davidfitch on June 28 2010

The Emerging View of Salvation: Brian McLaren and the Danger of De-eschatologizing the Kingdom

As I said on the two previous posts, 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 among others. 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. Here’s some of what I wrote (edited for a blog post with citations etc. deleted) on the second of these 3 traps using Brian McLaren to illustrate what such a danger might look like.

———————————-

Emerging church writers have spilt much ink criticizing evangelicalism’s narrow understanding of salvation. Author/pastor Brian McLaren has led the charge. For McLaren, truly the father of the emerging movement, evangelicalism has over-personalized salvation, made it into a transaction and has generally been pre-occupied with the afterlife and escaping hell. As a result, evangelicalism’s salvation message has actually distanced the believer from the salvation that God is doing to transform the unjust world. As a result, evangelicals have become dispassionate and even duplicitous in the way we lead our lives in the world. Again, in short, McLaren agrees with everything I have written in The End of Evangelicalism? concerning evangelicals and our practice of “the Decision.”

McLaren responds the status quo by admonishing evangelicals that they have forgotten (or ignored) the Jesus of the gospels and His message: the Kingdom of God has begun. We have focused instead on the Pauline/ Lutheran doctrine that we are justified by faith in Christ through his atoning work on the cross. He argues that evangelicalism’s salvation has become a personalized middle class gospel accommodated to the comforts of American prosperity. It is a message hardly recognizable in what Jesus preached in the gospels where He announces that the Kingdom of God has broken in, a new way of life with God has begun. McLaren, true to the evangelist he is, invites his readers to identify with it and join in living the way of Jesus in this new Kingdom. As opposed to an evangelical conversion that emphasizes the afterlife, McLaren says Jesus is about the work that God is doing in His Kingdom to reorder our lives now. In joining in with God and His Kingdom we can become part of what God is doing to transform the world.

In his The Secret Message of Jesus, McLaren takes this theme that is over 100 years old in New Testament scholarship and refashions it for evangelism. He invites his readers to follow Jesus into the socio inter-personal and political dynamics of the Kingdom birthed by, in and through Jesus Christ. In Anabaptist fashion, McLaren describes how God is working not through coercion or power but in the daily (even mundane) lives of committed followers of Christ willing to participate in what He is doing through love and reconciliation. To those of us tired of the individualist consumerist habits of evangelical salvation, Brian McLaren is a breath of fresh air. He offers a salvation that includes repentance and a decision, but is grandly holistic. It is a belief and practice that shapes us out of the duplicity and dispassion that has seemed so much a part of evangelicalism’s practice of evangelism.

In McLaren’s next book, Everything Must Change, he expands on this vision. He describes the message of Jesus as a new way of life founded upon “a counter story.” This story is of course the Kingdom of God, “a framing story” offered by Jesus that truly helps us see what God is working in the world. Over against the stories of domination in our world that are destroying the earth, sustaining suffering and exploitation and perpetrating gross injustice, McLaren calls for an awakening to this new framing story, the “creative and transforming story” of Jesus (EMC, 274), where God’s love, reconciliation, sacred beauty, restoration, justice and renewal takes shape among us and in the world. This is a story “that changes everything” (EMC ch. 3). McLaren calls his readers to become true believers and participants in this “framing story,” the Kingdom of God.

It is in Everything Must Change that we see, maybe for the first time, McLaren’s temptation to de-eschatologize the Kingdom. De-eschatologizing the Kingdom happens when one separates the Kingdom of God from its fulfillment in the historical (i.e.incarnate) work of God in Jesus Christ. It is in EMC that we notice that Brian is comfortable differentiating “the message of Jesus” (the Kingdom of God) from “the message about Jesus” (that Jesus Christ, in His life, death, resurrection and as Reigning Lord, is the means by which the Kingdom is taking place) (See for instance EMC 22,98). It is therefore possible to read him in this book as advocating that we must put our faith and trust in God and His framing story – the message of the Kingdom – as opposed to submitting ourselves to the one who has been exalted as Reigning Lord and is actually bringing in this new in-breaking Kingdom. Jesus becomes (if we’re not careful) the guide, the exemplar in helping us do this. This move de-eschatologizes the Kingdom and risks thwarting the formation of a politic for mission in three ways.

