Post Series
0: Intro
1: Narrative Question
2: Authority Question
3: God Question
4: Jesus Question
5: Gospel Question
Theological Foundation Recap
6: Church Question
7: Sex Question
8: Future Question
9: Pluralism Question
10: What-Do-We-Do-Now Question
11: Final Thoughts

After setting down his alternative theological foundation, Brian launches into an exploration of “be-ology”—what it means to be as a Christian and human. (160) A natural first question after such a jarring experience with the first 5 questions is this: “What do we do about the Church?” Or more specifically: What is the Church?

Interestingly, up until this point Brian has not used the word church. I found this incredibly odd and disconcerting in a book that is supposedly exploring a new kind of Christianity. Odd that he would not use the very word Jesus Himself used to describe the group of people who are his followers, i.e. Christians; disturbing that his new theology and faith is not specifically for the Church. For someone who describes himself as “a lifelong churchgoer and a veteran pastor,” I wondered why in 160 pages (and beyond this chapter) he never utters the word. I think the reason becomes clear when we explore the answers Brian provides to his question.

He begins this section, and rightly so, describing the fear and antipathy modern culture has toward the church. The sentiments he describes reflect one which someone exclaimed in a conversation I describe in my book I had with a fellow Starbucks barista: “The church is fucked up!”¹ As Brian describes the current crisis, “When enough church leaders wake up and smell the Ben-Gay, when they realize that their faith communities are shrinking and wrinkling and stiffening, they start to ask the church questions very urgently: What are we going to do about the church?” (162)

He says that we should stop worrying about what forms the church takes (thanks you!) and start seeing “ourselves as servants of one grander mission, apostles of one greater message, seekers on one ultimate quest…What would that one mission, message, and quest be? Around what one grand endeavor can we rally? What one great danger do people need to be saved from and, more positively, what one great purpose do they need to be saved for?” (164)

In other words: Why does the church exist? According to Brian, “to form Christlike people, people of Christlike love…the formation of Christlike people of love naturally becomes the grand unifying preoccupation and mission of our churches.” (164, 165)

At one level this seems fine, but does the church in any way exist to save people as the earliest church themselves existed? Yes. According to Brian, the church exists to save people “from the great danger of wasting their lives, becoming something less than and other than they were intended to be, gaining the world but losing their soul.” (emphasis mine. 164)

In answering question 6, then, the Church must totally rethink the Her core mission and identify that mission along these terms. (165) That mission, then, is “forming people of Christlike love” (171) and “save them from…wasting their lives” (164)

That’s it folks.

It’s funny, because I thought the Church was a community of redeemed and rescued people sent on mission to reconcile the world to God through Christ.

Does not Paul explicitly explain the mission of the Church in 2 Cor. 5:11-21 when he explains the God gave “us” the community of believers the “mission of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them”? Are we not Christ’s ambassadors who have been committed the message of reconciliation: “Be reconciled to God”? Is not God making His appeal through the Church to be reconciled to Him through Jesus Christ? And is not the basis of that reconciliation that “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God”?

While I am with Brian at one level, that the mission of individual church communities is to form Christlike people. Christlike formation, however, is part of sanctification! In other words, forming Christlike people who follow the way of love happens only after that have been made new through individual “transformation moments.” What is that transformation moment? When a person choses to be “in Christ” (that incredibly key, distinctive theological rallying point for Paul throughout his letters) and the old person goes a ways and the new person begins.

For Paul humans are born “in Adam” and live out of the flesh, their sinful nature (Rom 5:12-20). They are alienated from God and His enemies and by nature people of His wrath (Col 1:21; Eph. 2:3). But “in Christ” Paul also makes clear that this condition is a past condition. “Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior.” (Col. 1:21) “Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath.”

These and other pieces of the Holy Scripture make plain that there was an old condition and a new condition; a moment when someone is not a believer/follower and when someone is. Even more important there is a time when someone is not reconciled to God and a moment when a person is through Christ. To put it in more exclusionary terms: a person is part of God’s community or they are not, part of the Church or not. Brian cannot voice this, however.

All of this is incredibly important to Brian’s definition and mission of the Church, which misses a vital, necessary piece: faith in Christ. The church is NOT simply a group of people who act like Christ and follow the way of love (though this is an important, vital part of having a real, genuine faith in Christ) and saved from wasting their lives. This is the Kiwanis, a great group of people who’s current motto is “serving the children of the world.” Service and love is not distinctive to the Church nor to Jesus. You could say the same thing for the PeaceCorp, though such Imperial comparisons might draw a lightning bolt or two from Brian.

No, the Church is the community of people who have been rescued from death through the forgiveness of their sins by faithing in the final sacrificial death of Jesus Christ, who by His own blood entered the Most Holy Place once and for all, thus obtaining eternal rescue and life for those who faith in Him. Consequently, those who are saved and believe in Jesus act as the continuing presence of Christ to spread His Kingdom Reign on earth.

That’s the Church, Brian McLaren.

As Paul writes in Ephesians 2: “Because of His great love for us, God, who is rich and mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions— it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with Him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages He might show the incomparable riches of His grace, expressed in His kindness to us in Christ Jesus.”

The word “us” is used 4 times along side with/in Christ 4 times. Paul is speaking to the Church, the redeemed and the rescued and the reconciled in Christ. This is the message and banner of the Church: BE RECONCILED TO GOD IN CHRIST!

