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After GAFCON

Post GAFCON Interview with J.I. Packer

Post GAFCON Interview with Peter Jensen

GAFCON: A Longer Look

N.T. Wright reflects on GAFCON

Read the GAFCON Statement

Technorati Tags: GAFCON, JIPacker, NTWRIGHT

Beyond “Beyondism”

Beyond "Beyondism" (Joseph Bottum, First Things)

I think it was David Brooks who coined, years ago, the term “beyondist.” A beyondist is someone who urges us to get beyond left/right distinctions, beyond partisan politics, beyond the stymied options of the day. Jim Wallis is a good example, as the title of his book God’s Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn’t Get It plainly shows.

Who can’t feel the call of beyondism? When Wallis writes, “Don’t be a liberal, don’t be a conservative, be a man or woman of faith. Don’t turn right, don’t turn left, go deeper,” the response has to be: Amen, brother—but stop preaching to the choir. Your heart gives that weird, despairing thunk of hopelessness the umpteenth time you hear a set of Democratic party talking points, Republican party rejoinders, liberal reposts, conservative retorts, leftist agitations, and righty fulminations. To be bound entirely by the political options of the day is to be lost in the perpetual quotidian—swept down the narrowest of channels, banging from side to side and scraping off your skin as you go.

And yet it’s one thing for people to get beyond left/right distinctions, and something different to demand that people get beyond left/right distinctions. That demand to get beyond politics itself exists in a political context—and its proposals always end up breaking for one camp or the other: The way to get beyond the liberal/conservative divide is for all of you on the other side to agree with me. It seems to be a rule that every beyondist is actually doing a little bait and switch—like the tire store that advertises discounted radials they just happen to be out of, though they’re happy to sell you these more expensive whitewalls instead. (read more)

Touchstone Responds to "A Call to an Ancient Evangelical Future"

Those that have not read the September issue of Christianity Today that addresses Robert Webber's "A Call to an Ancient Future Evangelical Future" or read the related documents at Ancient-Future Worship dot com, should do so.

THEN, they should read the engaging response and critique from Touchstone.

Though I would hardly consider myself well-versed in all things "ancient-future," Russell Moore summarizes my general suspicions quite well in his article, Listen Closely:

At the end of the day, the “Ancient/Future” Evangelicalism is a natural extension of American Evangelicalism’s besetting sins of faddishness and consumerism. That’s the reason it is fanned (as so many Evangelical winds of doctrine are) by publishing houses. This project comes to us just as Evangelicalism is in the throes of an infatuation with the so-called emerging church, which is also fueled by publishing houses (the sellers of youth ministry curricula) and which is also enamored simultaneously with postmodern cynicism, egalitarianism, doctrinal flexibility, and ancient-seeming worship.

The rest of the articles can be found here: Back & Forth to the Future: A Critical Symposium on A Call to an Ancient Evangelical Future

(HT: JT)

Mohler on Barna

A Revolution in the Making?

...Still, something has gone tragically wrong when a marketing researcher declares that the church of the Lord Jesus Christ is simply doomed--especially in terms of local congregations. "There is nothing inherently wrong with being involved in a local church," he argues. "But realize that being part of a group that calls itself a 'church' does not make you saved, holy, righteous, or godly any more than being in Yankee Stadium makes you a professional baseball player. Participating in church-based activities does not necessarily draw you closer to God or prepare you for a life that satisfies Him or enhances your existence. Being a member of a congregation does not make you spiritually righteous anymore than being a member of the Democratic Party makes you a liberal wing nut."

A closer look at that argument reveals a glaring non sequitur. It completely avoids the question of what the church should be, and it undercuts a basic biblical premise--that the local church is supposed to be the very place where Christians are drawn into the very passions Barna identifies--and into so much more.

RELATED
Storms on Barna pt 1
Storms on Barna pt 2
No Church? No Problem

Mohler announces his review at Together for the Gospel Blog. There, he adds, "In one sense, the book is something of a poison pill for evangelical Christianity" and

Almost everything Barna says about the shortcomings and failures of evangelical churches is accurate. Superficiality and worse mark so many churches, and it is no wonder that so many believers never develop into mature Christians and so many churches never experience the power and glory of God in congregational life. Unfortunately, Barna's approach is even worse -- abandoning the local church altogether as the normative context for Christian involvement.

