christians and non-Christians too!

1 Michael Frost, Exiles: Living Missionally in a Post-Christian Culture, pg 286

Justice and rights II

Published
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Graeme
on March 21, 2007
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Ok firstly a warning: I’m still not sure where my thoughts are going on this, but I feel the need to ask the questions! Feel free to offer constructive criticism.

The western world sees justice as being about the rights of the individual. Indeed individual rights have become almost sacrosanct. It might be naive or simplistic to say this, but this culture of individual rights is something that leads to the way people are quick to resort to litigation to stand up for their rights.

Individual rights can, when allowed, lead to the sort of situation that we see in The Salvation Army in the UK when ‘risk assessments’ have to be done for every activity. So in order to protect us from being sued for negligence, officers and leaders must go to the places they think about taking people in case a person trips over and breaks their hip because they weren’t looking where they were going.

In a world where legal precedent holds weight, the actions of the individual in upholding what they see to be their rights, is not necessarily a positive thing for society as a whole. I understand that this is dangerous ground, and that to withhold the rights of the individual is open to abuse, but it is something that we have to consider.

Also I’ve been uneasy for a while with the whole wealth increasing system of combating extreme poverty. All too often it feels that our solution to a problem is to implement a western capitalist model which ignores the good of a community and instead leads the community away from its traditional roots towards a model of life that is acceptable to our mindset.

Now when it comes to the church, a lot of church conflict is based around individuals exercising their right to individuality, yet within the body of Christ I think that this right is actually superceded by what is good for the body as a whole. I’ve even heard it said that in the Kingdom there are no rights there are only responsibilities. Therefore, we do not have the right to free speech, but we have the responsibility to speak truth.

Don’t get me wrong I believe in justice and human rights, but I’m starting to wonder whether it is as simple as that. When the Old Testament speaks about justice it is in terms of righteousness rather than rights. The rights of the individual amongst God’s people were often ignored in order to uphold the unity of the people of God. Almost always this was because of a lack of righteousness on the part of the individual.

So rather than forming a programme because this is the current trend within the church, the programmes we form must come out of the heart of God in our own hearts. Rather than simply fighting for the rights of individuals, is it possible that our churches should model a community that places the good of the community ahead of the rights of the individual?

Justice and rights

Published
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Graeme
on March 20, 2007
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I think Christians (especially evangelicals) too easily make justice about individual rights. It’s an easy default move when we don’t have visible justice going on in the local body itself. I think articulating justice in terms of rights enables us to put justice at a distance because it enables justice to become a concept separate from the way we engage victims, the poor and relationships in everyday life. more

I read this quote and found it really interesting and it’s certainly provacative. Whilst I’m not sure yet what I think I suspect that he may have a point in what he is writing. This is one to come back to me thinks!

Seeing people differently

Published
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Graeme
on March 18, 2007
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Over the last 2 days I’ve had two different encounters with the verse 2 Corinthians 5:16Open Link in New Window. The version that appears when you ‘mouseover’ the verse is not the one I read, so instead the New International Version says:

So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer.

What a wonderful verse this is. Firstly, and this is the point that Sarah picked up on in her sermon this morning, we do not see Jesus as the world sees him. The world looks at him and sees a moral teacher who managed to get himself killed, or as a mythical character, or as someone to be ridiculed and proved false.

The second thing, which I think I read in the book I’m trying to read at the moment (see the sidebar) but can’t find the bit right now, was about the first sentence of the verse. “So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view.” How liberating is this verse?

According to Paul we no longer have to see people as the world sees them. This means that we see everyone as our Lord sees them, which is as people who need to be loved. What’s more this does not only refer to those people who society looks down upon, but also those who are looked up to.

Anyone who has read this blog for a while knows where I stand on God’s option for the poor. I believe wholeheartedly that God, whilst loving all people, has a special regard for those who the world rejects. However, this verse has challenged me to think again about those who the world reveres.

Talent, wealth and success are the worlds indicators of value and worth. However, God sees us all equally. Those who are successful are loved just as much, yet it is all too easy to ignore this value in the successful!

This verse challenges us to see everyone as God sees them, not just the poor and needy who have no value in the world’s eyes. Whilst the rich and successful are accepted by the world, we need to see beyond the trappings of the world’s value system and see them as God sees them.