Here were some thoughts from the notes I took on my iPhone:

• Regarding US diversification, by 2043 more than 50% nonwhite minority.
• The Pew and ARIS religious survey reports suggest a decline of evangelicalism and Christianity. Show Christianity is in danger and in decline.
• 17.5% go to church in 2005. Mainline lost 25% in 25 years. Evangelical numbers flat and keeping up with popular trends.
• The decline in evangelicalism is in white evangelicalism. That’s what the Pew and ARIS show. Only reason evangelicals surviving is because of ethnic minority increase. Large and increasing denominations are stable and increasing because of nonwhites. Surviving because they are ethnically diverse. Smaller and declining denominations are 89-96% white, i.e mainline protestant. Baptists 64% white and pentacostals 58% white, which are increasing in size.
• There is a decline and collapse in Evangelicalism among white attendance and commitment. The silent story is increase an vitality among ethnic nonwhites. The story isn’t that evangelicalism is declining. The story is that it is declining among whites. Dying white churches and being replaced by nonwhite churches.

The lecture was an eye-opening glimpse into the future face of America, not to mention Her current face.

Afterward Melinda and I went to a local coffee shop to discuss our thoughts. We both came away with a similar feeling: while we appreciated Dr. Rah’s revelations regarding current evangelicalism, we thought he painted a more rosy picture than it deserves. We both were excited to see that massive shift away from an Anglo-Western domination toward a diverse portrait, but we wondered about the white community that is leaving the church en mass.

Now, here me out: I celebrate the diversification of evangelicalism in general and Western Michigan evangelicalism in particular. Near our house in Alger Heights there are a myriad of storefront hispanic and black churches that fit under the evangelical umbrella and several more throughout the city amidst the dominant form of “white” Christianity. This diversity is one of the reasons I have fallen in love with my city. I am excited about the increase in ethnic minorities who are coming to Christ and finding expression within the larger body of Christ.

A linger question remains: How are we to respond to the changes in our white evangelical Grand Rapids church community?

Let’s face it: for a long time (really long time!) Grand Rapids and the broader West Michigan area has been demographically white. Really Dutch and really white! Look at the statistics for three West Michigan counties from 2000 (From US Census QuickFacts):

KENT
White persons, percent, 2000 86.2
Black persons, percent, 2000 9.3
Asian persons, percent, 2000 2.1
Hispanic or Latino, 2000 9.5

OTTAWA
White persons, percent, 2000 94.7
Black persons, percent, 2000 1.5
Asian persons, percent, 2000 0.4
Hispanic or Latino, 2000 8.2

MUSKEGON
White persons, percent, 2000 83.3
Black persons, percent, 2000 13.4
Asian persons, percent, 2000 0.5
Hispanic or Latino, 2000 4.5

AVERAGE
White persons, percent, 2000 88.07
Black persons, percent, 2000 8.07
Asian persons, percent, 2000 1.07
Hispanic or Latino, 2000 7.4

Like I said. White

My guess is that these demographic averages across West Michigan will shift when the new census data is released later this year and our area will still be mostly white. While I am super excited about the ethnic shifts that have taken place and are occurring in my city, I’m still concerned with the analysis from Rah, Pew, and ARIS that shows a massive decline among whites in mainline and evangelical Protestantism.

I am not saying I am concerned with whites at the expense of ethnic minorities. Instead, it seems like (at least for Dr. Rah) there isn’t a concern for what is occurring in this particular demographic because so much good and growth and occurring in other demographics, in ethnic minority communities. Perhaps I misunderstood Rah, but it seemed as though he was saying the story isn’t so bleak because there is massive growth among minorities, even though it really is bleak for the white demographic.

It seems that if the national trends hold true for Grand Rapids, there could be major problems for the Grand Rapids church. Perhaps those problems have already been manifesting themselves. While the Grand Rapids church isn’t exclusively demographically white, it is by and large made up of white people. National churches that are majority white are hemorrhaging. National churches that are diverse are stable and/or growing. National churches that are ethnic minorities are growing. It seems as though the same could (and perhaps is) be said of Grand Rapids.

Perhaps I am making too much of these statistics and worrying too much about an entire demographic of people. Perhaps not.

Any thoughts? Specifically, do you think, demographically speaking, whites are exodusing from the Grand Rapids church in the same way they are nation wide. If so, why is that the case and what can be done about it? What are the problems this demographic has with the Church, especially in our area?

These are the lingering, hyperlocal questions that remain from Dr. Rah’s lecture

My friend and colleague, Jason Myers, and I had a conversation about whether it is possible to identify false teachers in 21st century America. We wondered aloud whether the Church has the ability and permission to identify, name, and address men and women who are teaching doctrines and practices that are foreign to the Rule of Faith of the Church in our democratic, multi-cultural, postmodern context.

Is it even possible to ID false teachers in an environment that exalts every voice and every perspective equally? In a “the-world-is-flat” culture, how can the Church of Jesus Christ contend for the Rule of Faith that was given and entrusted to the Church by Jesus? And perhaps more importantly, now that that same ethos has entered into the Church (empowering everyone to have as equal a perspective and interpretation on Scripture and that Rule), while at the same time Her members are incredibly biblically illiterate and ignorant of church history, how can the Church protect Herself against those within the Church who slip in unnoticed and begin teaching so-called heresy?

These questions are not directed at one particular end of the theological and ecclesiastical spectrum. I think these people exist on the right and left equally. Given the unique point in history the Church find herself in, I think there is a real possibility of such people slipping in and creating destruction. Given the weightlessness that plagues modern American Christianity—a sort of “tumbleweed complex” in which She is completely untethered from the historic faith—coupled with mass biblical and theological illiteracy, there seems to be a great need to take the reality of false teaching and false teachers more seriously.

