Missional Explorer

Talking Consumerism with Ryan

I had coffee with Ryan, a new friend and kindred spirit from Adullam this past week.  Sometime soon Ryan is going to be challenging our community re:consumerism which often acts as a barrier in moving from the "oneness" of our communion to the "otherness" of mission.  This is gonna be a tough one to take on as I suggested to Ryan on Friday.  I have recently read Walter C. Hobbs chapter on "Faith Twisted by Culture" in Confident Witness--Changing World (Van Gelder) where Hobbs says:

"A cursory review of the history of Western Christian missionizing discloses two problems.  One is a colonizing tendency among those who have taken the gospel to other peoples.  The other is an inclination among the evangelized to reshape the gospel along the familiar line of their own traditional worldviews, values, and religious norms.

The task is perhaps even more difficult for the missionary who is a member of the culture to which the gospel is being proclaimed.  North American Christians face a substantial challenge in this regard.  The gospel we preach is too often shot through with Western sentiments, such as individualism, consumerism, security, personal happiness, and corporate success.  North American culture has a tenacious grip on our expression of the Good News, and we face a formidable task in disengaging ourselves from its hold. . .

The thesis of this article is that North American Christianity is in great measure a faith twisted by culture.  Too often, we have uncritically embraced many of the taken-for-granted presumptions and priorities that characterize the dominant worldview of Western civilization instead of testing our culture's values and perspectives against the biblical standards.  And we have merged those cultural givens within our doctrine and practice, even though we are people who claim to be followers of the Way."

Finally, Hobbs unpacks our unfaithfulness in three specific ways:

"Consider the several gods that our cultural forebears followed, and ponder the various ways in which the North American Church permitted the worship of such gods to become blended into our Christian faith.  Three gods, in particular, seem to permeate Euro-history that still dominates North American culture and North American Christianity.  These are: (1) modern science, itself the progeny of the Enlightenment and rationalism; (2) economic liberalism and individualism; and (3) organization and professionalization.  Each of these cultural themes has distorted a basic Christian doctrine.  Science and rationalism have shaped our view of Scripture; the individualism of economic liberalism has shaped our view of salvation; and organization together with professionalization has shaped our view of the church."

Do we lemmings have the courage to ask these kinds of questions of each other in our headlong dash to the abyss?

Disengaging in Order to Engage

Wrapping up three observations on moving from Christendom to Diaspora from Douglas John Hall, Hall commends us to:

"Disestablish yourselves!  But what does that mean, concretely speaking?  It is a relatively straightforwad thing to disestablish when establishment, in the primary sense, has meant a legal arrangement between the church and state.  The famous Barmen Declaration required immense courage and a strong, biblically inspired theology; but it could come to the strategic point that it did come to with a kind of enviable immediacy.  'Since we Christians are bound in obedience to the one Lord', said the drafters of the Declaration, in effect, 'we cannot admit as ultimate the authority of any other leader, and (by implication) especially not the little self-proclaimed Fuhrer whose agenda so obviously violates what w hear from our one Source and Sovereign.

In light of the suffering of the Confessing Church under Hitler one dare not suggest that Barmen was easy.  But as the most dramatic instance of Christian disestablishment in modern European history, Barmen is premised on the existence of a de jure form of religious establishment.  Its authors knew quite precisely where the disengagement from culture had to concentrate its attention.  Intentional disestablishment in North America is another story.  How can churches disengage themselves from such nebulous things as worldviews, ways of life, moral codes, social values, dreams of happiness and prosperity?"

Personally, I totally agree with Hall's diagnosis here and also agree with his general prescriptive treatment of disestablishment or, what I call, disavowing/disengaging from Christendom as the institutional church.  Yes, very easy to say. . . incredibly hard to do.  Ultimately however I disagree with Hall's specific prescriptive treatment as he proceeds to identify "theology" as our way out. . . ao our way to disestablishment.  My current and preferred option of dealing with (again in Hugh Halter's words) our "1700 year wedgie"--- where the early Church was unwittingly corrupted in accepting an alliance between church & state (yes, the ending of persecution was obviously welcomed but at what cost as Constantine proceeded to "use" Christianity to unite the empire)---is not theology but missionality at the margins: accepting and perhaps even welcoming our marginality in society as an opportunity for authentic faith and true engagement with our culture. 

In the end, I agree with Patrick Keifert in his new book We Are Here Now: A New Missional Era when he insists, with theologian Martin Kahler, that "Mission is the mother of theology."  Perhaps its because I've seen theology as wedded to the discipline of philosophy and propositional (abstract) truth far too long.  If theology were more often de-westernized and seen as "relational truth" (as author Mary Lou Codman-Wilson identifies in her chapter "Witness in the Midst of Religious Plurality" in Van Gelder) rather than "propositional truth", I might agree.  But, in the meantime, my own personal view is that walking in primacy of our missionality (actively engaging the world) will force our theology to be more than just a "head trip" and therefore more accountable in the real world beyond academia.    

