Pietism in the drivers seat, and Doctrine riding shotgun

Too often Reformed Christians disparage their siblings who are Pietists. Brad Boydston makes an astute comment on Scot McKnight's Jesus Creed blog:

"There are two reasons why Pietism gets misunderstood. The first is that it is a renewal or life movement rather than a doctrinal movement. It’s not saying that doctrine is bad — or unimportant but that it should not be in the driver’s seat. The car should be driven in a relational manner. That idea is troubling to those who have a rigid doctrinal system that they believe should drive everything.

Secondly, because it is not a tight system requiring uniformity in all matters, there are people within Pietism who have at times driven off in pretty weird directions — mysticism, extreme individualism or extreme focus on experience — to the degree that it pushes aside sound doctrinal input.

As I see it, though, you want to have a Pietist driving the car or it will never go anywhere significant. But you also need to have someone with a doctrinal orientation riding shotgun — and reading the map. They may annoy each other occasionally but the map reader is necessary or the driver can end up going in circles.

In 1 Timothy 4:16 the apostle tells Timothy to watch his life and doctrine. The church needs both the doctrinal and pietistic impulses. We’re the healthiest when we have been able to integrate both. Spener was calling the church to reintegrate both impulses. Those who caught the vision from him ended up doing some pretty amazing things — evangelizing the world, developing the notion of public education, caring for orphans and refugees…"

Comment by Brad Boydston — January 4, 2012 @ 10:39 am
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/2012/01/04/pietism-what-is-it/

Spiritual Nomads

I recently had a conversation with a woman who seems to have been bouncing around the Body. She started out Lutheran, then attended several popular charistmatic churches in our area, then sojourned among the Baptists, then then Presbyterians, and now is hanging out with us. Why does this happen? She became upset with doctrine at some places, upset with divine laughter and "slaying in the spirit" at another place, at dispensational dismissal of the charismatic gifts  at another place, upset with the pastor at another place, and at lack of fellowship at another.

I wonder how long she'll sojourn with us?

Every tradition has its distinctive doctrine. Christian sub-groups foster their identity through the cultivation of distinctive doctrine. Not only do they have a distinctive take on this doctrine, but they also place a distinctive emphasis on it. The unique gift that each group offers the church universal is its distinct doctrinal emphasis. Yet, the temptation of each tradition is to turn their distinctive doctrine into a trump card that subjects every other Christian doctrine to its service. The challenge for each tradition is to offer their gift to others while at the same time reformulating their doctrine in light of the whole Christian faith.

 --John L. Drury

That is part of the challenge of each tradition. It is the challenge for each Christian to decide what part of the garden they will plant their seed, and stay there long enough for their plant to bear fruit.

Evangelicals and Memorial Day

(This is what I wrote to my uncle, who is a deacon in the Catholic church, as a preface to the article below.)

I don't know what it is like for Catholics, but this is a real problem for lots of us who are evangelicals. Many of us celebrate the civic year instead of the Church Year: Mother's Day, Memorial Day, Father's Day, Fourth of July, Labor Day, Veteran's Day, Harvest Festival (the evangelical alternative for Halloween.) We also do not have a formal liturgy, like the Catholics or Orthodox, which would prescribe the texts and practices for our worship. Thus we often mistake our own concerns for those of the Spirit. All this can tempt us to put country before God.

Finally, because Protestants tend to have a more individualistic understanding of their faith, when De Young uses the word "church" below, it might be a worthwhile exercise to substitute "any particular Christian..."

Thinking Theologically About Memorial Day


Posted By Kevin DeYoung On May 26, 2011 @ 5:26 am

This is post probably has something to make everyone unhappy. But here goes.

With Memorial Day on Monday (in the U.S.) and, no doubt, a number of patriotic services scheduled for this Sunday, I want to offer a few theses on patriotism and the church. Each of these points could be substantially expanded and beg more detailed defense and explanation, but since this is a blog and not a term paper, I’ll try to keep this under 1500 words.

1. Being a Christian does not remove ethnic and national identities.

In Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, male nor female, slave nor free (Gal. 3:28), but this does not mean men cease to be male or Jews ceases to be Jewish. The worshiping throng gathered around the throne is not a bland mess of Esperanto Christians in matching khaki pants and white polos. God makes us one in Christ, but that oneness does not mean we can no longer recognize tribes, tongues, nations, and peoples in heaven. If you don’t have to renounce being an American in heaven, you shouldn’t have to pretend you aren’t one now.

2. Patriotism, like other earthly “prides,” can be a virtue or vice.

Most people love their families. Many people love their schools, their home, and their sports teams. All of these loves can be appropriate. In making us for himself, God did mean to eradicate all other loves. Instead he wants those loves to be purer and in right proportion to our ultimate Love. Adam and Eve should have loved the Garden. God didn’t intend for them to be so “spiritual” that they were blind to the goodness around them. In the same way, where there is good in our country or family it is right to have affection and display affection for those good things.

Of course, we can turn patriotism into an idol, just like family can be an idol. But being proud of your country (or proud to be an American or a Canadian or a Russian or whatever) is not inherently worse than being proud of your kids or proud to be a Smith or a Jones or a Dostoevsky. I find it strange that while it is fashionable to love your city, be proud of your city, and talk about transforming your city, it is, for some of the same people, quite gauche to love your country, be proud of your country, and talk about transforming your country.

3. Allegiance to God and allegiance to your country are not inherently incompatible.

Sometimes Christians talk like you should have no loyalty for your country, as if love for your country was always a bad thing. To be sure, this must never be ultimate loyalty. We must always obey God rather than men. But most Christians have understood the fifth commandment to be about honoring not only your parents but all those in authority over you.

Moreover, Jesus shows its possible to honor God and honor Caesar. This is especially clear if you know some of the Jewish history. The tax in question in Mark 12 is about the poll tax or census tax. It was first instituted in AD 6, not too many years before Jesus’ ministry. When it was established a man by the name of Judas of Galilee led a revolt. According to Josephus, “He called his fellow countrymen cowards for being willing to pay tribute to the Romans and for putting up with mortal masters in place of God.” Like the Zealots, he believed allegiance to God and allegiance to any earthly government were fundamentally incompatible. As far as they were concerned if God was your king, you couldn’t have an earthly king.

But Jesus completely disagreed. By telling the people to “render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s” he was saying there are duties to government that do not infringe on your ultimate duty to God. It’s possible to honor lesser authorities in good conscience because they have been instituted by a greater authority.

If you read all that the New Testament says about governing authorities in places like Romans 13 and 1 Peter 2, you see that the normal situation is one of compatible loyalties. The church is not the state and the state is not God, but this does not mean the church must always be against the state. In general, then, it’s possible to be a good Christian and a good American, or a good Ghanaian or a good Korean. Patriotism is not bad. Singing your national anthem and getting choked up is not bad. Allegiance to God and allegiance to your country do not have to be at odds.

4. God’s people are not tied to any one nation.

When Jesus says “go ahead and give to Caesar what belongs to him” he is effectively saying, “you can support nations that do not formally worship the one true God.” Or to put it a different way: true religion is not bound with only one country. This means–as we see in Revelation 7 and Isaiah 49 and Psalm 87 and Matthew 28 and Acts 1and a hundred other places–the Church will be transcultural and transnational.