1.) First, de-eschatologizing sets the stage for “the Kingdom” to become another nebulous Master Signifier which can mean anything. When we separate the Kingdom from the ongoing in-breaking work of Jesus as reigning Lord, the Kingdom is set free from its moorings in God’s eschatological work. No, no longer grounded in its history in the nation of Israel and the fulfillment of that history in Christ, the Kingdom can be applied as a concept to any number of activities that one deems qualifies as God’s ‘ethic’ for bringing justice into the world. Indeed, it can become the means of another form of ideological complicity as we casually associate “the Kingdom” with various causes without discerning whether this is of Christ and His Kingdom. I have no question that some government initiatives qualify as God’s Kingdom, especially when Christians get involved. Yet how would we know apart from the church’s participation in God’s eschatological activity to bring this Kingdom to fulfillment in Christ? The Kingdom has of course become a Master-Signifier before. Some might even suggest that George Bush used evangelicalism’s amalgamation of democracy and the Kingdom to justify the Iraq War as the bringer of God’s “freedom” to the world. There is a long history of such “ Kingdom abuse.” Separated from the eschatological fulfillment of this Kingdom in Jesus Christ, the Kingdom can become just another Signifier that distracts us from God’s justice as opposed to building a politic of God’s justice/Mission in and among our everyday lives.

2.) Secondly, de-eschatologizing the Kingdom strips us of our ability to inhabit the gospel in peace and hospitality. Ironically, when the Kingdom is de-eschatologized, we are tempted to make it into a Cause which we advocate over against those who disagree with us. We are tempted to take control of history when the Kingdom is separated from the certainty that God is working to bring it to completion in history in Christ (1 Cor 15:25-28). As a result, the onus to bring in the Kingdom is shifted more onto what we do than what God is doing. We lose the wherewithal to participate in God’s work as patient and non-coercive participants as McLaren wants (I consider it a curious mistake of McLaren to give up on the second coming in New Kind of Christianity 197).  It is only as we are confident of what God has in store for the world, that we can participate daily as His subjects, not as ones who need control the world. McLaren’s words in his title, “Everything must change,” reveal the stress of this de-eschatologizing. Instead, I would suggest “Everything Has Changed” already in Christ and we must now participate in what God has already begun and is bringing to completion in Christ for the world. Only in practicing such a belief can Christians avoid taking on “the Kingdom” as another cause which we must fight for over against those who disagree with us. This patience and hospitality is essential for a political presense that can participate in God’s Mission in the world.

3.) Lastly, de-eschatologizing the Kingdom loses the very dynamic that gives us hope for something different coming into the world. One of the first things I learned about the Kingdom in seminary is what we used to call “the already, but not yet” character of it. From Oscar Cullman, George Ladd and other NT theologians we learned there is a tension in the NT that acknowledges the Kingdom has come yet it is not yet completed. We then are a people baptized into the new age all the while continuing to live among the old. We are called to live under and bear witness to the new realities of the Kingdom, Christ’s Lordship, his defeat of the powers, his victory over death, sin and evil. This takes seriously the fact that something actually happened cosmically to the world in Jesus Christ yet it has not been fully manifested (it comes as a mustard seed). If we separate the Kingdom from the Reign of the living resurrected Christ, we lose this tension. If we lose this tension, we lose the wherewithal to engage the world for the transformation God is bringing in His Mission.

As I said last post, the emerging church shows much promise for leading post-evangelicalism into a new faithfulness for Mission. McLaren, and many other emerging leaders, teach us a salvation of the Kingdom that breeds hospitality and authentic witness to what God is bring to the whole world. He takes the foundational teachings of Jesus and writes them for a new evangelism in our time. My concern is for a new post –evangelcial political presence of faithfulness  in our culture. I suggest McLaren contributes to such a new presence. If there is to be such a politic in our future however, we must avoid the trap of de-eschatologizing our belief and practice of salvation.