This is the very message of the earliest of the Church in Acts. They didn’t preach “live like Jesus” but “believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved.” (Acts 16) In the face of Jewish persecution and Roman imprisonment they didn’t proclaim “don’t waste your life” but “Repent and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins.” (Acts 2) God raised Jesus from the dead, and the forgiveness of sins and freedom from sins in Christ was the consistent message of the Church, stemming from Her mission to go into all the world and make disciples of Jesus Christ. (Acts 13 and Matthew 28).

In reality, Brian’s church is not church at all, but a social club devoid of any power because it is disconnected from Jesus Christ as exclusive Lord and Messiah.

This Holy Friday I am reminded how important it is for the Church to boldly, confidently shout from roof-top to roof-tops that Christ has died, Christ has risen, Christ will come again! Through the Church God is dispensing His grace and forgiveness and reconciliation and rescue from sin and death, because it is through Jesus Christ and Him alone that all of this is accomplished. The power for forgiveness and reconciliation and life transformation and individual rescue from evil, sin and death is through death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, both of which are mysteriously missing from the mission and message of Brian’s church.

1. the (un)offensive gospel of Jesus, 37.

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

THE POST-COLONIAL ERA AND ECCLESIOLOGICAL IMPLICATIONS

While post-modernism is the condition of the West, post-colonialism is the condition of the South and East; the West is grappling with an existence beyond the values and metaphysics of modernism, while Asia, South America and Africa are all dreaming of an existence outside and beyond their collective colonial history and colonizers. Most non-Westerners prefer to use the term post-colonialism to describe their struggle for identity in the aftermath of the colonial experience. Postmodernism deconstructs the dominant narratives as being simply one of many competing reality-defining stories, hence Jean-Fransçois Lyotard is incredulous towards metanarratives. Furthermore, Michael Foucault’s critique birthed the deep hermeneutic of suspicion of institutions that characterizes our postmodern culture. Consequently, any institution that attempts to control belief and behavior is viewed as repressive and domineering. In fact, there is a deep sense that institutions in and of themselves are structures of domination. Thus, postmodernism is an ally of sorts of post-colonialism; those who seek to come to terms with the experience of colonization and its long-term effects see in postmodernism not only the possibility of an alternative discourse that affirms and celebrates Otherness, but also a strategy for the deconstruction of the concept, authority, and assumed primacy of the category of ‘the West.’ In other words, just as postmodern thought disrobes the differing values and authorities within the West as simply one story over another, post-colonialism asserts that the West itself is one narrative among many, a narrative whose authority and primacy is no longer simply so. That the West does not exclusively define reality is a seismic development, indeed!

The reality of our post-colonial era has great implications for the Western Church. First, the Western Church must dissect the West as a category from the narrative of Jesus. In other words, Christian spirituality and God’s Redemptive Narrative can no longer be defined by Western values and sentiments. In his book, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Paul Freire explains that there comes a time when the oppressed as divided, unauthentic beings develop their own pedagogy of liberation, a development that must be rooted in their own existential struggle for freedom, rather than in models presented to them for emulation from the oppressors. In other words, those who have been oppressed by the West in times past will not seek liberation from the West and its institutions, including Christianity. Rather, they will find freedom in their own indigenous examples. Whether those examples are renewed tribal spiritualists or alternative religions to Western Christianity, post-colonial sectors of the world will assert themselves against all things Western, which calls for indigenous discipleship.

After Jesus’ resurrection He commissioned His disciples as agents of His new Kingdom-movement to share the good news of the Kingdom. Interestingly, where you would expect Jesus to use the word “preach/proclaim” or “bear witness,” a slower, lower profile verb is used, an almost scholastic, schoolish word, “disciple.” This verb literally means, “to cause one to be a pupil or disciple,” which is the controlling word for the Church’s mission. In addition to dissecting the narrative of Jesus from the West, post-colonialism calls for solidarity through indigenization. Solidarity with the non-West requires that one entire the situation of those whom one is solidary; if what has characterized the global South and East is their subordination to the West, true solidarity with the post-colonial South and East means discipling them in the Way of Christ at their side in order to transform their objective reality. Thus, because the post-colonial condition requires hyper-indigenization, the Western Church would do well to begin bleeding Western categories from God’s Story, while also rethinking our concepts of the Other.

As the West rethinks its categories and pays closer attention to indigenization of God’s Redemptive Story, it must not fall into the trap of what Edward W. Said calls the “phenomenon of Orientalism.” According to Said, Orientalism is the notion that the categories “Orient” (which would be modern-day Asia, particularly China) and “Occident” are man-made categories that contributed to a European system of knowledge about the Orient, an idea of Europe that flowed from “a collective notion identifying ‘us’ Europeans as against all “those” non-Europeans.” Embedded within the idea of the Orient was an identity of European superiority in comparison to all the other non-European peoples and cultures, creating a hegemony of ideas and overriding the possibility that more independent, skeptical thinking people might have differing views. This facet of the colonial–post-colonial narrative struggle is intriguing for two reasons: it precludes Western Church theological dominance and hegemony, because the post-colonial struggle is precisely set against the type of Western identity that led to Orientalism; and more pragmatically it requires the West to revise nearly all of its categories for the global Other, realizing that they have been largely deduced through a foggy 18th century-esque romanticism that generated who and what was an Oriental, who or what was an Other.

While I hardly scratched the surface of everything post-colonial a few things should be clear: Otherness is celebrated and affirmed over against the West; Western institutions likeChristianity and the Church are skeptically viewed as extensions of colonial years gone by; solidarity with the global Other requires a radical indigenization as the formerly oppressed seek an identity and solutions apart from their oppressors, and embedded within their own forgotten narratives; and the Western phenomenon of Orientalism (or even Afrikanism) must give way to more nuanced, respectful categories of the non-Western Other. Obviously, our post-colonial global reality requires a drastic shift in Western global mission efforts. But before those efforts can shift, Western global missions as an entity needs to rethink the worldview underpinning those efforts.

