dethroning constantine
I am about to start blogging about the Christendom paradigm (systems story) and how it has fundamentally altered our frames of reference for gospel, church, and mission. And so, the next few blogs are going to involve a fair bit of critical assesment. But I want to say upfront that while I really believe such a critique is neccesary, I don’t wish to be heard as saying that God was not involved in the seventeen centuries over which the ‘Christendom’ paradigm has dominated our maginations. But I do want to say, that while I am no friend of the paradigm (for a whole lot of reasons that shall become obvious) I nonetheless, like you, stand on its shoulders as I try to articulate a more genuinely missional paradigm. True to our fallen condition, there is good as well as bad dimensions in all levels of human experience, so lets condition our next few conversations with some humility whilst submitting the paradigm to a thorough, no holds barred, evaluation. Because I really believe that until we cast down the hegemonic monopoly that the Christendom paradigm holds over our imaginations, we will never be free to find a more authentic experience of ecclesia.
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Alan your thinking in this area has been vital to the paradigm shifts I have made in my thinking about church and mission over the last couple of years so I am really looking forward to what you have to say on this subject.
I think you are right, we can’t just write off the Christendom era Church as apostate in a sense, nevertheless I do get frustrated with the “well what else could the church have done?” argument when it comes to the damaging church/state pact of Christendom. I think Stuart Murray in the UK in his recent books shows that there were Christian groups offering alternative ways of being church and relating to culture at significant moments in church history.
We met at Asbury last year and I am now back in Scotland church planting in Edinburgh and I am constantly amazed at the tenacious hold that Christendom has over my thinking, it is almost as if it is my default mode of thinking about culture and church which I subconsciously fall back into.
The problem with dethroning Constantine is that there’s an unspoken guilt complex because it’s not considered a good thing to speak ill of the dead. Constantine was king in an era when his type of ruling was what was needed to make that world go around… he’s been dead a long time and we’ve carried on spinning the wheels.
It is a difficult thing, to think outside of the cultural influences that have dictated to me all of my life, and continue to do so. Action and reflection, movement and discussion are helpful to identify what I am allowing to constrain me. This blog and the blogs of those who blog here and have their own blog (something once begun but not maintained!) is a helpful space for expression and reflection… an island of sanity in a sea of despair…
It is helpful to be pointed toward the consideration of strains of Christianity that have lived outside of the otherwise “hegemonic monopoly” that’s grooved into our brains and tatooed on the inside of our eyelids. The early church, the Chinese church and to some extent aspects of Celtic Christianty have helped me.
On another thread PeggyBrown spoke of grief and our lack of perception of the grief we live with… this is a bit like reporting on an abusive elder! The manipulation of our sense of shame and guilt undermines our confidence in the wrong-ness of our nonetheless sincere elder. It’s time to shake off the guilt and lift our heads Godward…
It is good however also to be reminded to be humble, because like it or not, without Constantine in his time we wouldn’t be here in ours! It’s not good to speak ill of the dead, it is good though to reflect honestly on their strengths and learn from their weaknesses - so that we recognise the mistakes when we make them ourselves! At least we have a capacity to reflect and a forum to discuss…
Slainte mhor agus a h-uile beannachd duibh
A Celtic Son
PS James I’m interested in the journey of a church plant in Scotland - do you have a blog?
The Philip Jenkins book, ‘The Next Christendom’ is fascinating in this respect. He documents huge populations of Christians living outside a Christendom context right through the ages. It’s an amazing read. These are stories we need to hear - stories which show Christianity outside of Christendom has been done before and can be done again.
I believe that there is a parallel (and light in the darkness?) with this thread to the incredible struggle that Christian women have gone through in the history of Christendom — and over the last 30 years of my struggle, particularly. It has been especially challenging for those of us whose culture told us we were only valuable if/when we bore children — and male children, at that! [On a personal note, I am slightly amused that after I broke free of this prison for my mind and told God that I would be happy to serve him single and childless -- that he brought me the man of my dreams and I have born three wonderful sons!!! :)]
Whatever hold Constantine has had on Christian men over the years since his death, has been passed to the women…and THEN some.
