Some thoughts on Church and Culture – Thesis 3

My final thought (for now!) on this topic... Thesis 3: By equating ‘church’ with the hour and fifteen minutes we spend together on a Sunday instead of a community we load up the weekly gathering with more than it can or should bear.

This perhaps is not an idea specifically about church and culture but I think it’s one of the reasons we’re in such a pickle over the ‘church and culture’ issue.

I think we (meaning, Sydney Evangelicals (capitals intentional) who have been brought up on Knox-Robinson ecclesiology) have overemphasised the ‘church as gathering’ equation to the extent that church has become limited to what happens when we’re in the building together on Sunday morning (or evening, or Saturday or whenever we gather).

Church is not a building (though every physical gathering needs a location); it’s not an institution (though any gathering of people will have institutional structures, see Volf (1998), After Our Likeness, p.234-45); and neither is it an event (though as a gathering community the church will be marked by the significant regular gathering ‘event’).

Brief Theological Aside: Of course, this wasn’t the intention of Knox or Robinson (imho); their most significant contribution being the point that the heavenly gathering (Heb 12:23) being primary means that we are always ‘in church’. Still though, the insistence that earthly ‘church’ doesn’t exist when we are not gathered (“It is not too much to say that the church on earth does not exist, or is not visible, except in the actual assembly of believers” Robinson (1965). The Church of God), though linguistically precise, is I believe theologically limited. Yes, ekklēsia means ‘gathering’, and the word is mostly used in the NT to refer to actual gatherings (whether Christian or not); but there are at least two times I can see where Luke uses the word to refer more broadly to Christian people who are not actually physically gathered – Acts 8:3; 9:31.

Therefore I prefer to talk of the church as a ‘gathering community’: that is, we are a community living under the headship of Christ (so, we are ‘church’ even if we’re not gathered); but we are a community that is marked and defined by gathering, both spiritual and physical gathering, temporal and eschatological gathering. To be Christian is to be a member of the church, gathered now around Christ by the Spirit, to be gathered on the last day physically in Christ’s presence, and to gather physically now whenever possible and practical as the fundamental expression and experience of our identity. To decide to stop gathering with other believers will by definition bring into question our identity as Christians. If I’m a member of a football team (in my dreams I’m inside centre for the Wallabies) but decide to no longer meet with the other team members and instead aim to play rugby as an individual, I might have lofty intentions, and there may be understandable reasons for my decision, but you’ve got to ask whether it really is rugby I’ve ended up playing.

The upshot of all this is that church isn’t just our formal gathering; it is not less than that, but must be more as well.

Even if you don’t agree with my theological aside and want to maintain the church is church only when Christians gather idea, then at least we can agree that the church gathering doesn’t need to be (and I suggest) ought not be limited to one hour and 15 minute (or thereabouts) gathering once a week.

Pity the poor ‘Sunday Service’ – it must be a time of public reading of Scripture, gospel proclamation, theological education, spiritual nurture, practical instruction, corporate worship and prayer, and intimate fellowship; with offertory, announcements and morning tea thrown in there’s a lot going on in one gathering (and there’s another series of blogs on the implications of this sort of expectation on preaching and preachers...). The point for now is, that if you add the requirement to be ‘culturally relevant to all who attend, especially to the majority culture of our community that we’ve decided to target’ we’ve ended up with an impossible task.

Putting together theses 1, 2 and 3 therefore, cultural relevance belongs to church through individual Christians or small groups of Christians who are engaged in real relationships of evangelistic-love with their friends and neighbours; while the regular gathering of God’s people, aiming at transforming all our individual cultures by living intentionally as God’s people under Christ by the Spirit, will have a culture different to any other, and open to every other.

So, invite your vegan neighbours to a dinner of barley and eggplant salad on Friday night, your NRL loving workmates to a spit roast on Saturday night and have a cup of tea and a scone with Mabel from across the street on Thursday afternoon; get everyone from your church who surfs into the same home group and encourage them to be an evangelistic community to connect with local surfers; do the same for the scrap-bookers, the long-distance runners and the wanna-be-masterchefs. And then come Sunday, come together in the one gathering that transcends all human connections, this new community in Christ. Introduce your surfer friend to your sister the scrapbooker and your brother the vegan. Then sit together under the word of God and share together in the Lord’s table, and display the manifold wisdom of God to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places (Eph 3:10), and perhaps lead your friend to worship God, exclaiming, ‘God is really among you’ (1 Cor 14:25)!

