Enchanted Community

BLOG 11/4/13. THE CHURCH AS A COMMUNITY OF EXILES

Let me continue on the theme introduced in my last Blog (“The Church and the Other Six Days”). To adequately address the issue of the church’s too often failure on equipping the people of God for the other six days of the week, we are going to need to do something like: reconceive, or maybe reimagine, our whole popular notion of the church—and to realize that the church is always a community of aliens and exiles in a foreign land—always. Absolutely. Peter reminds us of this when he describes the people of God as a whole different race of people, who are sojourners (aliens) and exiles in a context that is always warring against our souls (I Peter 2:9-12 in loc.).

We have all probably read that passage many times, but we need to stop and realize the implications of what it says for our understanding of who we are as the people of God, or as the church, or as the dwelling-place of God by the Holy Spirit, i.e., our ecclesiology.

Please note: this says that where ever we are on those other six days, we are in an alien context culturally and socially. It may be a very sophisticated alien context, but it has values that are not focused on our being the incarnation of God’s New Creation in Christ. It is a culture that is always very subtly substituting its own idols for the claims of God’s Kingdom. It is a culture that will always try to seduce us into conformity to its own norms if we want to be acceptable. It would substitute religion for Christianity.

The church, then, is that sabbatical gathering of this community of sojourners and exiles to be reminded again of: who we are, and of what is our calling for those other six days. It is a gathering where we are to be to be reminding each other and encouraging each other of who we are. It is a gathering where the word of Christ dwells richly in our mutual conversations and where we are to be “teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in our hearts . . . (Colossians 3:14-16 in loc.).

This is not your typical understanding of church.

This is a whole different ecclesiology where the ministry belongs, not to some clergy-class, but rather where the ministry is from each of us and to each of us by one another. It is a gathering in which we acknowledge the realities of our daily lives and our daily work as agents of God’s New Creation in Christ. It is where we share stories about life and work, about challenges we face in the seductiveness of this world. It is where we rejoice in our calling to Christ, and pray together for God’s kingdom to be coming and for his will to be done dynamically in and through our excellent lives in our present realities, as those who are the bearers of His diving nature.

This is all so counter to the prevailing custodial understanding of ‘church’ and of ‘church leadership.’ It understands that the church does not exist as a hiding place from this present world, but as that community that equips us and continually re-evangelizes us, and excites us for our calling to incarnate that Kingdom and its life-giving present in the whole fabric of our context. The church is not club that generates church activities to entertain us spiritually, but rather is to be a transformational encounter with God and each other week by week.

Our conception of the church must eschew any notion of the church as an escape from the realities of this present world. It must always understand that the church is that thrilling and dangerous counter-cultural community that is the flesh and blood demonstration of God’s new order.

Got it?

BLOG 10/31/13. THE CHURCH AND THE OTHER SIX DAYS

Dr. John Knapp, president of Hope College in Holland, MI, has recently written a book entitled: How the Church Has Failed Business People (and what can be done about it). I haven’t yet read the book, but I do know John Knapp, and I know of his credentials internationally as a profound resource on ethics and business. He and I are friends and we have discussed this subject on several occasions. There is too often a disconnect between what we consider ‘church’ with its own institutional life . . . and the other six days of the week when we are engaged in our homes and workplaces. It’s not just business people that have been failed, but all of us if the church is not equipping us to be functioning children of Light, or God’s New Creation people in Christ, in all of the vicissitudes of the other six days (after Sunday). Those other six days are the arena of our calling and of God’s mission for us.

I remember quite clearly when on an occasion a pulpit search committee had been given my name and came to visit me to solicit my response. The church they represented was a very large and wealthy First Presbyterian in a major industrial and financial center in this country. In its pews, week by week, sat the influential citizens of that influential city. When I inquired what they were looking for in a pastor, they gave me a glowing report on what qualifications they sought, and what a marvelous opportunity it would be for me. (My friend John Knapp would have choked!). They wanted someone who was eloquent and inspirational in the pulpit, who affirmed them, and who also could be an entertaining speaker at their Tuesday Businessmen’s Lunch (and who would manage the church from his ‘throne’ in his study).