What I take comfort from is that God has kept hope alive through the centuries in those of his “daughters” that the Holy Spirit has also given equipping gifts. This hope springs from our ability to adapt to our opressive context creatively and graciously in order to find ways to serve God obediently–and still remain alive!
I had to make peace with Constantine, and the rest of the “Patrix” programmers, in order to embrace the freedom Christ offered me.
It would be interesting to see how many of the Christian populations living outside the context of Christendom down through the ages embraced a more inclusive role for the sisters…
The journey is arduous, brothers, but God’s grace is sufficient to the task.
And I agree with Alan — we need to submit ourselves to the Spirit in order for our discussion to be a balanced mix of justice, mercy and humility!
Onward!
In “making peace, by the way, I meant processing the reality, gleaning the truth, rejecting the false, letting go of Constantine and the poisons of guilt and grief associated with his legacy in Christendom — and moving forward having learned and grown a bit more Christlike.
Oh this is gong to be good. And James, it is good t hear from you again. I thought the Celtic Son would latch onto you. Actually, you guys are kinda alike. Celtic Sons both I suppose.
And Peggy, our little discussion about the Patrix is now taking an interesting turn. Constantine as a Patrix progammer….brilliant! For those who don’t follow this, Peggy and I talked about the Patrix as being the way men have set the agenda up to keep women under their power. Think Matrix as the maternal environment (that’s the actual meaning of the word) Patrix as the paternal environment.
I blog at http://www.xanga.com/jamespetticrew
Alan your ear must be good, Celtic Son and I come from the same home town!
I’m not with you some of you in reference to Constantine doing a good or OK thing for our survival, if I understanding some of the comments. We might not be in this mess had he not messed with Christianity in her most fluid and unstructured desperation to reach and disciple the lost. Instead, thanks to Grandpa Constantine we have a slowed or halted the Jesus Missional Movement replaced by an institutional way of serving Jesus! Where we went wrong stops directly at the doorsteps of Grandpa Constantine who had ulterior motives for doing what he did in the institutionalization of Christianity as the State Religion of form rather than function.
I’m not going to be easy on old grandpa in the grave. At the same time it reminds me that while sometimes we believe we are doing good for the kingdom when in reality we have hindered the mission of Jesus. That thought scares me to death because my whole life until now has fueled the institution at the expense of the mission. I repent!
Constantine messed with us and I do speak ill of the dead. And I thank God we are finally breaking free from his institutional influence that has nearly smothered us to death.
Did you notice, I don’t appreciate what Grandpa did to the Church!
Good onya Bob…
ever the iconoclast.
I don’t read that anyone is celebrating Constantine… I think the closest we come is the comment I made “without Constantine in his time we wouldn’t be here in ours” and it was intended as a statement of fact not a compliment! In the context it was also a confirmation of Alan’s challenge to remain humble - hindsight is a wonderful gift - what blaring errors of yours and mine will future generations be lamenting? I was simply reminded that one day we will be “old grandpa in the grave”
Slainte
A Celtic Son
Systemlogik des “Christentums” (1): Konstantin vom Thron stürzen…
…
Celtic, I may or we may closer than we think to that grandpa grave stuff. Think where we would be without old grandpa Constantine? The flip side of your thots?
I know there will be those who point to my own blunders and I did admit I fueled the same-o when I pastored and for that I do repent. I am with you, I hope, I do not like old Grandpa C.
What in the world is post 11 saying? I need an interpreter!
I’m glad to know that know one really appreciates the old grandpa in the grave. i sure hope I can do better, but I lived all those years doing what I thought was right and helpful to discover and painfully so that it wasn’t.
Maybe it will be Grandpa C and Grandpa C!
Bob Carder the second Grandpa C, I sure pray not!
I mean no one not know one in the 4th paragraph, I hate my lack of proofing.