What do you think? Does Brian McLaren commit the ideological “trap” of de-eschatologizing the Kingdom? rendering the gospel of the Kingdom impotent for shaping a politial presense in the world?

Filed under Evangelism,Incarnational,Missional Theology,Uncategorized 14 Comments

davidfitch on June 24 2010

The “Emerging” View of Scripture: Pete Rollins and the Danger of DeIncarnationalizing the Word

As I said last post, 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 among others. But 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. Here’s some of what I wrote (edited for a blog post with citations etc. deleted) on the first of these 3 traps using Peter Rollins to illustrate what such a danger might look like.

————————————

Emerging church writers have spilt a lot of ink criticizing evangelicalism’s modernist assumptions on Scripture. They have rightly showed the problems inherent to evangelicalism’s excessive propositionalism, hubris in interpretative method (that there is one true interpretation tied to the author’s original intent) and its resulting exclusionary arrogance. Irish philosopher Peter Rollins, a former evangelical Pentecostal, addressed these issues on behalf of the emerging church with his books How (Not) To Speak About God and his follow-up book The Fidelity of Betrayal. His deconstructive approach is popular among the emerging church leaders in N. America.

According to Rollins, the established church, which often means evangelicalism, is too certain about what we know about God and too hyper-cognitive towards Scripture thereby taking the mystery out of our encounter with the living God. We evangelicals, so Rollins suggest, tend to colonize the text, make Scripture our own possession and in effect make the words of Scripture an idolatry. As a result, we have become a controlling, uninviting, judgmental people losing the wherewithal to encounter the living God and inviting others into such an encounter. We know Scripture but we are untouched by it and so we are insulated from God who seeks to reveal Himself in and through it. In short Rollins agrees with everything I have written in my upcoming book The End of Evangelicalism? concerning the evangelical practice of “the Inerrant Bible.” Rollins solution is to move us from “right believing” to “believing in the right way.”

To get us to the right way, Rollins’ provides a diet of pre-Medieval mystics, apophatic theology and some post-structuralist ideas found from the likes of Derrida, Jean Luc Marion and John Caputo. True to his apophatic leanings, Rollins says we must approach revelation with a sense that there is always more of God concealed than is revealed. God can never be fully revealed in words, even the words of Scripture. We therefore always fall short of knowing what we mean by God. The evangelical tendency to concentrate on the known content of Scripture, therefore, misses the point. God is made known in the unknown. We must approach all revelation with a humility and openness appropriate to this reality. In true deconstructionist terms, we must acknowledge “that our various interpretations of revelation will always be provisional, fragile and fragmentary.” Context, culture and language both limit the extent of our understanding of God as well as make it possible. Truth is not so much then about what we can conceptually grasp. It is about the living encounter with God that transforms our selves as a result what Rollins labels a “soteriological event.”

To those of us who have suffered with the modernist habits of the evangelical practice of Scripture, Rollins comes as a breath of fresh air. He helps shape in us a humility towards Scripture that can breed the hospitality and conversation we need for a politic of Mission.

Rollins’ proposal, however, poses a danger. His version of truth risks that the gospel never hits the ground sufficiently to shape a political reality. He certainly intends to foster the incarnation of the gospel in people’s lives. This is a big theme among emerging leaders. Nonetheless, it is questionable whether he has provided for a confidence in what God has revealed sufficient enough to order a politic of truth, justice and reconciliation in the world. He is apophatic after all in his approach to religious language (God can never be contained in language). He is serious about all interpretations of revelation being provisional. As a result, we could end up ever and always postponing judgment as to what God is saying so that indeed we never test it, engage it and allow it to shape our lives together as a people in everyday life. Because God is revealed in what we cannot know, we may get lost in contemplation and/or conversation that never provides the determinacy to actually participate in the Mission God in concrete ways as a people.