While American churches are in America, they must never be only American churches. We must keep in mind (and when applicable, explicitly state) that our congregations are filled with brothers and sisters from all over the world. Likewise, we must work hard to help people see that Christianity is not just a Western religion or American religion. Christianity started in the Middle East and quickly spread to North Africa, and parts of Asia and Europe. The Church was always meant to be international. Today there are more Anglicans in church in Nigeria than in England, more Presbyterians in South Korea than in the United States. The promise to Abraham way back in Genesis is that through his family God would bless the whole world. Christianity is not tied to just one certain nation. Following Christ is not an ethnic thing. You can be from any country and worship Jesus.

5. All this leads to one final point: while patriotism can be good, the church is not a good place for patriotism.

We should pray for service men and women in our congregations. We should pray for the President. We should pray for the just cause to triumph over the evil one. We are not moral relativists. We do not believe just because all people are sinners and all nations are sinful that no person or no nation can be more righteous or more wicked than another. God may be on America’s side in some (not all) her endeavors.

But please think twice before putting on a Star Spangled gala in church this Sunday. I love to hear the national anthem and “God Bless America” and “My Country, Tis of Thee,” but not in church where the nations gather to worship the King of all peoples. I love to see the presentation of colors and salute our veterans, but these would be better at the Memorial Day parade or during a time of remembrance at the cemetery. Earthly worship should reflect the on-going worship in heaven. And while there are many Americans singing glorious songs to Jesus there, they are not singing songs about the glories of America. We must hold to the traditions of the Apostles in our worship, not the traditions of American history. The church should not ask of her people what is not required in Scripture. So how can we ask the Koreans and Chinese and Mexicans and South Africans in our churches to pledge allegiance to a flag that is not theirs? Are we gathered under the banner of Christ or another banner? Is the church of Jesus Christ–our Jewish Lord and Savior–for those draped in the red, white, and blue or for those washed in the blood of the Lamb?

In some parts of the church, every hint of patriotism makes you a jingoistic idolater. You are allowed to love every country except your own. But in other parts of the church, true religion blends too comfortably into civil religion. You are allowed to worship in our services as long as you love America as much as we do. I don’t claim to have arrived at the golden mean, but I imagine many churches could stand to think more carefully about their theology of God and country. Churches should be glad to have their members celebrate Memorial Day with gusto this Monday. We should be less sanguine about celebrating it with pomp and circumstance on Sunday.

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 The comments are worth reading just as much as the article...

Is Youth Ministry Killing the Church?

via Brad.

Guaranteed to be controversial, IMO this article from the Theolog blog points to a real problem. If we are theological nominalists, then we will be more prone to ecclesiastical "grouping" rather than ecclesistical "participation." As a result we will be more vulnerable to the temptation to "have our needs satisfied" and "be fed," because we will have identified ourselves--consciously or unconsciously--as consumers, rather than servants. This has consequences not only for youth ministry, but for women's ministry, children's ministry, etc.

The great challenge is to be able to minister without fragmentating into focus groups.
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February 4, 2010

Is youth ministry killing the church?

by Kate Murphy

After having worked for several years as a youth pastor, I recently accepted a call to be an interim solo pastor. One weekend, Sara, a beloved saint of the church, died after a long battle with Alzheimer's. On Sunday morning I was standing in the choir room discussing plans for the funeral when Jonathan—a high school sophomore—walked in. “Deanne,” he said to the music director, “I heard about Sara, and I thought you might need me to take Libba's spot in the bell choir this morning.” She gratefully accepted his offer and excused herself from our conversation to review the music with him.

It was a pretty mundane exchange, but I was blown away. It's remarkable enough to see a 16-year-old boy drive himself to church early to join a bell choir comprised of adults in their 50s and 60s. But even more intriguing was Jonathan's perceptiveness. Not only did he know that Libba was Sara’s daughter, but life in the church had taught him to anticipate congregational needs. He knew that Libba played with the bell choir, and he realized she probably couldn't play that morning. Unprompted—I checked with his parents—he offered to fill in.

This couldn't have happened at any of my previous churches—though it's not Jonathan's faith that's of a rare caliber. It's his connection to the congregation.

I've always met young Christians through youth programs. I've been hired by churches so committed to the discipleship of their young people that they've dedicated resources to creating specialized curriculae and activities. These churches expect regular events that are created exclusively to minister to young people.

But I wonder now if we're ministering them right out of the church. Unlike Jonathan, the kids I've previously pastored never sat around a table with adults at church-wide fellowship events—they had their own program options. They've never worked side by side with other members to put on a neighborhood vacation Bible school—they were off on their own mission trips.

When the youth were asked to contribute to the larger church, it was usually through manual labor, the only thing we thought they were capable of doing. Yes, we may have let them plan and lead one worship service a year, but we never dreamed of asking any of them to sit on the worship committee or serve as a regular worship leader. The message was that the church existed to serve them, not the other way around.

Kenda Creasy Dean and others warn that when our children and youth ministries ghettoize young people, we run the risk of losing them after high school graduation. I saw evidence of this in Jonathan. Over the years I've worked with young people as passionate and serious about their faith as Jonathan is. I think I've done youth ministry with integrity.

But I may have been unintentionally disconnecting kids from the larger body of Christ. The young people at my current congregation—a church that many families would never join because “it doesn't have anything for youth”—are far more likely to remain connected to the faith and become active church members as adults, because that's what they already are and always have been.

Kate Murphy is the interim pastor of Hickory Grove Presbyterian Church in Charlotte, North Carolina.

The Fellowship of the Ring and Nominalism

I've been thinking about nominalism again and the way groups can either be collections of individuals or a unity of members, and my mind naturally wandered to that premiere metaphor of the church, the Fellowship of the Ring.

I began wondering, in the LOTR, at what point is the Fellowship broken? Of course, there was no better authority to answer this question than our daughter, Susan, so I asked her, and this was her wise reply:

The last chapter of Fellowship of the Ring is called "The Breaking of the Fellowship." In it, Boromir tries to steal the Ring from Frodo, Frodo and Sam flee, and the others scatter about trying to find them. Later we learn that Boromir dies and Merry and Pippin are scattered. So there are severals ways it could have been broken: Boromir's attack on Frodo, the physical separation of the members, or the death of one of the members.

However, is "breaking" the same as "ending?" In the very last chapter, The Grey Havens, when they're getting ready to sail away, Gandalf says to the hobbits, "...on the shores of the Sea comes the end of our fellowship in Middle-earth." And in the histories in Appendix B, the last entry says that when Sam had sailed away, and Aragorn, Merry, and Pippin had died, Legolas and Gimli also sailed West together, and "when that ship passed an end was come in Middle-earth of the Fellowship of the Ring."

So a few things may be concluded:
-The Fellowship was broken by death, strife, and/or separation.
-The Fellowship still existed in Middle-earth (though in a fragmented state) so long as some of its members were living there.
-We are left with the possibility that the Fellowship still exists, but not in Middle-earth.

Patricia Piccinini: artist and theologian?