Bob, I am with you on old Connie. I think he ruined so much. But you can never know. I once remember reading a book about the great “what if’s” of history. what if Hitler had won the war? What if Napolean had won his? etc. Each essay was written by expert historians in their respective areas. Its a fascinating concept. What if King Con had not made his deal. My feeling is that we would have got the job done by now. Anyone else suggest alternatives?
Hmmm. Interesting scenario question you raise, Alan. I’m not so sure we’d be done with the job by now, had Constantine not been in place. Contextualization and replication are not fail-safe methods, guaranteed to “work” just cuz they’re “right.” They’re always dogged by the double-trouble tendency twins of centralization where we try to control the culture, and syncretization where we allow the culture to control us. Someone else would’ve taken Constantine’s place, or gone down the other trail of error.
Constantine left very little positive legacy, in my opinion, and he turned inside-out the radical New Testament message of equality of access to all for being followers of Jesus. (And wasn’t that the message that nearly turned Rome upside down, when slaves could find relief in knowing they were the Lord’s freed people and masters needed to take note that they were the Lord’s bond servants?) He left a world of limited spiritual access, under the appearance of universal (but forced) “access.” Oxymoronics.
[Sidenote: The DaVinci Code approach does no better. The don't like Constantine, but the gnostic system gives even less accessibility, as "only smart people count."]
However, it is fascinating to delve into the medieval period in Europe, where Christians were attempting to make the continent into “post-pagan” by disseminating the gospel. From around the 7th to 11th centuries, various translations and original works show up in Old English (Beowulf), Old Saxon (The Heliand), Old High German (Diatessaron), etc. (There’s fascinating research to indicate that at least some of the authors/translators were influenced by Celtic rather than Roman theologies.)
Many of these documents were attempting to contextualize, but some were nudging over toward the line of syncretizing. And then there the overt attempts to centralize by conversion through conquest. Constantine’s influences again? The attempts to reach people through contextualized literature may give us more insight into how to live well as Christians in post-Christendom, retro-pagan cultures.
What if Celtic theologies rather than Romanism had prevailed in the critical 6th to 8th centuries? That would have been my preference, however, I also realize every paradigm has its problems. If Celticism “won,” would we perhaps now be running scenarios against the inherent tendency of paradoxical systems to lose clarity and order? Or some other issues?
Oh I love your thinking Brad. Glad you have joined the discussion. By the way I could not work out which of your websites was your blog. Email me…
I do love the Celts. I thought about including them in TFW’s as a movement that changed the world. But others have already covered a bit of that ground (George Hunter, Martin Robinson, etc.) I hate the fact that the Roman church tamed them. “Ahhh what if…”
Aaahh the great what if’s…
what if Constantine hadn’t brokered the deal and locked us up in the institution… maybe Alan’s optimism is right and the job would be done… or maybe Brad’s observations about the human propensity towards synchretism and/or centralisation would have meant we’d be deconstructing a different oppressive dysfunction.
Maybe if the Celts had prevailed we’d have escaped one form of institution… and replaced it with another… we’d be able to have our discussions ( about some other issues) in hushed tones following vespers in the monastry - if the Abbot allowed it!
As mentioned previously, hindsight is a great gift… how much of the detail and “intention” of historical data is revised and recreated in the recounting? Did Constantine set out to stuff things up, or did “bureaucrats” - well-meaning or sinister - move beyond their parameters? How much of the fault belongs to Grandpa C himself and how much to ecclesistical powerbrokers of the day and since?
“What if’s” are momentarily interesting to ponder, especially to give the mind a rest from all of the hard work, making sense of my own thoughts - before I even get to anyone elses! But in the end it’s only worth real effort if the “what if’s” help us in the shaping of things to come!
Slaint
A Celtic Son
Mornin’ Celtic Son and all …
Yes, the Great and not-so-great “What Ifs …”
There’s a wonderful quote from Kirkegaard, the essence of which is “Life can only be understood looking backward, but it must be lived looking forward.”
To which I would add, from a futurist’s perspective, “Learning from hindsight is not necessarily cheap, but lack of foresight is quite costly.”
