davidfitch on September 2 2010

Me Vs. Craig Carter on Same Sex Relations: How My Position Differs from the Traditional Evangelical Approach

During the last six months, the blog posts on the LGBTQ, other sexual issues and mission have been by and large well received.  I have had many good conversations off blog and on blog. I started out the whole series of posts by saying, “Is it possible to “be Missional” among the gay/lesbian communities without a clear affirmative stance towards GLBT relations?… Many would flat out say “no.”” I said “I find myself at odds with many of the underlying assumptions that drive these conclusions.” I had seen several instances where Ed Stetzer and others were accused of being “non-missional” because they did not affirm gay/lesbian relations. I had also seen several instances where the lone engagement by the Neo-Reformed on these issues was to preach against something and believe that was sufficient to engage the issue in terms of mission. I was content with neither approaches. To me,  what I called the post Emergent consensus approach to these questions as well as the traditional evangelical approach – and its offshoot – the New-Reformed were both inadequate.

Having said that, I was surprised that I got little push back from my post-Emergent coalescence friends.  I expected push back from this side because I revealed my conviction that to be transformational in these issues of sexuality, one had to work from a place of redeemed sexuality which revealed that, for me, same sex relations (as well as other sorts of sexual relations) are non-normative for the Christian life. Instead I got the biggest push back from an evangelical – theologian Craig Carter at Tyndale University College in Toronto – who suggests I am sliding down the slippery slope to protestant liberalism. He wrote a full post on it here.

I think it might be helpful for clarifying my own position if I respond to Craig’s post item by item. I think it could clarify how and why traditional evangelical engagemnt on these issues is inadequate for the missional task.Here goes:

______________________
Craig says: “Fitch accepts the story that the pro-homosexual activists and their liberal Protestant fellow-travelers tell” regarding evangelicalism’s stance towards the LGBTQ peoples. Craig says that I agree with those who accuse evangelicalism as judgemental, lacking in compassion and understanding. Craig says “When Fitch writes this sort of stuff he sounds like he learned everything he knows about Evangelicals from reading books by John Spong and James Barr and by watching Kieth Olbermann on TV.”

Me: Craig is right. I think the approach of evangelicalism is flawed. And I think this is revealed in the ways our attitudes and approach have been typecast – for better or worse – as judgemental, lacking in compassion and duplicitous. In just the last decade, witness these NY Times best seller books, Mel White – Religion Gone Bad,  Chris Hedges – American Fascists, Dan Gilgoff – The Jesus Machine,  Sam Harris – Letter to a Christian Nation, Robert Lanham -Sinner’s Guide to the Evangelical Right, Randall Balmer – Thy Kingdom Come: How the Religious Right Distorts the Faith and Threatens America,  Christopher Hitchens – God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. All these book caricature evangelicals and include the charge of duplicitous judgementalism on gay relations as part of the evidence. True this is a caricature – many times by angry atheists. But if that is not enough then look at LifeWay’s Research on what people think. Read InternetMonk’s great insights on evangelcials. The bottom line is that the huge public opinion on evangelicals must be looked at. When so many people are saying the same things eventually we have to look at ourselves and ask, why do so many people think we are this way? Even if this is a media conspiracy, you have to at least ask why? I think this judgmentalist characteristic is something inherent in our evangelical approach to theology which for me in some ways is illustrated by Craig himself. (I have a book coming out of all this in January - The End of Evangelicalism?) What do you think?

Craig asks: whether “Fitch really thinks that Reformed and Evangelical churches do not acknowledge and embody #1 – that We All Come Broken.” He asks whether I really think this is a new approach.

Me: I know that evangelicalism articulates a commitment “that we are all sinners.” However I think evangelicalism as a church generally DOES NOT inhabit this truth as a concrete posture in the world from which to engage the world. This is more than a problem of individuals in the church. This is a cultural issue inherent in the way we presume Christendom assumptions about our relation to culture. It is a theological problem. It is inherent to the way we articulate and practice salvation as I hope to show in my upcoming book The End of Evangelicalism?

Craig says: It is #2 (No Public Statements) that really sets off alarm bells. We are not to proclaim that sexual sin is sin? Or are we? This is rather unclear. Fitch clearly says that he does not accept homosexual behavior as compatible with redeemed Christian life . . . so why does he say we should make no such statements in public? He apparently thinks that somehow playing down our position on sexual morality until the outsider has come inside the Church will make it easier for the non-Christian to accept our view once we finally disclose it.

In relation to my call for not making public statements on GLBTQ, Craig thinks this “ is just weird because the first thing I thought of when I heard this was Robert Schuller and his approach to emphasizing the positive as his explanation for why he never preached on sin. The second thing I thought of was the seeker-sensitive approach to “re-branding” the church in a way that is less offensive to the secular person. And this is proposed as the way to be “Anabaptist” and “radical”? It is enough to make one’s head spin.”

Me: These statements, to me, are a sign that Craig has become a thoroughly Christendom thinker, a shocking development given his excellent early work on Yoder in his academic career. He assumes that public statements a.) communicate what we believe about sexuality, b.) and somehow witness the gospel. Instead, I argue, in a post Chrsitendom world, amidst multiple sexualities of various cultures and communities, we really communicate NOTHING about who we are and what we believe God is doing among us redemptively in sexuality by making public statements that we are against “such and such.” We instead just distance ourselves over against anyone who does not already agree with us. Putting a sign out, protesting, and identifying ourselves as anti-gay, or pro gay for that matter does the very thing Craig accuses me of. It makes us into a place that attracts only the ones who agree already. It sets us up as a market niche pro-or anti gay church. It separates us from missional engagement with any number of sexual issues. And it does not communicate what cannot be communicated to those who don’t get what our sexual commitments are really about. Of course, internel to the community’s development, understanding who we are and why, and the thick languages of Christian sexuality, is all part of being a community of integrity. Within the communoity, we articulate these commitments, yet we hold these commitments incarnationally, we live them, and we witness to them, and invite people in who are seeking. This is part of being a minority post Christendom world. For those in Christendom, I say go ahead, put up a sign, protest and attract a crowd of people who believe the exact same things you do already. But don’t expect much mission.

Craig says: “The Neo-Reformed position (I criticize) actually is the position of the entire Christian tradition until the past few decades.”

Me: Uh? According to who? I know Craig spends a lot of time in patristic studies, as have I. I would find Craig’s position here to be highly disputed by not just a minority, but a majority of patristic scholars. I think he probably means some broader evangelical commitments in which case I still have to dispute him on some issues.

Craig claims: that I am trying to “go down the middle,” a “compromise position between two positions- liberal and evangelical.”

Me: I couldn’t disagree more. In fact the idea of a centrist way or an Hegelian third way makes me want to puke.  In fact I don’t think there is a middle way between the two approaches I find satisfactory. I think both traditional evangelical (or Neo-Reformed) and the postEmergent positions are the same in their dependence ultimately on modern/Christendom constructs of epistemology and both assume a Christendom posture towards culture. I believe we need to leave these constructs behind and engage the world incarnationally, with the fullness of the wisdom of what we live in Christ in His history as the church and Scriptures. This kind of engagement happens when active living missionary communities inhabit places witnessing to the gospel in humble incarnate ways.  You would think Craig, someone who once studied the great Anabaptists, would get this?

Craig claims: that I take “the the whole idea of sexual “orientations” as a given without being critical of the idea. That somehow I am not critical ( enough?) of the idea of a fixed orientation.

Me: Read this post here where I pose the question Can anyone enter the redemption of the new creation in Christ apart from submitting all desire to Christ for His purposes? Read the comments.  You decide. Enough said.

Craig thinks: that “Fitch takes the issue of homosexuality far too seriously.” That I am “singling out of homosexuality from a vast array of other sexual sins as if there was something different about it that made it an exception to be troubling.”