More works of one of my favorite contemporary artists, Patricia Piccinini are collected here . She writes:

The sculptures present a series of creatures that I have designed to ‘assist’ a series of the endangered Australian animals. In the photographs, we follow more closely one of these creatures, ‘The Bodyguard (for the Golden Helmeted Honeyeater)’. It is very seductive to think that we could find a simple technological solution to complex ecological problems such as extinction. It is far more exciting to talk about genetic engineering than to designate a large area of habitat/real estate as national park so that dozens or even hundreds of native species might be given a better chance of survival. We have a long history of scientifically introducing new stuff into our environment in order to make it better, however it has rarely worked. Yet our relatively recent understanding of genetics seems to have left us ready to add yet more stuff in an unprecedented way. Why do we think we have it all figured out now?

I wonder how much of what she says is transferable to the way we think about the church? Continuing the long obedience in the same direction...

The Annals of Either-Or

Brad has commended this article, "False Dichotomies in Mission," By Christopher J.H. Wright. From my point of view, it is an excellent analysis of the way either-or thinking has affected the life and mission of the church.

Wright lists the following false dichotomies:

1. We have tended to separate the individual from the cosmic and corporate impact of the gospel, and to prioritize the first.

2. We have tended to separate believing from living the gospel, and to prioritize the first.

3. We have tended to separate evangelism and discipleship, and to prioritize the first

4. We have tended to separate word and deed, or proclamation and demonstration, and to prioritize the first.

5. We have tended to separate evangelism from ecclesiology, and to prioritize the first.

Well worth reading and repentance.

Ecclesiastical Romanticism?

There are differing models describing what it means to be an artist. I think they can be used to different different models for being ministers.

The first is medieval, and organic. The artist sees herself as part of a larger purpose, and uses her gifts to further that calling. The focus is not on her, but on her work, and the way it reveals something real, true, good and/or beautiful. Aesthetics, like ethics, follows metaphysics. The artist is not an isolated, autonomous individual, but a particular person who is participating in and reflecting something greater than herself. Even if she is working alone in her studio, she understands that her work as directed beyond herself and somehow "connected."

Think of the countless anonymous builders of cathedrals, some making stained glass, some carving stone, some hewing beams, and so on; all individual master craftsmen, dedicated not to their own glory but to the glory of God. We may not remember their names, their work has withstood the centuries and continues to move us today.

The Renaissance gives us another model. Again, aesthetics follows metaphysics, and the metaphysics of the modern period denies universals. What is real is the individual. Hence the focus is on the artist, the artist as genius. So familiar are they that we are on a first-name basis with them: Michelangelo, Leonardo, Raphael. Individual perspective and talent is celebrated so highly that it eventually leads to the cult of genius.

It plays out in the 19th century Romantic image of the autonomous and misundertood artist, one who is an "outsider," or "rebel." He stands valiantly against tradition and institutions, out of the conviction that change is the engine of creativity. This eventually makes art into a quest for novelty. I have in mind now artists like Théodore Géricault, Manet, Cezanne and the painters of the Salon des Refusés.

Ultimately we come to the current situation where often one's credentials as an artist are the degree to which one can invent oneself as an artist. The greatest work of art now is not the object but the subject: not a painting or a sculpture, but the artist.

So how does this relate to ministry?

It seems to me that there are some ministers who follow the Ecclesiastical Renaissance model. They are the celebrated superpastors whose names are familiar to us because of their unique perspective or individual charisma. We know them by name: Rob Bell, Mark Driscoll, John MacArthur, Rick Warren. We try to imitate them, adopting their techniques, their language, their dress, their worship styles. This can be instructive, but in the end one can only become what one is already, potentially.

Then there are the clergy who are Ecclesiastical Romantics, a particularly tempting position for some emergents. These are the folks who are "disillusioned with church as building, box, organization, meeting place and program." They set themselves outside of tradition and institutions, and seek to create something that will feel authentic because it is new and different. Ecclesiastical Romanticism may be the only way to reach a culture that thrives on novelty and narcissism, but it seems to me to lack the resources to help that culture move beyond itself.

So, tonight I wonder: is there any place remaining for ministers who aspire to the medieval, organic model? Is this what New Monasticism might be calling for?

Big Box 2: Definitions

One final detail remains before we can address Donn's post. How shall we understand "big box?" Using MacIntyre's template, I take this term to be able to refer to different things:

1) A Modern understanding: "Big Box" refers to the collection of discrete, independently existing individuals who happen to be engaged in a similar set of beliefs and/or practices, at generally the same time and place. However, their unity is not "authentic," only assumed or imposed. That is, they do not participate in some universal greater than themselves, so that they are a particular instance of that universal, but instead, having rejected the idea of universals they constitute themselves as a "unity."

This is why they need to "brand" and "market" themselves: branding and marketing are "external" ways of establishing identity, unity, and "relationship." (For Modern churches, they are perhaps the only ways.) Modern "big box" churches are "plants" in the sense of factories. They offer a product, and if one can assemble the necessary "parts" and master the necessary techniques, more of the product can be delivered.

Thus, the Modern "big box" church is located at a specific space-time coordinate composed of a certain quantity of members located at that coordinate, as opposed to the postmodern "no-box" church, which resists definition even in terms of specific space-time coordinates. In general, postmoderns react strongly against quantification, calculation and prediction--and so reject the "programs" approach of modern Big Box churches, while still maintaining the modernist metaphysical commitment to discrete individuals

2) A premodern understanding of "big box" might refer to the particular instance of the universal. That is, the particular thing participates in or images the greater thing, so that its existence is dependent upon the reality of the universal. It does not constitute itself as a collection of individuals, but rather receives its existence as a result of its relationship to the universal, and is one of many possibile instances of the universal thing. Its definition is therefore impossible apart from the universal.

The premodern church is a "box" insofar as it incarnates the universal: it is a concrete, physical instance of the Body of Christ. It has a nature which is given to us to understand, enjoy and instantiate. It may be big or small, but it has a specific location in time and space, and most importantly, it has a history. From a postmodern perspective, boxes are seen as confining: they limit the individual's freedom. Hence, the more the premodern church recognizes a history and honors a tradition, the bigger the box it appears to be.

Big Box 1: Why is it dying?

In "The Death of the Big Box," Donn Johnson notes how increasing social decentralization is fragmenting education, and wonders what the effect this will have on the Faith:

Is the same process at work in spiritual formation? Is there a decline in the "big box" method of spiritual formation? The big box of a church building at a set time and place with assigned teachers and preachers? Are all the alternative offerings basically good things? Or do they risk creating truncated Christians who gravitate to places and pastor that validate their opinions and make them feel good? The cultural dominance of the church in the culture is long-dead, and that's probably a pretty good thing because we in the clergy and institutional denominations have not done that good of a job stewarding our affluence. George Barna's recent post illustrates how American Christians are living a far more ala carte style of theology and belief than ever before. Where churches and denominations used to cohesively define and clarify belief, we have become a nation of belief-grazers who assemble a mash-mash of beliefs and preferences that are not always coherent or consistent, and we know that and don't really care.

