“You are going to feel like hell if you never write the stuff that is tugging on the sleeves of your heart — your stories, visions, memories, visions and songs. Your truth, your version of things, your own voice. That is really all you have to offer us. And that’s also why you were born.”
Anne Lamott
“You are going to feel like hell if you never write the stuff that is tugging on the sleeves of your heart — your stories, visions, memories, visions and songs. Your truth, your version of things, your own voice. That is really all you have to offer us. And that’s also why you were born.”
Anne Lamott
The vital question is… by what criterion are we to judge that the Church is now headed in the right direction? Answering first in the negative, Kung comments, …the Church is not on the right path so long as it adapts itself to the present; nor is it on the right path as long as it holds fast to the past. How do we know the Church is on the right path? — … the Church is headed in the right direction when, whatever the age in which it lives, the Gospel of Jesus Christ is its criterion..
This post is mostly a stream of consciousness regarding “How do we know the church is on the right path?”. I prefer “How do we know the church is on the wrong path?”. I am much better at seeing what is wrong than what is right. As I continue to ponder, I’m finding a lot of threads to pull. The church tapestry I created over many years is unraveling.
This quote from Kung cited earlier is an example of one those threads: “… the salvific act in Jesus Christ is the origin of the Church; but it is more than the starting point or the first phase of its history, it is something which at any given time determine the whole history of the Church and defines its essential nature.” The restoration movement, which is my heritage, marked the Day of Pentecost as the origin of the church. The NT book of Acts was the blueprint for the church, particularly 2:38-47. ( I wrote a post about my church heritage. You can read it HERE.) The Day of Pentecost as the church’s origin shaped our ecclesiology profoundly. For example, the book of acts was the primary resource for teaching and preaching. The rest of New Testament was relevant but clearly secondary. The four Gospels were admired but were mostly for devotional reading while the important work was done in the instruction manual, Acts, and the apostle Paul’s epistles. Cornerstones of true church’s buildings were engraved with “Established AD 33″. The Old Testament was irrelevant to ecclesiology. I remember the distribution of handy little —”The New Testament and Psalms ” — Bibles. The endgame was getting church right, everything else became a means to that end.
Perhaps you find what I described above as troubling as I do. However, I suggest that premise is widely held in western Christianity and shapes perceptions about what church is and should look like. There are many variations but at the core is Pentecost. It seems to me, more than ever, the endgame is getting church right. It is for that reason, I find Kung’s declaration : — “…the Church is headed in the right direction when, whatever the age in which it lives, the Gospel of Jesus Christ is its criterion.” — an important shift from getting church “right” to embracing the origin of the church as “God’s salvific act in Jesus Christ”, a concrete reality in which the essence of Church — real church is found.
It is difficult, maybe impossible, to set aside preconceived notions of church and reimagine church. Perhaps some Sunday school “desert island” speculation could be helpful.
What if ?, there were 200 God believers on a desert island, born and raised with no contact with the outside world, except for a bottle that washed up on the beach which contained the following note: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life; he has rescued you from the dominion of darkness and brought you all into the kingdom of the Son he loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.” Limited to a single statement of God’s salvific act in his Son, what would their ecclesiology be? As with most “desert island” questions, its improbably tempts one to discount any relevance, but if the origin of the church is God’s salvific act in Jesus Christ, it seems to be a good starting point on the path to discovering real church.
At this point, I say, with reasonable confidence, that their life and community would be characterized primarily by what Good News produces — gratitude .
Posts to follow will continue exploring ecclesiology of “The Good News in a Bottle Church”. Creative insights are welcome. Critiques also.
If we only change because our circumstances change, then who is our God? Matt Redmond
Rebecca Manley Pippert writes, “Our problem in evangelism is not that we don’t have enough information—it is that we don’t know how to be ourselves. We forget we are called to be witnesses to what we have seen and know, not to what we don’t know. The key on our part is authenticity and obedience, not a doctorate in theology.”
I need to know another person’s story so well that I can identify all the ways I see God at work in their lives, even without them noticing. Michael Frost
Good News The message of “Good News” is this: You are loved. You are unique. You are free. You are on the way. You are going somewhere. Your life has meaning. That is all grounded in the experience and the knowledge and the reality of the unconditional love of God. This is what we mean by being “saved.” Richard Rohr
Truthiness in October 2005, Stephen Colbert defined “truthiness.” What matters, he argued in a hilarious imitation of a hard-charging right-wing television pundit, isn’t whether some statement about the world is true; it’s whether it feels true.
