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13 Responses to “the contexualized community”

1. Chris Martin on December 13th, 2007 9:33 am

   Tell me, how, now that we know we have lost this basic missional truth, can we live without it/ignorant to it?

2. Patrick on December 13th, 2007 10:00 am

   “Tell me, how did we ever lose this very basic missional truth?”

   The Church became a path to power and authority and influence. So people rose in its ranks, and then adapted the theology to secure their power and authority and influence.

   They don’t want to give it back. So to assert this truth is often to be labeled a heretic.

3. Erik on December 13th, 2007 12:05 pm

   The Church did indeed become a path to power, influence, and authority! However, I’m not so sure the people who rise within its ranks today necessarily recognize it as a “tool/path” to which they achieve there own egotistical standard. In essence, at some point in history the “golden calf” itself took on a god head persona which was then embodied through its centralized community. Hmmm… the gospel of the “golden calf”! It is a false gospel which dictates that we must have the Church (that is in the traditional sense) if we are to truly find communion with Jesus.

   I rather like the idea of a community being more focused on embodying Jesus where they are rather then where they think they should be! Funny… I guess that came out more like a brain teaser then I had intended.

4. Chilly on December 13th, 2007 1:07 pm

   We stopped praying like we’d die IF we didn’t… in turn, we now expect God to obey us rather than us wholeheartedly obey Him.

5. Eleanor Burne-Jones on December 13th, 2007 7:00 pm

   I just see a huge divide between people agreeing we need to be transformed community in order that others can see the life of Christ being lived amongst us, and their willingness to do anything about it.

   Instead we have leaders telling us to put up with how dysfunctional and damaging the church can often be as a gathering, and disregarding all the good work that has been done to produce resources aimed at improving church healthy function - for example on conflict transformation, healthy communication, clear, open and transparent decision making, clear role expectations, helping people to emotional maturity and self awareness of how they are in groups, learning how to work in teams, and so on. So much is available, but the churches ignore it in a sort of spiritual arrogance that all they need is a few key texts and it will all be alright! We end up with gatherings which tolerate abusive behaviours that would be immediately dealt with in the workplace, and communities that spend more time singing and hanging out with Jesus than sorting out broken relationships. We have the facts - here in the UK and in US many see Christians and our gatherings as judgemental and hypocritical. We choose not to respond, but to get excited about other things instead, the glamour of work in poor communities and the high profile campaigns for social justice. These are vital, but so is the mundane business of making our gatherings safe and healthy. Never mind the lack of witness without it, unhealthy unsafe gatherings also undermine effective teamwork.

6. Patrick on December 13th, 2007 11:48 pm

   Eleanor, I think you’re exactly right. While working in a church I dealt with exactly that and in many ways its why I stopped working in a church. A friend of mine who went to this church was a management consultant and I helped plan a Saturday all-day seminar she led for the staff and lay leaders. By the end of the day it became clear that those at the top, head pastor and a few elders, had absolutely no concern other than getting people to just do what they demanded. They weren’t interested in learning relationship, they wanted to learn how to efficiently manipulate.

   That seminar exposed the underlying motives much more than solved what on the surface appeared to be communication issues.

   Not surprisingly those attitudes resulted in people wandering away. Very sad.

   Abusive behaviors have such lovely theological rationalization that it’s hard to bring balance when they’re in full swing.

7. David Scott on December 14th, 2007 12:01 am

   Let me offer a story of hope on this subject:
   I work for a university ministry in the states. At times, the campus ministry environment can be discouraging because due to the “success” of a few large scale “spectator” oriented campus movements, leaders have turned their focus to replicating those experiences. The result is that we create students with expectations that that is what the Church is, a concert or movie experience. Here’s the the hopeful part: They are figuring out it’s a scam anyway! Just a couple of days ago, I was having breakfast with a student who has run the gamut of mega-church ministry. He hasn’t read any of the “right” books or blogs, been to any conferences, and still he looks at me and says, “I’m tired of this, I need community.” He told me how he hasn’t been to church in 6 weeks because he was tired of going, sitting, and listening to a speaker. I’ve never been happier for someone to tell me that they quit going to church! This led into a long conversation about moving from one person leading to a community that all use their gifts together, etc. He emailed me yesterday to say he is talking to some friends at work about starting a small group community. The point is, much like Alan pointed out in the Forgotten Ways, it DOES seem to be built into people given to God. Even the most corrupt of leadership won’t be able to stop it

8. Matt Stone on December 14th, 2007 12:24 am

   I think we lost it in Christendom. When everyone was the church, no one was … except for the clergy … and even a lot of them were corrupt. Mediocrity set in. Then the monastics arose seeking a deeper life in faith. Post Christendom we need to rediscover the truth that we are the church and that means visible church.