How that looks, though, is a mystery…

Yesterday a friend of mine and I launched a hyper-local experiment for Grand Rapids, MI called ZOOMAE. In short, ZOOMAE exists to empower dreamers to stimulate spiritual renewal in Grand Rapids through publishing, networking, and missional projects. ZOOMAE is the english phonetic spelling of the greek word for “yeast” and is used by Jesus in Matt. 13 and Luke 13 to metaphorically describe the Kingdom of Heaven’s explosive growth and transformative power.

I simply love this metaphor! Yeast is incredibly tiny, simple, ordinary, normal, and seemingly insignificant. Yeast is also transformative and stimulates explosive growth when embedded and distributed throughout the locality of a lump of dough. Jesus says the same thing of the Kingdom of Heaven, of the Reign of God when those who are stewards and partners of that reign (the Church) are as equally embedded, distributed, planted, and partnered. Even though seemingly insignificant, normal in appearance, ordinary, very simple and incredibly small, individual Jesus-followers will exact tremendous transformational and stimulative influence on localities. When the Church hyper-locally lives out Her identity as the continuing presence of Jesus Christ by proclaiming the good news of the Reign of God, people and places will be transformed. When simple, ordinary, normal followers of Jesus live radical, embedded lives within particular localities, radical transformation and explosive growth will happen.

That is the vision of ZOOMAE: to empower simple, ordinary people of Grand Rapids to dream big for God in their city to stimulate spiritual renewal and life transformation.

In large ways the experiment was born out of several conversations among friends around the local watering hole. For some time a few of us have wondered how it would look and what would happen if we considered ourselves pastors to the city. Not a building or organization, but the whole city. It was also born out of a desire to empower local practitioners, pastors, leaders, and activists to speak prophetically into the city through the tangible, written medium of books. These two ideas morphed into a broader effort to empower Grand Rapids Christians to own their city in a way that would see the Kingdom of God descend and bring transformation.

Who knows where this will go over the coming months. Now we are finishing up the organizational ground work (i.e. board of directors and 501(c)3 application) and beginning to lay the ground work the rest of the year for the big launch in 2010. Over the coming weeks I will fill in some of the details like the publishing, networking, and missional aspects, as well as the coming theme for 2010. Until then, check out the Facebook page.

be His; just do,
-jeremy

Series
1-Introduction
2-The Post-Colonial Era and The Church
3-Toward A Post-Colonial Worldview
4-Post-Colonial Theology and Missions
5-A Case Study – Evangelism Explosion International

EVANGELISM EXPLOSION: AN OVERVIEW

Evangelism Explosion International (EE) began in 1962 by Dr. D. James Kennedy as a response to his rapidly declining church plant in Fr. Lauderdale, FL, Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church. It is both an evangelism equipping program and evangelism technique that is similar to Romans Road or Four Spiritual Laws. After launching his evangelism equipping program, attendance soared from 246 to 3,134 in 1974, largely due to the intentional evangelism efforts of EE. During this time, Dr. Kennedy realized he also had the opportunity to train pastors in his techniques, resulting in 582 trained pastors and lay leaders in 6 clinics during this same period. By 1975, EE had gone global, holding clinics in Saskatchewan, England, South Africa, and Australia. On March 17, 1996, Coral Ridge Presbyterian church celebrated a milestone in the the history of this 34 year old ministry: Evangelism Explosion was now in every nation training its people in personal evangelism. In fact, by 2000 the EE material was in every territory and translated into 70 languages. The scope of EE and its global reach makes it an ideal case study for reflecting on a post-colonial worldview of mission. Obviously, God has used the Dr. Kennedy and this ministry for His glory, and He will continue to do so well after his death, so my critique comes after much appreciation.

Considering how drastically the world has change over the last 46 years since EE’s inception, how does Evangelism Explosion International fare when evaluated against a post-colonial worldview of global missions? If much of the Western world has shifted into a post-modern cultural condition and the global South and East embrace post-colonialism in their struggle for identity in the aftermath of the colonial experience, is this thoroughly Western evangelism model relevant and effective (or even appropriate) given much of the non-Western worlds post-colonial condition? While I could give lengthy critique on the theological and biblical problems with this method, I am using EE as a case study only to evaluate the program missiologically and ecclesiologically. Therefore, the next few pages will explore EE in light of our post-colonial world and evaluate this evangelism method through a post-colonial worldview.

EVANGELISM EXPLOSION AND A POST-COLONIAL WORLDVIEW OF MISSIONS

Given the post-colonial shift in the global South and East, in addition to the postmodern shift within Western culture, how does EE compare to a post-colonial worldview of missions? As a certified EE trainer who both (briefly) taught and used this evangelism model in the United States, there are aspects of the international component I affirm and others that are concerning as I consider this enterprise in light of a post-colonial worldview. First, I appreciate EE’s commitment to proclaim Jesus’ good news to the whole world and indigenize that proclamation. As Tom Stebbins explains in his book on EE, “Although adhering to non-negotiable, controlling principles, EE adapts to the culture of every nation, territory and people group…” As I said in my worldview statement, God is truly global and interested in saving all tribes and nations, which they affirm. Secondly, the model is centered upon training pastors to equip their own people with the tools to proclaim the good news of Jesus through the local church. In true multiplication form, EE representatives hold clinics for pastors in countries for pastors to train their own people to evangelize. Both the commitment to adapt to cultures and train pastors to equip their own people are good starting places in a post-colonial era.