Me: Hmmmm, read this post here. Read my lengthy descriptions throughouit these posts describing how LGBTQ must be put into the entire sphere of sexual brokenness the church faces among every person in its gathering. There are sometimes when I wonder what Craig was reading here? What am I missing?

Craig says: that “for a long time (over 20 years) I (Craig) thought it was unproblematic to accept women’s ordination and maintain the traditional position on homosexuality, but now I have changed my mind. I think that there is a good reason why these two issues have been linked right from the start of second wave feminism and the sexual revolution in the 1960s.”

Me: I think the two issues are linked due to the Western habit of thinking out of the political structures of Western liberalism of individual rights, autonomous authority etc. Once we escape that logic, which I think neither complementarians or egalitarians do, this problem goes away.

Craig says “I suggest that we take a long, hard look at John Paul II’s Theology of the Body.” I agree, it’s a great text, and

Me: I regularly draw on Roman Catholic theology. See this post here where contraception and procreation are talked about. Notice some of the comments.

Craig says: in his comment to me in his post that he’s most concerned for “those struggling with homosexual temptation who need pastors who love them without compromising the teaching of Scripture and encourage them to stand fast.”

Me: I think that Craig does not “get” that indeed I am trying to provide a place for that kind of sanctification. For me, Craig represents the ensconced Christendom habits of evangelicalism by the way he engages culture from a posture of power, presumed hegemony of language, and that we need not engage people relationally and try to understand the issues that go so much deeper than saying “You are wrong and must change your behavior.” I know he wouldn’t be this way in person. But his approach doesn’t deal with any nuances that are sadly missing in our traditional evangelcical account of cultural engagement. I have muy theories as to why this is a glaring blindspot for many evangelicals. That will have to be a post for another time. For now, I suggest that the passing of Christendom in many parts of the world demand we take an incarnational position in the world. This is what I have been trying to construct in our relation to sexual issues, sexual brokeness in the world. More than holding a Bible out in front of someone and declaring a few statements and then help that person “white knuckle” it, grit their teeth, and “hold fast,” I suggest sexual redemption comes from a true spiritual and bodily formation. Anyone who reads this post here should be able to get that eh?

All in all, I respect Craig Carter. In his career, he’s done a lot of work, work I have drawn upon. I love the school where he teaches and the world of Toronto and that part of Ontario. But I think Craig’s post on me was just not careful enough. I think it does clarify however some of issues we evangelicals face who have a heart for the victums, the hurting and the lost among the LGBTQ peoples among us. What do think of the differences between Craig’s position and mine? In what way does Craig represent the traditional evangelical stance on same-sex relations? Its positives? Its flaws? In light of the above, where does his criticism still hold? What am I missing?

Thanks Craig for interacting!

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davidfitch on August 30 2010

The Welcoming and Mutually Transforming Community Among the LGBTQ: An Example and Some Questions

I’ve written enough on this subject already. But I sense a need to summarize some thoughts especially in light of this post by Craig Carter. I think Craig’s got me wrong and frankly inhabits a position that does not meet the demands of mission to a sexually broken society. I’ll respond to Craig’s post in next few days when I get a minute. For now, I’d like to put forward a summary of the whole thing by posting a comment from the last post. It’s by Jon Trott. Jon encapsulates the challenges, the practices and the shape of the “welcoming and mutually transforming community” as it seeks to incarnate the sexual redemption of Jesus Christ.

Living in an intentional community of very imperfect people, of which I am certainly one, I might add that sexuality within a Christian community ought to entail confession, transparency, and restoration. This could also be formulated as repentance / restoration, but that implies sexual failure, which is not always the case; one can be tempted without falling. But the need for others walking alongside — others who also transparently admit their own struggles sexually and otherwise — is one of the great lacks in the Church today. It startles me how dishonest we are individually and corporately about the near-universality of sexual temptation. How do we minister to one another? Living as I do, I have the amazing luxury of being able to walk down the hallway on most days to a friend’s room, pull him aside, and ask for prayer and/or counsel re being tempted sexually. These days, it is more often just “Five minutes to live by” — a quick confession of feeling weak or even entertaining sexual thoughts — followed by a prayer. Why do this? Why not just do it on my own? Because the act of becoming transparent before my brother also makes me accountable to him as a representative of Jesus. I know the difference — he’s not going to rescue me or condemn me. But looking into his eyes and telling the truth about myself sexually is a place to start facing my own struggles in a deeper way than I otherwise might.
There’s so much more to this… as someone who does believe in the work of mutability groups such as Exodus International (in part because I know people — see them daily — who have changed their orientation), I do bear witness to what the Scriptures say regarding homosexuality. But I don’t think homosexuality is where the conversation starts or ends. Rather, it is part of the human journey toward wholeness that Jesus uniquely enables us to walk into.

In this simple comment, Jon describes what I think gets at some the essential elements of a “welcoming and mutually transforming community” that I have tried to articulate in this long series of posts (you can read them all by clicking onto the Women/GLBTQ category).  Jon’s community (the JesusPeopleUSA Community of Chicago) manages to occupy the broken position thereby inviting everyone to see their brokeness not from a position of power (making public pronouncements). We’re all in this together. This hopefully becomes a place where we do not engage “the other” from platitudes which mean little in this age where the words “heterosexual,” “gay,”  “lesbian” mean any number of things. Jon’s community engages in regular concrete practices where the examination of one’s self, desires and the reshaping of those desires is all part of a communal language, liturgy and practice. Jon’s community appears to do all of this while continuing to live within the historical wisdom of the Christian tradition, that same sex unions and many other kinds of sexuality miss the purposes of God’s creation and His work for sexual redemption in our lives. I don’t know everything about JPUSA community in Chicago. I am sure there is some dirt here too. Yet Jon’s words give a little vision of what is possible through incarnationally inhabiting a context for the sexual redemption God has begun in Christ for the world.

My questions are: 1.) Is this possible in non-proximal intentional communities? say in “groups of three,” or other forms of redemptive community. 2.) Why does my brother Craig Carter have such a problem with this? If anything I expected more push back from the traditional Emergent folk who I consider my friends but have been largely silent on this particular approach I am pushing for. What’s going on here?

Filed under Incarnational,Neo-Anabaptist,Uncategorized,Women/GLBTQ 21 Comments

davidfitch on August 26 2010

The Bad Habit of “Going to Church”: On Training Ourselves Out of The Bad Habit of Going to Church

What determines if people in your church make it to the gathering on Sunday? What do you think goes on in their hearts and minds as they get up out of bed on Sunday morning and attempt to make a decision as to whether they will “go” to church or not?

I think a key task in discipleship these days is leading people out of the bad habit of going to church – where such a decision even exists on a Sunday morning for people.

I think over the last forty years of American church, Christians have been habitualized into going to church for bad reasons. We have learned to ask the wrong questions as we consider “going to church.” These bad questions then shape us towards a certain disposition so that when we do go to church we are incapable of entering into the worship of God so as to be formed into His life and Mission. AS A RESULT, WE ARE AS A PEOPLE CUT OFF FROM ENTERING INTO THE LIFE OF GOD AND WHAT HE IS DOING – ironically by the ways we “go to church.”
Over the years, I have noticed some of these bad habits have been trained into people particularly well by mega churches (although believe me we all do it). Some of these bad habits/bad questions might be:

1.) The bad habit of asking “Who’s preaching this morning?” When we get up on Sunday morning (or for that matter whenever the time is for you that you consider whether to make it over to church), if we find ourselves asking this question, it is a signal that it is already too late. We have missed the point of the rhythm of the gathering. We do not go to church to hear a good sermon. We go to practice submitting to the Word and responding to it so that we can do the same throughout the week no matter what the form the coming of the Word might take.  Surely we need trained and gifted proclaimers of the Word. They help! Nonetheless, remembering that the greatest impact of the Word was made by a preacher who was a bad communicator (apostle Paul – see  for example 1 Cor 2:1-5), we should make the hearing of the Word on Sunday a discipline to train ourselves into for life. We should NOT practice being mesmerized by charms and wit of the motivational speaker.

