Mixing Metaphors

As we think about this entity we call "church," we have several metaphors operating in our minds and imaginations. We begin with Scripture: church as body of Christ, as people of God, as branches of the vine, as the living temple of the living God, etc. These are foundational; my purpose here is not to call them into question, but to ask if there are some additional, contemporary metaphors that might get us "seeing" in a different way, or from a different point of view. I'm particularly interested in missional metaphors (whatever you think that means!). So do some imagining, and then do some writing!

Reading list

ok, this thread still has a little life in it. John Meadows asked who recommended which books and who wrote the annotations. I got most of the annotations from reviews on amazon because only Laurel and Brian actually sent me annotations?

Here you go … do any of you lurkers want to add any book suggestions?

Brian Emmet:
Wright, N. T. Justification: God’s Plan and Paul’s Vision. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2009.
David Bentley Hart, Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable Enemies (Yale UP, 2009)

Robert Grant
Finke, Roger, The Churching of America, 1776-2005; Winners and Losers in Our Religious Economy. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2005.
Tickle, Phyllis. The Great Emergence. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2008.
Lencioni, Patrick. Death by Meeting: A Leadership Fable. About Solving the Most Painful Problem in Business. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Books, 2004.
------. The Three Signs of a Miserable Job: A Fable for Managers (and Their Employees). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Books, 2007.
Noll, Mark A. The New Shape of World Christianity: How American Experience Reflects Global Faith. Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity, 2009.

Laurel Long
Durant, Will and Ariel. “The Reformation.” The Story of Civilization, Vol. VI. Great NecK, N.Y., 1935.
Hayek, Fredrick A. The Road to Serfdom. Edited by Bruce Caldwell. 2007. The University of Chicago Press, 1944.

Traditional Pedagogy in peril?

Traditional Pedagogy in peril?

this is from Scot McKnight's blog today, Jesuscreed.org... regarding the future of universities as learning styles and the knowledge base are changing.

................
"Meanwhile on campus, there is fundamental challenge to the foundational modus operandi of the University -- the model of pedagogy. Specifically, there is a widening gap between the model of learning offered by many big universities and the natural way that young people who have grown up digital best learn.

The old-style lecture, with the professor standing at the podium in front of a large group of students, is still a fixture of university life on many campuses. It's a model that is teacher-focused, one-way, one-size-fits-all and the student is isolated in the learning process. Yet the students, who have grown up in an interactive digital world, learn differently. Schooled on Google and Wikipedia, they want to inquire, not rely on the professor for a detailed roadmap. They want an animated conversation, not a lecture. They want an interactive education, not a broadcast one that might have been perfectly fine for the Industrial Age, or even for boomers. These students are making new demands of universities, and if the universities try to ignore them, they will do so at their peril."
................

to me, the "The old-style lecture" and traditional pedagogy sound a little like a Protestant church service. In our weekly God-parties, I found it true that non-churched secular young people want "animated conversation, not a lecture."

so ... as we look at books like the "Great Emergence" and such themes as the collapse of the Evangelical church and possibly even the "great falling away" as young people abandon church services, what implications does the above information have for the task of reproducing the faith in a new generation?

PS: if you want to contribute some books to the summer reading list (annotated bibliography) please send them to me with a paragraph or two describing the book at josenmiami@yahoo.com

Summer Reading List

summer is almost here... tell us what you are planning to read this summer and why. If possible, rank your book selection by priority.

I~ll have to contribute my list after I arrive back in Miami on Wednesday.

ok Laurel: go! You too Biiilly....

500-Year Rummage Sale

Ok, lets try to rewind this conversation again and refocus using Phyllis Tickle’s book, The Great Emergence. I heard about this book from Robert Grant, and then saw a series of reviews on Scot Mcknight’s blog, I tried to be satisfied with following Mcknight’s reviews but finally had to break down and buy it. I thought it was an excellent book, although I was a little dissatisfied with the last chapter. She tried to indicate Calvary Chaple and Vineyard as “emerging” or postmodern churches, which I really don’t buy into.

