#2 BLOG: THE CHURCH AND THE CULTURAL WHITEWATER
For several years I was involved with producing a national conference for our denomination’s seminarians. My colleague in these conferences was Darrell Guder, who is at the forefront of the Newbigin studies having to do with the missional church. The description of this required seminar was: “Pastoral Ministry in the Cultural Whitewater.”
My role was simply to introduce our seminarians to Newbigin’s provocative thinking on: “The Church As the Hermeneutic of the Gospel” (From Chapter 18 of The Gospel in a Pluralist Society). But Darrell was intent on introducing these visionary young seminarians to the uncharted cultural realities for which there were no patterns for how to negotiate the cultural whitewater. Most of them had come out of fairly traditional Christendom era congregations, and assumed that they would graduate and find their way as somewhat traditional “ministers of Word and sacrament” in similar congregations.
We have lived for a millennium and a half with the institutional patterns bequeathed to us by Christendom, … those patterns that pretty much described the church as (excuse the shameless alliteration): Place + Permanence + Performance (called a “worship service”) + Priest/Preacher + Passive and supportive laity. Though there were remarkable exceptions and episodes of missional obedience and fruitfulness all along the way, that was, and still pretty much is, the standard pattern.
But here we are moving irresistibly into a Post-Christian (even hostile or resistant) culture, where, here in the west a smaller and smaller percentage of the population even acknowledges the church, or have any affinity for it. In my own neighborhood I have wonderful neighbors, but many (if not most) of them have either had very bad experiences with the church, or their thinking is colored by the frequently reported scandals involving church leaders, etc. This means that for me, I tread a delicate path in my communication with them, and in my frequent conversations (like, being an “over-the-hill” pastor makes me suspect) over drinks.
In the subsequent blogs I want to raise with you some of insistent previous questions, such as: What is the purpose of the church in the design of God anyhow, … and in the gospel of the Kingdom of God? How are Christ’s followers equipped to function as his New Creation folk in the realities of this “whitewater?” How is the church an essential element in gospel proclamation? Or: “What is the life-span of a viable congregation?” It’s an exciting time to be alive, but demands “suspending the horizons within which everyone else thinks” (to quote Andy Crouch), … not to mention that half the world’s population is under 25!
Stand by.