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.

Previous Posts
Intro
Ch. 1-3

In my last post on Doug Pagitt’s new book A Christianity Worth Believing I posed a number of questions in response to a paragraph from the first page of the book. In that paragraph, Doug basically said he no longer believes in the “versions of Christianity that have prevailed for the last fifteen hundred years, the ones that were suitable in their time and place but have little connection with this time and place.” This post will begin to unpackage what Doug means by this statement, beginning with what I believe to be his thesis:

[This book] is an expression of my desire for a Christianity that makes sense in the world in which we live, a Christianity that is not afraid of questions and will not resist answers, regardless of where they lead. It is my attempt to embrace a faith that is expansive, growing, and beautiful, one in which God is active and alive, involved in all of life. Because I believe in a Christianity where nothing is left out and no is left behind, where humanity participates with God in the redemption of the world; where sin is more than a legal problem to be judged but a relational problem that can be healed; where we pursue harmony, centered on Jesus the Messiah, the Jew, whose life, death, and resurrection allow us to live well with God; where the Bible draws us into a story of life and healing; where we find hope for this life and life ever after; where love is alive, where love drives out fear, where love propels us toward lives lived for the betterment of all the world. (pg 9-10)

At beginning, I just want to point out that Doug BELIEVES IN THE RESURRECTION! That isn’t a statement of utter surprise on my part, but a statement that, I hope, puts to rest all of the silly, stupid gossip and slander that is floating around the internet. No, Doug is not a heretic that denies the deity of Christ, resurrection, or sin. I would probably categorize him and this book as somewhat heterodox. Doug isn’t a heretic, but is simply a dissident who thinks differently about what exactly is orthodox.

With that said, here are a few things I noticed in this thesis and beginning of the book, chapters 1, 2, and 3.

Part of Doug’s ‘shtick’ (if you can call it that) and that of the broader emerging church movement is the recognition that all theology is contextual; everything we have formulated about the substance of our faith, by in large, has been formulated in particular periods of time and cultures and situations. As my professor Dr. Wittmer always says, orthodoxy and theology has always formed in response to herecy. While I HATE the ‘H’ word, I think he’s right and it adds to the larger argument and conversation over historical theology.

We say that Christianity is a “living faith” that has shifted and grown and been presented in different ways over the last 1900 years, and many of us are figuring out two things: what from History do we keep and what from History do we toss. Firmly believing that the Spirit of God moves through History to carry His Story along by the Tribe of His people into Creation, I am wrestling with what wheat has the Spirit preserved and what have we carried with us that is chaff. I think Doug is wondering that same thing and down right offering an alternative to, as we’ll see in the rest of the chapters, a Graeco-Roman version of Christianity.

But at the beginning I want to note a few things from this thesis: Doug seems to be an Open Theist who rejects the God of Classic Determinism; Atonement is sufficient for all and efficient for all, which means he at least takes an Arminian perspective and maybe/probably a Christian Universalist perspective, too; sin is relational and fits with His Arminian/Open Theistic perspective of God; Doug wants to re-Jewify (which is a neologism, btw!) Jesus, which is right in line with the Third Quest for the Historical Jesus of NT Wright and others; Doug believes the hope for the world is the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus; do I need to remind everyone that he has written, in print for all the world to see, that he believes in the resurrection?! And he embraces a perspective where, in the words of my professor friend Dr. Wittmer, “Heaven Is A Place On Earth“…quite possibly for all humans.

So here are is where I see Doug landing. Nothing necessarily and automatically heretical about an Open Theistic, Arminian, Christian Universalist position. Now I could very well be wrong about these assumptions, but that’s my gut reading the rest of the book. All three positions are held be plenty of other Christians and groups, so what he is proposing is not wildly off the map from what others throughout the history of the Church have also proposed and considered and with which plenty of other real live Christians have wrestled, including me (which I guess must make me a Pagittian of sorts!). He’s just packaged all of that heterodoxy in one book as an alternative to the status quo Reformed, determinism version of Christianity!

Anyway, the next two chapters tell the story about how he came to place his faith in Jesus Christ and how other, well meaning Christians, tarnished that innocence a little. One of the things I love about Doug’s new book is that it is part memoir, part theological treatise. So it’s like memoir theology or a theological memoir. A new genre of Christian literature, perhaps? After laying the ground in chapter 1 with a need to always reform our theology, he begins the memoir part of his theological memoir.

I’m not going to recall the story, because you really need to read it in all its self-revealed majesty. The thing I want to comment on is this: Doug came to Jesus because he encountered Him and His story; he went to a Passion Play and was completely laid to waste by the spiritual weight of encountering the Living God in the Story of the death and resurrection of Jesus on display at a theater in downtown Minneapolis. After his soul was stirred to the point of “making the Story [he] had just seen the navigational system of [his] life [and] live the Jesus way,” he was brought to the back and read a little booklet that parsed the Jesus Story into bullet points, steps and stages in an effort to ‘make sure’ he was really saved.

As Doug recalls, “Even though I prayed the words [of the booklet], that prayer didn’t mean nearly as much to me as the one I had improvised in the theater. I know this tract was meant to help new converts get the gist of the story of Jesus, but the booklet version made the story seem far more complicated than the joyous telling that had led me backstage. In fact, it made it seem like a different story altogether, one with steps and stages rather than people and passions.”