When I asked what role the pastor had in forming them in their lives of discipleship, to instill in them the responsibilities of Kingdom citizenship, to engage with them in discussions on the meaning of their work, on Kingdom ethics, on the responsibilities such persons of influence had on the large number of lives their companies affected—they looked at me and were speechless for a few moments, before admitting that this hadn’t been in their purview.

Make a note: such a prestigious congregation had (in John Knapp’s words) failed in its responsibility to these men (mostly) and women.

In that same city was another acquaintance of mine who, at that time, was the vice-president in charge of sales for another giant multi-national company. In a discussion group with him, and with a note of bitterness, he let us know that he had been in that church for twenty years and the church loved to have a person of his stature on their membership rolls. They wanted him to service on its official boards, and to support it financially. His anger was that in all of those years no one had ever asked him what he did during the week, though he was responsible for a huge international sales force. His conclusion: “They didn’t give a damn.”

Another failed church.

Let me conclude this blog by saying that these are stories of a church of a generation ago. The emerging generation has no traditional reverence for such disconnected church communities. These younger adults will not ordinarily invest themselves in such time consuming, and vocationally disconnected church activities that don’t equip them for their lives the other six days. Good for them: “Six days shall you labor, but the seventh you shall rest.” If the church ‘gathered’ doesn’t equip the ‘church scattered’ to engage the complex and ambiguous realities of their place of calling, then it has surely failed.

This will probably require the radical re-conception of church and of pastoral leadership. Stand by …

BLOG. 10/28/13. A CHURCH DESIGNED FOR THE MONDAY MORNING WORLD

The role of the ministry of the laity in their daily work-a-day lives is loaded with fascinating potential. It has, however, too often been displaced (hi-jacked?) by church professionals, who focus God’s people, rather, on their faithful participation in all of those in-house church activities. That is a horrendous subversion of the mission of God.

I regularly sit with our Christian community, in our worship services, in the midst of folk who are film-makers, research scientists, single moms, truck drivers, contractors, IT specialists, actors and actresses, baristas at Starbuck’s, bankers—you name it. As I look at them out of my own eyes as a once-upon-a-time teaching pastor, and now as an author, I have to wonder how all that is taking place in that worship service equips and forms each of them/us for our role as the children of Light in the week that is to follow?

The ministry of the laity is a theme that periodically emerges, creates excitement among the laity, and then is eclipsed as theology is divorced from the workplace. After World War II, the newly emerging World Council of Churches did some seminal and very helpful studies on the laity, but then that was eclipsed by more arcane theological issues. In those years Dorothy Sayers became a voice for such a needed focus on the laity, but church professionals had another agenda.

Along in the mid-sixties and seventies there emerged a healthy faith at work movement with Keith Miller, Bruce Larson, Howard Butt and others—even producing for a time a really good periodical by that designation. But when the funding ran out, so did the journal. Voices such as Howard Blake, Robert Slocum, and others would blow the trumpet for such a cause, but the seminaries, which, ostensibly, were training the churches teachers and leaders remained mostly deaf to this strategic mission.

I still cringe when I hear clergy speak of: “Before I went into the full-time ministry …” My question would be: which baptized (or confirmed) Christian person is not in ‘full time’ ministry’? Which child of God is not a part of the missionary calling of the church? When is the mission field not in the heart of the neighbor next to us, or in the place of our incarnation?

Then in the 1970s, after one of the huge Urbana Missionary Conferences, the InterVarsity staff became aware that of the 18,000+ students attending, only a few would wind up in overseas missions to the unreached world abroad … while the rest would return to one of the greatest mission fields in existence, which is the North American workplace. With that vision, they implemented InterVarsity Marketplace, and for a few years under Pete Hammond’s leadership produced a journal, and did some remarkable conferences … until the funding ran out.