I do wonder, however, how helpful it is to export a thoroughly Western model of evangelism to non-Western nations. By their own admission, the original EE material has been translated into 70 languages. My concern, then, is why they believe exporting a Western framing of the gospel and God’s Redemptive Story is proper, especially considering they have recently revised this same material for use in postmodern Western nations due to its changing cultural landscape. Post-colonialism calls the Western Church to dissect itself from Christian spirituality as it engages a world that seeks to operate beyond the categories and models of the West. If Evangelism Explosion has realized it needs to revise the way it communicates God’s Redemptive Story to postmodern Western nations, why does it think a one-size-fits-all approach is appropriate for non-Western countries? As a Western model, the original EE was extremely propositional and logical to the core in its delivery. The “presenter” gave a 20-30 minute monologue to the “prospect” (their words, not mine) about why heaven was a free gift and how they could receive that free gift. At the end, the prospective gift receiver answered “yes” or “no” to whether he or she would like to receive the gift of eternal life. In the presentation (not conversation), there is no place for dialogue (it is discouraged all together, because it “distracts from the presentation of the gospel.”), assuming the prospect has nothing to offer to the conversation on their spirituality. If this method no longer works in the West, then why would they assume it is appropriate in non-Western nations. Paulo Freire provides a scathing indictment and convicting commentary on the need for dialogue: “Dialogue is the encounter between men, mediated by the world, in order to name the world. Hence, dialogue cannot occur between those who want to name the world and those who do not wish this naming–between those who deny others the right to speak their word and those whose right to speak has been denied them. Those who have been denied their primordial right to speak their word must first reclaim this right and prevent the continuation of this dehumanizing aggression.” Frankly, EE denies the Other the right to speak in the spiritual conversation. By default it is monological, which does not bode well in a post-colonial era nor does it appreciate the diversity inherent within God’s Creation.

As a last point of evaluation, while I realize any ministry can only do so many things, I have always found it odd that EE emphasizes proclamation rather than discipleship. While it claims to be “friendship evangelism,” the entire emphasis of the EE method is on evangelism and proclamation, neither of which were emphasized by Jesus in His commission to His disciples. Instead, He called His followers to embed themselves in the lives of the Other and show (not simply tell) the Way of Jesus. And if, according to Paulo Freire, we are to become solidary with those who are presently spiritually oppressed and who have been ethnically oppressed in the past in order to bring liberation, we must stop regarding the oppressed as an abstract category, stop making pious, sentimental and individualistic gestures and risk acts of existential love; the Western EE (and Church) should move beyond simply proclaiming to incarnationally being Jesus, because true solidarity is found only in the plentitudes of acts of love, in its existentiality, in its praxis. The fourth stage of worldview is Recreation, both God’s future Recreative Act of the entire Creation and the small bits of Recreation accomplished through the Church. A proper, post-colonial worldview of mission must move beyond individual acts of pious proclamation and embrace solidarity centered in life discipleship and loving praxis as eschatological communities.

In the end, there are aspects of Evangelism Explosion International that are healthy and conform well to a post-colonial worldview of mission. Just like Christ’s Act of Rescue was indigenous and for all people, EE’s reach is entirely global and fairly indigenous, training local churches in every nation and adapting to the variety of tongues and tribes. I question, however, their insistence on exporting a Western version of Christianity to a world that doesn’t identify with the categories of the West nor any longer appreciates its superiority. Furthermore, the monological design of the model is neither contextually appropriate given the history of oppression by the West nor biblically sound since it is centered on proclamation rather than discipleship and solidarity. Instead of a Western model dressed in non-Western clothing, the global South and East need a narrative retelling of Jesus’ story of Rescue. Rather than detached monologues, the tribes and people of non-Western nations need dialogue and discipleship. Given the nature of EE and mass exportation of this methodology, I would conclude that it falls far short of a post-colonial worldview of global missions. Hopefully, just as EE has adapted its entire model for postmodern cultures, it will do the same for the post-colonial condition, too.

Series
1-Introduction
2-The Post-Colonial Era and The Church
3-Toward A Post-Colonial Worldview
4-Post-Colonial Theology and Missions
5-A Case Study – Evangelism Explosion International

POST-COLONIAL THEOLOGY

As America’s influence around the world wanes, so too the time of Western dominance in theology is over. No longer is there an “assumed primacy…of the West” in general, let alone specifically in the area of theology. In a post-colonial era where the voices of previously suppressed non-Western nations are exerting their influence on the world stage like never before, so too is the South and East beginning to own their own theological discourse. Because the Western versions of Christianity that have prevailed for the last fifteen hundred years are no longer viewed as connecting with this time and place, the time is ripe for such emerging global voices to enter the theological conversation. Thus, as the Western Church approaches global missions from a post-colonial worldview, it must ‘unbundle’ Jesus from Western Civilization and allow the Church in emerging global contexts to frame that Story in their own language.

For example, just listen to the voice of the Masai people in Kenya and Tanzania:

We believe in one High God, who out of love created the beautiful world and everything good in it. He created man and wanted man to be happy in the world. God loves the world and every nation and tribe on earth…We believe that God made good his promise by sending his son, Jesus Christ, a man in the flesh, a Jew by tribe, born poor in a little village, who left his home and was always on safari doing good, curing people by the power of God, teaching about God and man, showing that the meaning of religion is love. He was rejected by his people, tortured and nailed hands and feet to a cross, and died. He was buried in the grave, but the hyenas did not touch him, and on the third day he rose from the grace.

“The hyenas did not touch him.” What a wonderful way to express the resurrection of our Lord and communicate the majesty and glory of the Story of God using indigenous language! Notice what sort of language was not included: Trinity; sovereignty of God; election; determinism; the omniscience, omnipresence, and omnipotence of God; and other Western theological constructs. In other words, these African people crafted a theological credo that was contextual to their expression of faith in Jesus. The expression of faith in theology is never universal, anyway, but is in fact very particular; our dogmas and doctrines of God, of humanity, or Jesus, of sin, of salvation are firmly embedded in the Greco-Roman context of another time, and in some ways have become meaningless even in our own postmodern Western context. Imagine, then, how those Western, Greco-Roman theologies and doctrines appear in an Asian or African context. The Aristotelian Unmoved Mover concept of God, which is shared by many contemporary Western Christians, just will not translate to the Masai people.

