For the Joy of the Journey

This post is a break from Hans Kung and Real Church to share a post by Richard Beck in which he suggest transitions he would like to see in the church.

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Transitions for Church

I would like the church to begin making the following transitions:

• Choice to Character
• Rhetoric to Behavior Change
• Trying to Training
• Evangelism to Moral Formation
• Missions to Social Justice
• Moral Blame to Moral Luck

Choice to Character: I think the church makes mistakes when she is overly confident in her appeals to choice. The church should rather focus on the formation of character and the acquisition of virtue. 

Rhetoric to Behavior Change: Elaborating further, character is not formed by persuasive rhetoric (i.e., a weekly appeal from the pulpit to be a good person). Rhetoric is excellent for changing opinions and, thus, an excellent tool for improving doctrine. But it is a poor tool for transforming the lives in the pew. That is, we are NOT volitionally nimble. We possess characterological inertia and causal forces will need to be brought to bear upon us to form us into the image of Christ. The word form (as in mold or shape) nicely captures the idea. We don’t choose. We are formed.

Trying to Training: Thus, the focus of Kingdom living is less about “trying to be a better person” (via what William James called a “slow heave of the will”) than about “training to be a better person.” Church should be a kind of boot camp for Kingdom living.

Evangelism to Moral Formation: What I mean here is an evangelism that is volitionally-based, the traditional “Do you accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior? Yes or no?.” The move should be to what Jesus asked for in the Great Commission: “Make disciples.” Again, the word make gets at the idea very well.

Missions to Social Justice: These last two go together. Mission work should move away from “persuasion models” to actually changing the world. The question for missionaries should shift from “How many souls were saved?” to “How have you transformed that community into the Kingdom of God?” 

Moral blame to Moral Luck: We shift from seeing the moral landscape as populated by the “righteous” and the “blameworthy” to seeing the “fortunate” and the “unfortunate.” As Immanuel Kant said: “And how many there are who may have lead a long blameless life, who are only fortunate in have escaped so many temptations.”

If we make this shift, from strong volitional to weak volitional models, what gets lost? Actually very little. And the gains are enormous. By embracing causality and the contingent nature of will–by focusing on Character over Choice–the church might actually start being more effective (a nice causal word) in this world. We will rely less and less on God Talk and more and more on, well, actually doing things. You know, make a difference.

But what does get lost in this shift away from strong volitional models is a robust sense of moral blame or praise. In the contingent picture I paint you can’t take credit for your good character and neither can we “blame” others for poor character. Yet much of Christian theology seems to hinge on notions of moral praise and blame. Particularly soteriological visions of Heaven and Hell. 

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Of course, Beck is not the final word on THE CHURCH, but I believe he provides some thoughtful and important insights into the nature and character of the church today. His suggested transitions are worthy of serious consideration.

Still on the Journey

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 .

Still on the journey.

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.

Still on the journey