Which of you have the book already? Has anyone already finished it?

Her basic thesis is that about once every 500 years, the church holds a rummage sale and reorients itself to whatever current cultural condition it finds itself in. She believes were are approaching one of those 500-year junctures and that the rummage sale has begun. This is similar to what others such as Bob Mumford have said.

What do you think? Shall we read the book together?

Spiritual Heritage Part 2: "The Church Holds a Rummage Sale"

Lets start fresh with our discussion of Spiritual Heritage. Here are a couple of highlights from John Meadows that kicked off our discussion in the first place:

“But what we're trying to do is to follow the leadership of the Holy Spirit in this moment, in this era of social, cultural and political history, with events that come at us as like a fire hose. In the late '60's and early '70's God was moving sovereignly. I am so grateful to have been caught up in that move. But many of those leaders are dead (including three of our five teachers), and the others are in their 70's and 80's.

Of the two who are living, neither Charles nor Bob are doing what they were doing in the '70's and '80's. Both have continued to move with the Spirit. And when you hear them speak these days, they are still fresh and relevant. I was amazed at the prophetic insight that Bob still carries (not of a by-gone era; reminiscing about the good old days, but of our present context). When he spoke at ACM a couple years ago, he was totally up to date on current trends, theological and social movements -- probably more so than most of the rest of us in the room.

Most of us are attempting to maintain and value our historic relationships without trying to continue, restore or duplicate the past. No one can "go back", we can only move ahead. "What is God saying and doing now?" is our question.
On a more popular level, we're all theologians if we're interested at all in God, and knowing him. Here's how dictionary.com defines theology: "The field of study and analysis that treats of God and of God's attributes and relations to the universe; study of divine things or religious truth." So with that definition, you and I are also "theologians", although without letters.

I love the ancient Orthodox definition of a theologian, "He who prays is a true theologian."

And speaking of "Fathers of the Faith", Christendom as we know it would not exist without the theologians who hashed out the creeds and endured much hardship and suffering. We can deconstruct them and see their failings and clay feet, just like our own brothers, but we can't forget that we are here because of them and their struggles and scarifies to follow our God the best they knew how in the age and context in which they lived -- to serve God's purpose for their generation.”

And this from Brian: The church of Jesus Christ, as happens from time to time, gets confused. When confused, she tends to hold a big rummage sale, putting both her treasures and her accumulated junk on the block for bargain prices. (Well, they're bargains if they are truly treasures!) So here we are, sorting through the piles and piles of ... stuff. What will we gladly pay top dollar for? What are we willing to let go to the recycle facility?

Our Spiritual Heritage

John Meadows wrote a personal email letter to one of our blog friends about his appreciation for his spiritual heritage, but also affirming the need to “follow the cloud” today. When the apostle Paul said that he was “forgetting what lies behind” was he including forgetting good things in the past as well as the bad?

John’s thoughtful letter can be accessed here as a google doc. What do you think about the points he is making?

Robert Grant has also pointed out the need to appreciate our heritage, not only as Reformation Protestants going back 500 years, but also our ENTIRE spiritual heritage going back to the patristic age and the early church.

How do we combine the tension of remembering and cherishing our history and heritage (including learning form the mistakes of history) in dynamic tension with the apostolic example of “forgetting that which lies behind, and pressing on”?

By the way, here is the link to the excellent interview with Richard Foster and Dallas Willard that John M. mentioned near the end of our last discussion:

Where is the “upward call of God” leading us to press on toward now? Why is important to let go of the past in order to receive the future? How can we “let go of the past” without forgetting our heritage?

What aspects of your heritage do you appreciate?

John’s letter about his spiritual heritage can be accessed here on google docs

PS: by-the-way, please lift up Brian Emmet in your prayers. His father past away 9 weeks ago, and last week his mother went home to be with Brian’s father. That is a lot to process in the space of two months.