2.) The bad habit of asking “Do I really need this morning?” When we get up on Sunday and ask this, it reveals that we are trying to live our lives in independence from God. We are in a sense asking whether I need this service to connect with God or, strangely, am I good on my own. Yes?  Any time we ask this question, I suggest, we are in essence missing the point. We are not going to the gathering in order make a connection to God in worship. We are going to submit, quiet ourselves, and practice with others living in the presence of God so that our sensibilities are properly trained to continue in His presence the rest of the week. It’s a spiritual discipline that continues into the rest of the week not a point of contact to live off of the rest of the week. The worst thing that can happen to us is to need or become dependent upon some emotionally induced high we get from a produced worship experience that cannot be part of our ongoing way of being the rest of the week.

3.) The bad habit of asking “Is so and so going to be there?” Of course we go to the gathering on Sundays to be with people. It’s corporate for a purpose. Together we become the people of God. I believe a rich kind of community develops out of our corporate worship together as well as many other social practices. Nonetheless, let’s guard against gathering purely and only for who we can connect with. Let the community develop out of our life in God. Let it be part of a wider rhythm Let’s understand that regular rhythm of seeing and being with people in worship feeds into fellowship in every other area including those who are not in Christ. If this is the only time you see Christians all week, this is another signal of a bad habit of going to church.

BOTTOM LINE
The bottom line is we are desperate in N America for training ourselves out of some bad habits for going to church. We all too often go to get something whether it be “lights out” preaching, “worship experience” or even connecting with someone I really need to talk to. Not surprisingly, busy suburban self-sufficient evangelicals miss church more than half the Sundays. 50% of all evangelical Christians only go to church twice a month. Sadly church is something we do, instead of part of a rhythm for life with God in His Mission. I contend we need to see the gathering as a sustaining part of a whole life rhythm for mission. Worship at the Sunday gathering should part of a whole life rhythm so that gathering on Sundays is the equivalent of eating, bathing and the other things we do to sustain our lives. It should be such a part of everyday life that indeed asking the question of whether to go or not on Sunday morning would seem rather strange, like the occurrence of an emergency or something.

Do you agree? Do you think I have just made the church gathering more important? What other bad habits of going to church can you think of?

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davidfitch on August 18 2010

The Timeless Hauerwas: Some More Quotes and some of the things I continue to learn from “the man.”

As some people know, Stanley Hauerwas has had a significant influence on my life, thought, teaching and ministry. A while back I read Hauerwas’ memoirs entitled Hannah’s Child. As one might expect, there are many great quotes from the “quote-meister.” I just jotted a few of them down for those interested. In italics are my comments after each quote. Enjoy.
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Page 86 “I write like I learned to lay brick. You do it because you have to get it done before it rains.”  Largely due to Hauerwas’ influence, I try to read and write for the first three hours of the day (after morning prayers). It is part of the work of being a pastor/professor.

Page 87 “I have come to believe that “believing in God” is not a description that helps us know much about what it means to be a Christian.” This is why we are always invited to ask each person more about what they might actually mean when they say it.

Page 95 “… there is no substitute for learning to be a Christian by being in the presence of significant lives made significant by being Christian. … Significance suggests importance… lives that make a difference and that demand acknowledgement. But the lives of significance I began to notice were not significant in any of those ways. Rather, they were lives of quiet serenity, capable of attending with love to the everyday without the need to be recognized as “making a difference.”” I continue to strive to nurture and live in communities where such lives exist.

Page 141 “(On moving the church to every Sunday Eucharist) The board discussed the motion quite favorably. John (the pastor) had worked for years to reach this moment. I (Hauerwas) suggested that we vote. At that moment, John, who had been quiet during our discussion, suddenly declared, “You will not vote on this issue.” I thought he had gone bonkers. … He explained, however, that the Eucharist is about the unity of the church. If a majority vote determined the matter, then the unity would be betrayed. He noted that some people in the church might not be ready to make this move. He would call a meeting, inviting those who might have reservations to come and express their worries … If they strongly dissented, we would have to wait.” I learned from Hauerwas never to describe what happens in church by the word “vote” and, in leading a community, always be ready to wait.

Page 202 “I asked her to marry me. She thought I was crazy. She pointed out that I had no idea who she was. I responded that of course I did not know who she was. But I knew she was a Christian. I loved and lusted after her. The rest we could work out.” There’s more theology here than meets the eye. Yet the simplicity here is worthy of note. It drives the way I do marriage counseling.

Page 231 “Dennis’s vision for the school, as far as I could tell, assumed the church’s primary role … was to support those who think they run the world. In contrast, I wanted a church capable of reminding those who think they rule the world that they are in the grip of a deep delusion.” Hauerwas has influenced the way I lead my church community when it comes to matters of state politics. My first impulse is to always help us realize that those who think they are in power are not and we should not be so ready to assume this is the way God works.

Page 235 “Writing is hard and difficult work because to write is to think. I do not have an idea and then find a way to express it. The expression is the idea. So I write because writing is the only way I know how to think.” Enough said :)

Page 235 “I write, moreover, because I have something to say.  That I have something to say is not a personal achievement. I have something to say because I am a Christian.” Again enough said :)

Page 247 “As theologians, we must say more than we can be in the hope that others will make us more than we are. What is crucial is that we not write to justify the limits of our lives.” I try to remember this every time I approach the pulpit.

Page 254 “I am not interested in what I believe. I am not even sure what I believe. I am much more interested in what the church believes.” I learned from Hauerwas that writing books and doing theology has little to do with me. For this I am grateful.

Page 255 “I do not trust prayer to spontaneity. Most “spontaneous prayers” turn out, upon analysis to be anything but spontaneous. Too often they conform to formulaic patterns that include ugly phrases such as, “Lord, we just ask you …” Such phrases are gestures of false humility, suggesting that God should give us what we want because what we want is not all that much. I pray that God will save us from that “just.”” I learned from Hauerwas the inescapability of liturgy in all of life period. We are all beings scripted (shaped and formed) by liturgies every day. The church must offer the world the liturgy of life in Christ for the sake of God’s Mission.

Filed under Stanley Hauerwas 7 Comments

davidfitch on August 12 2010

The Witness of a Transforming Sexually Redemptive Community: Mission and GLBTQ Relations#3

In my last post on this subject, I said “One of evangelicalism’s biggest problems is we have no compelling sexual vision … We have little or no sexual ethic except the glorified desire of Hollywood lopped onto heterosexual monogamous marriage. We have no theology of desire formation. It is “lust,” and enjoy it, only do so while married to one person. We have no concept of the “ordering of desire.” This is why our witness is so vapid among the sexual brokenness of our day.” I said this is perhaps why we have nothing else to say to the GLBTQ peoples except “hetero-sexual sex is right” and “same-sex relations is wrong”.

It seems then that the first task of a “Welcoming and Mutually Transforming” missional community, ministering among the sexual brokenness of today’s society (whether GLBTQ or heterosexual or otherwise) is to recover a Christian vision of sexuality. There’s no way to describe what such a vision would look like in a blog post. Yet if I were to summarize the direction I think we need to go, it would be with the sentence, “human sexuality is a reflection of the Triune Relation that we are created to experience in the image of God.” But this really does not translate to those outside of Christian faith easily apart from a community living a sexuality in process of being redeemed. It would take a twenty page essay (or my sexual ethics class at Northern ?) to begin to describe this vision theologically.