So you can image my own excitement when PRISM Magazine, the journal of Evangelicals for Social Action, did a recent issue highlighting this very ministry, with a lead article: “The Daily Grind? Putting Our Faith to Work on the Job.” Yea! And in that issue is another hugely encouraging article about Redeemer Church of New York’s Center for Faith and Work. They quote that marvelous quote from Dorothy Sayers: “In nothing has the church so lost her hold on reality as in her failure to understand and respect the secular vocation. She has allowed work and religion to become separate departments . . .”

Cheers for PRISM, and for Redeemer Church and Timothy Keller for lifting up the banner. Stand by: this theme has been my passion for forty years and more. It needs to be heralded. To be continued . . .

BLOG 10/23/13. (CONT.) THE POSSIBLE LIABILITY OF CHURCH BUILDINGS

In J. R. R. Tolkien’s epic, Voldemort is the name “which must not be spoken.” For most traditional and custodial church communities, the same is true of even raising the possibility of the subject that questions the viability of church buildings, or how such buildings might well be a liability to the very mission of the church. I am regularly amused when I raise this possible liability in personal conversation with pastoral and church leaders how quickly they change the subject.

So allow me to be brief, and perhaps heretical, insane, contrary, or whatever . . . but I’m no novice in this realm of ecclesiology and of missiology. As I indicated in my last Blog, church buildings can enhance the mission and be useful, and be good stewardship in some cases—but more often they are idols, swept and polished and hugely expensive.

The church over its history and in its great missionary explosions has not depended upon church buildings. Meeting places? Of course. But church communities meet in rented storefronts, on beaches, in clandestine conventicles, in homes, out of sight, in coffee shops or hotel ballrooms . . . all kinds of convenient places as they pursue their pilgrim journey. Missional churches always must insist on being mobile, versatile, and flexible as they pursue their mission of being communal demonstrations of God’s new humanity in Christ.

That kind of thinking is disturbing, if not anathema, to comfort-zone Christian communities. OK, so be it. I want to propose that the greatest favor God could bestow on most comfort-zone churches would be the reality-check of having their church buildings destroyed, or expropriated. Then . . . then they would have to come together and ask the basic questions: Why has God called us? To whom has God called us? Why are we here? How do we equip ourselves so that every one of us is mature in Christ and contagious with the gospel in our daily lives, in our families, in our work place, in our twenty-four/seven lives? And is a permanent building essential, and is it good stewardship? Or is there another way?

How can we be a pilgrim people? How can aliens such as we are facilitate purposeful meeting together in such a context that we can “teach and exhort one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs?”

Face it: that is a question that will not be spoken by most church leadership. Church buildings become expensive idols, and the habitation of in-house church activities that are so often inimical to the mission of God. They become the habitation of what I somewhat humorously describe as: Thomas Kincaid ecclesiology. Figure that one out.

There: I’ve said it. Comments?

BLOG 10/21/13. THE POTENTIAL LIABILITY OF CHURCH BUILDINGS

For centuries we have identified church buildings with the church, which consume a vast amount of money in maintenance.  We “go to church” or “I belong to the church on Sycamore Street.” And I am quite certain that there are many Christian communities who have buildings that are a real asset to the mission of God—but only as staging areas where the individual followers of Christ are equipped to engage in the real mission of the church. The mission of the church is not to congregate in a sacralized building, and engage in multiple church activities. It is much more focused on being contagious with the gospel in daily life.

This all came a bit more into focus for me recently when I was in a discussion with a leader from the evangelical church in Cairo, Egypt. He was reporting that it was illegal for Christians to meet anywhere other than church buildings in that predominantly Islamic culture. The state approved of the church buildings as the place where Christians could legally meet. So what happened?

Church buildings have become the target of the radical Islamic groups, and many have been burned and destroyed. So what happens to the church, in such a setting, when the church building is destroyed? Does the church cease to exist? Is the Christian church and its mission dependent upon the approval, or the legalization of an Islamic, or Hindu, or secular civil magistrate?

