Guiding Christian Leaders for Ancient Mission in the Contemporary World

                 I like to browse the “spirituality” section of the major bookstore chains to get an update on the current dialogue (or rock-throwing contest) between established religion and pagan culture. The very choice of books selected for promotion is often revealing. This time my eye went to Churched: One Kid’s Journey toward God despite a Holy Mess by Matthew Paul Turner (Waterbrook Press). Since I also grew up “churched”, and often feel like an outsider among the converts and critics that populate the book stalls, I was eager to gain some additional insight. Besides, on the front cover A.J. Jacobs said this was a book “at once funny and full of humanity”.

 

                Unfortunately, my copy must be missing a chapter. Most of the book is dedicated to funny anecdotes revealing the foibles and hypocrisies of the institutional church (particularly the “fundamentalist” kind). This is coupled with touching stories of coaching by clearly loving parents, who resist critical thinking in favor of compassionate but obedient faith. Somewhere or other in the story, the author is supposed to reveal how and why he found God, started to love Jesus, and returned to church. But I missed it. Exactly when, how, and why did that happen? On page 154 (3/4 of the way through the book), the young teenager realizes that “it wasn’t so much that I was weird, but that fundamentalism was weird.” OK. I got that about 125 pages ago, and although I have been chuckling through the book, I’ve not learned anything new.

 

                By the time I got to page 211 (there are only 13 pages left), it is clear that growing teenager increasingly ambiguous about faith and doubts the pastor’s credibility. The final pages skim a life that has since endured countless church services (not quite sure why), dabbled in Calvinism, played with independent mega-churches, and found some solace in the loving and non-judgmental relationships of a nameless “small country church in Maryland”. (It’s the one name I want to know, and don’t get). The tale ends with a skeptical young adult attending another independent church in downtown Nashville. The worship feels like “the aurora borealis on steroids and a timer”, but at least it’s “not hurting anybody”. High praise?

 

                So exactly where is the turning point? Where does the churched kid find God? In the very last three pages it is revealed that he establishes a personal friendship with a pastor who seems (maybe) authentic, and finally accepts communion without being afraid. It seems to me that the reason why he was afraid, and the story of his journey to fearless faith, is the real story we long to hear. But it hasn’t happened.

 

                I now understand that the book was chosen by the marketers of the book chains because of what it said against religion, rather than for what it said in its favor. Secular therapists are cheering. God, contemporary readers now understand, is the absence of fear, a vague feeling of acceptance, a form of self-actualization, or a kind of heightened appreciation of friendship.

 

                Most of all, I am disappointed in A.J. Jacobs. I respect his writing very much, and he said the book was “funny and full of humanity”. It is funny, but it isn’t really full of humanity. It is full of ecclesiology, and the rejection of ecclesiology; and full of psychological abuse, and an unguided therapeutic journey to wholeness. One suspects that there are profound existential questions buried between the paragraphs about incarnation, divine purpose, the human condition, and ultimate hope, which is what “being human” is actually about. But these never surface. They are buried under the jibes and jokes, sarcasm and satire that make this book an enjoyable one-time read that will be soon forgotten.

 

                That’s OK, of course. It’s good to laugh. Yet there is a larger, deeper, more urgent conversation between Christian faith and pagan culture that is in serious jeopardy today. Culture really wants to write off faith as a psychological boondoggle or a quirky sociological phenomenon. Faith wants to write off culture as a complicated obstacle course on the way to salvation or one vast demonic deception. Autobiography has historically been one of the most effective strategies to do this. But will these deeper biographical sketches find there way into popular bookstores?

 

Tom Bandy

www.ThrivingChurch.com

                Two books dominated my Christmas thinking this year. The first set the stage for the next. First, I read Know-It-All: One Man’s Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World (Simon and Schuster) by A.J. Jacobs. It’s a great book for preaching illustrations, but it also represents the fundamental faith of modernity … the faith in reason. The author sets himself the task of reading the entire Encyclopedia Britannica. Afraid? Anxious? Beset? Burdened? (Notice how I cleverly mirror the author’s “A-Z” approach to comprehensive understanding?) Continuing education is the answer. Hope lies in knowledge. It is the enlightened agenda of the 20^th century. The last sentences in the book are so reassuring:

 

“I know once again, firsthand, the joy of learning. And I know that I’ve got my life back and that in just a few moments, I’m going to have a lovely dinner with my wife.”

 

Salvation is at hand! After all, what is more important than knowledge, health, family, and a good investment plan? Or maybe not?

 

                It is that “maybe not” that drove me to read Metavista: Bible, Church and Mission in an Age of Imagination (Paternoster) by Colin Greene and Martin Robinson. This is one of the best books on postmodernity yet available. However, be warned! It is steeped in very profound, but highly nuanced language. It wrestles with the history of ideas, not a catalogue of facts. My doctoral degree is in philosophical theology, and I found a refreshing challenge. If you are a pastor, this is a book best read in a classroom or discussion group.

 

                The title reveals the intent. This is not about describing a new meta-narrative of religious perspective, nor about defining a new metaphysic of reasonable orthodoxy. It is about discerning a new “vista” that is partially hidden and partially revealed. It is a “meta-vista” … a vista that is “on the way” … as if people emerged from the cultural forest into a sudden clearing and saw things differently for the first time, and were not sure what to make of it.