Before we consider the practical implications of this phenomenon, we should consider its causes. What roads lies before us depends on what road we are on, and what road we are on depends on what road we have taken. Elsewhere, I have written about the theoretical underpinnings of decentralization/fragmentation. See

Refusing to let the Culture Dictate our Lives",

"Institution or Body?",

"Square Circles and Nominalist Christians",

"Is Denominational Leadership no longer Important?",

"Understanding Nominalism Part I,

"Understanding Nominalism 2,

"Barna on Designer Faith" and

Understanding Nominalism 3.

Others have written with far more depth and eloquence: for example, S. Joel Garver, "Nominalism and the 'Modern.'" Of course the great-grandaddy of them all is Alasdair MacIntyre. If you haven't read his classic description of decay and bricolage in After Virtue, here it is:

Imagine that the natural sciences were to suffer the effects of a catastrophe. A series of environmental disasters are blamed by the general public on the scientists. Widespread riots occur, laboratories are burnt down, physicists are lynched, books and instruments are destroyed. Finally, a Know-Knothing political movement takes power and successfully abolishes science teaching in schools and universities, imprisoning and executing the remaining scientists. Later still there is a reaction against this destructive movement and enlightened people seek to revive science, although they have largely forgotten what it was. But all they possess are fragments; a knowledge of experiments detached from any knowledge of the theoretical context which gave them significance; parts of theories unrelated either to the other bits and pieces of theory which they possess or to experiement; instruments whose use has been forgotten; half-chapters from books; single pages from articles, not always fully legible because torn and carred. None the less all these fragments are reembodied in a set of practices which go under the revived name of physics, chemistry and biology. Adults argue with each other about the respective merits of relativity theory, evolutionary theory, and phlogiston theory, although they possess only a very partial knowledge of each. Children learn by heart surviving portions of the periodic table and recite as incantations some of the theorms of Euclid. Nobody, or almost nobody, realises that what they are doing is not natural science in any proper sense at all. For everything they do and say conforms to certain canons of consistency and coherence and those contexts which would be needed to understand what they are doing have been lost, perhaps irretrivably....

...in the actual world which we inhabit, the language of morality is in the same state of grave disorder as the language of natural science in the world which I described. What we possess, if this view is true, are the fragments of a conceptual scheme, parts of which now lack those contexts from which their significance derived. We possess indeed simulacra of morality, we continue to use many of the key expressions. But we have--very largely, if not entirely--lost our comprehension, both theoretical and practical, of morality. (MacIntyre, After Virtue, pp. 1-2)

If MacIntyre is right, the increasing fragmentation in education that Donn has identified is a result of the larger fragmentation of a conceptural scheme. MacIntyre gives a geneological account of this fragmentation in his great work, Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry.

One final detail remains before we can address Donn's post. How shall we understand "big box?" This will be the subject of my next post.

QUOTES: "God hates visionary dreaming."

Guess who wrote this? Hint: he died for what he believed.

"Innumerable times a whole Christian community has broken down because it had sprung from a wish dream. The serious Christian, set down for the first time in a Christian community, is likely to bring with him a very definite idea of what Christian life together should be and to try to realize it. But God’s grace speedily shatters such dreams. Just as surely as God desires to lead us to a knowledge of genuine Christian fellowship, so surely must we be overwhelmed by a great disillusionment with others, with Christians in general, and, if we are fortunate, with ourselves.

By sheer grace, God will not permit us to live even for a brief period in a dream world. He does not abandon us to those rapturous experiences and lofty moods that come over us like a dream. God is not a God of the emotions but the God of truth. Only that fellowship which faces such disillusionment, with all its unhappy and ugly aspects, begins to be what it should be in God’s sight, begins to grasp in faith the promise that is given to it. The sooner this shock of disillusionment comes to an individual and to a community the better for both.

A community which cannot bear and cannot survive such a crisis, which insists upon keeping its illusion when it should be shattered, permanently loses in that moment the promise of
Christian community. Sooner or later it will collapse. Every human wish dream that is injected into the Christian community is a hindrance to genuine community and must be banished if genuine community is to survive. He who loves this dream of a community more than the Christian community itself becomes a destroyer of the latter, even though his personal intentions may be ever so honest and earnest and sacrificial.

God hates visionary dreaming; it makes the dreamer proud and pretentious. The man who fashions a visionary ideal of community demands that it be realized by God, by others, and by himself. He enters the community of Christians which his demands, sets up his own law, and judges the brethren and God Himself accordingly. He stands adamant, a living reproach to all others in the circle of brethren. He acts as if he is the creator of the Christian community, as if his dream binds men together.

When things do not go his way, he calls the effort a failure. When his ideal picture is destroyed, he sees the community going to smash. So he becomes, first the accuser of his brethren, then an accuser of God, and finally the despairing accuser of himself."

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Living Together

What do you think of this? It certainly challenges the prevailing evangelical and philosophical winds. I found the comments on this blog helpful in appreciating Bonhoeffer's text.

What if Starbucks Marketed like a church?

via Brad:



I found the You Tube comments worth even more than the video:

"churches don't need marketing churches need prayer. "

"This is the problem with all the protestant evangelical McChurches all competing for each other. This is what you get for fracturing the Christian Church."

"Church isn't a consumer transaction; it's a relationship"

While I am altogether in agreement with those comments (especially the last one), there are other perspectives. Take a look here for example. According to David Deal,

"Some might find it distasteful for a religious institution of any denomination to so nakedly embrace marketing. But religious institutions are no different than secular organizations that seek to attract and retain members: they need to make themselves known if they’re going to succeed. And like secular organizations, they can choose any manner of tasteful or obnoxious ways to spread their message through marketing."

So, according to Deal, it is not a question of whether or not religious institutions should stoop to the market. It is assumed that "consumer" is the default position of everyone in our society, and that churches, synogogues, mosques and temples reduce to markets. So the question is whether or not religious institutions are in tune with how consumers wish to be treated.

From this perspective, Evangelical churches are using outdated techniques to appeal to and manage their consumers, which erodes trust between church as marketer and potential consumers That means churches need to adapt and follow consumer behavior. (Heaven forbid that they should form it!)

Here's what Deal predictions the consumer of 2018 will be like:

The answer is fairly simple: follow consumer behavior — don’t try to “manage” it. To help the marketer, Lisa introduces the four “Ps” of understanding consumer behavior in the digital world: permission, proximity, perception, and participation:

1. Permission: consumers derive comfort by managing with whom and when they engage. Example: Gilt.com is a closed, invitation-only shopping community.

2. Proximity: consumers tap into networks and affiliations based on on content and association. The notion of curated content is important here. Example: Tina Brown’s The Daily Beast content curator connects people with common interests. Daily Beast brings proximity to its readers.

3. Perception: consumers inhabit multiple personas. Marketers need to engage the persona consumers are willing to reveal and allow consumers to manage their own perceptions. Example: Apple enables consumers to customize our iPods however we want, and we pay Apple for the privilege.

4. Participation: consumers participate in order to feel connected. Example: Sprint and and Suave have collaborated to create In the Motherhood, a community managed by moms for moms.

Consumers use these 4 P’s to manage their fluctuations between core need states. We cannot “control” them. We have to let consumers guide us.

Lisa’s closing thoughts: if you’ve gotten permission from consumers to participate in their world, ask them to share their experience with others. Consumers will act as brand advocates for you – if they like you.

