BLOG 8/6/14. A NEW PARADIGM? (CONTINUED FROM LAST BLOG)

BLOG 8/6/14. A NEW PARADIGM? (CONTINUED FROM LAST BLOG)

To say that the responses to my most recent Blog, raising the question as to whether we needed a new paradigm of the church for an emerging generation, only underscore in my mind, the necessity of such a quest. To those of my generation who responded, the whole incapacity of the emerging generation to conceive of the church was: “sad,” or “unbelievable” … as though the problem was with the emerging generation, rather than with us.

But, for me what may be even sadder is the vast phenomenon of those who happily inhabit traditional ‘church’ institutions, and who find ‘church’ activities a wholesome part of their social fabric … and yet are equally incapable of giving any convincing reason why such church institutions ultimately exist, and who are hardly formed by any transformational encounter with Jesus, the Lamb of God, or with his awesome mission to make all things new.

There is a very real sense in which such an emerging generation, whose minds and experiences are not immunized by such forgetful church institutions, may be the generation, which produces that new paradigm which sees and understands how God’s plan is to recreate human relationships in authentic colonies of his true humanity, and which will incarnate the teachings of Christ in unlikely and unexpected ways.

And, yes … Christ is irresistibly and ineluctably building his church in this world, and in ways and by means, and in circumstances that no one suspects. Our human failures in seeking to build humanly controllable religious institutions (and calling them churches) do not in any way mean that Christ is not building his church, or that the church is not growing spontaneously and contagiously everywhere in the world today, often unobserved, sometimes in dangerous and life-threatening scenes, but in dynamic colonies of God’s new humanity—in those who have been transformed by their encounter with Jesus Christ and have embraced his teachings, and have covenanted together to love, encourage, teach, and be accountable to each other. The living and authentic church is alive with faith and obedience, and grows spontaneously wherever (even inside of moribund church institutions).

There are so many illustrations of this, but I am reminded of a graphic episode out of World War II (written about in the book: Through the Valley of the Kwai, by Ernest Gordon) in which a British military unit was cut off and captured by the Japanese in Burma and taken into a forced labor camp, where the conditions were totally inhumane. The morale diminished, the death toll rose, disease and exhaustion and malnutrition were diminishing the numbers daily.

It was in that horrific situation that the unit officer, a Scottish lieutenant by the name of Ernest Gordon, became one of the victims and was taken to the pavilion where soldiers were taken to die. But it was there that a church was born. The officer, himself a professed agnostic, was ministered by a simple country lad from England, who carried out his wastes, bathed him as best he could, and exhibited a gentle, self-giving love that was so very remarkable, not just to Gordon but to all of those in that hopeless place. Gordon was so taken by this exhibition of love that he asked the lad why he was doing all of this nasty work. When the reason for his ministry was discovered, it was his simple Christian faith exhibited in acts of love. He also had smuggled a tattered, coverless, copy of a New Testament in his loincloth. Gordon began reading it, was powerfully converted, and the faith became contagious, and in that most unlikely place a church was born, and those lads formed a church around the teachings of that tattered copy of the New Testament that had powerful and transforming effect and saw them through. They all returned home after the war as transformed New Creation persons. That is Christ building his church.

For this reason I look at the emerging generation as one that offers a fresh, clean slate on which to incarnate a fresh and authentic new paradigm of the church as spontaneous colonies of God’s new humanity that is the unmistakable creation of the Holy Spirit. Fascinating.

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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