So instead of that, I offer four ways God transforms our sexual desire and thereby our experience towards his created purposes. Then I make a comment on the practices we need for such a community to become this kind of place where we can be transformed by the Spirit. In describing these 4 areas for transformation (this is just a start) there’s almost a sense here, that if we allow ourselves to be shaped in these ways through confession, prayer, liturgy, truth telling etc. and thereby live them out, the GLBTQ issues will sort themselves out along with all the rest of the sexual issues the church is facing in today’s society (although I still recognize the necessity of articulating our sexual commitments internal to the Body of Christ).

FOUR AREAS FOR SEXUAL TRANSFORMATION

1.)    From “sex for me” to “sex towards Oneness.” Sex is dying to self in order to become one.  There is a reflection of the Triune God here. There is a reflection of the way of the cross here. “Husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her …” Eph 5:25.  Sex is the act of our own self-giving to the other for the sake of becoming one. And yet, the sexual malformation of our society often does the exact opposite – turning the other into an object for sexual satisfaction. The attraction that is nurtured is primarily the fulfillment of libido “for me.” Anytime this happens, we are duped and in a trap. When having sex becomes about who I am, my “sexual identity,” my ego, “how many notches on my belt,” “he/she wanted me,” “I feel desired” and  any of the other numerous ways society perverts sex into self fulfillment, I suggest we’ve become trapped into objectifying and being objectified. Instead of oneness between two, there is now an awful distance. We’ve lost the formation that makes the deeper purposes of God’s creation possible. We therefore must gather into community (I suggest groups of threes) to confess and discern how we make others into objects in the way we think about them, sexualize them. (I’ve been in powerful men’s groups where this kind of therapy revolutionized men’s lives). We must examine, bring out into the light, confess, and be healed of these inordinate desires deep within the soul that seem so “natural” yet war against the purposes of God for our lives. Once released of these enslavements, our own desires are not only freed to be re-oriented, but also those who have been victimized by these sins can also be free from the way their desires have been shaped by these sins.

2.) From dominating the other to being with the other. Our society trains us to make others into a fantasy for me. This is where the patriarchal dominance of the male over the female is a reflection of sin. Christian sexual redemption however overcomes difference WITHOUT OBLITERATING IT. This is the mystery (Eph 5:28-33). The two very different persons “become one.” Anytime we obliterate difference, to avoid the difference, any dominance or control exhibited therein, is the manifestation of sin that will lead to addiction. As a reflection of the Triune three in one, God created sexual life for the bringing together of difference. In some respects, I contend this is where same-sex relations can only fall short of God’s purposes. We therefore must examine ourselves, submit ourselves to Christ for the ways we seek to avoid difference, dominate or control those who are different in our sexual lives, play off ways we have stereotyped the opposite sex.

3.) From pursuing pleasure as the first goal to seeking pleasure as the after effect of true union. I take it that in Eph 5 the love of agape (Eph 5:25 committed covenantal self-less love) is joined together with the love of eros (Eph 5:31 the love that seeks union).  Marcus Barth in his commentary of Ephesians says this is the only place in Greek literature where this happens. To me this says pleasure/attraction/the desire for union is not necessarily first, but often the afterwards development of a love that pursues the covenantal purposes of God in marriage. To seek pleasure as an end itself, to make the other an object for pleasure, to somehow take any short cut to pleasure by making it an end in itself, deforms one’s sexuality. It dissables the growing of our sexuality so that, over a life time monogamous relationship, sex becomes less and less about pure physical attraction and more about the pleasure of union. The pursuit of pleasure/attraction as an end in itself therefore must be confessed as sin. We must gather in some helpful way to submit ourselves to the disciplines (many of them liturgical within the rites of the church) that shape us for a lifetime of growing into One with the person God has given us for marriage.

4. From sex as personally generative to sex as procreative, extending beyond me into life and mission.  Of course, I understand that sex can and perhaps should be personally generative (giving life). But what the Catholic tradition has truly understood, is that personal generativity is only generated out of the giving of oneself over to the procreative act that is beyond me in Mission. As Bob Hyatt has said so well here, the first command in the Bible to have sex is “be fruitful and multiply.” That sex should be always tied to procreation is something beyond the social imaginary of our current society. Yet to say that sex is physically tied to the unselfish act of giving oneself over to the future, to being obligated to the out-of control act of giving birth to something beyond one’s self is to ultimately say that sex, in the Christian sense, is missional. Yes I said sex is missional. For to give birth to and raise children, not as idols to our selves but as a belief and commitment to God’s future, is missional. Tying sex and procreation together in this way changes the very experience of sex. To detach it from the giving one self over to creation (even if biologically having children is not possible) changes sex. This is why Catholics have said that once you have contraception you shape and discipline desire totally differently.  In this way then, we must allow our bodies to be shaped by God’s call to procreate biologically. Now there are obvious implications here for same sex relations as well as adoption. Don’t have time to expound here. In addition we must come to see celibacy as a discipline that orders our drives towards God’s mission in the world. We must see our singleness, whether short term or life time vow, as a time for the spiritual disciplining of our bodies for God’s mission.

THE HABITS OF A SEXUAL REDEMPTIVE COMMUNITY

In order for a missional community to offer sexual transformation in Christ, it must offer a place where spiritual disciplines can be practiced for the shaping of desire into Christ. Admittedly, the received standard view is that desire is natural/given tied to biology. And of course, desire is tied to the body in some ways. Genetics have something to do with it. And yet so much of sexual formation is developmental. The reshaping of desire is inconceivable in our society because of the modern construct of desire.  Yet the contradictions inherent in saying desire is or cannot be shaped are so obvious it is hard to carry out this assumption in any meaningful way See Sarah Coakley’s can’t miss work on this here (HT Kinnon, Ben Myers)

In order for any of the above areas to be transformed, we need a regular practice of confession of sin, examination, space for the Spirit to shape imagination, healing prayer, liturgy and worship. (I recommend groups of three). We must have places where we can study Scriptures, talk openly and cast a vision for what God has created in sexuality. We must practice the renouncing of certain negative habits sexually (think of how we have renounced the domination of women in patriarchal patterns), how we look at each other, how we practice friendship, how we nurture our teenagers towards sexual fidelity. We allow the Holy Spirit to train ourselves into new habits that will often be at odds with society. Yet they are a profound witness to the sexual redemption God is bringing to the world in Jesus Christ.

Has anyone experienced such a sexually redemptive community? In my attempt to boil this down into a (long) blog post, what elements have I missed that are essential for such a transformative community?

Filed under Incarnational,Missional,Uncategorized,Women/GLBTQ 29 Comments

davidfitch on August 4 2010

On Why Neo-Reformed Theology is Not a Third Way: Deep Church by Jim Belcher

I have had a strange reaction to Jim Belcher and his book Deep Church. I know, I’m almost a year late on this (I can explain later). I think the book is written well, the narrative style keeps it moving. Jim’s a good writer. I think Jim is a smart dude, able to summarize the issues well. He isolates truth, evangelism, gospel, worship, preaching, ecclesiology and culture as the key issues of this kind of post-evangelical territory of the emerging churches versus what he calls the traditional churches. He nicely describes the ideas that animate the two sides. I learned from this book. It’s irenic. It delivers on these levels. I don’t know Jim, but I think if Jim and I met, we could enjoy a good friendship.

But Jim is a Reformed thinker, pastor. It’s obvious eh? And because of these theological commitments, for me, it is questionable whether he comes up with a “third way beyond emerging and traditional.” To me the formulations of Deep Church amount to a revision of the Reformed evangelical theology that got evangelicalism into trouble in the first place.

Don’t get me wrong, I am an evangelical. (I could be described as a Neo Anabaptist Missional-Holiness Church- Evangelical -Baptist Seminary -professor person). I am painfully aware that there has been a creeping malaise in this country over the sons and daughters of evangelicals for the last fifteen-twenty years. Thus came the emerging church. Over in the more protestant mainline world the Gospel and Our Culture Network was responding to a different problem. That work gave birth to the Missional church which later spread to evangelicalism. In reaction to the perceived inadequacies of these movements, but also appreciating the very real issues being posed by them, people like Tim Keller advanced a version of Reformed church (what some have called Neo Puritan) that sought the renewal of the gospel and its engagement with culture. The impact of his Redeemer church in NY and beyond has, in some respects, been breathtaking. A lot of good has come forth.