Alan, I came over here from Jesus Creed, and the discussion there. It’s not that I disagree or misunderstand where you want to go so much as I disagree with your perception of Church history - or perhaps, my perception of where you think we have come from. I am Catholic. I converted to Catholicism last year out of what I’d describe as post-evangelicalism.
It is easy to dismiss the Church as Constantine’s, but it is also wrong. The Church pre-Constantine was heirarchical. The Church post-Constantine was heirarchical. The post-Constantinian Church gave us our definitions of the Trinity and the Incarnation, defeated the heresy of Arianism, provided us with the Nicene Creed (a step toward the Story of Scripture understood in its proper context), and defined the canon of the Scriptures.
It is a modern-day myth to believe that the ancient Church, Catholic and Orthodox are Constantinian versions of authentic Christianity.
That’s my background and my understanding of what you mean by the Church of Constantine. I have not read your book, so my perception of what you mean may be completely off-base.
So I would appreciate some clarification, if possible: When you speak of the Church of Constantine, are you speaking of Catholicism and Orthodoxy, or are you addressing churches with any kind of hierarchy - down to low evangelical Protestant churches with their pastors and elders (or deacons or both)? Are you addressing both? Are you even addressing the idea of hierarchy?
Could you flesh this idea out for me?
Thanks.
At least if the Celts had won out, we’d understand you better, Celtic Son, and we’d be able to sign off with wonderful Gaelic sayings! I am grateful that I love Celtic literature and follow William Morris and CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien…having learned my way around Middle Earth, perhaps that helps me follow your train!
“I do love the Celts” …
Seems to me that with the early church there are two extremes. One extreme wants to say that Constantine is the author of all evil and that everything was going well before he stuck his oar in. Well, as I said above, Constantine was only utilising trends which were already under way in the church. However the other extreme is the Catholic and Orthodox people who want to read their church structure and heirarchy back beyond Constantine almost in its entirety, which to me is equally odd. I am sorry Scott and I really don’t mean to be offensive but as I look at the Papacy and Rome and the Orthodox Church (and I might add my protestant denominations HQ) it seems a million light years away from the white hot spiritual revolution that exploded on the Day of Pentecost.
I believe Constantine was a decisive wrong turn for the church but one which the church might have made any way. What I am certain is that he sent the church down a blind alley which we are now reaching the end of.
This thread is reminding me of a book I read back a few years BC (that would be before children). I should probably reread it with a fresher context and perspective…but I’m more than half way through Alan’s first book…so it will have to wait.
It is called “Turning Points: Decisive Moments in the History of the Church” and written by Mark A. Noll. To you all, it may be old hat…but it was very thought-provoking to me…but then, I do love history!
I seem to remember some good introspection from Noll, and the ability to critically perceive the value of these decisive moments — that not all were good!
What I firmly believe, however, is that one does not have to be extremist to be radical…and I believe I stand in Christ’s company on that one.
Scott, I refer to the Constantinian church as an idea / conception / confiuration of church. A way of conceiving the church if you will. I am not particularly referring to any major tradition, but to an idae of church that infuses all traditions. I might add that the historical churches (ala RC and Orthodox, etc.) are more bound to this than others because they have divinized it through centuries of theologizing.
Can I encourage you to try TFW’s and see what you think.
I think we need to be wary of the ex-girlfriend syndrome here. Yeah, we are so over her (the Constantinian church) but if we are honest with ourselves we’ll admit she must have had something hot about her for us to have kept up the affair for so long. Couldn’t have been all bad. Are we to say the Nicene Creed has no value? Or that the end of persecution wasn’t to be welcomed in some respects. Don’t get me wrong, Constantinian Christianity is due for some sharp criticism, not least in the way it led to just(ification of) war theology, but I think we need to temper this with the awareness that they were responding to their culture, not ours, and try to avoid polemics grounded in a western-centric view of history.
Matt, Matt, Matt. are you sure you should only be a “student”? that was a teacherly theology commentary! well said …
How many voices have we now heard calling for tempered criticism? I went back to read Alan’s original blog entry…and there it was as well! Hear, hear!!