And here is what I wrote in the margins: “Why can’t we just let God’s Story of Creation–Rebellion–Redemption–Consummation stand?” Why can’t we just let Jesus and His Story do all the talking, why must we fiddle? And what’s more: what is even necessary for salvation? What is the content of the faith of those who seek Jesus and His Way? As Doug points out in another encounter 10 days after his ‘conversion’, the way in which people come to and grow in Jesus is much more progressive rather than once-for-all as the result of signing on the dotted lines after agreeing with the bullet points of absolute truth.

Like Doug, it is difficult for me to boil down the majesty, powers and process of the good news of Jesus to general requirements for all believers. And like Doug, I believe there is a way of living and telling the Christian Story that connects with the life experience of the person living it. How we show and tell the Story is crucial, and he and I think that Story hasn’t been told very well as of late. But that is for another post…

Did I mention that Doug said he believes in the resurrection?

Previous Posts
Intro
Ch. 1-3

Because I am suppose to be on summer break from school, though still in (and rather bored with) summer classes, I picked up Doug Pagitt’s freshly released book “A Christianity Worth Believing” last evening. I’ve ‘followed’ Doug and his ministry at Solomon’s Porch and writings since my own ‘shift’ three and a half years ago. I’ve always appreciated his perspective and spin on God’s Story and I’ve been waiting to get my hands on this book ever since he announced last summer that he was writing a new one.

Here’s how the book describes itself:

Pagitt, a leader in the Emergent church movement, came to faith as a teenager at a Passion play, but Christian theology often didn’t cohere with his own raw, powerful and inclusive experiences of and intuition about God. Here Pagitt tells his own story and weaves together a new theology for the Emergent movement, viewing Christian doctrine from a slightly different perspective and trying to break it out of the firm grasp of Greek thinking by returning it to its Jewish context, the way it would have been understood by first-century readers. To Pagitt, humanity’s fallen state as a result of sin should not be emphasized so much as God’s desire to partner with people to do good work in the world. The Bible is not so much about truth and error as it is a picture of God attempting to reconnect, while Jesus represents our potential to live in love and establish the kingdom of God now. Pagitt clearly articulates both the heart and theology of the Emergent movement. Conservative critics will no doubt consider this Christianity subtly twisted out of recognition, but postmodern readers struggling with current expressions of faith will see love and hope.

I’m going to try to blog/converse my way through the book as a way to digest it and sharpen my book interactive skills, though since my current rate of return on verbal blogging promises is hovering at near 1% we all might be a bit optimistic I’ve already read through 35 pages, so check back tomorrow for some initial thoughts.

To get the ball rolling, here is a line from the first page:

I am a Christian, but I don’t believe in Christianity.

At least I don’t believe in the versions of Christianity that have prevailed for the last fifteen hundred years, the ones that were perfectly suitable in their time and place but have little connection with this time and place. The ones that answer questions we no longer ask and fail to consider questions we can no longer ignore. The ones that don’t mesh with what we know about God and the world and our place in it. I want to be very clear: I am not conflicted because I struggle to believe. I am conflicted because I want to believe differently.

Initially after reading that paragraph, here’s what I am looking for in the book:

• What are those versions of Christianity? Who’s are they and what are those versions’ ‘content’?
• Why don’t those versions throughout Christian history connect to this time and place? What exactly doesn’t connect? Is there anything that still does? Anything that we should still stay connected to in those historic versions?
• What questions did those versions answer and what were their answers?
• What are the questions our placement in history (particularly the postmodern placement) are asking? Why don’t those versions in Christianity’s history connect to our postmodern context?
• What answers no longer “mesh with what we know about God and the world and our place in it?” What DO we know about God and our world and our place in it?
• How do you want to believe differently? How does that “different” look and feel?
• What do you believe that is different or similar or the same than those versions of Christianity that no longer mesh with what we know about God and the world and our place in it?

Believe me when I say I’m not bone picking here nor witch hunting. I thoroughly agree with the “versions of Christianity” description, because as a budding historical theologian (yeah right!) I can see how all theology is contextual and historically rooted. That I get. And I think the talks of Pagittian heresy are over blown and nonsensical. But these are the questions I have after reading page 1, questions I really hope he answers, not because I want to nail him to the wall, but because I think they really deserve answering if paragraph 3 of the first page is where Doug is at.

And if the current gestation of historical theology in our postmodern context is forcing us to reconsider the “versions of Christianity” we’ve been handed by History, then we need to know what from History do we keep and what do we discard; what are the non-negotiables that History has preserved for us that mesh with what is real about God and the world and our place in it (in essence what are we to believe is real about God and His Story), and what is the chaff of History to discard as cultural nonsense.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. I’m off to read…come back soon

In his landmark book on the Church, Chuck Colson cast a convincing, hopeful vision for the Body of Christ. Throughout his book, Being the Body, Dr. Colson explored who the Body of Christ is and how She is the manifestation of God’s hope for the world. During this exploration, though, he also laid down a scathing indictment: the Church has lost Her effectiveness and must recapture an understanding of Her biblical identity. He is right. The 21st century American Church’s fascination with crafting slick worship events (complete with fog machines and rock-star quality light shows), building $93 million facilities (complete with a bookstore, cafeteria, gym, and Starbucks™) and fighting petty, alienating “culture wars” (complete with fear-mongering political attack ads) has seriously warped the Bride’s understanding of Her identity and mission. And in light of the postmodern, post-Christendom cultural shift the Western world is experiencing, we not only need to recapture our identity in general, but need to answer the specific question, “What has God called us to be and do in our current cultural context?”