"Six Characteristics of Missionary People"

In reading a chapter by Jon M Huegli in Confident Witness--Changing World (edited by Craig Van Gelder), Huegli quotes John Hendrick's "six characteristics of a missionary congregation" which I have adapted for a people and not just a congregation.  This is truly a missional call to faithfulness.

1.  A missionary people will understand that they live in a cross-cultural situation.

2.  A missionary people will enter into dialogue with their context and culture.

3.  A missionary people will provide opportunities to reflect on culture from a biblical view.

4.  A missionary people will pray for and seek their own transformation.

5.  A missionary people will accept the marginal position we find ourselves in.

6.  A missionary people will bear witness in their social and cultural situation.

Wanted: Missional Resources for High School Students

As part of my upcoming responsibilities at Jim Elliot School, I am being asked to re-enter the classroom (after a two-year absence, one in New Zealand and the other in administration) in order to teach what we have previously called our one semester "missions" class.  Because of how our school has developed over the past 17 years, the "missions" class has become something of a "flagship" course in pointing/preparing our kids for broader engagement with the world.  Plans are for me to lead this class second semester. 

I am, of course, absolutely delighted to take on this class once again.  I've taught it many times before. . . but never in light of the missional directions I have been traveling over the past year.  My first decision was to change the name of the class from "missions" to "Missio Dei" which I hope reflects a change in emphasis from something that "we are doing for God" to identifying and participating in "what God is already doing" in the world around us.  It's a huge difference and I want the class to reflect this difference in every possible way.  As I've blogged so often in this space, the Mission is God's. . . it is ours to join and participate with Him in what he is already doing!! 

Now comes the hard part and perhaps some of you can help.  There are heaps of materials and resources out there on missional thought/engagement in our post-Christendom and post-modern context.  The problem is that, while some of this material is truly awesome for older ages, I have yet to find anything that can effectively be used with high school audiences.  Currently I am tempted towards adapting parts of The Shaping of Things To Come by Frost & Hirsch with Mere Discipleship by Lee Camp.  But I would love to have options that target the high school audience and "kid culture" more specifically and effectively.  If you have ANY ideas or suggestions in the quest, please let me know.

Final Thoughts on Context

Circling back one more time to how the first Jesus followers dealt with the issue of context (embracing non-Jews as fellow pilgrims even as they remained outside of Jewish culture), I wonder at how willing we are to embrace new Jesus followers even as they remain outside of western culture.  What does it mean, say, for Japanese to follow Jesus and remain culturally Japanese?  What does it mean for skaters to follow Jesus and remain sub-culturally skater-dudes?  Or more provocatively, is it possible for Muslims to follow Jesus and remain culturally Muslim?  Yes?  No?  Why?  Why not?  As you can see, we must all wrestle with context and with a God who insists on working uniquely and meaningfully in every contextual situation.

I’m off to Christchurch for a few days to meet up with a couple other missional guys, Steve Taylor and Karel van Helden.  More later.               

Context Adventures in the Early Church

I like to be reminded often that the events recorded in the book of Acts were positively stunning in their embrace of what God was doing in non-Jewish contexts.   The first Christians, mostly Jews, assumed that one had to be Jewish in order to authentically follow Jesus.  The first crisis occurred when non-Jews signed up (Acts 11).  The second crisis immediately followed when non-Jews refused to become Jews and join Jewish culture (Acts 15).  “Whadayamean we need to allow God to work uniquely in that filthy culture!” was essentially the Jewish response.   Peter along with the Holy Spirit intervened and the rest is history.   But we lose the meaning of these events if we don’t recognize the scandal of it all back then and apply it equally scandalously today.  To what extent are we embracing what God is doing uniquely in other contexts/cultures today?  Is it possible that we need to read the Bible differently or, as many missional people are saying, allow the Bible to read us differently regarding our often narrow perceptions of God and His work in the world around us?  And what does the most scandalous context message of all mean when we consider that, in what we call the Incarnation, Creator-God chose to became one of us and live among us, not as some distant trans-cultural king but as a (gasp) itinerant Jew of questionable parentage and circumstances who not only grew in his early awareness, but lived, traveled and ultimately died completely immersed in the cultural context of his time.