This is what I call the danger of de-incarnationizing the Word of God. It is the same critique of deconstructionism that has been voiced by Milbank, Zizek, and others. They suggest that deconstruction glorifies “the never to be reached” and sucks us in to a ‘bad infinity.’ Our life together begins to look like a “pseudo activism indistinguishable from a Bhuddist quietism.” None of this may be true of Rollins but it is the danger that lies close at hand: the danger of a concept of truth that by definition never lands in the concrete circumstances of our every life together.

To be more precise, to de-incarnationalize the Scriptures is to separate them from their source in Jesus Christ, the Incarnate Son – to remove the language of Scriptures from the logic of incarnation. God has condescended to reveal Himself in Christ via human culture including the language of Scripture itself. God was born in human flesh and lived among us speaking our language. He died, rose and ascended gifting the church with apostles, teachers and the ongoing proclamation of the Word all by the purview of the Holy Spirit. In that His Holy Spirit is among us, His presence continues and inhabits the ongoing language of His people. As we situate ourselves in this language, we are able to encounter God in it and discern Him elsewhere. The Scriptures are the very extension of the incarnate Christ through the Holy Spirit into the world via the preaching, Table and community of His people. In such a place, we are able to discern justice, righteousness, reconciliation and the ways of God in our lives together for the world. This does not deny that the language of His people always points beyond itself to the fuller reality which it cannot contain. This too is part of the incarnation (This is from Jamie Smiths Speech and Theology). And we must always approach the Scriptures with humility and submission in all the ways it is practiced. Yet the Word has condescended into our lives, and God continues that enfleshment in His people. We can discern the truth in the Spirit via the Scriptures, actual truths, what we must do,  concretely for our lives together in the world. To separate the Scriptures from their incarnate continuity with the Son is to render them impotent to shape us politically as the reconciliation of God at work in the world. We are in danger of receiving a Truth that can never land in the social realities of our every day lives.

That Rollins is at least vulnerable to this trap is evident in some of the liturgical services of his Ikon community as outlined in the 2nd half of How (Not) to Speak of God.  These well-crafted performances are meant to be “soteriological events.” They invite the participant to engage in Scriptural stories in ways that deconstruct the most commonly held interpretations of Scripture. Their operating mode is to turn the received interpretation ‘on its head’ so as to clear some space for a fresh encounter once it has been determined “what God is Not.” The events are inventive and engaging to say the least. There is no doubt they provoke an encounter with God. Yet these liturgies can have the affect of deconstructing the participant pulling him/her apart from our history in Christ. Yet the very purpose and profundity of Christian liturgy, as I understand it, is the opposite: to draw us into the very participation into our history of God in Christ. These Ikon services can have the affect of removing the participants from the very context or language that we need to locate ourselves within the Story. The modus operandi here illustrates some of what happens in the de-incarnationalization of the Word. In an effort to avoid the ‘creedalizing’ of doctrine, we are left devoid of (disconnected from) the history of what God has done, and is doing whereby we can see God in the world and participate in Mission. As a result, these “Ikon services” can come off almost as performance art. They can leave the participant with no place to go and no context from which to move into the world to locate God’s Mission. If this indeed happens, these are not liturgies that can incarnate a people into a life together in Christ for His Mission in the world.

The emerging church therefore has much to offer post-evangelicalism in the forging of new faithfulness for Mission. If there is to be such a politic in our future however, we must avoid the de-incarnationalizing of our belief and practice of Scripture.

What do you think? Does Pete Rollins commit the error of de-incarnationalizing the Word? rendering the Scripture impotent for shaping a politial presense in the world?

Filed under Incarnational,Missional Theology,Uncategorized 26 Comments

davidfitch on June 22 2010

The Three Potential (ideological) Traps of Emerging Missional Theology: Can Rollins, McLaren and Hirsch Avoid Them?

I have had to invent 3 words to describe what I see as the 3 ideological traps facing emerging and/or missional theology. The words are de-incarnationalize, de-eschatologize and de-ecclesiologize. I am not proud of the creativity it took to devise these words. They are pathetically clumsy.

