BLOG 2/9/16. CAN OLD TRADITIONAL CHURCH INSTITUTIONS BE RE-CYCLED …?

BLOG 2/9/16. CAN PROUD OLD TRADITIONAL CHURCH INSTITUTIONS BE RECYCLED INTO TRUE AND VITAL COMMUNITIES OF GOD’S NEW CREATION?

Michael Frost, the splendid Australian missions and theology resource has done a study in a book entitled Incarnate: The Body of Christ in an Age of Disengagement. Frost is no novice, nor is he a detached theoretician. Rather he is a practitioner and sees what such electronic/digital age has done to the human mind and to relationships. When we can sit at a table with friends who are all absorbed with their iPhones, or can see reality only on a television screen, or escape into media recreation and not be attentive to the persons and the neighborhood around them, … then something is terribly out of focus. Or when we can “attend church” and never really know what or who those others are, other than some basic identity … that’s not what God’s recreated community is all about.

The New Testament documents emerge out of a whole other culture. Westerners (such as I) find some of the deep traditions of the middle east fascinating, even desirable, but so very strange to us. I think particularly of hospitality. One’s home was always, evidently, equipped to give lodging to travelers or strangers. It is amusing the way we westerners have totally misread the nativity story of Jesus. Joseph and Mary didn’t get shoved out in the barn when they found no room in the inn. After all, Joseph was of the seed of David. He was royal family. But in those days folk kept their animals in a lower room attached to the house for all kinds of reasons of convenience. And it is likely that Mary and Joseph and Jesus stayed in that house for a good while.

Or take the early days of the church after Pentecost. First of all, there was a massive turning of thousands to faith in Jesus as the Messiah. The crowds were evidently given public teaching into the life and ministry and message of Jesus in some public place (like the temple porch, maybe?). But then in Acts 2:42 comes a jewel of a clue that may be seminal for us. It says: “And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship (or koinonia a gathering that had an intimacy and intercommunication and responsibility about it), t the breaking of bread and the prayers … they attended the temple together and breaking of bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts …” (Acts 2:42 ff.). It goes on to say that no one considered what he/she owned as their own. They were stewards of what God had given them, and so they shared generously with those in need. That’s incarnation.

Later there is the word of exhortation: “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers.” (Hebrews 13:2). This was considered a necessary requirement for God’s people and certainly would have been looked for in the church’s leadership. Paul, himself, was frequently the recipient of such hospitality in the pursuit of his missionary journeys. (I certainly have been on my brief missionary journeys.) But Paul let folk get close to him. “Be imitators of me, even as I am of Christ.” That is true disciple-making. Let folk get close. Let them ask questions and see you in your informal best, and off-guard. People need those whom they know well, and with whom they have had koinonia to be their models in the mission of God.

How did we get large, imposing church institutions with very respectable, even believing people, who (to use Frost’s term), are so politely disincarnate? New church communities, missional churches can incarnate this from the get-go, … but venerable old, proud, religious institutions are going to be a huge challenge if they can be recycled at all. Hopefully, God will raise up some really creative ecclesiastical and communal architects to help us imagine something totally new and different. Just a thought …

About rthenderson

Sixty years a pastor-teacher within the Presbyterian Church. Author of several books, the latest of which are a trilogy on missional ecclesiology: ENCHANTED COMMUNITY: JOURNEY INTO THE MYSTERY OF THE CHURCH, then, REFOUNDING THE CHURCH FROM THE UNDERSIDE, then THE CHURCH AND THE RELENTLESS DARKNESS. Previous to this trilogy was A DOOR OF HOPE: SPIRITUAL CONFLICT IN PASTORAL MINISTRY, and SUBVERSIVE JESUS, RADICAL FAITH. I am a native of West Palm Beach, Florida, a graduate of Davidson College, then of Columbia and Westminster Theological Seminaries.
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