But this is not a third way.

In forthcoming posts, I want to outline why the Neo-Reformed movement of the Gospel Coalition, Tim Keller & the Redeemer churches, leaves me asking for more. I have learned much from people like Tim Keller and Jim Belcher. But there are profound limits to this “brand” of theology. This is not a third way.

In order that I might maintain the readership on this blog, I offer the following salvo that should give you an indication of where I am going in my contention that the Neo-Reformed Missionals are not a third way.
Neo-Reformed Theology is built on the same logic as evangelical theology. In fact this is also the same logic as the protestant mainline theology and for that matter the Emergent theologies. They all rely on the cultural foundations of the West and in particular the Enlightenment. And, for me, this means all of these movements will eventually fail to engage the new and changing cultures of Post-Christendom in the West for the gospel, they will fail at resisting the consumerist forces of modern American society, they will fail at tranfromational engagment (eventually). They will all end up repeating the fate of evangelicalism – i.e. being successful at harvesting those who are already in some way culturally inclined towards Christianity but not capable of inhabiting the new post Christendom cultures of the West for the gospel. THIS IS WHY WE NEED A THIRD WAY!! Of course, this doesn’t mean that Neo-Reformed thought won’t be immensely successful at gathering in Christians and ministering to the Christendom populations that still exist in the US (and they are many). But the surging post Christendom populations shall continue to be unreached (and grow). This is the reason why I think we need to continue to talk about a third way (although we may want to think about forgetting “the third way” logic).

I know I have just aggravated even the best of my friends and so I ask for a little grace as I try to expound on just what the heck I just said in forthcoming posts.  In the meantime, do you think we need a third way? Should we get rid of this logic entirely? Is it helpful?

BTW I’m going to try to pull my brother Bob Hyatt into this one. I’m hoping to convert him to Neo-Anabaptist Holiness (He needs to get saved :) ). I can’t promise anything.

Filed under Neo-Reformed,Uncategorized 20 Comments

davidfitch on July 28 2010

Why Pre-Labeling A Church Community’s Stance on Same-Sex Relations is a Bad Idea: Mission and GLBTQ Relations #2

I’ve been building an argument here on this blog for a posture I call “welcoming and mutually transforming” (WMT) towards GLBTQ peoples among us. I suggest that this is the incarnational posture of mission as we engage any culture, but especially as we seek to embody the sexual redemption made possible in the person and work of Christ in the world. I said last post that such a community would be based on three commitments that reflect this embodied (incarnational) posture in the world.
1.) We All Come Broken
2.) We Make No Pre-Set Public Statements
3.) We Embody Spiritual Disciplines that Nurture the Life in Christ for God’s Mission in the World.

This post I want to explore the Second commitment: We Make No Pre-Set Public Statements on What We are For or Against in Sexual Relations.

Here, I am asserting that as a community inhabiting a locale, we do not make any public statements concerning what we believe concerning sexual issues to people outside the community. Sexual redemption is witnessed to others through the telling of stories, humble listening and relationships. In post-Christendom cultures public statements on what we have come to believe concerning GLBTQ and any other sexual issue can only be misunderstood. Positive public statements towards GLBTQ relations (welcoming and affirming) only serve to niche the church (as a GLBTQ church). Negative public statements or public protests against GLBTQ issues only serve to be misunderstood and put the community over against those struggling with these issues. I recommend that a WMT community Make No Pre-Set Public Statements on What We are For or Against in Sexual Relations.

Of course, this is more than a policy recommendation. This is all about the incarnational missional disposition we take in a sexually broken world for the bringing in of the Kingdom. Here are three comments about this disposition

1.) There’s a difference between judging (condemning) someone and discerning alongside someone out of love for that person. To put a sign up, or announce our position against GLBTQ relations, or to somehow protest all GLBTQ issues in front of City Hall, in essence puts us in a judging position towards those we do not even know. This forecloses witness and the possibility for God’s work. I believe evangelicalism’s tendency to publicly judge and condemn on these issues forecloses the possibility for discerning alongside not only GLBTQ peoples, but the many who are struggling with sexual brokenness even inside our church communities.

1 Cor 5:12 makes the distinction between judging those in the community and those outside. Paul says we do not judge those outside the community, those we do not know. Yet Paul calls the church to “judge” those inside the community in the same passage. LET US THEREFORE QUIT JUDGING THOSE OUTSIDE THE COMMUNITY. I believe James 4:11,12 tells us not to speak evil or judge a brother inside the community. Here we are told to not take the Law under our own control, and judge our brother from a position as “judge.” The seeming contradiction between Paul and James here is solved when we realize that James’ mode is to encourage the posture of submission and humility to God.  James in speaking against the judgment out of a position of superiority. In other words, there is a difference between judgment – whose goal is to condemn – and discernment alongside someone in mutual submission to Christ  – whose goal is the restoration and redemption of one another out of love and humility (1 Cor 5:5). It is the latter position that we are called into as Christians. We cannot be in such a position when we have already pronounced condemning judgment. Jesus commands us towards this posture in Matt 7:1-5. The point of “take the log out of your own eye first” is that we approach one another out of the humility of our own sin. “Let the one without sin cast the first stone.” One of the biggest issues for evangelical mission among GLBTQ is the lack of this awareness of the log in our own eye. We come off judgmental. So let me say this – there is a delicate sense in which no judgment can be made against GLBTQ or any other sexual issues, until we have a redemptive sexual community that can humbly invite and listen and ask the GLBT to join us in repentance and renewal of all sexual desire. This is the essence of the position I am arguing for – Welcoming and Mutually Transforming. For these reasons I suggest no public statements about what we are for or against in terms of GLBTQ.

2.) Likewise, Pre-labeling One’s Church as “Welcoming and Affirming of GLBTQ” undercuts missional engagement as well. For we really have no way to know what that might mean? Are we in essence affirming all sexualities, which in essence means we are saying nothing about sexual redemption at all? Are we simply affirming sociologist Jodi OBrien’s recent statement on sexual relations – ”I support the fight for everyone to make choices regarding how they wish to author their own lives (in their sexuality) and the meaning they seek for themselves and those they wish to define as “family.”” If so, is there any possibility for incarnational transformation left in the area of sexuality? If a church community’s first allegiance is to Christ and the calling of one another and the world into following Him and His Kingdom, it is easy to see how these “welcoming and affirming” words – even if one took a pro-gay Christian stance – have no way to be defined. Instead, they serve only to “niche” the church. They in essence market the church and create an attractional dynamic that almost guarantees the loss of the transformational dynamic of the missional community.

Of course the same goes for those who wish to make public statements about “welcoming but not affirming.” Besides the obvious ways this communicates pre-judgment, there is simply no way we can communicate the positive Christian sexual vision, to those outside it. To prove my point, try to explain to someone outside the church why “celibacy” is part of the compelling Christian vision for sexuality. Of course, people inside evangelicalism can’t even get this. One of evangelicalism’s biggest problems is we have no compelling sexual vision which makes sense of celibacy as a fulfilling calling. We have little or no sexual ethic except the glorified desire of Hollywood lopped onto heterosexual monogamous marriage. We have no theology of desire formation. It is “lust,” and enjoy it, only while married to one person. We have no concept of the “ordering of desire.” This is why our witness is so vapid among the sexual brokenness of our day.  This is perhaps why we think saying “no” to GLBTQ is enough. Yet it isn’t enough. Saying “heterosexual is God’s norm” says next to nothing in the climes of post-Christendom. It does not define the sexuality Christians are called into.