Sigh. Too bad Paul didn't do a better job of asking permission to participate in Philippi, Thessalonica, and especially Ephesus. Think of how many more brand advocates they could have made!

Rediscovering Liturgy

VCC has already been touched by this wind of the Spirit; will we continue to let His breeze blow, or will we shut the window? Here are some recent CT articles that might help us out.

A Deeper Relevance
Why many evangelicals are attracted to that strange thing called liturgy.

"...Worshiping in the liturgical tradition is no panacea. When not approached wisely, it can be misused and abused; it can tempt participants to substitute mere religious ritual for a vital, personal faith in Jesus Christ. Nonetheless, this tradition does have much to offer contemporary evangelicalism. Take our fascination with relevance: the first thing this liturgy asks us to rethink is what we mean by "relevant" worship.

It is not an accident that when we think about making church more relevant, we usually mean meaningful for one particular group. In North America, that usually means 20-somethings and young families. For one, 20-somethings are some of the hardest people to attract to church—we evangelicals love the challenge of reaching them. Two, when they start raising families, they begin to return to church—we also love a field ripe for harvest. It's a perfect "target audience" for a new church to aim at.

Unfortunately, churches that perceive themselves as relevant often by their nature limit a full-bodied expression of the church—that is, they "target" 20- and maybe 30-somethings, and usually those of that group who are middle- and upper-middle-class white-collar types rising in income and influence. Few churches that consciously seek relevance want to clear the way to church for the poor, the homeless, welfare moms, drug-addicted men, or those trapped in nursing homes and convalescent hospitals. These "target audiences" are not very relevant to many "casual, contemporary" churches.

Liturgical churches know that as profound a reality as is the surrounding culture, there is an even more profound reality waiting to be discovered. This is one reason I thank God for the liturgy. The liturgy does not target any age or cultural subgroup. It does not even target this century. (It does not imagine, as we moderns and postmoderns are tempted to do, that this is the best of all possible ages, the most significant era of history.) Instead, the liturgy draws us into worship that transcends our time and place. Its earliest forms took shape in ancient Israel, and its subsequent development occurred in a variety of cultures and subcultures—Greco-Roman, North African, German, Frankish, Anglo-Saxon, and so on. It has been prayed meaningfully by bakers, housewives, tailors, teachers, philosophers, priests, monks, kings, and slaves. As such, it has not been shaped to meet a particular group's needs. It seeks only to enable people—people in general—to see God....

We are in the habit of thinking that our culture—the reality we strive to be relevant to—is the measure of meaning. That's why we're tempted to shape our churches to look like that culture, because that is what people in this culture will find meaningful. It is logical on one level, and there is no question that we have to be culturally sensitive in our outreach. But the liturgy wants to show us a deeper logic and relevance.

The liturgy begins by saying that our culture needs not so much to have its "presenting needs" met as to be gently and calmly invited into a wiser culture—the culture of a Trinitarian God and his kingdom. This is what is blessed, now and forever. Our culture is the transitory thing, an apparition that will someday have to pass away, just as childhood has to pass away. The liturgy says to us as we enter, "You're in the culture of God and his kingdom now. Things will be different from now on."

See also:

Relevant Liturgy

"There’s an article on liturgy in a surprising place. RelevantMagazine.com is a for-twenty-something very significant Christian site. The magazine, more known for its emergent, missional approach, typically slates “religion” as often seen to be “irrelevant”. Yet in this article (link off this site) LisaMarie Goetz, a Christian Education major at Wheaton College with a minor in Christian Spirituality, declares: “Young adults all over the nation and the world are beginning to feel this way [that they want church – not a concert or a comedy club], and many are crowding liturgical churches each Sunday. It truly looks as if the liturgy is being revived in this generation....”

The Future Lies in the Past
Why evangelicals are connecting with the early church as they move into the 21st century.

"We confess that we have often lost the fullness of our Christian heritage, too readily assuming that the Scripture and the Spirit make us independent of the past. In so doing, we have become theologically shallow, spiritually weak, blind to the work of God in others and married to our cultures. … We dare not move beyond the biblical limits of the gospel; but we cannot be fully evangelical without recognizing our need to learn from other times and movements concerning the whole meaning of that gospel...."

"Like Webber, journalist Colleen Carroll Campbell has surveyed this youth movement that's dissatisfied with culturally co-opted Christianity and wants a more historically rooted form of the faith. Her results, featured in her 2004 book, The New Faithful: Why Young Adults Are Embracing Christian Orthodoxy, show that these young people recognize the anti-Christian nature of the culture in which they grew up. They have been "reared in a media culture that relentlessly lobbies for their attention and panders to their whims," and thus "find it refreshing when religious leaders demand sacrifice, service, and renunciation of consumerism." They feel not restricted but "strangely liberated" by the focus on objective morality and obedience in these churches. To them, this is finally a form of religion that stands over and against individualism and relativism. And they are "captivated by groups that stress stability, commitment, and integration—the very values they found wanting in their splintered, mobile families and fragmented, impersonal communities...."

"...Campbell found that the informal, spontaneous style of many free-church Protestant groups does not give these young adults enough of an anchor. In Massachusetts, Campbell spoke with Sharon Carlson, a young woman raised in the Plymouth Brethren movement, a free-church tradition that eschews liturgy, tradition, and hierarchy. Carlson described the Communion experience as "tearing up bread and passing around cups of grape juice after men in the assembly spontaneously stood and repeated the words that they felt prompted by the Holy Spirit to say," and she felt that was no longer enough. As Campbell reports, " 'I want to be more connected to history, the history of the Christian church,' said Carlson, who relishes the knowledge that she is worshiping the way Christians have for centuries. 'There have been generations of people before me saying the same prayers.' "

Creedal Christianity

Is there any place for "creedal Christianity in the post-Christendom, late modern world of the West?" This is a question our adult Sunday school will be entertaining in another week, as we study what happened "after Acts." It is also the question Jaroslav Pelikan entertained in the eighth decade of his life. Krista Tippett writes, "Pelikan, who died on May 13, 2006, was a scholar who devoted his life to exploring the vitality of ancient theology and creeds. He insisted that even modern pluralists need strong statements of belief."

This is a controversial position. Much of postmodern theology, with its re-discovery of "intellectus," an immediate, non-discursive way of knowing, is apt to dismiss creedal Christianity as "stiff" if not "dead." Indeed, the biggest criticisms might be summarized this way:

1) Creeds are power plays, which marginalize minority opinion.

2) Creeds, as unchanging, are no longer suitable to match the diversity and change of life in the 21st century.

2) Creeds, as propositional, violate the mystery of God and Christian experience.

Brad has an important link here, to help deal with those criticisms.

"Jaroslav Pelikan understood what a difficult thing unchanging creeds can be for modern people. He knew as well as anyone that historically creeds were employed in part to consolidate power — both of church authority and of Christian empire. But he insisted on capturing a sense of the profound and positive reasons Christianity, alone among the major traditions, seemed to require creeds. The global spread of Christianity and of the translation of the Bible into now more than 2000 languages, as Pelikan described it, "is the history of how one sought in a new setting not to speak the same thing but to say the same thing."