A post-colonial worldview of missions, then, needs to make space for the theology of Christian spirituality to emerge within other tribes, while also allowing those tribes to inform the contemporary theological discourse. “Theology in a postcolonial context is a highly political affair. Postcolonial theologies will not settle for a position at the margins of their Western counterparts. Rather, they serreptitiously seek to turn the margin into the centre, thereby disrupting the serenity grounded on the assumption that Western formulations are self-evident.” And there’s the rub: why must ‘Western formulations’ be entirely self-evident? While I certainly understand and would agree that the Zeitgeist of God’s Story has helped formulate our theology and preserved truthful understandings of His Reality, must they be the sine qua non of theological discourse? Why cannot the West learn from African Christological expressions? How could Asian understandings inform our understanding of pneumatology? Or why cannot the Western Church learn from the Eastern (Orthodox) Church’s understanding of worship and prayer? We’ve already begun to recognize that the Western understanding and articulation of the gospel has been too often truncated, shallow, thin, bland, anemic, privatized, personalized, polarized, and compromised. Perhaps our more globally integrated era will help further expose weaknesses in our thoroughly Platonic, Enlightenment theology. And if the Western Church is to have any positive theological affect in this new era, She must have be grounded in a post-colonial worldview that makes space for theological reflection and construction by the global Church. While the West certainly provides a tether to historical theological categories (e.g. Trinity and the dual nature of Christ), we must be able to learn as students from the global Church if we are to both contextualize God’s Story and partner with our overseas brothers and sisters in missions.

POST-COLONIAL GLOBAL MISSIONS

If the Western Church embraces a post-colonial worldview of missions, how exactly would ‘doing missions’ look from that posture? If we are in fact doing global missions in a post-colonial context from a post-colonial worldview of missions, we will first recognize that the Other does not need to conform to our Western morals, values, and customs. In fact, it might be best to encourage Muslim, Buddhist and Jewish seekers to not become members of the Christian religion at all given how closely aligned Christianity is with the West. In his book, Generous Orthodoxy, Brian McLaren explains, “Although I don’t hope all Buddhists will become (cultural) Christians, I do hope all who feel so called will become Buddhist followers of Jesus; I believe they should be given that opportunity and invitation. I don’t hope all Jews or Hindus will become members of the Christian religion. But I do hope all who feel so called will become Jewish or Hindu followers of Jesus.” While this suggestion may seem radical and have a slightly universalist tinge to it, we need to understand that the words ‘Christian’ and ‘Christianity’ carry with them much baggage and Western, especially American, connotations. In the previous paragraph of his book Brian affirms the need to become “humble followers of Jesus, whom I believe…to be the Son of God, the Lord of all, and the Savior of the world.”

Global missions outreach through a post-colonial worldview of missions must be rooted in the notion of “following Jesus” over against other religions, while permitting the Other to remain embedded in their cultural and spiritual traditions.

Rooting our post-colonial mission efforts in “following Jesus” as opposed to “becoming a Christian” is not only important to a post-colonial worldview of global missions, it is also biblical. It’s called discipleship, which of course finds its meaning in Jesus’ Great Commission. It means embedding ourselves in the tribes of the Other, learning their customs and spiritual heritage, and committing to the long process of helping them become students of Jesus, rather than simply Christians. But as Dallas Willard wrote, “non-discipleship is the elephant in the church!” While the Western church is woefully inadequate at discipleship in its own Western context, a post-colonial worldview of missions needs to shift to this model from a thoroughly proclamation colonialist one. Through discipleship Western global missions must include these elements: we must embed ourselves among the Other and first embody and demonstrate the Way of Jesus by being disciples ourselves before proclaiming the gospel of Jesus; we must consciously seek to make disciples, to bring others to the point where they are daily learning from Jesus and follow Him with their lives and lifestyle, instead of winning converts through evangelistic colonialist endeavors; we must take the time to change whatever it is in their actual belief system that prevents them from placing their confidence in Jesus as Master of the Universe, while connecting their existing belief system to God’s Redemptive Story as found in Jesus; and finally, while we do not want to syncretize Jesus with Buddhism or Hinduism, we must allow space for the following of Jesus as Lord without embracing a Christianity that is rooted in the West nor American culture.

Finally, the Western Church through a post-colonial worldview of missions will make partnership with the Church of the global South and East a vital component of global missions in an effort to reach all nations with the good news of Jesus Christ. Such partnerships will be mutual, complementary and indigenous, recognizing that the vital centers of missions are dispersed throughout the world today, and could be multiplied with deliberate Western Church partnerships. Ironically, already African nations are sending missions to North America. For example, the Anglican Church of Rwanda planted a church on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., Church of the Resurrection. Another movement within American Anglicanism, called the Convocation of Anglicans in North America, is a missionary effort from the Church of Nigeria to shepherd disaffected former Episcopal churches who have left the American Anglican communion over several biblical and ecclesiastical issues. Such partnerships, however, must flow from a spirit of mutuality of authority and unity of purpose. Just as theology must shift from a Western-centric posture to a global discourse, including and especially the tribes at the margins of our world, so too must missions shift toward an arm-locking posture with our Asian, African, Indo-Philippino, and South American brothers and sisters as co-equals for the sake of the gospel.

Series
1-Introduction
2-The Post-Colonial Era and The Church
3-Toward A Post-Colonial Worldview
4-Post-Colonial Theology and Missions
5-A Case Study – Evangelism Explosion International

TOWARD A POST-COLONIAL BIBLICAL WORLDVIEW

Abraham Kupyer gave the Church a beautiful model for understanding the biblical worldview: a Creation-Rebellion-Rescue-Recreation paradigm. As the Western Church re-thinks how She should approach global missions in the 21st Century, She should use Kuypers paradigm to construct a post-colonial biblical worldview of global missions.