Or in our own culture, one could ask why it is that church buildings are tax-exempt? Why this accommodation? Churches expect the same public services of protection as other segments of society. Why, then, should the church not pay taxes and help foot the bill? What would happen if the civil magistrate suddenly imposed property taxes on the billions of dollars of church property in our nation?

The roots of this go back to somewhere in the era of Emperor Constantine, (in his ostensible new-found faith in Jesus Christ) who thought to be doing the church a favor by endowing it with temples and professional clergy, choirs, etc. so that it would be a counterpart to the pagan religions that were dominant in Rome at the time. It was sort of a quid pro quo arrangement: You pray for the empire and well take care of you.

This being so, and given the dominance of the Christian church in the successive centuries in Europe, Christian mission refocused itself on an institutional form rather than on communities of missionary obedience (with some notable exceptions) gathering for mutual edification, prayer for the mission, encouragement and that of a mobile, flexible, versatile, communities of gospel obedience, and that were “the missionary arm of the Holy Trinity” . . . to church institutions conducting services under the authority of professional clergy.

In recent generations one looks with wonder on the church in China, which, when its institutional church properties (the pattern given to the Chinese by Western missionaries) were expropriated by the Chinese Communist government, and the church outlawed . . . went underground and into clandestine house churches. Rather than diminish the church or quench its mission, it exploded in growth. Now that church (which is impossible to number because of its clandestine nature) has the vision of taking the gospel back down the Silk Road to Jerusalem, which makes the whole Middle East part of its missionary vision. Such a vision does not require buildings, or government approval. Such a missionary vision does not seek to avoid hostility and persecution. Such a community is intensely focused on gospel obedience, and the community is formed to enhance that vision.

Meanwhile, the North American church, for the most part, spends huge amounts of its resources maintaining church buildings and institutions that have (too often) little vision beyond their own survival. I don’t have neat answers, but it sure makes me stop and wonder about such questions.

BLOG 10/17/13. “CHRISTIAN FAITH IS TOO WILD AND FREE FOR THE TIMID”

I think it was author Madeline L’Engle who once commented about her presence among so many literary colleagues who were resistant to the Christian faith, when she observed: “Christian faith is too wild and free for the timid.” It may also be too wild and free for many inside the Christian faith if they ever became aware of the dimensions of Christ’s teachings and of the requirements that faith and repentance make upon those who accept them.

Gregory Boyd learned this lesson when in 2004 he resisted the efforts of some right-wing political folk in his congregation to distribute their literature and have folk sign-on to some other efforts. Boyd and his leadership team resisted and he thereupon preached several sermons on how dangerous it is to identify the Christian faith with political agendas. Some members wept for joy at having this explained to them, but about one thousand members left the church. Even the New York Times picked up on this story. … Too wild and free, indeed! (By the way, Gregory Boyd published these sermons in the book: The Myth of a Christian Nation.)

Or, there was my dear friend Prof. Jack Sparks, who realized this the campus Christian organization of which he was a board member was not reaching the radical youth culture on campuses (in the 1960-70s), and so resigned his faculty position and moved with a team to Berkeley and took on the life-style of the radical youth culture and engaged it from the inside—it called itself the Christian World Liberation Front. It became a very fruitful ministry, but not for the timid! I spent a couple of weeks with those folk, and let me affirm that such an encounter was thrilling, but they never taught me this stuff in theological school. Not for the timid, indeed, but it transformed my life. In the course of my conversations with Jack, I asked him why he thought such a ministry was so fruitful. His response speaks directly to the theme of this blog: “I am persuaded that God rejoices to bring the light where the darkness is the greatest.” Light shining in cultural darkness is not safe and is not for the timid, but it is our calling.

Maybe the example of New Testament scholar N. T. Wright fits here. There was a group of (how to describe them?) semi-agnostic New Testament scholars who were chipping away at the uniqueness of Jesus Christ and were widely reported as the: Jesus Seminar. Tom Wright got himself included in the group, dealt with all of their questionable teachings, learned the material better than the founders of the group, and rather took it apart from the inside. Now, granted: that Dr. Wright is a uniquely gifted scholar, but such an engagement required that he forsake the security of academic isolation and engage in the potential consequences. Timidity, again, would have kept him cloistered, but the Christian faith when understood, understands that our Christian/Kingdom faith is rambunctious, fearless, free, well formed in intellectually and ethically. It moves into this post-Christian culture and the inhabitants thereof with high joy.