New book by Dallas Willard

In my humble opinion, one of the true spiritual giants in our time has been Dallas Willard. Not only does he have a profound biblical message for the church in our generation, he has grown and developed his character and thinking outside of church ministry, in a philosophy department of a secular university. I sincerely hope there are some young men and women coming up in university settings that will replace him when he is gone.

Have any of you read his newest book yet? I have not, I just became aware of it this morning when I went to Scot McKnight’s web site and saw this overview of the book.

I believe that the greatest weakness of the current church in the United States is the underdeveloped spiritual formation. Dallas Williard picked up where Robert Coleman (Master Plan of Evangelism) left off, and has been calling followers of Christ and the church to in-depth discipleship to Jesus for a generation –.
he has been a voice in the wilderness, crying out to the church to prepare the way of the Lord through spiritual disciplines and spiritual formation.

His new book is called Knowing Christ Today: Why We Can Trust Spiritual Knowledge

Here is a brief selection from today’s post on Jesuscreed:

...............
“The third part of the book, which shifts slightly in style to less philosophical argument and more to Christian exposition, concerns knowledge of Christ in the spiritual life -- and here he enters into what for many of us is the classical style of Willard's form of a more mystically-shaped Christian life. The seventh chp enters into a spirited but reasonable form of Christian inclusivism, which he calls Christian pluralism where final redemption is ultimately shaped by whether or not a person -- Christian religion or not -- has a heart that is properly oriented toward God.

Finally, he has a chp in which he expands the meaning of "pastor" and argues that it is pastors who have the responsibility of making this "knowledge of Christ" known today.”

...............
Which book by Willard has been your favorite? What do you get out of his writings as the central theme?


Books
The Spirit of the Disciplines: Understanding How God Changes Lives.(1988). San Francisco: Harper and Row, ISBN 0-06-069442-4 (you can buy this for as cheap as $3.75 online now)

The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life In God (1998). San Francisco: Harper, ISBN 0-06-069333-9

Hearing God: Developing a Conversational Relationship With God (1999). Intervarsity Press (USA), ISBN 0-8308-2226-7

Renovation of the Heart: Putting on the Character of Christ (2002). Colorado Springs: NavPress, ISBN 1-57683-296-1

The Great Omission: Reclaiming Jesus's Essential Teachings on Discipleship" (2006). San Francisco: Harper, ISBN 0-06-088243-3

The role of the Spirit in salvation

Here is a possible topic for conversation. What exactly is the role of the Holy Spirit in the work of salvation? Is anyone aware of any theological works on this subject? I know that this is one of the significant differences between Catholic and Eastern Orthodox theology -- I'm guessing that Protestantism is more "Western" having thrown out a lot of 'pre-modern' Catholic tradition but did not add back in a profound theology of the Spirit -- at least not until the rise of pneumacentric protestantism (Pentecostal and Charismatic) in the twentieth century.

Deb was reading to me this morning from Matthew 12 and I was struck by a passage I have read many times, but had not heard before in The Message version:

Matt 12: 31-32 "There's nothing done or said that can't be forgiven. But if you deliberately persist in your slanders against God's Spirit, you are repudiating the very One who forgives. If you reject the Son of Man out of some misunderstanding, the Holy Spirit can forgive you, but when you reject the Holy Spirit, you're sawing off the branch on which you're sitting, severing by your own perversity all connection with the One who forgives.

What struck me in this is the part about someone rejecting the Son of Man. Such a one can be forgiven. Hmmm…. What does that mean?

However, if someone rejects the Holy Spirit, how can they be forgiven? By rejecting the Holy Spirit, they are rejecting the dynamic active agent of God … the one who draws them, convicts them of sin, imparts faith to them and teaches them the things of Christ. The one who gives the revelation that Jesus is the Messiah, the Holy One of God (Peter, the Rock) The one that is the active executor of forgiveness of sins.

Does this mean that an honest Hindu or Muslim with a good heart, who rejects or neglects the divinity of Christ out of “some cultural misunderstanding” but who continues to respond affirmatively to the inner workings of the Spirit can be saved? (through the redemptive work of Christ of course, but perhaps in cognitive ignorance of that work). It is certainly worth considering and discussing.