Through Creation, we see a creative God who pronounced His Creation good. While only two Humans are depicted in the Creation narrative, the sheer diversity of Beings within the created order, from fungus to maple tree and swan to whale, suggests Humanity would not escape the diversely, creative hand of Elohim, either. In fact, anyone can sense that tribal and national diversity are embedded within the very blueprint of the Human structure. Asian expressions of life are different from African expressions. European cultures differ from South American societies. Even within continents there are varying ways in which people live and breath through history. This embedded diversity within the fabric of Humanity exists within the Body of Christ, too. Rather than shun differing expressions, the Western Church should celebrate the variety of created Humanity within the Global Church. A post-colonial worldview of global missions begins with an embedded diversity in the Created Order. It begins by affirming and celebrating the Otherness found in Humanity and recognizes that this diversity is derived from the Triune Creator God who is Himself diverse in Persons, though one in essence. Traditionally, the West began with itself as the arbiter of what was good and proper, rather than Creation; Western global missions has assumed the primacy of the West resulting in excessive confidence, rather than starting with and appreciating the variety of Humanity in Creation. This must change if we are to restore the effects of rebellion within Creation and share His redemption.

While the Genesis narrative explains how we find our Being in the Creator God, it also explains why the world is so broken and disrupted. Though they were created to exist in an eternal relationship defined by mutual love with their Creator, free Humans chose to rebel instead. That rebellion plunged all of Creation into brokenness, resulting in what French lay theologian Jacques Ellul called, “The Great Rupture.” Primarily, our relationship with God ruptured, but our relationships with each other have, too. Not only do we not love God as we ought, we do not love other Humans as we were originally designed. Even though we were made for each other, made to live together and created to find our meaning and purpose not simply in ourselves but in one another, we find doing so is incredibly difficult.
Thus, almost every generation in every part of the globe has experienced for itself a Crusade, the Conquistadors, Trails of Tears, Holocaust, Rwanda, and Darfur; on every part of the globe The Great Rupture is evident in broken, oppressed Human relationships between tribes and nations. Additionally, Creation itself is broken, resulting in famine, massive earthquakes, tsunamis, and drought. No part of Creation’s original shalom has not been disrupted. As Paul writes, every corner and crevice of Creation groans in anticipation of Rescue. Thankfully, the Creator launched the greatest rescue operation known to man; through the death of God’s Son Jesus Christ, the consequences of Rebellion and evil powers are conquered and God’s rescue operation for the whole cosmos can be unrolled and put into dramatic operation.

Despite the Human Rebellion against the Creator, all was not without hope. For even at the beginning the Father intended to Rescue His Creation by sending His Son to restore Humans to relationship with Himself and the Other, while eventually restoring all Creation. Jesus is the Rescuer, the Victorious Obedient Substitute, who through His Redemptive Act rescues and restores Creation in this way: Through His Life, Jesus obeyed God perfectly after the First Adam did not, while demonstrating how we are to live as Humans; through His Death, Jesus paid the final penalty to God for Rebellion on behalf of all Humans through a final sacrifice, thus restoring Humans to relationship with God; through His Resurrection, Jesus defeated the Dark Powers to liberate all Humanity from Satan’s control and free us from the bondage of Evil and Sin. Through this Rescue operation, the Creator intended to Rescue and eventually Restore all of Humanity. Thus, in coming to Earth, Jesus intended to redeem all of Humanity through His Life, Death, Resurrection, and Ascension; His Redemptive Act is sufficient for all Humans and effective for everyone who will eventually embrace Jesus as Lord. And a post-colonial worldview of missions will realize that God is truly global and Jesus’ Redemptive Act is also global, allowing people from all tribes to bow before Jesus Christ and confess Him as Lord.

Furthermore, this Rescuer incarnated Himself as a Human among Humans; God the Son dwelt among us by embedding Himself in the world as a real Human. Like Jesus, the Western Church must embed Herself within particular global cultures by incarnationally living, eating, and working closely with its surrounding community to build strong links between Christians and not-yet-Christians. And like the prophets of the Hebrew Scriptures, the Western Church is called to bringing the full weight of the identity and mission of the Church as a community of adopted Sons and Daughters to bear upon global cultures in order to articulate the gospel and ethical implications of the Kingdom of God. While the identity and mission of the Church is as a discipling community, the Body of Christ is also an eschatological community that embodies the good news of Jesus Christ and Reign of God within particular contexts, just like Jesus. And as the Church we are called to join in with God’s Act of Recreation now.

The final ‘act’ of God’s Story and a post-colonial biblical worldview of global missions is Recreation. Through Jesus Christ, God is making all things new, a Recreation that began with Jesus’ announcement of the in-breaking of the Reign of God and continued with the commissioning and establishment of the Church. Just as God set apart a group of people (Israel) to be a blessing to the world around it by testifying to the one true God, He chose the Church to bear prophetic witness to the salvation and restoration found in the Reign of God through Christ; by way of choosing, calling and sending a particular people to be the bearer of blessing for all, God is uniting the whole cosmos through his plan of shalom restoration. A post-colonial worldview of missions will be centered on the articulation of the moral and ethical truths of this Reign to all nations by using it’s prophetic voice, while also influencing the tribes of the world in such a way that they pattern their lives and lifestyle after Jesus, to cause the nations to be pupils and disciples of the Son of God. As an eschatological community, the Church represents the values, authority and Way of the Reign of God by giving a foretaste of God’s ultimate act of Recreation while pointing people toward this better way of being Human and living together on Earth. Through a post-colonial worldview, Western global missions will truly be this community for the entire world, for the glory of God.

A post-colonial worldview of missions, then, affirms and celebrates the diversity of Creation in Humanity and the Other, grieves over the oppression and fractured relationships between and within the nations, embraces a furious love of God that extends to all tribes through the death and resurrection of Jesus, and lives embedded within these tribes as an eschatological community that offers Life in Jesus and represents the values, authority and Way of the Reign of God, giving a foretaste of what is to come. Because God is global, not simply Western, the Body of Christ must be global. And a worldview of global missions in an era of globalization must embrace and celebrate the Otherness of Creation by being post-colonial. Consequently, a post-colonial posture toward global missions will affect how the Western Church does both theology and missions.