Technorati Tags: AlMohler, Barna , Ecclesiology

Wright and Emergent

Justin has posed an interesting question at the reformation21 blog dealing with the connection between N.T. Wright and Emergent. He asks,

Do any of you guys have thoughts about why Emergent folks (like McLaren and Franke) are so grateful to and dependent upon the work of N.T. Wright, and why Bishop Wright seems to appreciate what they are trying to do?

I don't know about Bishop Wright's "appreciation" of the emerging church (and would be curious to hear why people like McLaren appreciate his work), but he did do an Open Source Theology Conference in 2004. You can find the audio from the conference here.

In the first session, Wright makes some introductory comments about how he finds it odd that these folks have an affinity for his work and want to hear him speak. Moreover, Wright makes some comments about how certain aspects of his theology could undermine the aims of those within the emerging movement and the critiques he has received from those within postmodern evangelicalism regarding his historiography.

Notwithstanding the connection between two, Wright's talks are fantastic-- and he makes mention of the UK study, Mission Shaped Church.

If you want to avoid the trouble of going through OST's page, you can download the sessions here:
Session 1: God's Future for the World has Arrived in the Person of Jesus
Session 2: Understanding and Implementing Jesus' Gospel in the Present
Session 3: Reimagining our Mission as God's Agents of New Creation in the World
Session 4: Fulfilling God's Kingdom Project for the World as a Mission Shaped Church

(Wright also mentions the UK study, Mission-Shaped Church at several points in the lectures)

UPDATE:
Phillip Ryken offers his opinion @ reformation21
Jeff Jue's response @ reformation21
Rick Phillips' response @ reformation21

Technorati Tags: Ecclesiology, Emerging Church, N.T. Wright

One Question I Have Re: Barna's Revolution

Because of the proliferation of discussions regarding George Barna's book Revolution, I hesitate to add one more post to the pile. I think people have sufficiently noted the main weaknesses in Barna's book (Kevin Miller asks the question today: George Barna's New Book: Revolutionary of Revolting? -- thanks for the props btw!).

Here is the question I haven't seen anyone ask:

Is Barna describing the "emerging church" movement? If he is, what does his ambivalence toward the local church say about emerging understandings of the importance of the local church? I have always understood that emerging folks have a passion for the centrality of the local church within the mission of God. This has always been my primary point of contact with the movement.

Perhaps some understand Barna to simply be expanding the parameters of how we understand the term "church." This would be quite in line with advocates of organic ecclesiology, missional church, etc-- but this is not his argument at all. Barna says to embrace the church if you need it, leave it behind if it doesn't serve your needs.

So, who are the millions of Americans he is describing?

Technorati Tags: Barna , Ecclesiology, Emerging Church

Evangelical Theological Society & The Emerging Church

The Pastoral Ministry Study Group of this years ETS meeting was devoted to the emerging church.  I was shocked and impressed with the number of geeky middle aged men in tight pants who crowded in to hear the sessions in the study group.  Anthony Bradley delivered a paper and John Hammett made a noble attempt to respond to Emergent's (capital E) Response to Our Critics.

Both papers (and the questions asked of the presenters) displayed charity, a desire for understanding, and a humble search for greater clarity and dialogue.  I was surprised.  I believe that the academic community has responded laudably to the gauntlet that was thrown down for them, and I hope to see leaders from the variety of emerging church movements at the 2006 ETS meeting in Washington, D.C.

Hammett made it clear that he would gladly email his paper to anyone who  asked for it.  Many of the conference papers are also supposed to be posted on Zondervan's site (though I couldn't find them there or at the ETS page-- if anyone knows how to do this, advise us all in the comments).

Additionally, Justin Taylor is presenting a paper tonight on his perspectives on the movement.  You can get a pretty good idea of what Justin is presenting through his McKnight-esque string of posts "What is the Emerging Church Movement" (part I, part II, part III, part IV, part V, part VI, part VII, part VIII, ...).