Since the vision of Christian sexuality cannot be communicated outside the community in words only, since this kind of redeemed sexuality can only be offered with embodied witness, I again strongly suggest that WMT missional communities not make public gestures that pre-label the community sexually amidst the world of sexual brokenness.

3.) We hold our existing commitments humbly as witnesses to redemption not enforcers of a morality.
That we make no public pronouncements, does not deny we carry pre-existing  sexual commitments that are creation grounded, redemption filled, and desire reordering. Our community has not been brought into being ex-nihilo. We are part of a story 1000’s of years old. The wisdom in Scripture towards gay relations, pre-marital sex etc. should not be easily discarded because of science or other presumed modernist authorities. There are large parts of wisdom here which have little to do with whether Scripture actually prohibits pre-marital sex, gay sex. Protestants keep looking for Scriptural proof texts while we should be reading the depths and wisdom of the Fathers, the Pope etc… which reveal the profound meanings behind things that the world simply cannot understand (like no contraception, celibacy). It is part of being incarnational to participate in the historical development of Christ’s witness that has been given to us. We do not seek to escape history. I don’t see how we can be missional amidst the sexual brokenness of our day without a recognition that God has been working to redeem creation, and human sexuality in Christ for 2000 years.

Having said this, we must become communities that hold our commitments with a confidence sufficient to listen to those outside our commitments. We must listen and dialogue. We must so trust the Holy Spirit that Jesus is Lord that we can hear the depths of what is going on in the lives of GLBTQ peoples. Part of our problem as evangelicals is that we have been so insecure in our own sexual commitments and sexual lives that we live these commitments defensively.

Is it possible that, even while assuming the prohibition against Gay relations (which I assume), that we will discover some parts of gay sexuality that we can affirm? That there is much we can affirm about same sex friendship, never mind cross-gender friendships. Can we see understand the depths of the reasons why heterosexual relations have become so formed within gay relations, can we understand and affirm some of the qualities of love that GLBTQ peoples have searched for and found within gay relations? Can we listen? Can we search and uncover together. In the process learn about our own brokenness? All of this requires, the holding of our own commitments (those of us who are committed to the traditioned sexual ethic of Christian life) humbly, vulnerably, so as to listen. To me, such an engagement makes possible the Holy Spirit’s work in transforming us together out of submission to Scripture, mutual confession, and healing prayer.

In summary, for all of the reasons above, I am arguing that a Welcoming and Mutually Transforming Missional Community must avoid gestures that would pre-label the community’s stance of sexual relations in the neighborhood.
Is this playing games? talking out of both sides of mouth? Can there be any avoiding of pre-judgment?

My next post on the WMT community is on the Spiritual Disciplines of such a community.

Filed under Incarnational,Neo-Anabaptist,Women/GLBTQ 33 Comments

davidfitch on July 22 2010

The Mission and GLBTQ Relations: Three Commitments of a “Welcoming and Mutually Transforming” Missional Community #1

Way way back last March I started a series of posts on the two issues of a.) women in ministry and b.)the normative status of Gay/Lesbian sexual relations, and their relation to each other theologically in the post-evangelical landscape. (The entire series is here) I saw the post evangelical landscape as divided between the NeoReformed missionals (NRm) and the postEmergent Coalescence(pEC). In relation to the church’s position on GLBTQ relations, one side (NRm) took what has commonly been termed the “Welcoming but Not Affirming” position while the other side took the “Welcoming and Affirming” position. I viewed both positions as inadequate for our post-Christendom times. I asked if either position was missional? See that post here. As an alternative, I wanted to explore the incarnational logic of Missional community, a logic I believe drives the Neo-Anabaptist missional engagement of culture. I called (with the help of Brad Sargent) this position “Welcoming and Mutually Transforming” (WMT).

I left off the last post by saying that the only way to witness to and to live this WMT position was through a “welcoming and mutually transforming” community (WMT) of sexual redemption that finds its very identity “in Christ” for the Mission of God in the world. I want to flesh out what this might look like in three posts, this one and the next two to follow. I want to propose that such a sexually redemptive community is based on three commitments that reflect the embodied (incarnational) posture of such a community in the world.
1.) We All Come Broken
2.) We Make No Pre-Set Public Statements on What We are For or Against in Sexual Relations (please do not jump to conclusions on this).
3.) We Embody Spiritual Disciplines that Nurture the Life in Christ for God’s Mission in the World including Listening, Reading Scripture Together, Confession of Sin, Repentance, Dependence Upon the Spirit and other practices that affirm Life, Sexuality, Friendships, Creation and place them all within what God is Doing for Restoring the world and Reconciling it to Himself (missio Dei).

For today’s post, I offer some comments on commitment  1.). Then I’ll go quickly to 2.) and 3.) in the next two posts.

WE ALL COME BROKEN.
The overriding assumption of the “Welcoming and Mutually Transforming” community is that all are welcome, and everyone who comes must come to it as broken, in need of transformation. If there is no acknowledgment of our brokenness, of our sin and need for God, it is not possible to receive the Kingdom of God. “Blessed are the poor in Spirit for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.” If we say we are not broken, if we have no recognition of our need for transformation, why then come?

As I said here in this post, the condition of transformation in Christ, i.e salvation, is that all of our desires are submitted to Christ for renewal, orientation transformation. This is the beginning of discipleship. This is not to say apriori that all our desires are corrupt and inappropriately ordered. It merely acknowledges that there are desires in our lives that are broken and in need of healing, and we do not always know which ones these might be. Furthermore, all desires find their rightful end in God and so all desires are in essence incomplete til they are ordered in this final way.

Yet this posture, of coming to Christ as broken, must be modeled before the world in community. We, the church must be first in the confession of our brokenness. This is not just a tactic. This is the first and necessary step towards the redemption, the dying and rising with Christ,  that births the renewal of all things. We must be living this “way” that we are inviting the whole world into.

The biggest problem with the evangelical church’s witness regarding sexuality among our society, nevermind among the GLBTQ, is that we ask others to change their sexual behavior without seeing the duplicity in our own sexual behaviors and orientations. We therefore come into a context, whatever its sexual issues are, from a power position, claiming everyone else is screwed up but us. This defies the incarnational logic of Christ, and the way the Triune God works in the world in Christ by the Spirit.

In the case of evangelicals and gays, evangelicals have typically baptized all heterosexual attraction as good and then offer “getting married” as the solution to anyone who cannot control him/herself.  We never deal with the stunning amount of screwed up heterosexual/monosexual desire that lies resident in our churches which heap abuse after abuse upon one another and sap our sexual lives of God’s purposes.
As the community of Christ, i.e. a “welcoming and mutually transforming” community, we must lead the world into redemption by first leading the way into humility, brokenness and confession. This communal embodied posture is the defining starting point for missional engagement with a culture’s sexual issues in Christ, no matter what they might be. It embodies what it is we are inviting all people into including those who call themselves “gay.”

I think the major objection to this from the GLBTQ advocates in our midst is that “this is a power play.” By saying all desire must be submitted to Christ, the argument goes, you are pre determining our sexual desire as sin. I’ll address this more in the next post. But for now, I wish to say that Jesus and the entire New Testament insists that those in power and those with the gospel must be those who give up power, in essence go and inhabit the world powerless, live in submission to one another, and to the “other” in submission to the Lordship of Christ. Instead of saying to the gay/lesbian “you must confess your sin ________, let us instead say “let me confess my sin to you” and invite you to join in with me (discerning sin in and among my life), as we seek what redemption might look like as we submit our lives to Christ. To anyone who might seek that a particular desire be classified as sacred over the supremacy of Christ, to those who are not yet ready to enter into the death and resurrection of Christ, we grieve. This, nonetheless, is what we live incarnationally as witnesses to. This is all we have to offer. The Triune work of God in the person of Jesus Christ. The way of renewal through the death and resuurection of Jesus Christ. We are not demanding that anyone follow this path. We are not pre-judging anyone. We are merely witnessing to (and offering non-coercively) to the world what God is doing and in and through Jesus Christ.