So, how about trying on a computer-based analogy–just for fun? But don’t put too much stress on this on-the-fly analogy…it can’t handle much!
I don’t know if it’s so much the ex-girlfriend syndrome (since we are collective a bride, remember) as it is one of an arranged marriage program started/upgraded by the ancient forefathers (Patrix programmer Constantine and subsequent others)…we’re not sure what gramps was thinking when he and his buddies hacked into the original program (cultural, contextual and every other kind of distance, and all) — and successive programmers have, over the centuries, tried to make doing our duty as the bride better/easier — but each suggessive SW/HW upgrade brought with it a few new good things…while it always managed to screw up something that we really liked before. I just hate when that happens! Job security for the programmers, I guess….
I think we here are in the process of recovering and restoring the original operating system in a new generation of hardware that’s finally both sophisticated and simple enough to deal with the “simplexity” of the original OS that the current/former generations of OS/hardware just can’t handle.
Too slow, too clunky, too antiquated, to complicated (ctrl-alt-F4 what?), too many glitches, too many viruses corrupting too many files, too much “thrashing” and “deadlock” — with the endless rebooting — and not even defragging this sucker will do. And Format-C-colon won’t do it either. Nor will adding more GBs of memory, RAM, faster processor, bigger monitor, better WAN or LAN capabilities, more powerful firewalls, anti-virus programs, whatever!
Time to bring the new streamlined hardware out of the test lab and on-line to run the original user-friendly software.
Let those who can still find the necessary parts and tech support run the old program/hardware, if they have to, God bless ‘em.
But we’re finished with the whole arranged marriage thing and ready to go back to being courted instead of dragged by the hair.
The persecution one is an interesting question and takes the discussion to the root of why I personally have decided the whole Constantine thing was a wrong turn. ( but not one devoid of good points) The church went from being persecuted by the Roman State as a marginal religous group to using the Roman State (and other states down the centuries) to persecute marginal religous groups. There was a poison in this church/state relationship which turned the church from persecuted to persecutor and as I read the Gospels and especially the Sermon on the Mount if there was every anything that should be described as heresy it should be the church as persecutor.
Oh, there were certainly poisonous compromises entailed in the Constantinian shift. But consider the opposite extreme, the Restorationist movement (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restorationism) that brushed over the creeds and birthed such movements as Mormonism, Christadelphians and Jehovah’s Witnesses. Poison lies in that direction also. Do we see Constantinianism as the Great Apostacy as they do? Or is a more nuanced position possible?
Brad, as for being a student, I am treating my studies as sort of a backfilling exercise. Focussing on gaps in my field education, where I’m weakest. Bypassing subjects where the field education surpasses what you can learn in a classroom. I don’t anticipate doing too much studying under the lecturers I already know from front line work if you know what I mean. It’s not easy qualifications that I’m after.
Well, Matt, the interesting juxtapositions in the link you provided are certainly sobering, aren’t they? Alan, did you see us all in different places in the article? There but for the grace of God….I confess that I am slightly crestfallen by the weight of history’s accusations. Is anyone’s noble intention left unscathed?
Perhaps this is the time for the reminder that for every finger we point, there are three pointing back at us…
God help us…as long as humans are involved, we will find a way to muck it up, won’t we? It is only humility and diligence to the Word, proper discernment of the leading of the Holy Spirit and the healthy submission of our thoughts and actions to the loving (and harsh?) critique of others that will save us from the more arrogant language and postions our forebears have used and held.
I’ll be doing some more chewing and digesting of this particular dish for a few days…salted with tears…back to processing the rebellion through grief, I guess.
Matt I certainly don’t agree with the Restorationist agenda but I do find it interesting that we tend to promote orthodoxy and condemn heresy yet ignore orthopraxy. I think as equally wrong as anything the JW’s believe has been the burning of heretics, the persecution of Jews, the persecution of the anabaptists and Quakers, etc, etc. My problem with the Christendom church in part is that orthodoxy of belief has always been seen as more important than orthopraxy of behaviour. Yes I think the Nicean creed is great but it doesn’t excuse those who developed it or say they believe it in for acting in ways contrary to the Lord it well defines. What I mean is that we tend to elevate the creeds as standards of belief but often ignore the Sermon on the Mount as a standard for behaviour.