My writing project The End of Evangelicalism? Discerning a New Faithfulness for Mission is winding to a close (praise God).  The book charts evangelicalism’s recent troubles culturally in N America. It then uses political theory via Slavoj Zizek et al to dissect how our beliefs of Scripture, Salvation and Church in Society (and the way we practice them) have shaped us for an inhospitable political presence in the world. I argue that the Inerrant Bible, the Decision for Christ, and the Christian Nation somehow became badges for us that worked against our formation into God’s Mission for the world.  I try to show how evangelicalism developed into an ideology that is imploding under its own contradictions and antagonisms. I then spend a whole chapter showing how our political theology can be re-constructed on a different basis – all the while upholding and transforming these existing theological commitments.

Currently I’m writing an epilogue probing the possibility what a new faithfulness might look like to emerge “from the ruble” of evangelicalism. I applaud the emerging and/or missional church movements among others. But 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.

I argue to de-incarnationalize Scripture is to separate the authority and interpretation of Scripture (even its language) FROM the incarnation of God itself in Christ that is extended historically in and through the body of Christ. Once separated from Christ, we must engage Scripture by somehow overcoming it instead of allowing ourselves to be immersed into it. I argue this is a bad idea. We are left with events, encounters, which cannot shape a politic in the world. Like an ideology, events can be vulnerable to being used to support existing political structures. I applaud Peter Rollins account of the problem of Scripture in evangelicalism but also show how he might be vulnerable to this de-incarnationalizing of Scripture.

I argue to de-eschatologize the gospel is to somehow separate the Kingdom of God FROM the life, death and resurrection of the incarnate Christ and the extension of God’s work of incarnation into the inauguration of Christ’s Lordship at His ascension. Any separation of the Kingdom from this dynamic of Christ’s inbreaking Reign, the manifestation of His Lordship in through the Spirit over His subjects and over the world, risks making “the Kingdom” just another banner to be waved for social causes. It can become a Master-Signifier whose meaning can be filled in by many different and competing causes. It can lose its meaning quickly and become highjacked for ideological purposes. I applaud Brian McLaren’s work that has called into question the traditional evangelical construals of salvation. The question is, can Brian himself avoid the error of evangelicalism (turning the Kingdom into an ideological side benefit we fit into our lives)? To do so he must avoid the trap of de-eschatologizing the gospel.

Lastly I argue to de-ecclesiologize the church’s relation to society is to somehow separate the practice of church FROM its origins in the Incarnate Christ. From this point in history the church as a politic was born in the person and work of Christ. From his death, resurrection, ascension, gifting of the Spirit and His continual presense where two or three are gathered, a people are birthed in the world for His Mission, His embodied presense incarnationally in the world. There are some forms (perhaps much abused in our day) to this politic, i.e. the Table, the preaching of the Word, fellowship and justice of a people, which brings into being the inhabiting of the world with Christ’s very presense. To detach the church from its sources via the practices of church (I know this sounds Catholic) we in essence make church and its engagment in the world a banner, a cause, that can get ideologized. “Missional” becomes a banner to promote another program devised by humans. The question is, can Alan Hirsch and Michael Frost for example, avoid this trap when they advocate missiology precedes ecclesiology?

The epilogue to my book is meant to challenge the current emerging and missional movements to not make the same mistakes as evangelicalism thereby succumbing to being absorbed by other ideologies, whether the Enlightenment liberal cause or the evangelical mega church cause.

In the next week I am going to post my three summaries of the Rollins, McLaren, Hirsch engagements (I love all 3 guys by the way!).

P.S. I am still going to post my final post on Mission among the GLBTQ. It deals with the shape and necessity of redemptive sexual community for Mission.

Filed under Missional Theology 12 Comments

davidfitch on June 15 2010

On How Flat Leadership Works for Mission: The Three P.’s

Much has been made about flat leadership in the missional church. Flat leadership of course refers to non-hierarchical forms of church leadership structure. In my experiences, there are various reactions to it. Some assume flat leadership is a reaction to abusive authoritarian structures of leadership. Still others complain that flat leadership means no leadership. Some like it because, in the midst of conflict or confusion in the local church, flat leadership means we talk more or tolerate each other more. For me, all of this misses the point of flat leadership.