The Barna Update // Redefining Church

A Faith Revolution Is Redefining “Church,” According to New Study

October 10, 2005

(Ventura, CA) – For decades the primary way that Americans have experienced and expressed their faith has been through a local church. That reality is rapidly changing, according to researcher George Barna, whose new book on the transitioning nature of America’s spirituality, entitled Revolution, describes what he believes will be the most massive reshaping of the nation’s faith community in more than a century.

(full article)

Questions? Comments?

I have a million thoughts/reactions/questions I would like to pose in response to this, but my brain is not firing on all cylinders right now. Perhaps a few reflections over the next few days. I'm eager to read Barna's Revolution -- and hear other's thoughts as they process this.

J.I. Packer, A Stunted Ecclesiology

Spent some time this morning reading an excellent essay by J.I. Packer, A Stunted Ecclesiology: The Theory and Practice of Evangelical Churches (Touchstone, December 2002).  Packer addresses the role of tradition in the development of an evangelical ecclesiology, and issues a plea for recognizing the centrality of the church in the purposes of God in light of some of the salient problems facing the evangelical church today.  I highly recommend this essay-- noting that we might be surprised with some of Packer's proposals for the way forward.

Below is a selection from the essay's introduction.

What is in the mind of evangelicals when they speak of the evangelical church? They are not using the singular noun in what would be a secular way, that is, to signify a statistical and organizational collective, though of course the global evangelical fellowship is that, and may be so viewed if sociology is one’s concern. But in fact their use of this phrase is voicing the same sort of claim to authenticity as Roman Catholic and Orthodox Christians express when they identify themselves as belonging to the church. This small c use of the word church (large c reduces it to a group label) carries the thought of the one body of Christ on earth, of which all believers are in some sense members, but which takes its most proper form in the circle of communion to which each of the adjectival qualifiers (Roman Catholic, Orthodox, and now evangelical) is pointing.

Believers using any one of these three distinguishing labels for self-identification express thereby, in an informal and subtextual way, their belief, not that God is content to have three communities of saints side by side, but that here is the particular road that ideally all God’s people would be taking together. The ecumenical exchanges of the past century have brought an awareness of this churchly inkling (often not more, but never less) as undergirding the sometimes perplexing phenomenon of separation justifying itself; and when evangelicals speak of the evangelical church, the same inkling is involved. There is here, in fact, a recognizable renewal of the sense of churchly reality that lay at the heart of the sixteenth-century reformation.

(full article)

Barth on 'Incarnational' Churches

The vast majority of people talking about the church today take language from the Incarnation and paste it onto virtually everything regarding the life of the community. So, we talk about incarnational practices, being an incarnational people, having incarnational ministries, being an incarnational missional community, etc.

For some reason, that sort of language has never rested well with me. Perhaps I have been guilty of using it myself, but I have always made the attempt to shy away from the language-- and I have never completely understood why.

I think it is primarily because I thought it betrayed a subtle error in our ecclesiology-- namely, the mission of the church is to provide witness to the Incarnation. It seems like an over-realized ecclesiology (to borrow and mix terms) that would cause us somehow think that a community providing witness to the person of Jesus is anything like the Incarnation-- if we really stop to think about the Incarnation. Now, this is not to say that the church is not LIKE Jesus, or that the presence of the risen Christ does not dwell in the community. However, even as we understand the reality that Jesus embodies himself within the community, I have still had problems with talking about the church in these terms. Amidst all our passion for the mission of God in the local church, and our increasing awareness of the presence of God within the community-- I think we must remind ourselves that the church is not Jesus.

This afternoon, I read an excerpt from a paper written by George Hunsinger-- Karl Barth: The Church As Witness. I feel that Barth put words around the concerns I have had for some time-- and even takes my hesitancy with the language one step further:

"No "encroachment" on Christ’s lordship or on the uinqueness of the Incarnation can be allowed (IV/1, 723)...To speak of a continuation or extension of the Incarnation in the church," states Barth, "is not only out of place but blasphemous" (IV/3, 729).