In this post, I aim to help correct this understanding of the Church’s identity by addressing the question, “What is the mission of the Church?” The obvious starting point for this question is Jesus, who birthed the Church and commissioned Her for a specific function. Beyond the incarnation, though, we will also examine the mission of God and how the established organism of the Church fits into the Trinitarian framework of God’s missional, redemptive plan for Creation. Subsequently, the paper will examine a dual understanding of the Church’s mission as rooted in disciple-making and prophetic witness. In short, we will see how the mission of the Church is to be a community in which people are discipled in the Way of Jesus and embody and bear witness to the Reign of God within a Trinitarian framwork. And because the Church is the hope for the world, I hope this understanding of mission will help Her faithfully live as the organism through which God is accomplishing His mission for Creation.

A TRINITARIAN ORIGIN

Let’s make one thing clear at the beginning: the Church is not a mere collection of individuals, cultural construct, human institution or political interest group. The Body of Christ does not have its origin in the institutions of Man, but rather claims Her origin, and thus Her mission, from the Divine. The first mention of the ekklesia (Church) is in Matthew 16, where Jesus is recorded saying, “I will build my gathering of called-out ones (church), and the Gates of Hades will not over come it.” And consider the entire ministry of Jesus: Throughout His ministry Jesus set out to raise up and form a group of people for the purpose of sending them on mission when He ascended to the right hand of the Father. At the very beginning of Jesus’ ministry, a messianic community was Jesus’ goal. It was not an after thought or even simply a result of Jesus’ teachings. Calling out a gathered people was deliberate because they would (we would) carry forth His mission, a mission that was from the Father.

As the Father has sent Jesus, so Jesus has sent us, the Church. And Jesus’ mission becomes our mission, because the Father uses Humans to accomplish His work. “They may, and often will, fail him and disappoint him, but their role is crucial to the achievement of His mission, for it is through this flawed and vulnerable group of people that God’s kingdom will be established.” The Father entrusts the proclamation of His Kingdom-movement to a particular group of people whom He has chosen for the sake of the whole world. And what is this group to proclaim? They are to proclaim the Reign of God, the fact that God whom Jesus knows as Father is the sovereign ruler over all people and things, and this reality is no longer something remote, but rather is an impending reality that now confronts all men and women for a decision.

And in true Trinitarian form, the mission of the Church is from the Father, given through the Son, and accomplished by the Holy Spirt. While our mission to announce the Reign of God is from the Father and given to the Church through Jesus by Him establishing the Church through gathering together a group of people, the Spirit is the Person who helps Her accomplish this mission. Like Jesus’ own coming, the works and words of the Church are connected directly with the power of the Spirit. This active Agent of Mission is a power that rules, guides, and goes before the Church to bring the universal work of Christ for the salvation and restoration of the world to its completion. So the Church is not left to Her own devices to accomplish Her mission, but is guided and empowered by the Spirit. Furthermore, the mission of the Church is not Her own nor is it of Human origin. Rather, the mission of the Church is from the Father, given to Her by the Son, and accomplished by the Spirt, a realization that should undergird any understanding of the particulars of Her mission and identity.

DISCIPLE-MAKING

I have a confession to make: I hate evangelism. Well, not evangelism, per se, but rather the word, and how it is used to define the mission of the church. The word evangelism stems from the Greek euangelion for “good news,” which is a noun not a verb. The problem is an entire theology of mission has been built on this single word, which was never used for the commission of the church in the first place. When the word was originally used by Jesus of the Kingdom of God, He described the invasion of God’s Kingdom-movement in the world as good news, and called people to turn from their own Rhythm of Life and believe in this Kingdom by following Jesus into it. After His resurrection He commissioned His disciples as agents of this new Kingdom-movement to share the good news of the Kingdom. Interestingly, where you would expect Jesus to use the word “preach/proclaim” or “bear witness,” a slower, lower profile verb is used, an almost scholastic, schoolish word, “disciple.” This verb literally means, “to cause one to be a pupil or disciple,” which is the controlling word for the Church’s mission.

The key to the mission of the Church is not “evangelism” but discipleship; we are not to evangelize, but to influence someone in such a way that they pattern their life and lifestyle after another. In our case, our goal should be to influence people to follow Jesus as Messiah, Redeemer, and Restorer. Now to be sure, in this process we will proclaim, explain, and bear witness to the amazing news that is found in Jesus and His teachings on the Kingdom of Heaven, but the mission of the ekklesia is to step into someone’s life and show them a better way of living and being Human through Jesus, not simply to talk at them about their sin, Jesus’ death and resurrection, and possible future heavenly bliss.

The differences between these two notions of mission are incredibly stark: While evangelism is monological, discipleship is dialogical; evangelism seeks to win people, discipleship seeks to shape people; when we evangelize, we posture ourself as a sage on the stage, with discipleship our posture is a guide on the side; evangelism is an ephemeral event, discipleship is an on-going, progressive effort. I liken evangelism to Colonialism and discipleship to Sustainable Development.

“Colonialism is the extension of a nation’s sovereignty over territory beyond its borders by the establishment of either settler colonies or administrative dependencies in which indigenous populations are directly ruled or displaced. Colonizing nations generally dominate the resources, labor, and markets of the colonial territory, and may also impose socio-cultural, religious and linguistic structures on the conquered population.” Similar to 19th and 20th century colonial efforts, are not evangelistic tactics often like crossing borders into enemy territory to settle and claim people for our kingdom? When we enter the conversation with another don’t we usually dominate all of the emotional, intellectual, and verbal capital in an effort to make that individual our own? And just as colonialism was often based on the ethnocentric belief that the morals and values of the colonizer were superior to those of the colonized, don’t we often insist that we hold the trump card to all things spiritual, that our morals and spirituality are more superior to the friend or co-worker, ultimately thinking they have nothing to add to the conversation?