Three Reasons Flat Leadership Works For Missionary Communities

For me three things drive my attachment to flat leadership structures in the church. First, flat leadership pushes the church outward as opposed to a top-down leadership structure, which draws the church inward. As I have said elsewhere, with top down leadership, the activity of the church flows inward towards the leaders who give direction. They are the professionals. When a member of the body has an issue, concern, or a call to pursue in the field of mission, he or she is trained to first look inward to the leader to answer questions like:  How does this fit with our goals and visions? How can we secure resources from the church organization? How can we secure its blessing? Each member of body is passivized as he or she looks inward and upward for approval for what they are doing. The church becomes uniform as it becomes organized around a personality that people like, trust or are drawn to. There are usually a set of issues that distinguish this leader and his/her church from other leaders and their churches. People stay or leave as they are aligned with this person and the positions. In essence each church becomes a “brand” centered around its leadership. This is what top down leadership does. Flat leadership does the opposite. It decenters the life of the church from around a central leader. It pushes people outward. Flat leadership enables the church’s identity to take shape around missional activity in the surrounding culture.

Second, flat leadership structures are more dynamic flexible and discerning of new things. Conflict is important in a church. Differences, disputable matters and the discerning of sin in the body are all important “life matters” that shape a community into the mission we are called. With top down leadership, conflict usually gets litigated through the leadership as opposed to discerned by and among the community. There is very little room to move into new territory unless discerned by the said leader. But, unfortunately, the leader is often engulfed in “managing” the church’s growth now.  Conflict is discerned based on what harms or does not harm the cohesiveness and growth of the church body. This stagnates a community quickly. Decentralized flat leadership works against that.

Third, flat leadership models the disposition of Christ we need for mission in the world. With top down leadership, there is often a coercive element here. The leader is often acting out of the authority of the office, in which he or she exercises an authority of position.  He or she is set above the congregation instead of below it, as the Scripture seems to dictate for all leadership in the church. Mark 10:42-45.  Such leadership does not model the submission to Christ that following Christ demands. It does not model the vulnerability and submission to the Father that Christ Himself modeled and the epistles call all leaders into (Phil 2, 1 Pet 5. 1-6).

For these various reasons, top down leadership works against the body of Christ being incarnational, discerning new territories, entering the world humbly and in the disposition of servanthood. It passivizes the body of Christ from being an alive ministering community of the Spirit extending His Lordship into the world.

The Three P.’s of Leading a Missional Community

Having said all of this however, people still can’t see how such a flat leadership works in the church. We are so driven by a modern Christendom form of leadership which is more efficient and based in a set of cognitive skills sufficient in Christendom, but woefully inadequate for the missionary situation we find ourselves in. So, recently, I was asked, about two months ago, while we were in the midst of a conflict in our body, to describe for our shepherd board the principles of how our leadership works. I wrote three things on a napkin that I have since used over and over again. I now call them “the three P.’s.” They are

1.) Posture. All leadership is called to model the POSTURE of submission to Christ as Lord of the church and (in that) the posture of mutual submission to one another in all activities of leadership. This posture, which Yoder called “revolutionary subordination,” is the place out of which God works to reveal the truth. In dialogue with one another, in listening, and in pushing each other, a consensus is birthed. And until that time we wait and listen more.

2.) Process. The process of Matt 18:15-20 is fundamental to how we navigate issues in the church. The issues the church must deal with arise from on the ground relationships going on amidst and around the community. When sin and/or a disputable matter occurs, we begin to discern that issue/disagreement NOT BY GOING TO THE TOP DOG LEADER, and having him/her arbitrate. (Matt 18 is not just about sin, but also issues of differences as described in the words “binding and loosing”). We go to one another and in humility discuss the issue. If we believe someone is in sin we say that and then submit ourselves to that person being careful to listen as to why we might be wrong. If agreement cannot be reached, if insubordination is detected, we then bring in a third person. At the point where an issue simply cannot be agreed upon (and these issues are rare and outside the creedal orthodoxies that guide a given church), then we take it to the elders, then to the community to study and pray over the issue (Acts 15.28). The Holy Spirit at work in the community drives the issues that will determine the direction of the church, not the single chosen leader who shall determine what shall be discerned, what shall be tolerated, and what shall be not allowed.