Some thoughts on Church and Culture – Thesis 1

I’ve been thinking a lot about the interaction between gospel and culture recently, particularly in relation to church planting. The vibe I’m hearing around the place is that we need to discover the culture of the community in which we want to plant a church and then shape our church culture to be able to fit with the surrounding culture. It goes under the heading of ‘incarnational mission’ (something I’ve railed against in the past... but that’s another story). So, to take a prominent example, Mars Hill Seattle looks around their city and sees a whole lot of Gen Y inner-city types; so they set about developing a church culture that is Gen Y inner-city-ish and from that platform set about evangelising the city. Which all seems great – and of course, there’s lot of greatness and godliness involved in it and lots of people have come to life in Christ. But here’s my concern...

Thesis 1: “If a church is targeted at a particular culture the gospel must become moulded to, marginalised by or manipulated by that culture”

Now you may respond as others responded when I first suggested this to them – “but Mars Hill is VERY orthodox! They’ve succeeded in keeping the gospel clear while also being relevant to the surrounding culture”. Buy my question is, is that really true? My BIG concern with Mars Hill is that the doctrine of the divinity and uniqueness of Christ comes across with the same force and passion and expectation of adherence as the doctrine that men shouldn’t be stay-at-home Dads. I imagine that when asked, Mark Driscoll would affirm that the doctrines of Christ are more central and important than the doctrine of stay-at-home dads (I hope he would!). But the problem is, that to the punter listening there’s no differentiation (that I’ve heard) between what is a catholic doctrine of the faith and a particular application of a particular interpretation of the Bible! Hence, a manipulated gospel at worst, a moulded or marginalised gospel at best.

I’m reminded of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s line: ‘God hates visionary dreaming.’ Which wasn’t a spray against planning and vision casting! Instead, he levelled a challenge to church leaders to dream of a church with Christ alone as its head rather than a church with themselves at the head. His point was that the church must be the community shaped by the gospel, and only the gospel.

I have a friend who is dreaming of a church that would have the same grungy-surfy-semi-alternative culture as the suburb he lives in. His dream is to see lots of people won for Christ. I just don’t think his plans are going to achieve that. If we craft a church that has a grungy-surfy-semi-alternative culture then we’re going to have to say to existing members of the church, ‘you can’t belong here’, or at least, you can’t be prominent in leading here because you’re an old-fashioned-anglo-conservative. Not only do we end up with a church that excludes those who are already Christ’s, we’ll also exclude those who could be Christ’s but who don’t fit the target culture – what happens to the grandmother who is neither grungy, surfy, or alternative in even the slightest way? We have a church where she can’t be welcomed. The church is no longer shaped by the gospel, it’s shaped by the culture, with the gospel fitted in afterwards.

Given that the gospel is the gospel for all nations, when we set out to create a church that will make current members no longer fit and potential members not be welcome we’ve moulded, marginalised or manipulated the gospel. To be saved you need Jesus and grungy-surfy-semi-alternative-ness.

But, my good friend says, all you’re ending up with is your own un-scrutinised promotion of a particular culture to the exclusion of current and potential members – you’ve just replaced the dominant culture of the area that will attract more people with the out-dated, weird, churchy culture that you’ve inherited and grown used to, and that attracts NO ONE!

Well, that’s quite a challenge – which I shall gladly rise to in my next post.

Thinking Big Thoughts on Lord Howe Island

Hi there - here I am, temporarily holed up in the Anglican rectory on Lord Howe Island.  In between the arduous tasks of leading a Bible Study group, teaching a Scripture lesson and preaching at two church services, there's a whole lot of God's glory to behold and enjoy.

I'm also taking time to read, think and pray (i.e. I am working!).

This morning I was sitting in a cafe, enjoying a nice coffee, overlooking the lagoon with Mt Gower towering in the background, reading an article 'On Evangelical Ecclesiology' by John Webster (Ecclesiology, 2004, p.9-35), and came across this idea:  that the church has its origins in the free will of God that desires to move beyond himself so that 'there should come into being a creaturely counterpart to the fellowship of love which is the inner life of the Holy Trinity' (p.9).

How amazing is that!  (1) that I could get paid to sit on Lord Howe Island and read theology!  (2) that God would desire to create us, the church, the 'creaturely counterpart' to his eternal fellowship of love! and (3) that he has made us with the ability to sit in a cafe and contemplate his inner life of love!

Simply breathtakingly good in every sense of the word.