A. W. Tozer once commented that as long as the Christian church moved out in mission in obedience to Christ, even in such a hostile world, it grew and flourished. But: “But when it dug in to preserve its gains, like the Jews and the manna in the wilderness, when hoarded, it bred worms and stank.”

Yes, the Christian faith is too wild and free for the timid, both inside our outside the church.

BLOG 10/14/13. WHO IS INHABITING OUR ‘CHURCH’?

I was the visiting preacher at a neighboring Episcopalian Church on one occasion. After the service I was approached by a stylish lady who was quite a fixture in that church. There was about her that savior faire and a certain flair for the dramatic gesture. She was expressing her appreciation for my presence and for whatever I had said. So I asked her how she had become a follower of Jesus Christ?

With a laugh and a wave of her hand, she responded: “O, Reverend Henderson, I haven’t believed in God for years, but I just love the Episcopal Church!” She loved the ambience, the aesthetic beauty of the liturgy, the social network of the church, and was obviously at ease with all of the familiar in-house jargon that is part of that tradition.

I have often wondered in the several years since that conversation how many inhabitants of our churches there are who would not be quite so candid as she, but who are ‘religious’ and comfortable with gospel words, while at the same time in the darkness of unbelief and evidently sensing no contradiction.

I have led countless workshops on evangelism in my career, and on so many occasions have had the audience most enthusiastic about what I was teaching about the gospel of the Kingdom of God, the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ … yet later over lunch when I have engaged them one-on-one to share with me how they came to know Jesus, they were awkward, or embarrassed, or quite unconvincing that they had ever had such an encounter. They are all for the gospel words, but have evidently never encountered him who is behind the words and whom they point—they quite obviously have never had a living and transformational encounter with Jesus Christ, and so deliberately expressed their love for and trust in him. They have never, seemingly, become those deliberate followers of Jesus who have renounced the dominion of darkness and entered into the dominion of God’s dear Son.

As pastor I have come face to face with this in-house unbelief so often. Folk love the church. It is an essential part of the social fabric of their lives, but their faith is a remote sense that God is near, or that he will be there when the need him. When pressed about their deliberate turning to Jesus and their intent to be his obedient disciples, they could get all flustered as though that were an unfair question.

It has convinced me that there is a major mission field inside of the church. If I can plagiarize and put my own translation/interpretation onto one of T. S. Eliot’s poems, it would go like this:

You neglect and belittle the desert/mission field.
The desert/mission field is not remote in southern tropics
the desert/mission field is not only around the corner,
the desert/mission field is squeezed in the tube-train/the church pew next to you;
the desert/mission field is in the heart of your brother/inside the church.   (from ‘The Rock’)

The community of God’s people needs to be re-evangelized every time they meet, lest they/we drift off into a mindless godless Christianity. I think that may have been what Jesus had in mind in establishing what we call the Eucharist.

True discipleship can never be casual unengaged religiosity. It grows out of a passion for Jesus and our knowledgeable love and obedience to him.

[I’d love to hear your feedback on this.]

BLOG 10/10/13. IF THE CHURCH KNOWS WHY IT EXISTS, IT HELPS A LOT!

I keep coming back to the basic questions about the church and its role in the mission of God to the world in Jesus Christ: what is the church? And: why is the church? We are told that the church is the Body of Christ, so OK, what does that look like? Every follower of Jesus Christ and every participant in the church certainly ought to have a very simple and lucid answer to these questions. Let me propose, as a starting point, my own four principles in answer to these questions.