   A question that arises out of this for me though: if monasticism is largely a product of dysfunctional Christendom, how useful is a neo monastic paradigm in post-Christendom? I have no firm conclusions here, but I do have some lingering doubts.

9. Penney Winiarski on December 14th, 2007 1:41 am

   David, that is a very hopeful story and kind of hits the thoughts I’ve been having in regards to Alan’s question. We look at the church now but this is infact the history of God’s people from the beginning.

   I’ve been reading some stuff by N.T.Wright and he speaks of the balance we need between the God of creation and the God of covenant(torah). Humanity has never been able to keep a proper balance. Many of those saints/prophets we look to in humanity’s history are infact either persecuted or ignored by those sent to redeem them. Wright makes the point that God’s Word is expressed in the flesh, yet, that very flesh is still corrutible.

   How did we lose this very basic missional truth? Is it maybe simply part of our DNA? The very covenant(torah)we try to revere, is the same covenant we break because with our eyes/flesh we can not comprehend the God of Creation. It seems like our nature or evil hearts consitantly reach a point where it is like a pot boiling over. A stench to our God, or maybe a cry as in a woman in labor.

   As in the symbolism of birthing, our Jesus purges and removes those lampstands. We do not uphold our end of the covenant, but the God of Creation must or risk denying and breaking covenant Himself.

   It is a movement of the kingdom advancing even further through the process of birthing. Polycarp is put to the stake and the Jews collect the firewood! Horrible, yes, but it is burning up and laying bare the way for Jesus to lead the kingdom further.

   We are individually and collectively being purged. How incredibuly awesome and fearsome to know we are still living in the days of Acts, to be witness’s and have the opportunity to just stand.

   One other thing I wonder though. David, you make a good point, where I believe you are speaking about the spirit of community being built into people given to God. If infact, Wright is correct, this would suggest that it is God himself being built into His people. A kind of lampstand ourselves. Which simply solidifies your point.

   Sorry for the long post, but this blog is deep. I think I need to come up for air and maybe read Alan’s book!

10. Paul Deveaux on December 14th, 2007 3:40 am

    I am going to steal something from Mike Breen to answer this one: We have convinced ourselves that the gospel is complex and easy rather than simple and hard.

    People increasingly want the easy way out: “The gospel can only be understood by those highly educated clergy, thus I cannot be held accountable for it. I am doming the best I can with my limited education/status.”

    We are simply too afraid to do the hard work. We have gotten comfortable with our false version of the the gospel and refuse to admit that we don’t get it. The golden calf strikes again!

11. grace on December 14th, 2007 8:52 am

    I believe we lost that basic truth because organizations replaced true community yet claimed to be the expression of community for believers. Over time and tradition this facade of community came to be the accepted norm and we “forgot” the way in which the gospel was intended to be embodied in the life of the community. Still today, there are few willing to believe that this facade of community may be incomplete.

12. Janet on December 14th, 2007 4:09 pm

    I’ve recently read “The Emerging Laity” by Whitehead and Whitehead which outlines the process by which “ordinary Christians” were disempowered… the communal meal together celebrating the prescence of Christ became a symbolic ritual, administered only by the professional clergy. Apostolic leaders, teachers, elders etc. over time morphed into “priests”… very much leaning on an “old covenant” idea of a person representing God to and for the people. Later priests were required to be celibate, separating the lifestyle of the priest from the laity even more.

    The idea of “clergy” as central to the function of church still has sway over the imaginations of many (Not to the TFW crew of course!)… although the shortage of priests within Catholicism in the West is tending to erode this conception, for the laity in fact do almost everything.

13. Patrick on December 15th, 2007 1:21 am

    Janet, exactly right I think.

    That’s why our understanding of communion is one of the most accurate insights into our whole understanding of church. And when we make church the founding principle of the other parts of our theology then we can quickly display a Christian religion that has only the barest connection to what we see in the Gospels or in the Epistles.

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