Totally agree with you there and I think that is one of the important lines of inquiry we have to pursue. As for the creeds I have always been dissappointed that they skip from the incarnation to the crucifixion with hardly a look see in between. They are certainly not beyond critique. Critique is long overdue. But I think we need to use sniper rifles rather than shot guns.
Alan you provoked me and I went and read again the chapter on the Syrian church, I can do obscure, if you are interested you can find my thoughts about it for contemporary mission at http://www.xanga.com/JamesPetticrew
Matt, re the restorationism implied in my writings. that’s why I started by saying that I don’t wish to be heard as dismissing holus bolus the Christendom paradigm. Clearly God worked in and through it, but I reain convinced that it is fundamentally flawed and cannot produce what it in its most sincere expressions, wishes to produce. The restorationiasts might have gone too far at times, but they were onto something.
Here’s a little something to add on to Peggy’s computer/operating system analogy in entry #26.
A former roommate of mine, now about 30, shared the story of when he was in college. That was the year the first attempt at “dual platform” computers was attempted - both Mac and DOS in one great machine … or so it was advertised.
Problem was, it turned out these double-platform machines worked slower, regardless of which platform was in use, and had a higher freeze rate than either of the comparable single-platform machines.
He came back from break to find all the double-troubles gone from the computer lab, and single-platforms in their places. (And I am sure this is apocryphal, but I do want to guess that MACS were the ones now sitting there …)
If you have modernist-mindset software attempting to run in a non-modernist-mindset domain, it ain’t likely to work well, despite the sincere efforts of the programmers. (Does “freeze” count as another analogy for “culture shock”?)
[...] I really enjoyed his initial introduction and he has posted part one already. [...]
Brad…as in “Brain Freeze”? Or “Frozen Accommodations”? Sound very much like “culture shock” doesn’t it!
Alan, I have only had a chance to thumb through your book thus far as I add it to my pile, but the books for graduate studies have to come first. Once I get through it I’ll be in a position to post a review and more substantial comments in the near future. But I wanted to post a comment here in response to your comment above on nineteenth century restorationism being “on to something.” Please know that my comments come as those of a friend and colleague wanting us all to reflect effectively and critically as we learn from church history, the history of missions, and try to be creative as we experiment with new forms of ecclesiology in our post-modern, post-Christendom contexts.
As to restorationism, we have the examples of more aberrational forms that sought to recover an allegedly primitive form of the early church, and those that became more heretical such as the Latter-day Saints. While this spectrum reflects the more benign to the more troublesome, they all hold to an unfortunately romantic notion of the church of the past that simply isn’t doesn’t reflect reality. We often hold to similar views in the present. I would think our ecclesiological forms should reflect the culture in which we establish a Kingdom community as it reflects on New Testament forms of church structure as well as those expressed in the church through history and its cultural incarnations.
I would also urge us to pursue a cautions interdisciplinary analysis wherein our missiology interacts with other disciplines such as sociology, religious studies, intercultural studies, etc., that might help us steer clear of oversimplifications in our understandings of things like Christendom culture, the underground church in China and the like. Perhaps we can all agree that these are complex issues that resist simple analysis, and given the natural human tendency to simplify, coupled with our individual blind spots, we need a variety of perspectives and our best minds working together to arrive at new approaches for the twenty-first century.
Just a few thoughts.
Alan, I look forward to hearing your response to the above comment about restorationism’s “unfortunately romantic notion of the church of the past that simply doesn’t reflect reality.”
I find myself, as on other threads, digging deeper - starting from a place of “theology” is not enough. I can read any biography - even autobiography - and not “know” the subject. That is not the declared objective of God… it is not simply that we know ABOUT God, but that we KNOW God (holistically: body,soul and spirit) and that we know we are known - fundamentally all begins from a place of relationship.