1.     The church as the Body of Christ is the incarnational and communal demonstration of God’s new creation in its relationships, i.e. in its one another love, in its ministry of reconciliation, in its mutual care for one another, in a whole recreated and wholesome and fresh understanding of the fact that we need one another in mutual love, forgiveness, caring, provision, accountability and responsibility. This transcends all of the alienation and divisions that have eroded the human community in its rebellion. It provokes the curiosity of those god-seekers out there.

2.     The church as the Body of Christ is the incarnational and communal demonstration of the lifestyle of the Kingdom of God, or of God’s New Creation in Christ. This has to do with a whole new way of behavior. It is what Paul calls: The breastplate of righteousness. It is Sermon on the Mount good works that men and women and see, and by which they can know that we are Christ’s disciples. This is not only individual, but also communal. It is the community of Light that attracts the attention of those looking on. It is so awesome that no one takes it lightly. It provokes the curiosity of the on-lookers.

3.     The church as the Body of Christ is (as one Latin American has described it) the missionary arm of the Holy Trinity. It is (and every participant with it) by the very virtue of its calling by Christ a dynamic agent in the demonstrating and heralding/preaching of the gospel of the Kingdom to every nook and cranny, every ethnic group in the whole world. This is its dynamic mission. It is to be, by the Spirit, reproductive in its whole life together. It is not to be a permanent, institutional, secure, religious society—it is to be a purposeful, mobile, flexible, vulnerable and intensely missional community. No one should identify himself/herself with it who does not intend to be Christ’s disciple in this way. And …

4.     The church as the Body of Christ is to be, what the scriptures describe as a beautiful Bride for the Lamb. It is to be formed into his image and likeness. It is to be without spot or wrinkle. The marriage feast of the Lamb is now in preparation as the Spirits fashions this beautiful Bride for the Son of God.

And church expression that doesn’t incarnate and demonstrate such obvious purposes of God’s design for the church … becomes a serious hindrance and stumbling-block to the mission of God to the world.

Confession: These are hardly the principles that determine the life of all too many stagnant pools of ‘religious Christianity’. Church institutions, buildings, professional staffs, in-house activities, aesthetically beautiful worship services and sanctuaries may well have nothing at all to do with the church. Is that saying it too radically? I think not.

BLOG. 10/7/13. WHAT WOULD LARRY PAGE AND SERGERY BRIN DO WITH THE CHURCH?

I’ve been fascinated by watching interviews with these Silicon Valley-types who are always coming up with whole new revolutionary concepts of information age technology that render present (seemingly successful) ones to be obsolete. I think of guys like Larry Page and Sergery Brin who founded Google, and are now into GoogleX, or Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, or Jeff Bezos of Amazon, or Steve Jobs of Apple. I love their capacity to see beyond what is, to concepts that are potentially and enormously more efficient and effective (and more profitable).

And I wonder what these guys would come up with if we could get them into a room with some thoughtful Christian missiologists, or ecclesiologist … and call forth their genius on the form and mission of the church. Now I know—I can already hear my traditionalist ecclesiastical professionals ridiculing the whole idea—that the very idea is somewhat outrageous, but then so were the ideas they proposed that have transformed so much of our lives. (So were the teachings of Jesus!)

For one thing, all too many who profess to be Christian leaders are wedded to patterns and concepts that they have inherited and which are proven to be very limited in their incarnational authenticity. I have found (in my limited experience) that very few of these leaders have a strong and knowledgeable grasp on the essence of the church in the design of God, or of how it is to effectively accomplish its mission of being the “missionary arm of the Holy Trinity” (Bonino) in causing the gospel of the Kingdom to be preached to every ethnic group in the world.

From at least the era of Constantine we have mistakenly conceived of the church as some kind of an institution with temples, clergy, liturgies, etc. that renderi the laity to second-class status, and with no plan how to make disciples who are contagious, mature, reproductive, and demonstrative of New Creation. So what we have in this part of the world is this huge oversupply of religious institutions, buildings, seminaries, misunderstandings of Christ’s message and mission, and the resulting baggage … but with diminishing fruitfulness.

One of these Silicon Valley geniuses made the off-hand comment that when you come up with something radically new and more effective, you have to scrap some older stuff, and sometimes people get hurt. That’s the risk.