 

                The authors call this experience “radical cultural engagement”. It is the intersection of societal imagination, cultural icons, and the encounter with the Bible as scripture. It is what lies beyond the subjectivity, selfishness, and opportunism of modernity; but also beyond the preservation of heritage, intellectual curiosity, social action, and ideological cant that represents 99% of Christian thinking in postmodernity. What happens when we emerge from the cultural wilderness to discover that both conservative and liberal fundamentalists are wrong, and both modern rationalism and postmodern willfulness are wrong, and God is weirder than expected?

 

                The Bible becomes a means to grapple with the weirdness of God. Unfortunately, Greene and Robinson seem most interested in just one aspect of that wrestling match, namely the “political” implications of the storylines of scripture. Scripture interprets the “metavista” by pointing toward the righteous Kingdom of God, curbing our proclivity to violence, modeling a moral alternative to rampant capitalism, and establishing the church as proclaimer of the good news of [social?] reconciliation. I’m not convinced that is sufficient, but it is a darned good start.

 

                The authors began the book by sounding the alarm that the irrelevance of the church is accelerating (despite evangelical claims), and that this irrelevance is rooted in the church’s inability to discuss anything meaningfully with anybody. I think this is accurate and powerful. The book finishes positively by focusing on the “cosmic significance of incarnation” as the thread that connects past, present and future in an unfolding narrative. This is not about a relationship with a cool dude named Jesus, but about experiencing the intersection of the infinite and finite.

 

                In the end, there is a fourth circle intersecting with societal imagination, cultural icons, and encounter with scripture. That fourth circle is decisive. It is the peculiar kind of revelation through which the fullness of God is present, yet unexplainable, uncontrollable, and unexpected. It’s what makes a “vista” possible in the first place, and what renders every “vista” only a “metavista”.

 

That experience alone renders the church a counter-cultural minority. It is a paradox of escape from the world and encounter with the worlds. The one thing that surprises me most of all about this book is that the authors seem to assume this paradox has not happened before. I think it has … in the monastic movement of the 4^th – 6^th centuries that rejected Christendom from the very beginning.

 

Tom Bandy

www.ThrivingChurch.com

www.tgbandy.com

                Here are two books that you really should read simultaneously to get the full impact. Both were published in 2008. Both are about incarnational moments in real living. Both present the Gospel as a combination of grit and hope … or as I sometimes say in workshops, each book seeks to provide desperate people with one good reason not to commit suicide tonight. Good Christmas reading.

 

                Jim Walker from Hot Metal Bridge Faith Community wrote Dirty Word: The Vulgar, Offensive Language of the Kingdom of God (UMC Discipleship Resources). The essence of the book is in a chart on page 78. Our “deep needs” for assurance, belonging, meaning, and identity … are caused by the “four curses” of fear, rejection, luxury, and superficiality … and cured by the “Koinonia” of communion, community, compassion, and word … so that we find “salvation” through abiding (John 15), belonging (Luke 19), loving (Mathew 25), and truth (John 3:16). There. That’s the book. The other 256 pages are an extended footnote.

 

                But what a footnote! This book helps you understand why church planting is not a curriculum, why so many mission-driven pastors are getting fed up with the established church, why so many Christians are getting fed up with pastors who only gripe about the established church and do nothing, and why so many seekers age 18-35 really are interested in Jesus. Jim Walker explores the meaning of “koinonia” in fresh and faithful ways.

 

                The great irony in this book is that once past some of the surprising, gritty, and deliberately edgy terminology, Jim reverts to some remarkably abstract theological terminology. I suspect it might be lost on many veteran church members … who might in turn scoff that the realtime young seekers Jim’s church reaches will be turned away by theological language. That’s why the end of the book is equally surprising. Jim outlines the “Hot Metal Apprenticeship Program” as an afterthought (I think), but it was a good idea. Veteran churchy people who balk at basic Bible study will be shocked that these earnest seekers would do a 9-month experience of such theological intensity.

 

                Meanwhile, Tex Sample released EarthyMysticism (Abingdon Press). These are personal reflections to describe mystical experiences in real life. These incarnational experiences are definitively not intellectual rationalizations. Sometimes they are occasions of great joy and fulfillment, and sometimes of great pain and emptiness, and sometimes of profound ambiguity that anticipates a clarity that is not yet. But they are all experiences when the infinite and finite connect and Tex is left in radical humility before God. This is mysticism, not “misty living”. It is not about walking in a comfortable fog, but about touching the Holy.

 

                My favorite quote is in the preface as Tex recalls his surprising call into ministry: “I absolutely hated the idea of doing such a thing … I later learned, however, that the call to go into ministry is a lot like throwing up. You can put it off for awhile, but there comes a time when you have to do it.” The quote put me in mind of Jim’s “dirty word … the vulgar, offensive language of the Kingdom of God”. Only Tex wasn’t talking about language, but about God’s offensive, impolite, and inconvenient ways of working in the world.

 

                The great irony about this book is that once past some of the poetic, mystical references to “the hush in the presence of the unspeakable, the awe-struck before the ineffable”, Tex reverts to simple, compelling story telling. I suspect this, too, might be lost on many veteran church members … who might scoff that the young academics Tex has mentored will be turned away by stories of the miraculous. His postscript is profound. What is theology, after all, but a humble attempt to explain what happens when God “shows up” in the midst of life?

 

                Both books make a similar point.  Perhaps this December we can replace the “theology of skepticism” which epitomizes the real doctrine of most established churches of modernity, with the real presence of Christ.

 

Tom Bandy

www.easumbandy.com

www.netresults.org