My question to y’all, is this posture of the WMT community a power play? Is the very giving up of power a power maneuver? If so, how?

Filed under Incarnational,Neo-Anabaptist,Uncategorized,Women/GLBTQ 25 Comments

davidfitch on July 13 2010

The Diversity We Seek: The Danger of Manufactured Pre-Determined Diversity

I had a conversation with someone the other day at “the Vine” about diversity and seeking diversity. At “the Vine,” we’re in the process of planting/reviving 2 missional communities and I argued that one of these contexts – Hyde Park – had to be the most diverse place in the Midwest. She said no, that a different place – Waukegan – was. We were working with two different concepts of diversity.

The actual demographics of each place can be debated. But I argued numerically that Hyde Park was more diverse because its inhabitants included a wide range of ethnicities (white people are probably in the minority here), a wide range of economic classes (from wealthy to poor across all ethnic spectrums), and a wide range in levels of education (from the intellectual elites of Univ. of Chicago to the under educated poor of the Chicago public schools system).  I said as far multiple kinds of diversity, Hyde Park had to be the most diverse place in the Midwest.

My friend said Waukegan is more diverse than Hyde Parke. What she meant when was that Waukegan is a place which is more “not us.” We are middle class suburban (majority) white people with the comforts of education, stable families, homes and jobs. Waukegan is more on the “margins,” people who are struggling for all those things. When I said Hyde Park is more diverse, I was referring to the makeup internal to that community, and its broad differences within one community. When my friend said Waukegan was more diverse, she was saying Waukegan was more “other” than us: diversity as a function of a relation external to us.

As we plant communities what are the opportunities and pitfalls of each? Which diversity should we seek to plant in? Diversity a.) or Diversity b.)? What different things should we consider in terms of God’s redemptive purposes in each? Which diversity should we seek as the most appropriate context for a church like ours to seek to inhabit?

I think these are important questions. There are opportunities and pitfalls in both. I offer a comment in relation to both kinds of diversity.

In the case of Waukegan, there is an opportunity to go to the margins and minister the gospel. Given the ubiquitous poverty, this represents “the deserted places of the empire.” These are the folk God has called us to be mindful of. There is the great readiness here, fertile soil here. “Blessed are the poor, the open handed, the ready to receive, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Just as important, here is where we can learn the Kingdom, for God is at work here in unusual and different ways than we are used to.  Yet there are dangers. How do we go here and not be people of privilege? Coming with the answers? Coming with our value systems we learned in the suburbs? How do we enter with proper humility? Most importantly, we must resist the temptation that we know, can predict, what redemption will look like here we inhabit these places for the Kingdom. There is a temptation it will look like our pleasant lives back in the prosperous suburbs. This is the false promise of “the American dream”.

In the case of Hyde Park, we have opportunities here as well. We have the opportunity of calling this community into the diversity of the Kingdom, the community of reconciliation and renewal that God is bringing thru Christ.  The ones who are wealthy will learn from the poor and vice versa. The ones who are educated will learn from those not and vice versa. The various ethnicities will learn to love and care and understand and learn from each other. Yet we must be careful here not to allow a manufactured diversity to take shape where somehow we all look the same. We cannot appeal to some preconceived notion of what such a diversity might look like in this context. We cannot assume what our music will be, what wealth will mean. We must avoid the mistake (and this is true of many communities) that those who are successful in economy must somehow be minimized, what their success in the world might mean here (I’ve learned this from the Afro-American church communities). They surely must model how to live differently with wealth but they also must teach us how to live in the economy for witness. There is a danger of a manufactured pre-determined flattened diversity that is often shaped by the bland vision of American democracy. God wants to create something anew here through His life of forgiveness, reconciliation and renewal.

I have noticed (a times) a manufactured diversity in large churches in majority white suburban wealthy communities. Here people of different ethnicities and social backgrounds are hired to be visible and lead from up front. Is this a good thing? Sometimes this can work for some good. Sometimes, I’m afraid it is manufactured and is niot the diversity we seek. Kingdom diversity is a culture of renewal worked out on the ground in real relationships. I tend to discourage such attempts at manufacturing diversity. What about you? Is this a temptation where you minister? In what ways do you see manufactured pre-determined diversity taking shape in Christianity? Are you against the ‘token hires’ to promote diversity? How can we avoid the tendency to do manufactured pre-determined diversity? Do we need to?

Filed under Ecclesiology,Missional Ecclesiology,Uncategorized 9 Comments

davidfitch on July 6 2010

The Emerging View of the Church in Society: Alan Hirsch/Michael Frost and the Danger of De-Ecclesiologizing The Church in Mission

This is my last of three treatments on the theology of the emerging/missional church. As I said on the three previous posts here, here and here,  I’m currently winding down my book project  The End of Evangelicalism? by writing an epilogue probing the possibility what a new faithfulness might look like to emerge “from the rubble” of evangelicalism. I applaud the emerging and/or missional church movements. But I contend they must avoid three dangers, three traps if they (we) are to elude the traps that evangelicalism has itself already fallen into.  That’s when I came up with these three clumsy terms, de incarnationalize, de-eschatologize and de-ecclesiologize. Today, I’m examining one of my favorite persons in the missional church movement – Alan Hirsch and his co-writer Michael Frost. I love these guys. I hope they take what I wrtite here as an act of love and appreciation for what they’re doing.  Here’s some of what I wrote (edited for a blog post with citations etc. deleted) on third of the 3 traps using Hirsch and Frost to illustrate what such a danger might look like.

_______________________________________________

Emerging/Missional leaders have criticized evangelicalism’s practice of the church as too defensive and inward looking. The evangelical church, they say, has become an organization set off over against society as opposed to being a people in and among society in God’s Mission. Missiologists Alan Hirsch and Michael Frost,  two of the main leaders of the missional church movement in N America, have challenged evangelicals in this regard to embrace a “missional ecclesiology” in N America.

Early on in their writing, Frost and Hirsch chided the N. American church for its obsession with attracting people to come to its services and programs. In The Shaping of Things to Come, they labeled the N. American church as fundamentally “attractional.” It is structured primarily around a building which is to be the center of all its various services and programs. This “attractional” modus operandi has engulfed all of the church’s functions including evangelism. According to Hirsch and Frost, we even seek to reach the hurting and those seeking faith by inviting them to church to a program we built to meet their needs. For Frost and Hirsch, this notion of the church is fundamentally flawed. It depends upon the social orbit of Christendom society where the societal expectation is that the church would be the center for all things having to do with God. This Christendom world, however, is slowly passing away. Today, this attractional “indrag” works to close off the church from the hurting and the poor and the ever-increasing world of non-Christians.

For Frost and Hirsch, the N. American church is carrying on the bad habits of Christendom. We still believe we possess power and influence in our culture “to compel them to come to us.” We organize ourselves into hierarchical business like structures that centralize the church’s operations instead of dispersing it into the world. In order to preserve our own culture, we divide what is sacred (the church) from the secular (the world). It is a power play requiring those who believe to come to church to meet God.  As a result, the church is self-enclosed trying to defend its own view of the world. It has not only withdrawn from Mission, it has become antagonistic to it. In many ways then, Frost and Hirsch agree with just about everything I have written in The End of Evangelicalism? concerning evangelicalism’s practice of “the Christian Nation.”

In response to this state of affairs, Hirsch and Frost preach a dispersed notion of the church where it inhabits its neighborhoods and contexts of everyday life. Recounting some the core themes of missional thinkers, they unfurl how the church is to live missionally as an extension of the Mission of God in the world (not as a church that does missions as a program). We are to follow Christ and the incarnational model of God’s sending the Son into the very context, rhythms and language of everyday human life. We are to live inhabit the context and witness to the Kingdom. These are “the forgotten ways” of Jesus and His disciples, which bred the first mission into the world. It is only after we inhabit and identify with those we are with that the church can then take shape in terms of its programs and services. To do the reverse is to revert to the attractional ways of Christendom.