Cognitive Dissonance We don’t like to live in the tension between thought and action, or between contradictory thoughts. There’s even evidence that cognitive dissonance can sometimes be so profound that it creates physical discomfort. So we deal with the tension. We can change the thought to match the behavior. We can change the behavior to match the thought. We can add thoughts or rationalizations to resolve the tension. Or, we can simply trivialize the tension and decide that it’s so insignificant that it doesn’t really matter.
Knowledge …there is a difference between knowledge “on ice” and knowledge “on fire.” For many Christians, their belief is often just knowledge “on ice,” not experiential, firsthand knowledge, which is knowledge “on fire.” Even though we call them both faith, there is a difference between intellectual belief and real trust. There is a difference between talking about transformation and God’s love and stepping out in confidence to live a loving life. Only the second is biblical faith: when our walk matches our talk. Richard Rohr
Guilt & Shame The language of guilt isolates responsibility for a single event; the language of shame assumes that you are now that event waiting to be visited upon all. Guilt suggests punishment or restitution; shame declares that no matter what you might do, you will always be that person. Fr Stephen Freeman
View from the front porch The most universal expression of all is a smile, which is rather a nice thought. No society has ever been found that doesn’t respond to smiles in the same way. True smiles are brief—between two-thirds of a second and four seconds. That’s why a held smile begins to look menacing. A true smile is the one expression that we cannot fake. The Body – Bill Bryson
…real church is not adapting to the present nor is it holding to the past — now all I need to do to find real church whose criterion is the Gospel of Jesus Christ! In the next post, I intend to wrestle with what a church looks like whose criterion is the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Often when I am thinking and writing about a particular thread, a related post, article and/or reference mysteriously appears. Today was one of those occasions. With the ink barely dry on my previous Real Church post , Michael Frost’s post entitled “If Jesus planted a church, what would it look like?” hit my in-box. He addresses directly the challenge to wrestle with what a church looks like whose criterion is the Gospel of Jesus Christ. His insights provide an excellent starting point for further conversation. I encourage you to read his entire post.
I intend to incorporate his thoughts as I continue to pursue real church. Here’s a sample:
Here’s what the church that Jesus built looks like – a people who acknowledge him as their king, offering all of their lives under his authority, working on living out this constellation of values:
This is not the first time Michael Frost has dropped into my life unexpectedly. Several decades ago, I discovered he and Alan Hirst were conducting a seminar on their book “The Shaping of Things to Come: Innovation and Mission for the 21 Century Church”. Attending their seminar and reading the book was a significant influence in the development of my evolving ecclesiology. It is good to hear from Michael again.
This post continues thoughts on Real Church. Read the previous post HERE.
I am resolved that my pursuit of “real church” will be one of discovery and I will resist my compelling need to explain. As Crabb concludes: “The passion to explain leads us along a path that ends badly.”
My responsibility is to know I reside on a continuum between an idealized church and the real church. My mission is to discover and surrender to the will of God for His gathered people, in that pilgrimage the real church will come forth.
I remain committed to the statements from the previous Real Church post. However, three weeks since writing that post, struggling with the idea of real church, I realize just how much of a challenge, perhaps impossibility, it is to set aside my idealized abstractions about church and discover real church. That understanding is important, otherwise my pursuit will only lead me to confirm my idealized abstractions. I have no illusion that I will discover “the” real church, but I do believe I can move closer to real church. Although I am not a theologian,Kung was encouraging “…the theologian learns by his mistakes and that if he is prevented from making any, he is prevented from constructive thinking; that it takes time not only to find the truth but also for the truth to take effect in the Church generally, in the face of innumerable obstacles, of the prejudices and pretexts of an opinion communis which masquerades as genuine doctrine.” My hope is for —constructive thinking , some truth regarding real church and patience for truth to take effect.
Returning to Hans Kung’s book “THE CHURCH”, I believe he is helpful in creating a starting point to pursue real church. Here are some citations:
Rather than talking about an ideal Church situated in the abstract celestial spheres of theological theory, we shall consider the real Church as it exists in our world, and in human history. The New Testament itself does not begin by laying down a doctrine of the Church which has then to be worked out in practice; it starts with the Church as reality, and reflection upon it comes later. The real Church is first and foremost a happening, a fact, an historical event. The real essence of the of the real Church is expressed in historical form.
The “essential nature” of the Church is not to be found in some unchanging Platonic haven of ideas, but only in the history of the Church. The real Church not only has a history , it exists by having a history. There’s is no “doctrine” of the Church in the sense of an unalterable metaphysical and ontological system, but one which is historically conditioned , within the framework of the history of the Church, its dogmas and its theology.