Series
1-Introduction
2-The Post-Colonial Era and The Church
3-Toward A Post-Colonial Worldview
4-Post-Colonial Theology and Missions
5-A Case Study – Evangelism Explosion International

In the Fall of 2006, I had the opportunity to work for a national upscale department store after working for over four years on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C.. Our store was located in one of the wealthiest and diverse counties in the country, resulting in a mosaic tapestry of tongues, tribes and religions. My department alone included six Muslims, an Orthodox Jew, a Sikh, a Buddhist, a few non-Western Christians and others who were spiritual, but non-religious. Ethiopia, Morocco, Somalia, Gabon, India, Afghanistan, Japan, Columbia and Pakistan were all represented, creating an amazing work environment and cross-cultural learning experience. It was in this context that a clash of national heritages occurred. One afternoon my Gabonian co-worker asked me, “Is your name African?” As a thoroughly white midwestern American (in the strictest WASPian sense of the description) I could not help but laugh out loud at his question! Obviously, my African co-worker got a kick out of it, too. He was curious about my family heritage, because he came from a part of the world where my ancestors were apart of something I could only touch and feel at movie length. You see, my last name, Bouma, is Dutch and the Dutch Empire used its naval and military might to colonize parts of western and southern Africa, including Gabon where my African friend was from. Through such trading companies as the Dutch East Indies Company and Dutch West Indies Company, the Kingdom of The Netherlands used its might to leverage trade in newly discovered lands outside of Europe. And it was through the Dutch West Indies Company that my family name spread from European to African. Thus began my introduction to the realities of colonialism.

Like me, most Westerners are incredibly removed from the colonial experience and its consequences. Though the hundreds of Native American reservations plagued by rampant alcoholism, drug addiction, and suicide are mini-colonial dystopias in our very own backyard, Americans scarcely encounter the effects of colonialism. And though some commentators may attempt to paint the Bush Administration as colonialist militants wrapped in peace keeping garb, for all intents and purposes the Age of Colonialism is over. Through colonialism, European nations extended their sovereignty over territory beyond its borders, dominated the resources, labor and markets of the indigenous peoples of Asia, South America and Africa, and imposed socio-cultural, religious and linguistic structures on the conquered populations.
Though, nation states no longer overtly exploit other people groups in this sort of manner, the struggles of a post-colonial era are just beginning.

Within former European colonies and nations of the global South and East, there is a growing desire for self-assertion, self-expression and self-rule that was formerly gutted at the hands of White Europeans. Likewise, the West has been quick to make recompense for past imperialistic misdeeds and accommodate that self-assertion. In the United Nations, for instance, the developing world insisted in 1961 that a non-Western be elected Secretary General. As a result, U Thant from Burma (now Myanmar) served this global agency for a decade, while a Peruvian, Egyptian, Ghanan, and now South Korean have served the United Nations since 1982. In addition to this political paradigm shift, the world has seen economic ones, too. Globalization grants the South and East unprecedented opportunities to begin enjoying the luxuries and technologies the West has enjoyed for centuries. Nations like Brazil, China, India and even Kenya are now economically linked to the West and benefiting from that interconnectedness at unprecedented levels. So not only is the South and East asserting themselves like never before, and rightly so, the West has begun to value and incorporate the cultures of these non-Western nations into their ethos, rather than insisting they conform to Western sensibilities.

Despite the post-colonial shift in the secular West, however, the Church has been slow to incorporate this important global paradigm shift into Her interactions with the world, especially Her worldview of global missions. In light of the post-colonial condition, the time has come for the Western Church to shed Her colonialist impulses and embrace a post-colonial posture toward global mission enterprises. Particularly what’s called for is a worldview reorientation toward a post-colonial worldview of global missions. This blog series (based on a paper I wrote for a global missions class) seeks to make the case for such a worldview shift, arguing globalization begs a different posture by the Western Church toward the rest of the world. Such a worldview will inform how we do both theology and missions in the 21st century. To explain how a post-colonial worldview of missions would look in a global context, this paper will examine Evangelism Explosion International as a case study in light of this worldview. In the end, I hope the Western Church will begin to see how it should relate to the rest of the world, a relating that is post-colonial at its core.

For this 2008 July 4th week I thought it was appropriate to, once again, reflect on where the Jesus’ community derives it’s power and hope, and hopefully put that hope in proper perspective over and against the willy-nilly salute to everything red, white, and blue. While ancient and Jewish, this story from Zechariah and Zerubbabel is instructive to us 21st century Americans on this day of patriotism.

So he said to me, “This is the word of the LORD to Zerubbabel: ‘Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit,’ says the LORD Almighty.

Technorati Tags: 4th of july, america, christianity, democrat, patriotism, july 4th, republican

Some background information on the Book of Zechariah and situation of the children of Israel is in order. Zechariah preached to the first generation after the return to Judah from Babylonian exile. In 536 B.C. the temple foundation was laid, but due to local opposition, the work was discontinued for sixteen years. In 520 B.C. God raised up Zechariah and Haggai to stir up the nation to complete the rebuilding of the temple. Also during this time, the Israelites were experiencing economic hardship, which was caused by the fact that, with no temple in operation, the land was still polluted from their former sins and would not produce well.

In this book, God reveals to Zechariah a series of eight visions to encourage Zerubbabel and Joshua, and the other inhabitants of Judea, as they rebuilt the temple and continued to reestablish their national life. In 1:8-17, God is assuring these leaders that the time is right, it was safe to begin the rebuilding effort. After a decade and a half of opposition from their enemies and hard economic times, the riders patrolled the earth and found it to be at rest. Because the earth was at peace, the temple project could now proceed and prosperity would return (1:16,17). The vision in chapter 4 is similarly meant to encourage and reassure the leaders of God’s provision and protection, particularly Zerrubbabel.