More to the point, in my own dealings with agnostics and deists in our weekly god-party, most of them do not affirm the divinity of Christ, but they keep coming to our hang-out, and in a couple of cases, I see unmistakable traces of the work of the Spirit in their lives. So is it more important that I work to overcome their intellectual resistance to acknowledging that Jesus is the Christ?, or rather should I set that aside (temporarily) to affirm the work of the Spirit in them and to extend the ‘friendship’ of Christ in me the hope of Glory to them? In the second approach, I choose not to try to persuade them to believe a set of propositions about Christ, but instead I attempt to facilitate the work of the Spirit in them until they reach the point that St. Peter did, where the Spirit reveals the truth about Jesus to them.

What do you think? Is this a possible area that needs some theological re-formation?

Justification and New Perspective

Scot McKnight posted a topic about some current theological debate regarding justification and atonement on his jesuscreed blog today. Some of it revolves around something called the “new perspective on Paul” and includes a debate between John Piper and Tom Wright.

My apologies to those of you that do not like substantial theological discussion but let’s talk about this. Brian and I have been chatting off and on about various perspectives of the atonement and this post by McKnight makes a good springboard into that discussion. For the more activist oriented, you can check out of this and go to skunklings.com and participate in some possibility thinking for mission.

I am pasting in some of McKnight post. To read the entire post or to participate in the discussion on jesuscreed click here. Even if you are not very familiar with 20th century theologians, if you click on the links below you can get a quick overview of the development of this area of Pauline studies.

.................

…How do you understand the "new perspective on Paul"? What do you think is its primary contribution? Which of the new perspective writers do you read the most and why and what do you like about them? How significant do you think this debate is?

First, there is no such thing as the new perspective if one think it refers to some body of doctrine. The New Perspective, therefore, deserves a brief sketch as to how it arose and what it means.

….McKnight gives a brief historiography here of the development of the new perspective leading up to N.T. Wright….

Then along came, and only then did along he come, N.T. Wright. Wright built upon Sanders and Dunn, to be sure, but he paved his own ground -- building in important ways upon C.H. Dodd and GB Caird -- by pursuing the "end of exile" themes in his early Pauline studies and then his Jesus studies, and then returned to Paul when the New Perspective had taken hold -- and he added to it, supplemented it, and has taken much of the heat by the critics. Wright has refashioned justification less in terms of personal conversion and more in terms of "who is in the people of God." And he has now added to all of this a new dimension, an anti-imperial reading of Paul and earliest Christianity -- and that had little to do with either Sanders or Dunn.

But at the bottom of these folks is a belief that Christians have misunderstood Judaism as a works religion and at stake is a profound (changed) orientation to the human problem in much of Reformed and Lutheran thinking: namely, that humans want to earn their place before God, that their fundamental problem is the attempt to establish themselves before God. The New Perspective, in one way or another, does not see this as the problem Paul himself faced and therefore to read Paul in light of this problem misreads Paul in important ways. I call this traditional reading the Augustinian approach to Paul, and I wish more of the critics of the New Perspective would give this Augustinian basis, which most of them think is actually Pauline, more attention. The New Perspective says, "well, yes, perhaps" but that is not what Paul was going on about when he was engaged with his opponents. The issue was not anthropological but both salvation-historical (more Sanders) and ecclesial (both Dunn and Wright). That's how I see things.

The issue then is how to read Paul in his historical context. This is the Protestant approach and many of us think that far too many of the critics of the New Perspective, instead of re-examining the Bible in its historical context, have appealed instead to the Tradition as established by Luther and Calvin. This leads me to another point...

Bibliography:
1976, Krister Stendahl, Paul Among Jews and Gentile.
1979, E.P. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism: A Comparison of Patterns of Religion.
1982, James Dun, Jesus, Paul and the Law.
.....................Paul Among Jews and Gentile.
Tom Wright, Justification: God's Plan & Paul's Vision.
John Piper, The Future of Justification: A Response to N. T. Wright.