"And creeds, he believed, also meet a deep human need — one that is not diminished but intensified by pluralism. Pluralism, he reiterates during this conversation, is not the same as relativism; the singing of a creed, in fact, is a way of indicating a universality of the faith across space and time. Pelikan's own generous sense of space and time, I think, helped him internalize the original impulse of creeds and communicate their meaning to the rest of us. Every time he recited or sang the creeds, he tangibly experienced the fact that these same words were sung in the Philippines that same morning and recited by the Emperor Justinian in the sixth century and Thomas Aquinas in the 13th and intoned by his own grandfather in the 20th century. I have been struck by the number and diversity of people who have told me over the years that this program touched them in a special way. Among them have been more than a few Unitarians, whose faith tradition was formed in part in reaction against the very idea of creeds.

"Attempts to make creeds modern and contemporary often seem to sacrifice something in depth and grace. Jaroslav Pelikan compared this, interestingly, to the language of love. We can try to be creative and unconventional but there aren't terribly many ways to say "I love you." Again and again most of us fall back on well-worn words and find that they more than suffice.

"Having noted that, in one of the most poignant moments of this program, Jaroslav Pelikan recites one of the newest creeds he discovered — a creed written by the Maasai people of Africa. In 1960, they took the bare-bones summaries the great creeds represent, and enlivened them with the vocabulary of their lives. Pelikan reads this Maasai creed, which includes mention of hyenas and safari, with reverent passion and an almost child-like delight.

"And isn't religion at heart about mystery, I had to ask Jaroslav Pelikan, that can never be captured in words? Can creeds ever be sufficient as a statement of faith? He left me with a wonderful statement of St. Augustine, who apparently struggled with this same question in his own theologizing as well. We resolve to speak of these things nevertheless, Augustine concluded — inspiring Jaroslav Pelikan centuries later — not in order to say something, but in order not to remain altogether silent.

I am not Augustinian enough to fully agree that we are not saying anything while not remaining silent. Neither am I Reformed enough to affirm that all we ever can (and must ) do is speak. For Christians, religion is not at heart about mystery. Neither is it at heart about complete comprehnsion. It is about knowing and loving the God Who is Three in One, who reveals Himself in Jesus Christ, and invites us into His infinite, endless life of love, truth and beauty.

But I think Pelikan is on to something here. Creeds are not sufficient, but they are necessary. Belief matters. "For as (a person) thinks within himself, so he is." (Proverbs 23:7)

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How Relevant can be more relevant, and all of us more faithful to Jesus Christ

Dan Whitmarsh is pastor of LakeBay Community Church in Lakebay, WA. I read his blog regularly. Today this came across my screen. What Dan has written is so important that I am reproducing it here, for my own edification and yours. I can't think of anything I've read recently that is more countercultural and relevant than this blog entry.

Amen and amen, Dan!

Tuesday, March 18, 2008
A Case Study in the Power of Language

"Over the weekend, Seattle's Mars Hill Church opened up their newest location, in a former downtown bar. Personally, I think that's kind of cool. There's a huge metaphor here. This bar was notorious for the violence and mayhem it attracted. Many in the community were fed up with all the antics going on there. The Seattle Police Department was regularly called to break up fights among the drunken patrons.

Now, that place of darkness has been transformed into an outpost for the Kingdom of God. The Light has shined in the darkness, and the darkness has fled. This is what the Kingdom is supposed to look like: ground once held by the darkness taken and restored for the Kingdom of Light. I wish we would see more of this happening all over the city, all over the world.

However, that's not the purpose of today's post. I simply wanted to begin with some kudos so you don't think this is another Bash Mars Hill post. You can find those all over the internet, and I don't particularly want to join in. (That's not to say I don't have my own disagreements with the MH way of doing ministry, which I have blogged about in the past; just that I don't want you to think I'm a hater or anything). (By the By - if you have the stomach for it, and want to understand the way many people up here in the NW view MH and Christianity in general, just follow the link to the article, and then read the comments at the end. It's. . .frightening)

Here's what I want to focus on today. Tim Gaydos, the pastor of this particular branch, had this to say about the newest MH edition:

"We're all about Jesus," said Gaydos, a 33-year-old Seattle native. "We're not about religion. Religion sucks. ... And this is not your mom's or grandma's church."

This is a theme you hear quite often from a certain segment of Christianity. People who have decided that the Church has become irrelevant and musty and a little, well, nerdy. People who think we need to reshape and reframe the church in order to reach a new generation for Christ. People who have read Donald Miller and Erwin McManus and Brian McLaren and Rob Bell (note: I don't think any of those men would necessarily be represented by where I am about to go with this blog; they just ask some questions that then allow a second contingent to make less-than-profound statements such as the one above). The last time I picked up Relevant Magazine, I read this statement and many variations on it: "We're the NEW Church! We're Cool! We're Hip! We're Relevant! We're not like that old person's church anymore!"

I think there are at least three reasons why we need to cut this kind of language out of any conversation regarding the Church.

1) This language, and the thought behind it, is stolen directly from the Marketing Machine that drives American Consumerism. And the primary tool of that Marketing Machine is the Divide-and Conquer approach. Divide society up into niche markets, then sell your product to that niche market. And make it painfully obvious that anybody who doesn't identify with that niche is a nerd, a loser, an old person (horrors!), somebody to be laughed at and avoided at all costs. Come Be Like Us! Be Cool! Be Appreciated! Show Everybody How Cool You Are For Buying Our Product! Show Everybody That You Aren't A Loser Like Those Other People!

2) Which makes the next obvious point: the product is always sold over and against something else. We're cool because we're Not Like Them! Or we used to be like them, but now we're cool because we've discovered this new product. I used to be a loser; now I shave with Afta and all the hot girls pay attention to me. I used to be a loser, but then I bought the new Nicky Hilton line of clothing, and now I'm cool. The Church used to be a bunch of losers, but now we've rebranded, dumped that boring religion of all those Old People, and now we're cool. Come check us out!

3) All of which goes against the Biblical Call for the Unity of the Body. You see, one of The Primary biblical messages is that there is one church, and that we only reflect Christ when we live out that Unity in the Church. Jesus said the world would know we are his disciples by the way we love each other. Paul spoke powerfully of Christ tearing down dividing walls to create One New Humanity. Paul blasted Peter when Peter chose to stop dining with Gentiles. The Church is the Bride of Christ, and it is beautiful. Derek Webb attempts to speak for Jesus in singing "And you cannot care for me if you've no regard for her/If you love me, you will love the Church."

Therefore, it is wrong bordering on sinful to define ourselves over and against other churches, especially against the saints that have gone on before us. It is a cheap shot to make ourselves more attractive by demeaning our "mom's or grandma's" church. This kind of statement is demeaning, divisive, and the exact WRONG way to attract people into the Kingdom. In fact, we should be doing all we can to portray to the world that we are lovers, that we cherish our ancestors, that we honor those who have gone before; if anything, we honor all outposts of the Kingdom of God, regardless if they are "cool" or not. Sara Miles, in her "Take This Bread," states that one of the tougher things about becoming a Christian was realizing she had to be in the same family as a bunch of people she vehemently disagrees with. Yet, she says, it's God's family, so she'll do her part to get along and honor those who, outside of the Body, she would never have befriended. In other words, because we are all One in Christ, we respect one another, even if we don't particularly like, say, the music somebody else listens to.