Verses 2-3 show a golden lampstand with seven spouts, a bowl supplying each of the seven lamps, and two olive trees on either side of the lampstand. This artifact was a duplicate of the one used in the former temple and the likes of which would be used at the completion of the second. The seven lamps were supplied by a bowl in the middle of the lamp, which continually fed the lamps through seven secret pipes; the lamps were never wanting, nor were they ever glutted, rather they kept on burning clearly and constantly. Likewise, there were two olive trees, one on each side of the lampstand, that were so fat and fruitful that of their own accord they poured plenty of oil continually into the bowl, which by two larger pipes dispersed the oil to smaller ones and so to the lamps.

In this vision, it is striking how the principle of God’s provision and protection for His projects is illustrated. Nobody needed to attend this lampstand, to furnish it with oil; the oil tarried not for man, nor waited for the sons of men. The scope of this vision is to show that God easily can, and often does, accomplish his gracious purposes concerning his people and movement by his own wisdom and power, without any supplication or effort of man. Though He makes use of men and their instruments, He neither needs them nor is tied to them, but can do His work without them. This seems to be the articulated interpretation of the vision by the angel in verse 6.

Surely you have heard this oft quoted verse, “not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit, says the Lord of hosts.” It has risen to the level of cliche and is often used to engender appreciation and awe of God’s power and influence. But I wonder how much we really believe in this Spirit, especially the unmight and unpower nature of that Spirit, or rather the anthropocentric nature of these two descriptives. In the heat of the effort to rebuild the temple, the Lord of hosts was reminding Zerubbabel and the rest of Israel of their story and God’s past demonstration of His Spirit.

Israel’s story is one of bondage, release, capture, release. Always, they were put in exile or bondage because they forsook their YHWH, the Lord of hosts. And always they were released because of God’s faithfulness and the Israel’s repentance. Consider these words from Matthew Henry’s Commentary which paint the theme of this story and picture of the Spirit of God at work in their narrative:

Israel was brought out of Egypt, and into Canaan, by might and power; in both these works of wonder great slaughter was made. But they were brought out of Babylon, and into Canaan the second time, by the Spirit of the Lord of hosts working upon the spirit of Cyrus, and inclining him to proclaim liberty to them, and working upon the spirits of the captives, and inclining them to accept the liberty offered them.

It was not the power and might of the people of Israel in either Egypt or Babylon, but the Spirit of the Living God moving among the circumstances of their narrative and hearts of their captures. The people were powerless, but YHWH was powerful. The Israelites were weak, but Jehovah was mighty. God’s children were powerless and weak out of the limitations of their humanity, but the Lord of hosts was powerful and mighty out of the infiniteness of His Spirit. And what is done by God out of His Spirit stands in opposition to visible force, to the human concept of might and power.

The work of God is often carried on very successfully when yet it is carried on very silently, and without the assistance of human force; the gospel-temple is built, not by might or power (for the weapons of our warfare are not carnal), but by the Spirit of the Lord of hosts, whose work on men’s consciences is mighty to the pulling down of strong-holds; thus the excellency of the power is of God, and not of man.

This is the exact concept of The Politics of Yeast: recapturing the Ecclesia’s silent power of Love through the Spirit of the Lord of hosts. For whatever reason, God desires to partner with His people to restore things on earth to the way in which they were originally intended to be, as they already are in heaven. The power of the Spirit is unleashed through the Ecclesia loving the world with the gospel and living incarnationally. The Church forsakes Her identity when She whores Herself to Power and Might, the Minions of the Prince and Power of this world. And I fear She has.

In some previous posts on the status quo (post 1 and post 2) efforts of the Church to influence Capitol Hill, I tried to provide some anecdotal evidence (which I realize does a poor job of establishing a normative situation), which I think reeks of Might and Power. Please understand, I do not doubt that Christian political groups, their leaders, and individual American Christians have pure motives in their efforts. I am sure they are motivated out of a conviction of the Supremacy of Christ and the truthfulness of the Word of God. But there is a significant difference between the conviction of the need for ends and the means for reaching them. We need a broad, deep Kingdom vision for Capitol Hill and America, rather than one as myopic as the Republican or Democrat party.

You could think of plenty of antitheses to illustrate the point: it is one thing to be convicted that a clinic should not perform abortions, and quite another to spew forth words of hatred and anger in protest of those clinics (I was going to say, “and quite another to blow it up” but thought the example would be slightly over the top); it is one thing to be convicted of the sanctity of marriage, but quite another to prance around with “God Hates Fags” signs or sit on a national TV show and claim 9/11 was God’s punishment for all the homosexuals; it is one thing to pat yourself on your back after signing your name and address to an “action card”, but quite another to spend three days praying and fasting for the gospel and God’s kingdom-reality to invade the Capitol Hill community; it is one thing to name-call Ted Kennedy or Bill Frist, and quite another to pray for their restoration in Jesus Christ. I could go on and on, but I sense a severe disconnect within the Church right now over what efforts are of Might and Power, and which are of the Spirit, the Lord of hosts.

I close these thoughts in no better way than by inking the word’s of Matthew Henry himself: “When instruments fail, let us therefore leave it to God to do His work himself by His own Spirit.”

He who has ears to hear, let him hear!
jeremy

Over the weekend I participated in an online dialogue for my online class Global Impact. For the class we’re required to post two posts each week in response to a forum question. This weeks questions was: What is the role of the Western Church in 21st Century mission? I already posted a fairly extensive paper on my overall view, but in one of my posts I said we the Western Church need to make way for Other voices. Here is what I said:

As the Western Church seeks to “do missions” in our 21st Century context, it must do so post-colonially. To do so, She must start by giving way to other voices, especially theologically. While our version of Christianity is decidedly Western, mainly because the theological discourse has passed through the West and out to other parts of the world, a post-colonial worldview of missions must make way for African Christological categories or Asian undersandings of pneumatology. Are we so threatened and fearful of that these voices might just be better and replace our own understandings that we will try and stifle them with the great ‘H’ word (heresy)? I hope not!