God’s salvific act in Jesus Christ is the origin of the Church; but it is more than the starting point or the first phase of its history, it is something which at any given time determine the whole history of the Church and defines its essential nature.
For those who believe the Church is headed in the wrong direction. Kung poses an essential question “…by what criterion are we to judge that the Church is headed in the right direction?” I believe the starting point to determine criterion by which to judge is understanding the essence of the Church. Paraphrasing Kung, the essence of real Church is found in its origin, a happening, a fact, a reality — namely, God’s salvific act in Jesus Christ.
“It [the Church] stand or falls by its links with its origins in Jesus and its message ; it remains permanently dependent for the ground of of its existence, on God’s saving act in Jesus Christ, which is valid for all time and so also in the present.”
For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, 1 Corinthians 15:3-4 – NIV
The Church must constantly reflect upon its real existence in the present with reference to its origins in the past, in order to assure its existence in the future.
Kung
Pursuing “real church” begins with an assessment of a church’s loyalty to the essential nature (essence) of “real church”, a church that is …committing itself to each new day afresh, accepting the changes and transformations of history and human life, constantly willing to reform, to renew, and rethink.”
Concluding the essence of real church originates in the reality of God’s saving act in Jesus Christ is a game changer for me. When I consider that the Day of Pentecost is when I have believed the church was established, there are profound implications. My idealistic, abstract notions of church as described on the day of Pentecost are inadequate criterion to judge a church’s loyalty to the essential nature of real church.
As Kung states, a concern that the church is headed in the wrong direction must be taken seriously. The vital question is… by what criterion are we to judge that the Church is now headed in the right direction? Answering first in the negative, he comments, …the Church is not on the right path so long as it adapts itself to the present; nor is it on the right path as long as it holds fast to the past. How do we know the Church is on the right path? — … the Church is headed in the right direction when, whatever the age in which it lives, the Gospel of Jesus Christ is its criterion..
Well at least that narrows it down —real church is not adapting to the present nor is it holding to the past — now all I need to do to find real church whose criterion is the Gospel of Jesus Christ! In the next post, I intend to wrestle with what a church looks like whose criterion is the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
I have a small grain of hope– one small crystal that gleams clear colours out of transparency. I need more. I break off a fragment to send to you Please take this grain of a grain of hope so that mine won’t shrink. Please share your fragment so that yours will grow. Only so, by division, will hope increase, like a clump of irises, which will cease to flower unless you distribute the clustered roots, unlikely source– clumsy and earth-covered– of grace.
Fake News Fake news is hardly anything new. Back in the 18th and 19th century, people would anonymously publish newspapers and pamphlets spreading horrible rumors about their political opponents. In the 1790s, one newspaper, secretly financed by Thomas Jefferson, wrote slanderous op-eds claiming that George Washington was going to declare himself king of the new republic. During the Civil War, southern newspapers claimed that Abraham Lincoln was not only going to abolish slavery, but force whites and blacks to intermarry. Mark Manson
We almost never think of the present, and if we do think of it, it is only to see what light it throws on our plans for the future. The present is never our end. The past and the present our our means, and the future alone our end. Thus we never actually live, but hope to live, and since we are always planning how to be happy, it is inevitable that we should never be so. Pascal’s Pensées
Biblical Worldview The findings were published in the report Perceptions about Biblical Worldview and Its Application. Now around two-thirds of Americans identify as Christians, and the study found that 51% of American adults claim to have a Biblical worldview. But then those supposed Bible believers were asked specific questions. The study found that a minority of those Christians who thought they did have a Biblical worldview actually held to teachings the researchers considered to be benchmarks of a Biblical worldview. Only 9% got all of the answers right. From the study: [Only] 26% believe the personal accumulation of money and other forms of wealth have been entrusted to them by God to manage for His purposes [Only] 29% believe that the best indicator of success in life is consistent obedience to God [Only] 33% believe that human beings are born with a sinful nature and can only be saved from the consequences of sin by Jesus Christ [Only] 47% believe that when they die they will go to Heaven only because they have confessed their sins and have accepted Jesus Christ as their savior [Only] 48% believe that it is very important for their religious faith to influence every dimension of life [Only] 49% say that their most likely source of moral guidance in any given situation would be the Bible [A whopping] 49% accept reincarnation as a possibility after they die.
Cognitive distortions Cognitive distortions are exaggerated patterns of thought that are out of line with reality. All people engage in cognitive distortions to some degree, but if you engage in too many, too often, you may become anxious, depressed, or both. Not coincidentally, learning to avoid cognitive distortions is also a good way to learn critical thinking.