This brief summary does not do justice to the contributions of Hirsch and Frost to the burgeoning missional church movement in N. America. They have provoked the church, especially the evangelical church, to rethink its position in society and take up the posture of Christ in the world, who came humbly, vulnerably to serve, seek and save the lost. They offer us a practice of church that shapes us out of the dispassion and protectionism that has plagued so much of our churches. Their work is helping to shape among a politic of faithfulness for mission in our time.

Nonetheless, there is a potential ideological trap that lies within the missiological practices of Hirsch and Frost. It is the trap of de-ecclesiologizing the church’s relationship to society. By the word de-ecclesiologize, I am not referring merely to Frost/Hirsch’s resistance to the institutionizing of the church. Indeed some of that might be warranted. I refer instead to the separating of the practice of the church from any continuous work of the incarnate Christ in history as extended in the forms of the church by the Holy Spirit. If this happens, I contend that the church is set adrift from any determination in Christ and the work of Christ in the world. It becomes de-ecclesiologized.

This trap is not immediately apparent in Frost and Hirsch. On the contrary, they have written extensively in sympathy with theme of The End of Evangelicalism?: the restoring of Christ to the center of a politic of Mission in the world. The central task of their book ReJesus is to “reinstate the central role of Jesus … in the life and mission of God’s people.” They do not wish to separate the practice of the church from Christ, they seek to “reinstate” it. They often summarize their approach to this issue with the formula: “mission must precede ecclesiology and that Christology must precede missiology.” For Hirsch and Frost, this phrase requires that Christ must come first and be the source of the church’s formation in the world. It is Christology which drives Mission from which the church is birthed in the world.

It is this formula, however, and the assumptions behind it, that reveal the potential for the de-ecclesiologizing of the church in their ecclesiology. Implicit in this formula is that we (anyone) can know/encounter Christ determinately apart from the ongoing form of the church. The continuous forms of the church, including Eucharist, the preaching and interpretation of the canon of Scripture, the fellowship of the gifts, are therefore dispensable for Mission. Jesus forms the church directly in Mission and the church is de-ecclesiologized in Mission.

Hirsch and Frost of course are following the founding theological mantra of missional church theology, that “it is not the church that has a mission to bring God’s salvation to the world, it is the mission of the Son and the Spirit through the Father that includes the church.” That the church should be defined as an extension of God’s Mission in the sending of the Son should not be questioned. Yet for Hirsch and Frost, this doctrine means that the church carries no continuous form from context to context. According to Hirsch, first comes entering the cultural context, identifying with its people, getting know, understand and live among the context. Only then, after one’s life takes shape in the culture, after redemption has taken hold in the culture, can the church take on forms. The church, as Alan is fond of saying, “comes out the back of mission.” The forms in which the church takes shape in the world are all a matter of post facto development after “we” have inhabited a context. The questions however remain: who are the ones who engage the context prior to being the church? Does not this missiological engagment assume the prior existence of the church? And how does one know Christ in this context apart from the continuous forms of the church to carry on His presence in the world?

Hirsch and Frost imply in ReJesus that it is through “a direct and unmediated relationship” between the individual believer and Christ that He is known in the context (ReJesus 55). They go to great lengths to “debunk the many false images” of Jesus that have existed in the church down through the ages. They then seek to “go back to the daring, radical, strange, wonderful, inexplicable, unstoppable, marvelous, unsettling, disturbing, caring, powerful God-Man” (ReJesus 105,111). They recognize here that we must allow all the various images of Jesus in the gospels to drive our encounter with the world. There is a serious attention given to the texts of Scripture in defending the “wild Messiah” Jesus they advocate as the basis for Mission in the world. There remains the question however, how do we seek after this Jesus without ourselves becoming victums of another encultured view of Christ? this time the Wild Messiah as portrayed and argued for by Hirsch and Frost. For Frost and Hirsch it is a fresh encounter with the living Christ which over comes the forms of the church instead of being made manifest in these same forms as Christ has given them to the church. The danger here is that Christians are left without a basis for our very connection to the ongoing presence of Jesus Christ by the Holy Spirit in the Triune history. We become a bunch of individuals seeking a personal mystical experience of Christ via our own interpretation of the gospels. We become individual worshipers of a self-described Jesus devoid of the means to be immersed in the work of the Triune God in the world.

The church however has been given practices from Christ and in continuity with Christ as the Sent One to embody Christ in the world by the Spirit. Within these practices of the Eucharist, the preaching of the Word, baptism, the fellowship of the “gifts” through mutual submission, ordination, service to the poor (Matt 25), the presence of Christ in mutual discernment (Matt 18:15-20) the body of Christ is materialized in the world. These various practices must be contextualized for each place we inhabit God’s Mission. Yet it is here in these practices that we learn that the incarnation is more than a principle to be applied as a missiological method – it is a reality extended in and thru the church. These practices should not separate us from the world, they should incarnate us as His body in the world. To somehow separate these practices from the extended work of Christ in history into the world via the Spirit is to risk setting up on high an ideological picture of Jesus as the possession of each individual. Instead through these simple ecclesial practices, we are enabled as individuals to submit to and participate in the full Trinitarian Mission of God of which the church has been sent and is a part. In these ways, missiology does not precede ecclesiology, missiology is ecclesiology and vice versa..

The danger in all of this is that the church falls into the trap of becoming ideologized. Without the forms of the church, we Christians are left without a source of political formation in the world. Without a practice to be formed “in Christ,” we as individuals instead gravitate around compelling causes, which often can be used and manipulated for ulterior purposes, whether it be the building of a large organization or the accumulation of power for purposes devoid of Christ. If the church has no stance from which to engage the world, discern the issues, and engage God’s work in the world, it is susceptible to disappearing as it is contextualized out of existence. It can then become an ideology or worse, the instrument of an ideology. Either way the church loses its faithfulness. “Mission” becomes an ideological banner because it too is undetermined by a concrete practice in the world. It in essence becomes a concept to be applied. We can be lured to put it to the service of the pragmatics of making the church more successful in terms and for purposes that have little to do with God’s Mission. In all these ways, de-ecclesiologizing the church’s place in the world makes the church susceptible to the trap of becoming the instrument of ideology, repeating (what I show in the End of Evangelicalism?) the evangelical mistake of “the Christian Nation.”

Hirsch and Frost rightly want to guard against the Western habit of imposing a form of imperialism on the host cultures we seek to inhabit. They want to guard against the church thinking its got it all figured out before it lands in a culture. They want to guard against the tendency for the church to think that the Holy Spirit is only working in the church and its practices. For all of this Hirsch and Frost are to be applauded. With Frost and Hirsch, we should understand that the practice of the church needs be contextualized although not discarded. The church has failed often in its history at this. We need to realize that God’s Mission is at work outside the church, that Jesus is Lord over all things, and the church exists to inhabit, discern and be responsive to His work, not our own pre agendas. The church has failed at this. We need to listen to Hirsch and Frost. Yet we must do so while taking heed to avoid the trap of de-ecclesiologizing the church stance in society.

There is no question in my mind that Hirsch and Frost are leading post evangelicalism towards a new faithfulness for Mission. They teach us how to be Christ’s body, His very incarnate reality in the world. They teach us the ways of compassion, of being among the poor and the needy, they teach us how to be an hospitable witness that embodies the justice of Christ in the world. These are truly the beginnings of a politic of faithfulness. If there is to be such a politic in our future however, we must avoid the trap of de-eccelesiologizing our belief and practice of the church in society.

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What do you think? Does Alan and Michael fall into the trap of de-ecclesiologizing the church? Have I fallen into the error of Catholicism (please describe what that might be for you eh?)? Does this matter?

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