I should say that I do admire the missional aspect of MH; I understand the crowd they are trying to reach and I love that they reach people my church probably never will. I applaud them for taking the Kingdom of God out onto the Highways and Byways, and that they get into the broken, stained, sinful lives of hurting people. They have faced a lot of opposition, and continue to thrive. May they continue to do so.

But it is time we all recognize that we dare not market the Church, nor even speak about the Body, in the divisive and destructive terms laid down by Madison Avenue. The strongest message we can send to the world is We're not like you - in fact, the message we bring is a lot better than anything you'll get out there. All that stuff being sold to you will only leave you empty. But here, life is different. We get along with people who aren't like us. Old people are actually kind of popular around here. And so are young people. But God loves us all, so we pretty much all love each other. And isn't that better than the empty loneliness you're trying to fill with aftershave?"

--Posted by Dan at 10:36 AM

The Future lies in the Past

Deuteronomy 32:7,29
Remember the days of old; consider the generations long past. Ask your father and he will tell you, your elders, and they will explain to you. ...They are a nation without sense, there is no discernment in them.

If only they were wise and would understand this and discern what their end will be!

Romans 15:4
For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through endurance and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.

2 Peter 3:2
I want you to recall the words spoken in the past by the holy prophets and the command given by our Lord and Savior through your apostles.

"We need intimate knowledge of the past. Not that the past has any magic about it, but because we cannot study the future, and yet need something to set against the present, to remind us that the basic assumptions have been quite different in different periods and that much which seems certain to the uneducated is merely temporary fashion.

A man who has lived in many places is not likely to be deceived by the local errors of his native village: the scholar has lived in many timeas and therefore is in some degree immune from the great cataract of nonsense that pours from the press and the microphone of his own age.

--C. S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory, "Learning in War-time," p. 28-29.

"By studying the past we can learn not only historical but metaphysical or transcendental truth."

--C.S. Lewis, The Discarded Image, p. 174.

A couple of weeks ago Ted showed me this article in CT: Chris Armstrong's "The Future lies in the Past."

Yesterday, my colleague Bonnie at EBC told me about hearing Leonard Sweet speak recently about the need to rediscover the past. (Wow. Has he ever done a 180 since Soul Tsunami. Forgive me, but my skepticism is surfacing here. Why is it that I am having such a hard time not believing that he hasn't sniffed where the publishing and speaking winds are about to blow, and so is poised for profit? )

Phyllis Tickle is blogging about the ancient future church.

The Spirit is on the move! Among a postmodern people who idolize their present experience, He comes to remind us that "that history is a story with a divine plot." You can't have a Story without a beginning, a middle and an end.

And if Hauerwas is right in his damning criticism of postmodernism,"Who told you the story there is no Story?" then the only way to make sense of our present experience is to re-discover the metaphysical and transcendent truth inherent in the past, and see how it relates to the Divine Plot.

I hope Louis Bouyer is able to see all this.

I hope I live long enough to see it develop and flourish.

Responding to Out of Ur,: "Disarming the Boomers"

"To be always relevant, you have to say things which are eternal." --Simone Weil




Out of Ur has been running a couple of entries here and here that speak about how younger pastors can relate to "Boomer" pastors. They are entitled (provocatively) "Disarming the Boomers:
Can a younger pastor bring change without getting blown away?" Here's the lead-in:

Let’s be honest. The distance between the Boomers and Busters isn’t just a generation gap—it’s a generation gorge. The cultural, technological, and philosophical shifts that have occurred in recent decades have given these two generations fundamentally different perspectives"

David Swanson writes,

One of the phrases that a young leader grows to loathe is, “You need to be patient.” Or at least I did. The truth is that “slow” and “fast” are very subjective. After a couple of years, I began to recognize the subtle looks of panic as I would suggest strategies or new ideas for the church. While these ideas seemed reasonable to me, to some of our Boomer leaders they sounded quite risky, radical even.

I am 53 years old, and I couldn't agree more, David. Speed certainly is subjective! Your slow may be my fast. But think about this: for both of us--as well as for those from the Psalmist to anyone who is suffering from evil and injustice--God's fast may be our slow. And similarly, for God, both Boomers and Busters must be incredibly slow. You might not be the only one who is impatient.

So maybe we should try to think about things not simply from our own subjective framework. (That is, after all a very Modernist thing to do, as Descartes--one of the Early Modernist Fathers--demonstrated.) Maybe neither Boomer modernism nor Buster postmodernism offer a perspective that is best able to be faithful to Christ.

Maybe we should be truly relational, and always be asking, "how can I keep in step with the Lord? What speed is He moving at?" None of us-- Boomers or Busters or Whatevers-- will ever be able to fully match His pace in the Kingdom dance Even as He is patient with us, we need to be patient with Him and with each other.

At the same time, we should always keep singing the psalmist's constant refrain, "How long, O Lord? How long?" All of us--Boomers and Busters and Whatevers-- share that song.

"Post-denominational," including a Radical-Modest Proposal

There's lots of talk these days about being "missional" and "post-denominational." These are rhetorically wonderful words and carry lots of excitment and, perhaps, even hope. But the philosopher in me likes to chew on things before swallowing them. So what do these concepts really mean?

An Aside:

Wherever there are conceptual vaccuums, we tend to fill them with images and dreams...not a bad thing, necessarily, but its like an engine only running on half its cylinders. For best Kingdom performance, we need to run our brains from both "sides." We need both concepts and images; logic and passion. I'm worried that after the Babylonian captivity of modernism, we are no closer to the Promised Land than before, as we are in the process of selling ourselves out to a different master.

Back to the Question:

So what does "post-denominational" mean? Here's some possibilities: (Of course, I welcome your further ideas.)

1) It means returning to a pre-reformational/pre-denominational ecclesiology. In other words, we should all quit being Protestants and return to the Holy Mother Church headquartered in Rome....but that hardly seems likely.

2) It means protesting protestantism by becoming a Restorationist. The Restoration Movement deplored creedalism and the institutional church and sought to restore a "primitive" Christianity unsullied by history's corruption.

But alas, we've been there and done that, and now the Restorationists have fractured into three main groups, including the Church of Christ, Disciples of Christ and Independent Christian Churches and Disciples of Christ. Is there a lesson here for churches today that similarly consider themselves "post-denominational?"

3) It means facing up to the nominalism of our day and embracing it, by admitting that the "universal" of a denomination is a fiction or worse. Thus, each individual faith community becomes it's own island. Any talk of it as part of an "organism" betrays a lingering belief in something greater and more universal...and the real possibility of it morphing into a dreaded Institution.

Put it this way: if what is really real is the individual, how can there even be a "universal" like a "faith community?" If we're in this business of deconstructing, let's not stop half-way. Let's not only deconstruct denominations, but these "communities" as well into the discrete, unique individuals that compose them. Then we'll certainly never again be plagued by institutionalism. We'll not only be post-denominational, we'll be post-ecclesiastical! (How about that for a Radical-Modest Proposal?)

Oh. Sorry. I've gotten carried away. Let's start this over.