Rather than colonizing, we are called into Sustainable Development: We are called to step into the cultures and languages and customs and lives of real people to show and tell them a better way of being human by showing them Jesus and telling them of God’s Kingdom Reign. In other words, we are called to disciple. In the same way that those who are committed to sustainable economic development enter the lives of people groups indefinitely for the purpose of showing them a better, more sound way of growing food, filtering water, or organizing an economy, we are called to step into the lives of people indefinitely to show them a better way of being Human in Jesus and explain the significance of His death, burial, resurrection, and ascension. Just as sustainable development is about the individual (rather than the group thats doing the developing), efforts at discipling non-followers are about them and their life, not us and our church or group. In the same way sustainable development equips people to better grow food or better manage a local economy, discipling non-followers must be about equipping them to follow Jesus and obey His teachings, not simply getting to heaven. Rather than colonize and conquer through evangelism, may we sustainably develop people through discipleship, because this was at the heart of the mission Jesus, which He gave His own disciples.

PROPHETIC WITNESS

Prophetic witness is the articulating of moral truth. Like the prophets of the Hebrew Scriptures, the 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 an embedded culture in order to articulate the gospel and ethical implications of the Kingdom of God. While the identity and mission of the Church means She is a discipling community, the Body of Christ is also an eschatological community that embodies the good news of Jesus Christ and Reign of God. And as Darrell Guder wrote, the absence of the gospel Jesus preached in the gospel the church has preached has woefully impoverished the church’s sense of mission and identity. In other words, the how the Church defines and tells the gospel is often very different than how Jesus defined and told the gospel, resulting in a misunderstanding of mission and identity.

Whether it is the Four Spiritual Laws, Romans Road, or Evangelism Explosion, evangelistic tools used to communicate the gospel typically point people toward accepting Jesus to receive forgiveness of sins to go to heaven. While experiencing both forgiveness (and might I add liberation) from sin and eternal existence with God are pieces of the good news found in Jesus, framing the gospel in these terms is woefully inadequate and foreign to Jesus’ own definition. For Jesus, the immanent Reign of God was the good news that needed to be proclaimed in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, and to the uttermost parts of the world, a reign that most certainly arises as God’s mission to restore all Creation through the death and resurrection of Jesus. And while the Church must not be equated with the reign of God, She is both spawned by it and directed toward it; the Body of Christ is the result of the breaking forth of an alternative Rhythm of Life, and is in humble service to that Reign by bearing witness to it.

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 has chosen the Church to bear prophetic witness to the salvation and restoration found in the 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.
And how does the articulation of the moral and ethical truths of this reign look? Firstly, the Church must embed Herself within particular cultures by incarnationally living, eating, and working closely with its surrounding community to build strong links between Christians and not-yet-Christians. Secondly, the mission of the Church in preaching the good news of Jesus must never be separated from action for God’s justice, because doing justice and mercy in concrete situations has always been at the heart of God’s deliberate movement and mission in History. Thirdly, the Church represents the values, authority and Way of the Reign of God, giving a foretaste of what is to come while pointing people toward this better way of being Human and living together on Earth. Ultimately, though, the Church stands in witness to the powerful, restorative work displayed on the cross through the once-for-all sacrifice of Jesus and final defeat of Death for all individuals within the World, which is its true hope.

CONCLUSION

At the conclusion of his book, Chuck Colson encouraged the Church to “fear not!” In fact, he says, the risen Lord of the Church tells His people 366 times throughout the Scriptures to not fear, and for good reason. Colson says the Church need not fear because as we live out our identity as His Body, God will use us for His purpose; “As we exhibit the characteristics of His Church throughout the ages, consuming the Word of God, celebrating the sacraments, loving one another in holy purity, the world around us will be changed.” The world will change and God’s mission will be accomplished, however, only when the Church lives out Her mission as a set-apart community sent to disciple people in and bear witness to the Way of Jesus and Reign of God. Unfortunately, the Church sells Jesus like aluminum siding, rather than disciple people in His Way, and pursues political ambition, rather than prophetic witness. Despite the extra love affairs of the Bride of Christ, though, we need not despair. We should not fear because the Church has its origins in Jesus Christ, and He is sustaining and building Her well into the future.

Like most of our discussions, we inevitably came to the topic of the emerging church movement. Like me, Dr. Wittmer is a recovering fundamentalist who is caught in the tension of his fundamentalist roots and what he perceives as shaky theology in this germinating movement. While he appreciates the emergent conversation and rejects much of his fundamentalism past, he still holds to the fundamentals of historic Christian orthodoxy and bemoans the loose-knuckled approach to belief within the emerging church (which will be answered by yet another book this fall called, Don’t Stop Believing.)

One of those bemoaned beliefs centers on the exclusivism of the Jesus and particularly the community of beliefs known as Christianity, or rather the inclusivism of the emerging church and the finding of God in the Other.