It is interesting to read in the gospel records that when Jesus came into the context of Second Temple Judaism with his radical message of the Kingdom/New Creation that he was inaugurating, that he dismissed the temple and the temple priesthood as being no longer viable. God’s new temple, or dwelling place, was to be his people. They were to be supportive and missional communities of aliens and exiles formed by the word of Christ. They were to infiltrate every dimension of life like leaven in a loaf. Every follower of his was to be equipped to be a mature part of the mission (check out Ephesians 4).

I’d be willing to bet that in such a room full of such creative geniuses (like Larry Page and Sergery Brin) and thoughtful Christian leaders and missiologists … that there just might be some really interesting critiques and proposals. I think it would be exciting. It may be a crazy thought … but maybe not? We, the church, might learn something about ourselves that we have forgotten.

What do you think? Feed me back some comments.

BLOG 10/2/13. PIONEERS OR SETTLERS?

Some thirty years ago, an Episcopalian priest in Texas (Wes Seeliger) wrote a wonderfully irreverent and hilariously funny book entitled: Western Theology. In it he does a colorful caricature of two kinds of Christians, and he does it in the context (which you might expect of a Texan) of the wild west, of small towns, of gunslingers, wagon trains, lives committed either to security or to adventure. Unfortunately the book is long since out of print, but there are (expensive) copies on the second-hand market. Happily, there is a great digest of the book in the late Brennan Manning’s book: The Lion and the Lamb (chapter three).

It is so apropos to the quest I pursue in these Blogs. As Brennan Mannning summarizes it: “There are two visions of life, two kinds of people. The first see life as a possession to be carefully guarded. They are called settlers. The second see life as a wild, fantastic, explosive gift. They are called pioneers. These give rise to two kinds of theology: Settler Theology and Pioneer Theology … the first kind, Settler Theology, is an attempt to answer all the questions, define and housebreak some sort of Supreme Being, establish the status quo on golden tablets of cinemascope. Pioneer Theology is an attempt to talk about what it means to receive the strange gift of life. The wild west is the setting for both theologies.”

In Settler Theology, the church is the courthouse, the center of town life where records are kept, the mayor has an office on the top floor to keep an eye on town life, and where they have an ice-cream social every Sunday.  God is the mayor who keeps order in the town. Peace and quiet are the mayor’s main concerns. No one sees or sees or hears him directly. In Pioneer Theology God is the trail boss. He is rough and rugged, full of life. He chews tobacco, drinks straight whiskey. He lives, eats, sleeps, and fights along side of his people. Their well-being is his concern. Without him the wagons wouldn’t move.

(This is so inadequate, but you catch the drift). In Settler Theology, Jesus is the sheriff, sent by the mayor to enforce the rules, wears a white hat, drinks milk, outdraws the bad guys, etc. In Pioneer Theology Jesus is the scout. He rides out ahead to find out which way the pioneers should go. He lives all the dangers of the trail … by looking at the scout, those on the trail learn what it means to be a pioneer. And so Seeliger proceeds with scandalous irreverence, but searching caricature to the work of the Holy Spirit who in Settler Theology is the saloon girl to whom the settlers go for comfort, etc. But to the pioneers the Spirit is the buffalo hunter who furnishes fresh meat for the pioneers without which they would die. He is a strange character—sort of a wild man and the pioneers can never tell what he will do next.

In the Settler Theology the Christian is a Settler who fears the open, unknown frontier … but in Pioneer Theology the Christian is a pioneer.

And so it goes in Seeliger’s fun book. I rehearse this because for fourteen years I passed out a three page digest of this to every person who came through our church’s new member’s class, and they all chuckled at it, but most ultimately identified with the Settlers and wanted a church that reflected that security. And therein lies a big part of our problem. The New Testament describes a Pioneer Church!

But with over half the world’s population under twenty-five years of age, who have no special affinity for Settler churches, we may need to come up with a fresh expressions of true Pioneer communities if we are to meet the hungerings of the emerging generation.