Too much “theology” is more reminiscent of dissecting a cadaver, than it is of relating to a living being. The body may have been alive once, but in our ambition to be right we have put out the light!
The problem with relationship is, that to be authentic, we have to surrender the element of control. That’s a scary thing, so many churches don’t engage in authentic relationship… Genuine relationship is not all about one party or the other - the relationship itself has life, it is central and the rest orbits around. In authentic community it is a reflection of the perichoretic nature of relationship in the Godhead
Our discussion will always be susceptible to misunderstanding, to operating on different planes and with differing complexities - at one level, John W is right to challenge over-simplification. However, there needs to be a blend of knowledge and praxis - purely academic concepts don’t cut it either - there has to be application in the fields of life. The hallowed halls of academia may provide a valuable resource, but at what cost?
God’s nature, invested in His creation, is to be fruitful and multiply - if there is no fruit we have an unhealthy root. Many discussions become too focussed on theology and concepts that have little application in real terms - these things can so easily become a distraction from the calling to follow Jesus Himself… in the reality of His life and death, His healing and suffering.
Slainte
A Celtic Son
Yes, CS, it is in the knowing/loving and being known/loved that the fruit of the Spirit is grown and offered to feed the starving…with the seeds that remain after the fruit is consumed poised to grow if they happen to fall on good soil….
I come to this treasured place willingly to sharpen and be sharpened. I confess that I struggle to keep my comments grounded in my actual experience rather than drift off to the “we” “they” “our” and “should” of the theoretical. Your comments, frequently, and those of others, help stir up my sometimes tepid, too-familiar pot.
But THIS old-girl-from-the-restorationist-camp (we all have come to be where we are today FROM somewhere, haven’t we?) will keep the simple covenant-keeping, what’s-mine-is yours, lay-down-my-life-for-one-another, reconciliation-focused, authentic, culture-transcending and culture-transforming communitas anchored in dynamic relationship with the person of Jesus Christ, that others are certrainly free to perceive as romantic non-reality if they want to.
Breathe….
The “simplex” church that the Holy Spirit founded and nurtured almost 2000 years in the past can still be found today…many (most?) of us who participate in this blog have at least seen or actively participate in it!
And I absolutely want to acknowledge that John W. did state right up front that he has yet to have a chance to read Alan’s book…and I think that he will see that it is too deep to yield its real and wonderfully practical treasures to a quick thumb-through! We’ll stay tuned for the review
In the end, it just isn’t simply WHAT we know that counts…it’s WHO we know and what we do about what we know about them — and what they do about what they know about us — that counts, isn’t it? (Yes, you will probably need to read that sentence slowly and out loud to get it
)
Blessings
for some of us, being “informational” is in our spiritual gifting, while being “relational” is more of a spiritual discipline. both are in our calling and neither are separate in our roots, even if we try to divide ‘em.
and what’s with my local bookstore that it’s taken a week plus for them to get TFW in as a special order (still waiting), and that it wasn’t even on their regular stock list?!
Brad, good call to remember to embrace the grand diversity…we all need each other’s gifts to get the whole picture loud and clear!
I don’t know what’s up with your bookstore…but I feel terribly guilty…my copy of TFW has just been sitting next to my bed for the last three weeks waiting for enough brain cells to be ready to tackle it…shall I send you mine? Your special order would probably arrive the same day, wouldn’t it? Does the thought count, my informationally-gifted brother.
Your relational sister….
thanks, Peggy. kind of you. while in the midst of a complex database prep job plus editing, my brain gets overloaded with words these days so it’d sit by my bedside for three weeks anyhoo.
meanwhile … ironically, shouldn’t it be a shame to feel guilty? or, if we’re paradoxical or embrace both high context and low context cultures, we get both barrels … hatin’ that …
You know, I hesitated to even use the word “guilt.” But, not to worry — I dealt with the guilt by offering you my book, so I think they cancel each other out….
Say, isn’t “should” a shame/guilt word? I’m getting dizzy…but I do try not to “should” on people, if I can help it…