At the Margins

I’ve been at the Envision 08 conference the last couple of days.  I’ve had lots of great and challenging conversations which I’m still processing.  There’s a good overview of each session here.

While there I met some amazing college students.  We had some great conversations–needless to say, they all left with Irresistible Revolution in hand.  None of them knew what the emerging church was, so, at their request, I clumsily tried to define it.

 The neat thing was, though none of them knew the term “emerging,” our conversations revealed that the concepts spoke of most often in emerging circles were in no way foreign to them, in fact, they were givens in their conception and understanding of God.

Many people think of emerging as a movement to do something different and shift thinking in the church.  This tends to be less and less the point the younger the person is.

I didn’t have to introduce my new friends to the concepts of emerging.  I didn’t have to show them how to be emerging.  At core, they culturally are already emerging.

Last week’s issue of U.S. News and World Report featured a couple of articles that include Common Table.

The cover story ”A Return to Tradition” and “Mixing Jesus with Java: The Appeal of New Religious Communities.”

This week I was speaking with someone about the church she once knew dying.

It’s kind of like my first year of college. I was pretty homesick. I longed for home day after day.

Eventually it dawned on me that I wasn’t in fact just desiring a place–home, but actually a time. The reality was that I could go back home, but doing so would do little to truly affect my homesickness as all my friends from high school were no longer there. I realized I was longing more for a season than for a place.

Given going back was not a possibility, I knew I had to embrace the new season God had given me.

Likewise, many are homesick for a church that no longer exists. No matter how much we try to keep everything physically the same, the reality is we cannot return to the season we are longing for, even if we think it was better, it has passed away.

Of course, the best way to get over homesickness is, instead of constantly seeking to return to where you were, to embrace the new place you are. Seek to know it, understand it, and live in it and eventually it will become home.

Jan at Church for Starving Artists wrote yesterday about the need to hear one another’s stories in building authentic community.

Sharing our stories is so important. 

I’ve found it the best foundation to lay for any group whether a missions team, intentional Christian community, or sunday gathering.

It enables us to love one another so much better.  Suddenly I have a glimpse into why Susan does all those things that drive me nuts and it’s not so bad any more. I’m able to sit in silence less awkwardly becaue I now know why John never speaks. Knowing how Jim grew up affords me more grace when he snaps at me.

A practical suggestion, having done this quite a few times by this point, is to have someone who is willing to be particularly vulnerable go first and set the tone.  It’s also good to encourage everyone to have a turn, sharing only what (and if) they are comfortable, taking particular care to value however much or little is shared.  It can take people a really long time to share their story, so I’ve found, if it’s a small group, taking a weekend retreat with the primary purpose of hearing everyone’s story makes it actually less arduous and forms a great foundation for authentic Christian community.

There has been a lot of discussion lately surrounding postmodernism and Christianity. My friend Scott Simmons recently provided me an excellent explanation from which the following heavily borrows:

Modernists argue that all Truth can be proven either rhetorically or empirically. This led to the scientific revolution, among other things. The problem is that in science, as in so many fields, we learned time and time again that we were constrained by a host of imperfections, whether they be incomplete information, imprecise methods, statistical issues, et cetera. Of course, modernists argue that this can simply be resolved with better mechanisms, i.e. we develop a better telescope and see more stars, it doesn’t mean that they weren’t there before, it just means that our equipment was insufficient to see them.

Postmodernists argue that truth cannot be perfectly derived rhetorically or empirically. That is to say that there is always a space of the unknown that breaks the continuity between rhetorical or empirical evidence and ultimate Truth. Secular postmodernists thus conclude that to say x is true is more a matter of personal understanding, values, or faith rather than in fact offering ultimate Truth.

Perhaps a chart would demonstrate better:

Science would say that all the evidence points to the truth being the green line. A philosopher might point to truth being the blue line. But in fact Truth or reality might be the red line. Given the simple fact that no one knows what happens in the area of the unknown, anything can happen and thus truth is subjective.

Of course, everyone continues to argue that their truth is in fact Truth from the philosophers, to the scientists, to the theologians, to the outright crazy. Many secular postmodernist take this an additional step to say that truth is solely based in perception and thus there is no ultimate Truth. This is where Christian postmodernists differ.

Christian postmodernists believe that there is in fact an ultimate Truth and, though it may be hinted at and pointed towards in science, philosophy, and religion, it is the sole dominion of God. That is to say that human understanding of Truth lacks perfection and by very definition remains always deficient from ultimate Truth, always in need of redemption, and always requiring faith.

All Christian efforts to prove God, whether scientific, philosophical, or theological have and always will fall short. Wonderfully, this simply not only affirms the requirement of faith, but the core and ultimate need we all have for God!

