Enchanted Community

7/05/12.           QUESTION: HOW ABOUT “ECCLESIAL TELEOLOGY”?

Teleology is the field of philosophy that has to do with design and purpose.

Several of us were engaged in a discussion about the enigma of the church the other day. One of the guys in the discussion is a systems analyst (which is, actually, an information technology field), but he was also fascinated with systems theory in general. He came up with the proposition that any corporate body, or any community, needs to know why it exists. He insisted that a healthy community (or company) needed: 1.) a core-principle, and 2.) a core-discipline. The core-principle has to do with why the community exists, and its purpose. The core-discipline has to do with how it achieves that purpose.

When I was a bewildered new pastoral leader, fresh-out of theological school (where no one had asked these questions), and found myself in a small and essentially dysfunctional church community, I used to wonder about these very questions: What am I doing here? What is this all about? Why am I doing the things I’m doing? What do the folk who called me here expect of me? Does any of it have anything to do with what God purposes for his church, or with Jesus, or with the Great Commission?

Jesus told his followers that he would be building his church, but that they were to be making disciples. OK? So what was this church he would be building? What was its purpose? What would it look like? What did making disciples have to do with whatever that church was that Jesus was building

Good questions?

So during the subsequent 55+ years I have been processing these questions, working on having some integrity, and finding fellow-travellers along the way. Let me share my own persuasion with you here.

First, I am persuaded that the core-principle for the church that Jesus is building has to somehow be vitally expressive the gospel of the kingdom of God, and with Jesus’ word that “this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to the nations.” That’s the agenda, and the church has to be somehow instrumental in that design.

And, secondly, that would mean that the core-discipline is the disciple-making necessary to equip men and women, i.e., all of Christ’s followers, to be maturely functioning in that purpose. Every believer must be equipped to understand the message, and be responsibly engaged in the design of God.

Along the way I have found others engaged in these same convictions. In the blogs that will follow I will “chase some of these rabbits” and invite your responses, experiences, and questions.

All praise to the Lamb of God. Amen.

#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.

This is my initial post. Others will follow regularly (I trust). Allow me to explain what is behind this Blog, its strange name, and its history.

For several years I participated in the Gospel and Our Culture (GOCN) discussions among those being influenced by the writings of Lesslie Newbigin. (That’s a whole subject in itself.) Part of Newbigin’s thesis is that the church is primarily missional, rather than custodial. He has raised before the somewhat moribund church in the west, that it has entered into the post-Christendom era, and into a culture that has had access to the Christian message, but now has rejected it, and has built up anti-bodies against it.

What I noticed sitting in those very fruitful discussions was that most of the participants were either academics (seminary faculty), or denominational staff. I was one of the very few who had a significant career (40+ years) as a pastor. For them it was the stimulus of engaging theoretically in the whole challenging subject. For me it was far more existential. I regularly reminded them that for a millennium and a half the church had been built upon an institutional paradigm of an active clergy and a passive laity (for the most part). The pastoral office was primarily custodial rather than equipping. This being so, if you tried to impose upon the communicants of such a custodial church scene the concept that they were seriously responsible for engagement in the mission of the church, then “all hell would break loose.” I could show them the scars.

In my own life I was in some fascinating discussions with some very (insistently?) curious twenty-something adults, who pressed me on the meaning and purpose of the church, and its role and viability in their understanding of discipleship. Out of these multiple discussions, over many months, came my own having to get honest with myself about my own understanding of the church (and questions I had dodged). Being a product of Christendom, its institutions, and traditions, … I had avoided asking some more basic questions.

This all is recorded in the first of three books, which is entitled ENCHANTED COMMUNITY: JOURNEY INTO THE MYSTERY OF THE CHURCH (Wipf and Stock, 2006). That book dialogically engaged the subject of what constitutes an authentic church. What will be following in these blogs will be engaging the continuing questions that keep arising from these young friends. After all, half the world’s population is under 25 years of age!

Stand by. Let me hear from you.