In our dialogue, he mentioned an essay in the year-old book by emersion (the Emergent line of books at Baker Publishing) called, An Emergent Manifesto of Hope . That essay, called “The Sweet Problem of Inclusiveness: Finding God in the Other” and written by Samir Selmanovic, a Seventh-Day Adventist pastor who grew up in a European Muslim family, explores the nature of the exclusivism of Christianity in relationship to the Other and the possibility that while “there is no salvation outside of Christ…there is salvation outside of Christianity.” (pg. 195)

Dr. Wittmer thought the essay was “bizarre” and “heretical”. I couldn’t recall the specifics of the chapter, but offered that maybe the author was simply deconstruction Christianity and our obsession over the institutionalization of Jesus rather than suggesting people can be God’s children simply by living like Jesus. He then challenged me to re-read the chapter and give him a 5-point essay on why it isn’t heretical (he was sorta kidding…) and I said I’d write a blog post, instead

So here is a reaction post specifically to Salmanovic’s essay in An Emergent Manifesto of Hope and more broadly to the inclusive tendencies of Emergent, all for (you) Dr. Wittmer!

Let me start by saying I’d consider myself apart of the emerging church conversation as a participant and appreciator. I participate as a read of and writer for the ideals of this refreshing movement; I participate as an appreciator, because I appreciate the general undercurrents of the conversation and what those leading the charge are trying to accomplish. But with that said, I also can see some troubling things within this diverse, adolescent movement. So after re-reading Selmanovic’s “inclusiveness” I come to this topic both appreciating and troubling. Let me continue…

The general theme of his essay is this: Is Christianity the only container of Jesus? In other words, is our religious system the only legitimate manager of Christ, or can people of other faith communities and spiritualities be in “partnership” or “relationship” with Christ.

Unfortunately, the author makes the mistake at the very beginning by confusing Religion with Story. Rather than dealing with the elements of the Story of the Holy Scriptures, he assumes that Christians believe our Religion is sine qua non, rather than our belief in God’s Redemptive Story of Jesus as told through the Holy Scriptures is end goal.

For instance, the author writes:

“But Christianity’s idea that other religions cannot be God’s carriers of grace and truth casts a large shadow over our Christian experience. Does grace, the central teaching of Christianity, permeate all of reality, or is it something that is alive only for those who possess the New Testament and the Christian tradition? Is the revelation that we have received through Jesus Christ an expression of what is everywhere at all times, or has the Christ Event emptied most of the world and time of saving grace and deposited it in one religion, namely ours? And more practically, how can we have a genuine two-way conversation with non-Christians about out experience of God if we believe that God withholds his revelation from everyone but Christians?”

Now this I agree with: do we honestly think that other faith communities do not contain reflections of what is real about God and His Reality? Because we are spiritual beings and created to relate to a Wholly Other that exists above and outside ourselves, it would make sense that varying human spiritual communities would reflect the strong human propensity for the Divine.

But the problem is the assumption that we through our own ability can create a truthful spiritual experience. While we are spiritual beings who were created to relate to God, Rebellion and Sin have “cracked” our ability to do both. So while other religions may contain fragments of God’s story (including even fragments of creation, rebellion, and redemption), those fragments are no substitute for The Story that is contained not in Christianity (which is such a weak strawman) but in the Holy Scriptures.

So, to answer his question “Does grace permeate all of reality, or is it only for and contained within Christianity?” allow me to use an oft used strategy from the Emergent playbook: that’s the wrong question! The teaching of grace has nothing to do with Christianity, but rather with God’s Redemptive Story. The issue is not whether the world has been emptied of saving grace and deposited into the human construct of Christianity (which is really what it seems he is getting at with this religion bit), but rather what Story tells the real story about saving grace.

At this point the real question should be this: what Story contains what is real about grace and salvation?

Moving on…

At another point, the author goes on to says this of the exclusiveness of Christianity:

“The Chominas and the Marks around us leave us wondering whether Christ can be more than Christianity. Or even other than Christianity. Can it be that the teachings of the gospel are embedded and can be found in reality itself rather than being exclusively isolated in sacred texts and our interpretations of these texts? If the answer is yes, can it be that they are embedded in other stories, other peoples’ histories, and even other religions?”

Again, the author confuses Religion with Story. Christianity is the institutionalized expression of God’s Redemptive Story as found in the Holy Scriptures. The Church is the community of called out and set apart people, by God, that embodies the Story and is sent on mission to reenact this Story by healing, restoring, and reconciling the world to Himself through Jesus Christ.

So the questions are these: Is God’s Redemptive Story isolated to the text of the Holy Scriptures? Well if you believe that God Created Humans to exist in an everlasting relationship with Himself and sought to communicate that intension to Humans through the Story embedded in the Holy Scriptures, then no. Now if this questions is no, then the second question is moot, but let’s humor him anyway. Is the good news of restoration through Jesus embedded in other religions? Hmmm, let’s ask a Muslim: Muslim, is the good news of restoration through the sacrifice and grace of God through faith in Jesus Christ found in your religion? Sort of a silly question, isn’t it Samir?

Again, Christianity as a human religious construct really isn’t the issue, Selmanovic. The issue is the Story of Jesus. Is that Story found in other texts? No, it is found in the Text of the Holy Scriptures. Is the Story of Jesus embedded in other religions? No, it is the Story of God’s Redemptive Community, a.k.a. the Church.

Which leads us the the next juicy piece of revelation (notice the lowercase ‘r’):

“We do believe that God is best defined by the historical revelation in Jesus Christ, but to believe that God is limited to it would be an attempt to manage God. If one holds that Christ is confined to Christianity, one has chosen a god that is not sovereign.”

At this point, I do believe I’m scared. I think I’m scared because I didn’t notice these sentences before, or maybe I did but was wholly uncritical of them and this entire essay, taking long, hard sips of the Emergent Kool-Aid perhaps. Also, at this point I wish I was sitting down with Samir and asking him in conversation about these two particular sentences.