1. MIND READING: You assume that you know what people think without having sufficient evidence of their thoughts. “He thinksI’m a loser.” 2. FORTUNE- TELLING: You predict the future negatively: Things will get worse, or there is danger ahead. “I’ll fail that exam,” or “I won’t get the job.” 3. CATASTROPHIZING: You believe that what has happened or will happen will be so awful and unbearable that you won’t be able to stand it. “It would be terrible if I failed.” 4. LABELING: You assign global negative traits to yourself and others.“I’m undesirable,” or “He’s a rotten person.” 5. DISCOUNTING POSITIVES: You claim that the positive things you or others do are trivial. “That’s what wives are supposed to do— so it doesn’t count when she’s nice to me,” or “Those successes were easy, so they don’t matter.” 6. NEGATIVE FILTERING: You focus almost exclusively on the negatives and seldom notice the positives. “Look at all of the people who don’t like me.” 7. OVERGENERALIZING: You perceive a global pattern of negatives on the basis of a single incident. “This generally happens to me. I seem to fail at a lot of things.” 8. DICHOTOMOUS THINKING: You view events or people in all?or ? ?nothing terms. “I get rejected by everyone,” or “It was a complete waste of time.” 9. SHOULDS: You interpret events in terms of how things should be, rather than simply focusing on what is. “I should do well. If I don’t, then I’m a failure.” 10. PERSONALIZING: You attribute a disproportionate amount of the blame to yourself for negative events, and you fail to see that certain events are also caused by others. “The marriage ended because I failed.” 11. BLAMING: You focus on the other person as the source of your negative feelings, and you refuse to take responsibility for changing yourself. “She’s to blame for the way I feel now,” or “My parents caused all my problems.” 12. UNFAIR COMPARISONS: You interpret events in terms of standards that are unrealistic— for example, you focus primarily on others who do better than you and find yourself inferior in the comparison. “She’s more successful than I am,” or “Others did better than Idid on the test.” 13. REGRET ORIENTATION: You focus on the idea that you could have done better in the past, rather than on what you can do better now.“I could have had a better job if I had tried,” or “I shouldn’t have said that.” 14. WHAT IF?: You keep asking a series of questions about “what if”something happens, and you fail to be satisfied with any of the answers. “Yeah, but what if I get anxious?” or “What if I can’t catch my breath?” 15. EMOTIONAL REASONING: You let your feelings guide your interpretation of reality. “I feel depressed; therefore, my marriage is not working out.” 16. INABILITY TO DISCONFIRM: You reject any evidence or arguments that might contradict your negative thoughts. For example, when you have the thought “I’m unlovable,” you reject as irrelevant any evidence that people like you. Consequently, your thought cannot be refuted. “That’s not the real issue. There are deeper problems.There are other factors.” 17. JUDGMENT FOCUS: You view yourself, others, and events in terms of evaluations as good– bad or superior– inferior, rather than simply describing, accepting, or understanding. You are continually measuring yourself and others according to arbitrary standards, and finding that you and others fall short. You are focused on the judgments of others as well as your own judgments of yourself. “I didn’t perform well in college,” or “If I take up tennis, I won’t do well,” or“Look how successful she is. I’m not successful.”
The antidote to cognitive distortions is practiced disputation, which means examining and engaging with competing ideas in order to correct distortions and arrive at a nearer approximation to the truth.
Fly or Honeybee Some people tell me that they are scandalized because they see many things wrong in the Church. I tell them that if you ask a fly, “Are there any flowers in this area?” it will say, “I don’t know about flowers, but over there in that heap of rubbish you can find all the filth you want.” And it will go on to list all the unclean things it has been to. Now, if you ask a honeybee, “Have you seen any unclean things in this area?” it will reply, “Unclean things? No, I have not seen any; the place here is full of the most fragrant flowers.” And it will go on to name all the flowers of the garden or the meadow. You see, the fly only knows where the unclean things are, while the honeybee knows where the beautiful iris or hyacinth is. Fr Stephen Freeman
View from the Front Porch This past weekend Ann and I traveled to Alabama to attend a small reunion with several of my high school classmates . It was good to get reacquainted and share memories. I am thinking a lot about how our origins were so similar but our perspectives and understandings so different, not so much in a bad way, but different. It was an opportunity to reflect on who I am and how I got here. It made realize how life changing my decision to leave Florence, Alabama and travel to Texas to attend college really was. I discovered this song some years ago and it came back to me as I thought about the reunion. Listen HERE.