This response generated a fair amount of dialogue on the forum. One of my virtual classmates took some issue with my assertion that we should not be so quick to break out the ‘H’ word when Africans give us different Christological categories, for instance, saying: “However, if we go so far as to say that there is no such thing as heresy (which I am not sure if you are saying or not) than haven’t we just claimed that all roads lead to God? What-ta-ya say?”

What-ta-I-say? Here’s what I said:

but then the question remains: WHO decides what is heresy? Is it the West, the East, the South…all ‘voices’ as one other student said? And please dont tell me the Scriptures decide heresy because that’s pretty lame…when we all know real humans (mostly Western White Men) are the ones who make decisions about what Scriptures say, thus what is orthodox and what is heresy.

So thats the real question: WHO decides what is orthodox and heresy…in addition to probably more important one: HOW do we decide. The question of WHAT is orthodox and heresy simply has lost any credibility as a viable quesiton…for the time being at least.

Given the volatile nature of what is happening within American Evangelicalism right now with the emerging church movement and confusion regarding what theology/doctrine/dogma from History do we keep and toss, I see these two questions being central to contemporary theological and ecclesiological discourse.

Who decides what is orthodox and what is heresy?

How do we decide what is orthodox and what is heresy?

There is a seedy underworld that most church goers know nothing about. It’s a world filled with buying and selling, profits and preaching, speeches and suckers the likes of which would shock the pants of Sister Betty and Brother John!

What is this 5-alarm scandal I speak of? Watch this YouTube video of Pastor James Merritt for yourself:

A few weekends ago I stumbled upon this YouTube video posted by an SBC pastor, Steve McCoy, on his blog, Reformissionary. If you watched the video, you saw Pastor Merritt being all generous like. Because, in his own words, he loves pastors, Dr. Merritt reached into that heart of gold and pulled out a special little gift from one pastor to another: one of his sermons! If you go and signup on for his newsletter in his den of crass Christian commercialism (read: website) you can download and have your very own copy of a Father’s Day sermon manuscript, complete with PowerPoint!

After watching the video I couldn’t let such a golden opportunity slip by, so I went to his site, signed up for the newsletter and downloaded my very own sermon package. After unzipping the file, there it was: my very own Father’s Day manuscript! The thing is 9 pages long, complete with the obligatory sappy introductory story, cheesy jokes, Christian cliches, and mm deep 4-steps to being-better-at-whatever-you’re-failing-at-as-a-Christian (in this case, parenting).

But this post isn’t about ranting about the state of the content of pastoral teaching and preaching. (That will be a post for another time) No, no, instead I want to ask a basic, knuckle-head question: Who decided it was OK to sell sermon manuscripts to pastors to use on Sundays? Who decided it was OK for pastors to copy and speak another pastors Sunday morning speech? Who decided it was OK for a few mega-star, mega-speachers (speaking-preaching as Doug Pagitt says) to decide what rural, urban, international, white, black, mainline, evangelical, mega-church, and house-church churches should be learning and studying in their own contexts?

Does anyone else find this incredibly odd, sad, and downright messed-up?

If you google “pastor sermon resources” you can find sites with audio files of preachers for listening enjoyment, but there are also plenty of pastor-specific sites that exist to provide sermons for pastors to preach. One website boasts “80,000 Free Sermons, Illustrations, & Free Trial for SermonCentral Pro!” and at another “you’ll find sermon series, leadership tools, and much more – all watering tools for your ministry” which is basically a nice way of saying “we offer thousands of sermon transcripts, sermon series, sermon packages, sermon illustrations, and sermon PowerPoints for you to pilfer with holy abandon…for a small fee, of course.”

It’s sad that the state of the church has driving men and women to pay for another dude’s (and dudette’s) speech about what they think God is saying and how they think people should live. It’s sad that a shepherd of the Bride of Jesus has been reduced (or rather maybe has reduced himself?) to a shopkeeper peddling his wares to desperate, needy pastors.

Why is this acceptable? Why do people do this? How does this happen?

I wonder if I will ever get that desperate? I can certainly understand the pressures to perform and deliver, the critiquing glares, and all the ears to tingle week after week could certainly take its tole. I think about my own future in such a position and can honestly say I don’t know that I would never pull such a stunt. In fact, I’m sure I will, and several times at that!

As I approach another year at seminary this fall and ministry in my own local context, watching this video  causes me to pause and reflect about the awesome responsibility of pastoring. I do not mean the responsibility to deliver great, compelling prose or the need to be clever and cool on a stage. No, the responsibility of a pastor is to teach, shepherd, and equip the Body of Christ to be Jesus to the world around them. Part of that responsibility as teachers is to teach hyperlocally, to radically relate the teachings and way of Jesus to a local context, not simply overlay another pastor’s generic vision. Isn’t this type of practice grossly inauthentic? Paul talks about us being an open letter of Christ to be read by others, and as a shepherd who is charged with the task of caring for the letters and stories of others, what better way to do so than to share the story and particular narrative of the pastor’s self? How can a pastor pastor without authentically laying bare the story and letter of his or her life? That certainly does not happen with “Made In Saddleback” stamped sermons.

Again, I can sorta understand the predicament of being a pastor and do feel for those who look around at all the glitz and glamor and long for “successful” ministries. Then the likes of Pastor Merritt offer that success with purpose-driven books, snazzy sermons, and growth-guaranteeing strategies. It is sad. But what makes me even sadder is to think that there is no way in hell that it is going to stop. There is too much money to be made, too much success to be had, and too many inflated egos to prance around.

Ahh, the state of the church…
-jeremy