Sports and Context in New Zealand

I think that one of the reasons why “context” seems like such a big deal to me right now is that we are obviously living here in New Zealand which, however western culturally, is still a “foreign country” to us.  Kiwis talk differently than us, drive differently, think differently, find value in different activities, etc.  In fact, as our family has come to realize, sports is an awesome example of a “highly contextualized” activity here in New Zealand.  Kiwis are, at best, only vaguely aware of American sports: basketball some, a little about American football (which they call “gridiron” here) and almost none about baseball or ice hockey.  Doing sports here in NZ means cricket (which we still don’t have a clue about), rugby (which we are beginning to understand even though they have at least three different ways of playing it: rugby league, union, and sevens), field hockey (I saw my first match since college yesterday), a game women play called “netball” which drew huge crowds at the sports complex yesterday—netball is kind of like basketball but you can’t dribble and the nets have no backboard just a free-standing hoop,  and of course the game of “football” which is soccer to us.  Reading the sports pages is like reading a foreign translation of the Bible to us. . . despite the fact that newspapers may have literally dozens of articles on sports, we don’t understand or follow any of it.  It’s also been interesting to see how passionate Kiwis feel about sports teams when we objectively don’t even have a clue.  But, just as quickly we have realized that American sports is just as “foreign” to them.  Following up on my Michigan-Ohio State comments in a previous blog, I asked Toby if he had ever heard of the Michigan-Ohio State American gridiron game. . . and it all drew a blank for him.   So “context” is a huge deal in all kinds of ways and is definitely not just an intellectual abstraction.  What has meaning, value, and enjoyment for us (as Americans) carries almost no value or meaning for Kiwi’s.  So if sports, as a fairly mundane activity, is so highly contextualized throughout the world, what does that mean for issues of faith which is supercharged with all kinds of history and emotions????

An Arab Jesus?

In my work recently, I have been continually reminded that we must always “contextualize” the Bible into every culture or people group we happen to be in. Contextualize refers to context in emphasizing that the Gospel must always be Good News for a specific people in a specific location at a specific moment in time.  In other words, it can only be Good News if people are given the freedom to embrace Jesus and, together with the Holy Spirit, work out what it means to follow Jesus in their context!  The implications are enormous because following Jesus in a specific context may look much different, say, in non-western cultures than it does for us westerners.  That fact, by itself, is often very difficult for many of us to accept because (1) we like to think of ourselves as having a corner on faith and (2) it also means that we often have to give up control of what discipleship looks like in other cultures.  But “give it up” we must (1) if other peoples are to have any chance of integrating faith into their context and (2) if we are to avoid the carnage of carrying more culture than Christ into other lands.  As I understand it, this lack of contextualizing the Gospel is one reason why so many Arab-speaking peoples reject Christianity because they (often correctly) see that to embrace Christ means that they must embrace western culture thereby rejecting the culture of their birth.  Arabs, particularly Muslim Arabs, have other issues as well but I am convinced that this rejecting (or embracing) of Christ for wrong reasons of culture is a huge scourge in our present time.   To counter this trend, among many things we must consider is, what might if look like if, for example, a Palestinian was to embrace Christ but remain culturally Arab??  I think I’d like to follow this up for a few days .  What are your thoughts at this point?  

On Letting God Be God

Continuing briefly on my thoughts from yesterday, I am fascinated with this tendency we all have to create God in our own image.  Especially when I "design God" in such a way that He agrees with me all the time.  After all, God is just a bigger, better version of me, right?  And, anyhow, wouldn't the world operate so much better if everyone was like me?  Challenging this tendency we all have (yes, you have it too, admit it) is a cool little book entitled "God is Not. . . "  I've listed the details of this book in the sidebar of my blog for those who are interested.  Of course, we do the same thing to Jesus, emphasizing the things we find comfortable or enjoyable or supporting our views while ignoring the things He said or did that are somehow vaguely threatening re: how I want to live my life.   The key question are these: If God and/or Jesus is not just a bigger, better version of ourselves, Who is He?   How can I find out what He's like?  And what is my attitude toward how other people see God in the meantime?

Walking as Aliens

We have been here in New Zealand for almost 3 months now. . . long enough to become acclimated to a new country and a new culture.  As all of our friends know, we truly love it here.  Yet, in the midst our immense enjoyment of new friends and a new environment, the truth is that we are still not completely familiar here.  This is not “home”.  The driving is different, the rules of engagement are different, work is different, and the language, while similar, is still different in hundreds of ways.  So while we feel comfortable living here in NZ, we still find ourselves outsiders of sorts, aware that we are not Kiwis, that we live here only so long as NZ consents, and that we are still largely strangers to Kiwi ways.  In a word, we are aliens.  As Linda and I talked this morning, we were startled to realize that our feelings of being comfortable but not relaxed, open but still cautious, a part of here but still not belonging, participating but not totally adjusted to. . .  may also be the way we should live in the United States as our country-of-origins.  Author Rodney Clapp calls our country-of-origin our “host country” and infers that people with a primary allegiance to God’s Kingdom should always be somewhat uncomfortable with political nation-states.  Several questions come to our minds: As the people of God and citizens of a different “country”, have we become too comfortable in the United States?  Have we adjusted too easily and too completely to a home that is really not our home?  And is it possible that we should have more in common with Jesus-followers from other lands and cultures than we do with fellow citizens of the United States.  By and large we are still grateful to be a part of the United States.  But confusing gratefulness with primary identity and allegiance would seem to be truly a dangerous mix.