There's an interesting dialogue here http://www.spcc-storrs.org/blog/archives/2005/06/have_denominati.php

about "post-denominationalism" between Ben Dubow from St. Paul's Collegiate Church at Storrs and Kevin Flannery that I find quite instructive. For Dubow, "denominational" is a negative thing. He writes,

"most denominations seemed more interested in organizational and institutional survival than in authentic Kingdom-building. ..
it seems to me that almost every denomination--for good or for bad--was born polemically.

And this is the problem. Their very nature is to be defined by what or who they are not (negative), as opposed to what or who they are (positive). Lutherans aren't Catholics and Baptists aren't Lutherans and Penetecostals aren't Baptists, and on down the line---but always defined in the negative.
In today's increasingly post-Christian world, I am not sure that
we can afford to be so polemical."

While heartily agreeing that denominationalism has its problems, Flannery responds, gently suggesting that Dubow has committed what philosophers call a "self-referential absurdity:"

"Seems that your comment that... '…almost every denomination--for good or for bad--was born polemically'… shows that this 'post-denominational' approach is subject to the exact same criticism. It is born out of a polemic against denominations. Denominationalism can without a doubt be problematic. I agree!... but I don't know that you have jump this hurdle by adopting a prefix."

Long ago there was a Covenant video entitled "A Great Ambition." (It's now available on DVD.) I remember a scene in it where the screen flashes from a baby being baptized to a group of mourners standing over a fresh grave. The voice over went something like this: "soon, every movement discovers it needs to marry and bury...it becomes an institution..." (the screen flashes to an old fashioned letterhead from the early days of our denomination) "...this is how the Mission Friends became a denomination: the Evangelical Covenant Church."

Such an understanding of "denomination" is not polemical, but indead positive. Postmodernism, suffering from a surfeit of skepticism, tends to see negatives; after all, deconstruction is its very DNA. Flannery, however, argues for positives:

The church that I am with joined a denomination recently (technically this denomination prefers to be called an affiliation—they sidestep things by rejecting the word denomination so that they wouldn’t have to defend its negative connotations). We wanted to join because we wanted to be a more dangerous church to the kingdom of darkness and a more glorifying church for the Kingdom of Light. We have formally only been members a few short months, not even a half of a year, but I think we are already better for our affiliation. Our kingdom perspective has broadened. Our teaming with other churches to advance the cause of Christ is more a reality today. The resources we have to advance God's kingdom have grown. For us joining an affiliation seemed clearly to be “a” way to be a more powerful church for God. This may not be the case for all churches that are unaffiliated, but it has been ultra positive for us.

Thus it seems like "post-denominational" may be more of a buzzword than a helpful concept. Dubow's reply is chastened:

... I guess, the key issue may be "good denominations" vs. "bad denominations" (though this seems a bit to black and white...)
At the end of the day, I would say that the key issue for me is mission. It used to be that denominational affiliation was so powerful because it linked one local church with many local churches with the shared mission. Unfortunately, increasingly today there is often less and less shared mission within many larger denominations (though, this is not universal).

Notice how the discussion pivots from "post-denominational" to "missional." Now we need to examine what is meant by "missional," and ask, "Can we be missional without being nominalists?" But that is another entry.

"Lost" and the Church

Every so often a television show comes along that can be seen as a metaphor for the church. A generation ago it was "Cheers." Today I think it is "Lost." No. Seriously. What other program illustrates such an attempt to live in community? Sometimes I think the whole series is about the process of sanctification.

We've been watching Season 3 of "Lost" on DVD. Last night we watched episode entitled "Left Behind." This series has a lot of religious allusions and connections.(That title, for instance, certainly wasn't an accident.) Some are laughable, like when Kate says she had to learn about the saints in Sunday school...

David Neff on The Well

Thanks to an alert from Brad, here's a keeper from David Neff. Here is his blog entry, the Church Next to the Godiva Chocolate Shop

At lunch today, my wife and I were
discussing ecclesiology. (Does that happen only in our family?)

The subject came up because we had both read an op/ed by Kyle Wingfield, an editorial page writer for the Wall Street Journal Europe.

Wingfield lives in Brussels, and he wants us to know that, for many of the Europeans he has met there, “it's not God who is dead to them as much as it is The Church—the official, often state-supported church, be it Catholic, Anglican or Lutheran.” He then shares his personal experience with a nontraditional church called The Well.

The Well, with its rock-oriented music, would in some ways feel familiar to many American evangelicals. But here’s what wouldn’t feel familiar: it doesn’t meet in its own building, but it uses several decentralized meeting places—including a restaurant called Jesus Paradise and a tavern called La Chaloupe D’Or, billed on the church website as “close to the Godiva chocolaterie.” (Well, count me in!)

The entire 120-member church meets together for worship only once a month. The rest of the time, they meet in these satellite sites.

In a tavern or restaurant, just anyone can happen by. And, Wingfield says, such serendipity is much more likely to occur in the settings chosen by The Well than if the group were to meet in a designated church building.

It's far less intimidating for newcomers to visit a public space with a dozen or so other people than a normal "church" with pews and a steeple and a hundred strange faces. In the course of our gatherings, we also meet people who were just going out for coffee and probably wouldn't have wandered into a sanctuary along the way.

That’s where my wife and I started talking about ecclesiology. “Is it church when confused people get together to discuss religion?” she asked. “Or does church require belief, commitment, and participation in worship?”

I said, the church should fundamentally be a gathering of the committed. And those who are committed should be trained to help the confused sort out their questions.

This tension between meeting the needs of the confused and the nurture of the committed is, of course, not new. It was present in the mid-1970s rise of the seeker-sensitive church, which minimized elements of traditional worship in order to appeal to the unchurched. The tension continues in mainline denominations that want to be so inclusive of everyone and so tolerant of everything that they can’t tell the difference between hospitality and inclusion. (See my review of Good Fences: The Boundaries of Hospitality and my interview with author Carolyn Westerhoff for more thoughts on this mainline Protestant trend.)

From Closed Doors to Public Square

The early church met behind closed doors. That made sense in a truly hostile culture where being a Christian could cost you your life. When it was finally able to meet in public, the church became not only a sacred institution but a civic one as well, with its meeting places prominently located on piazzas. In that new role, what the church gained in openness it lost in distinctiveness.

In a comparatively indifferent culture, some kind of alteration of the barriers makes sense. Barriers to inclusion shouldn’t be erased, of course. The Well’s website says that “at its core, church is people, coming together, becoming more like Jesus than they were before.” True, but not complete. At the heart of Christian life and Christian community, there are things that don’t make sense without study, commitment, and participation. Christian communal life cannot exist apart from common prayer, common confession, and Communion. These are things that unbelievers cannot join in. Because of the nature of the church, there will always be insiders and outsiders.

Placing key elements of church life out in public view is an important part of Christian witness in a secular and indifferent culture. A group like The Well can maintain its distinctiveness from Europe’s post-Christian culture. It can be open and welcoming at the same time. Maintaining that tension consciously and conscientiously will be an important challenge, because without the things that make Christian life distinctive it may be a great opportunity for discussion, authentic sharing, and witness. But it won’t be church.

Nevertheless, bless The Well and similar groups across Europe for engaging in this experiment.