3.) Pneumatocracy. OK it does not work phonetically, (I also have tried “Politics of the Spirit” if you’re really hung up on phonetics). Here I am trying to say that the body IS NOT A DEMOCRACY. It is a social field of the Holy Spirit where the authority of Christ is exercised in the gifts as recognized by the community. There will need to be apostles, prophets, teachers, evangelists, and pastors, all recognized and in service to the body. These gifts need to be recognized, trusted and followed if the community is to flourish into God’s life together.  Often I hear that no leadership can come from such a flat leadership. I think this misunderstands flat leadership. For flat leadership will not work unless the apostles can lead, the preacher-teachers teach etc. Each one must be given authority for what gifts God has given them. Yet they must exercise that gift in grace and humility (Rom 12: 3-4).

By following the three P.’s I believe a community is formed for mission Cohesively missional communities are shaped. Top down hierarchies provide leadership for Christendom. They most efficiently manage an already existing body of Christians, They facilitate larger churches. They create brands around leaders. It’s fine for that place and time. For we who seek to be missionaries, and to be unencumbered with the attractional models of church planting, I offer the three P.’s.

I already know people think this will not work. I was so formed out of John Yoder’s writings (especially Body Politics) that I was shocked this was just not second nature to any missional types. I have learned that this way of leadership is not only Biblical but revolutionary and will take practice and continual learning. So what objections or problems does this mode of leadership present for you?

Filed under Ecclesiology,Missional Leadership,Neo-Anabaptist 24 Comments

davidfitch on June 6 2010

“One More Empty Church”: On the Header of this Blog

The visual image of an empty church, especially a majestic church, a European Cathedral, tells the compelling story many of us find ourselves in in N America. J R Rozko, who redid my blog here a couple weeks ago (thanks a million JR!!) used the picture of an empty church in Toronto as the new header.  I don’t know the name of the church. But it is a symbol of what has become commonplace in both Canada and the northern United States. The exceptions are the mega church facilities, which are becoming few and far between in Canada (except for maybe Alberta) and are, I would argue, only a few generations from the same fate in the United States (at least the north that is). I could go on here about mega churches and their role in bringing about this state of affairs, but I leave that for yet another post.

These are the images of our time. In the YouTube video below, Father Robert Barron comments on the empty churches in Europe (HT here). He delivers a compelling challenge at the end. I thought I’d put it here in thanks to Rozko for his hard work on my blog, and the haunting reminder of the new situation we are in that now heads this blog. Thanks also to Nathan Colquhoun (and his storyboard solutions) for all his help on this blog over the years. What do you think about Barron’s theories about European culture, history and the empty churches? How far away are we from following the same history in N America? (I’m away in Canada for some R&R so my interactions may be sparse).

Filed under Uncategorized 5 Comments

davidfitch on June 3 2010

The Caffeine Free Diet Coke: A Metaphor for Evangelicalism in our Day?

Last week or so on facebook, some friends were giving me a hard time for comparing evangelicalism to an ‘empty’ Caffeine-Free Diet Coke. Of course I was referring to philosopher Slavoj Zizek’s famous cultural analyses found in his book, The Fragile Absolute (chapter 3). It’s an example I use in the intro to my upcoming book The End of Evangelicalism? Discerning a New Faithfulness for Mission. There I use Zizek’s Coke illustration to ask questions about the current state of evangelicalism in N America. Allow me to explain.

Zizek narrates how coca-cola was originally concocted as a medicine (originally known as a nerve tonic, stimulant and headache remedy). It was eventually sweetened and its strange taste was made more palatable. Soon it became a popular drink during prohibition that still possessed those medicinal qualities (it was deemed “refreshing” as well as the perfect “temperance drink”). Over time, however, its sugar was replaced with sweetner, its caffeine extracted, and so today we are left with Caffeine-Free Diet Coke: a drink that does not fulfil any of the concrete needs of a drink. The two reasons why anyone would drink anything: it quenches thirst/provides nutrition and it tastes good, have in Zizek’s words “been suspended.”