If I were sitting across from Samir, I’d ask him to explain to explain three words: best, limited, and confined. First, I’d ask Him what in the worlds he means by “God is best defined by the historical revelation of Jesus Christ.” Has he not read Barth, the patron theologian of the emerging church? Wasn’t it somewhere in Church Dogmatics that he said Jesus Christ was thee fullest, complete, and entire revelation of God? Is Jesus not the ultimate expression of God’s Divine Self-Disclosure? How is he the best? Does that mean there are other not-so-best revelations of God aside from Jesus elsewhere in the cosmos?

And this leads to word number two: limited. Let me get this straight:

God…Yahweh…the I AM is not limited to Jesus Christ ?

Did something get lost in the translation? And what’s more: limiting God’s Divine Self-Disclosure to Jesus Christ is somehow theistic management? Limiting the God as revealed in His Story to God-with-us-God as found in His Story to Jesus is us managing God? To be honest: I don’t know what to do with this! If God’s Redemptive Story as found in the entirety of the Holy Scriptures is real and truly a form of God’s Divine Self-Disclosure (read: revelation) then how can you say that reducing God to Jesus Christ is improper?

What’s more: how can you say Jesus is not confined to the Christian Story? Again, the author seems to have difficulty distinguishing between Religion and Story. Christianity has nothing to do with it. God’s Redemptive Story as communicated through the Holy Scriptures does. And if one does not believe that God’s Divine Self-Disclosure is not limited to Jesus Christ, and this not confined to the Christian Story, then I wonder how you can even call yourself a Christian. Or if you prefer, a follower of Jesus. If Jesus is not the only expression of God, then what are we doing?

I’d say this is the most disturbing quotation of the essay, but then I’d forget about a section at the beginning of the piece. After recounting a story of how an Algonquin tribal chief, Chomina, rejected the offerings of eternal life by a Jesuit priest because he wanted to be with his woman and boy in his paradise, Selmanovic says:

“‘What would you choose, eternal life without your lived ones or eternal death with them?’ Chomina knew his answer. He would rather die than live without his beloved. Moved by the Holy Spirit people like Chomina reject the idea of allegiance to the name of Christ and, instead, want to be like Him and this accept Him at a deeper level. This choice between accepting the name of Christ and being Christlike has been placed before millions of people in human history and today.”

Samir, the early church was not persecuted because they offered people eternal life, a paradise or even a set of pietistic rules to walk in. No, the early church was persecuted and butchered by Empire Rome because they precisely accepted, yea proclaimed, Christ as Lord and Messiah, rather than Caesar. Despite the fact Caesar was called the Son of God and Savior of the World, they knew through both the verbal testimony of the apostles and actualy working of the Holy Spirit that Jesus Christ was Lord, not Caesar, and he was the one to whom they were to surrender their lives. It was His Story they were to step into, rather than the false stories (and especially divine ones) of Rome. Rome could have cared less about a band of people wanting to live well. What they cared was that thousands of people accepted the name of Christ, over against the name of Caesar.

And while I myself struggle with what to make of other religions and people who live good lives, lives reflective of the Way of Jesus, I go back to this: Faith isnt the point in the first place; faith does not save, faith does nothing for a person (other than perhaps provide a bit of psychological health…). Rather, the object to which that faith is placed has the only power to save (or not). Faith is not the Savior or Healer or Restorer or Forgiver, Jesus is. Jesus is the Powerful One. Jesus is the One (and only one) who has defeated Death and provided the Final Sacrifice. Not Buddah or Muhammad or even Moses for that matter.

Having Faith or being in Faith or coming from a Faith Tradition has become quite in vogue in the past few years, because it is incredibly noncommittal. Anyone can “have Faith” and “be in Faith” without it interfering in there lives or the lives of those around them. But Faith is nothing without Jesus. I say it again: faith is nothing unless it is placed in Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ.

So, Selmanovic, to say that the Holy Spirit guides people “to reject the idea of allegiance to the name of Christ” and, instead, simply live and be like Him is, at minimum, utter and complete nonsense that borders heresy. And to even suggest that rejecting allegiance to Christ in exchange for a good, lived life is a deeper level of commitment is reckless and wholly unsupported by God’s communication to humanity through the Holy Scriptures that suggests far otherwise.

While I can appreciate, at some level, the argument throughout this essay that we need to drop the requirements for people to embrace an institutionalized from of Jesus (in the form of the Christian religion), I struggle with how to do that without dropping the Story about Him or the community that He Himself built: the Church. There is a fine line between dropping the Religion and dropping the Story, and at times I feel the emerging church (as reflected in this essay) crosses the line by letting loose of the single Story that only matters: rescue from exile and restoration to relationship with God through Jesus Christ.

I am no emerging church hater and fully identify with the general thrust of this conversation. But it’s essays like this that cause me to question the limitlessness of the dialogue. While I embrace diversity and will be the first to help erect the tent, at what expense do we continue renovating the tent to include more and more voices? Do we expense with human nature? The nature of sin? Or the essence of Jesus himself? May this conversation continue dialoguing widely and deeply, by may we also conclude those conversations with punctuation marks and underscore a belief. May we continue deconstructing the human constructs of the institutional form of faith in Jesus, but may we not whittle Jesus and the grandur of God’s Redemptive Story down to human inclinations and persuasions.

Is Christianity the only container of Jesus and His redemption? No, but God’s Redemptive Story as found in the Holy Scriptures is. May we devote ourselves not to a Religion, but a Story, the Story of rescue and restoration to relationship with God through Jesus and Jesus alone.