Providentially, Christians worship a God who speaks. The one true God who has chosen to share ultimate Truth with all of mankind through His Word, through the Holy Spirit, and through His Son. Our understanding remains deficient and must always be examined and challenged, but we get to experience ultimate Truth, here and now, like no other people and in eternity, in perfection.

Soli gloria Deo.

Christian vs. Christ-follower

Link

Created: Wed, 01 Nov 2006

My friend Colin just sent me a link to a set of Christian parodies of the Mac/PC commericals. It’s a great concept, but I’m afraid they fall short.

Essentially it’s an issue of good concept, poor articulation. These are anti-Christendom, but leave one thinking that being a Follower of Jesus is even more meaningless. They spent a lot of time dismantling Christendom but failed to equally develop what it means to Follow Jesus.

My friend and housemate Ryan provided a very good critique:

Good application of the Mac/PC ads. But, as Colin says, poor and lukewarm generalization of Christian and ‘Christ-Follower’ (Shouldn’t they be the same? Let’s not draw even more lines to define who we are by differentiating ourselves
from others.) Another attempt to market Christ on a platform of feel-good Christianity? Probably. “Hey, I smoke, have a tongue-piercing, don’t take showers, AND I love Jesus; so that makes my relationship with Christ more authentic and me more ‘real’, man.” Would have been better if the ads de-emphasized the very things it brought to light.

At any rate I think they are interesting and worth discussing.

A Generous Orthodoxy: Why I am a missional, evangelical, post/protestant, liberal/conservative, mystical/poetic, biblical, charismatic/contemplative, fundamentalist/calvinist, … anabaptist/anglican, metho (Emergentys)

Rating: 3 out of 5

Author: Brian D. McLaren

Year: 2006

Publisher: Zondervan/Youth Specialties

ISBN: 0310258030

Not as good as Velvet Elvis and even more married to the Constantinian model of church.

I think this guy doesn’t really get it. I’ve been moving all day and am tired, so I’m not going to try to address his post more fully yet. Has anyone read Velvet Elvis? I really liked it, but maybe I was giving it a too friendly read. I mean, I certainly disagree with the social gospel in the since that it removes Christ. I don’t think Rob Bell is doing this at all. What do you think?

Several weeks ago I was asked what type of Christian I was by a new friend expecting to receive a response along the lines of methodist, baptist, et cetera. My new acquaintance instead got a 15 minute explanation of what type of Christian I am. At any rate, it got me thinking, what type of Christian am I–not that one needs a type? I grew up methodist, but apart from really liking much of Wesley’s teachings (I am not as well read any them as I would like), I’m really unsure what it means to be methodist. Most would consider me evangelical, but I fundamentally disagree with much of their practice. I’ve yet to grasp what emergent really means and to say I’m New Monastic is probably too specific.

I’ve arrived upon incarnational. I believe that we are to seek to incarnate the model of Christ’s obedience to the Father and that, in the model of Christ, we are to seek to love others with complete self-sacrifice, even to death. Of course it could be misinterpreted as simply another way of saying we should emulate the specific life of Christ (see my post “What Would Jesus Do? Really???” What I mean by it is that we are the body of Christ acting in the world and that Christ is incarnate in us through His Holy Spirit which dwells in us.

I’m not sure if incarnational is the best description (probably not), but it’s the best I’ve come up with so far. Any other ideas?

I spent the last weekend cooking for my college choir’s retreat (it’s a way alumni serve the group). I met lots of wonderful new people and had some great conversations with old friends.

While I was there, I got to hear yet again how God is speaking to so many people in our generation. He may call us to different specific things, but it is apparent that God is uniting a generation of believers to seek after Him and inhabit His promises and commands with wreckless abandon. It’s amazing!

Unlike our parents, the people of my generation much more typically are either hot or cold with their faith. Either we desire to give up everything and follow Him or we don’t and realize that it’s not worth going through the motions. That’s an exciting thing for a generation who, more oft than not, grew up in a luke warm American gospel of cheap grace–a faith in which we could have both Christ and all our personal preferences–a gospel without sacrifice and a gospel without love.

We have inhabited a church so long that forgets that Christianity is more about having a relationship with our loving Father and Creator today than about salvation (route by phrase) tomorrow, that Christ calls us to daily take up the cross and follow him, and that our God is worth dying for (and thus worth obeying and worshiping).

It is a time of rebirth in the Church, when the poor, the fatherless, and the stranger will be welcomed into our homes (and more importantly our lives), when we will love the unlovable and heal the broken, when God’s revelation will flow in abundance and we will see Him with new and glorious clarity, when we will be persecuted for living a life in accordance with Him, when we will give up comfort, control, safety, and success to boldly follow after our Father, our Savior, our Creator, our Lover, and our King, and when we will see glimpses of Heaven breaking forth among us!

It is a wonderful and amazing time! Praise the Living God!