Today, Coke has become a drink that does not quench thirst, does not provide any stimulant and whose strange taste is not particularly satisfying. Nonetheless, it is the most consumed beverage in the world. It plays on the mysterious enjoyment we get out of consuming it as something to enjoy in surplus after we have already quenched our thirst.  We drink Coke because “Coke is “it”” not because it satisfies anything material. In essence, all that remains of what was once Coke is a pure semblance, an artificial promise of a substance which never materialized. In Zizek’s words, we ‘drink nothing in the guise of something …” It is “in effect merely an envelope of a void.”(22-23).

Zizek uses the caffeine free diet Coke as an illustration of how capitalism works. Taking some liberties with Zizek and his excellent illustration, I believe the Coke metaphor works for understanding some things about evangelicalism as well in the present period of its history. Many of evangelicalism’s beliefs and practices have become separated from the concrete reality around which they first came into being. In its beginnings, the inerrant Bible, the decision for Christ and the idea of the Christian Nation articulated beliefs for evangelicals that helped connect them to the realities of our life in Christ in the face of several cultural challenges. (these were the ways we thought about the authority of the Bible, conversion into salvation and the church’s activity in society). For fifty to seventy-five years, these articulations of what we believe served us well but also evolved and become hardened. As American society advanced, and our lives became busier and ordered towards American affluence, we practice these same beliefs but they have become disconnected from what they meant several generations ago. As a result, the inerrant Bible, the decision for Christ and the Christian Nation mean very little for how we live our day-to-day lives as evangelical Christians. They are ideological banners that we assent to. They are tied to behavioral practices that we engage in but they bear little or no connection to our lives in Christ for His Mission in the world. Just as our society drinks Coke as an “it,” as something that makes us feel good but has little substantial value as a drink, so we practice these beliefs as something we add on to our lives – not as something we need to live. It is something we do as an extra to our already busy lives that makes us feel better. Evangelical church, as symbolized in many ways by the large consumer mega churches, has become an “add-on,” “a semblance” of something which once meant something real. It is a surplus enjoyment we enjoy after we have secured all of our immediate needs.

Surely there are many evangelical churches of all sizes which do not fit this description, and God’s work continues among us despite our falleness. Yet as is typical of Zizek, his Coke illustration provokes us to ask questions about the things that drive us to come together. He describes in multiple ways what a politic looks like, when, like Caffeine-Free Diet Coke, it is “empty” at its core driven by forces other than what we accept as real. Zizek, of course, sees all social reality as ‘empty’ driven by antagonisms and contradictions as opposed to something real that we aspire to.

In the forthcoming book, I wish to explore, with Zizek’s help, how evangelicalism in particular has become this kind of “empty politic” driven by other things than our life together in Christ for the world? In the face of its failings, ( and in response to Zizek) I offer an alternative politic for evangelicalism where our everyday way of life is once again centered (by these beliefs) into a participation in the Incarnate Christ and the life we have with God in and through the “Sent One.” If “the inerrant Bible,” “the decision for Christ” and “the Christian Nation” were formulations that meant well, years later they have malformed us for Mission. I offer an alternative which preserves the core. I show how each of three emphasies of evangelicalism – a high view of the authority of Scripture, a conversionist salvation and an activist church in the world – can be rearticulated and reoriented in practice so as to shape a people for hospitality, inclusion, authenticity, faithfulness and compassion among the lost and hurting. Although challenging, I contend Zizek provides the basis for a fresh look at evangelicalism along these lines in the midst of our political malaise.

I know I opened this can of worms on facebook (feel free to friend me using the link on the blog). But what do you think? Is there some validity in this socio-political analysis of evangelicalism and what it has become in the twenty first century? Can you think of other ways evangelicalism is like a Caffeine Free Diet Coke?

Filed under End of Evangelicalism?,Evangelicalism,Uncategorized 19 Comments