But if we are the body...

2. On the Church, the Continuation of God's Narrative

We call Evangelicals to take seriously the visible character of the Church. We call for a commitment to its mission in the world in fidelity to God's mission (Missio Dei), and for an exploration of the ecumenical implications this has for the unity, holiness, catholicity, and apostolicity of the Church. Thus, we call Evangelicals to turn away from an individualism that makes the Church a mere addendum to God's redemptive plan. Individualistic Evangelicalism has contributed to the current problems of churchless Christianity, redefinitions of the Church according to business models, separatist ecclesiologies and judgmental attitudes toward the Church. Therefore, we call Evangelicals to recover their place in the community of the Church catholic.

[reprinted without alteration with permission from: www.aefcall.org]

If I could chose one area of theology that I could change in order to have the greatest impact on The Church of the Nazarene, it would be in the area of ecclesiolgy. Why? Because there is perhaps no other area with as far reaching implications as ecclesiology. The way we understand ourselves as the church determines the way we view salvation, the way we view sanctification, the way we view mission, discipleship, worship, sacraments, and on and on and on. So what would I changes about our ecclesiology? Simple. I ask only that we consider ecclesiology with a seriousness commensurate with its far-reaching implications. The AEF Call hits the nail on the head calling evangelicals to "take seriously the visible character of the church."

Perhaps the most well-known biblical image of "church" is in Paul's "body of Christ" metaphor.

"Just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others" (Rom. 12-4-5).

"The body is a unit, though it is made up of many parts; and though all its parts are many, they form one body. So it is with Christ. For we were all baptized by one Spirit into one body—whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink... Now the body is not made up of one part but of many... As it is, there are many parts, but one body... Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it" (I Cor 12.12-27).

We all have heard this metaphor many times, yet its magnitude is not apparent until we consider it in light of another Pauline story. It too is a well known story, but the stories are seldom connected. In this second story, we find a Jew named Saul traveling the world seeking out the church and trying to stamp out the church by identifying, torturing and killing its members. On one quest to Damascus, Saul is stopped in his tracks, blinded, and spoken to. The voice asked Saul a question, "why do you persecute me?" Saul replies with a question, "who are you?" To Saul's question, the voice responds, "I am Jesus of Nazareth." After this experience Saul changes his name to Paul, begins building - rather than destroying - the church, and the rest, as they say, is history.

What I find so amazing is the voices question. Jesus speaks to Saul and says, "why do you persecute me?" This is astonishing! Jesus Christ has long since been crucified, resurrected, ascended and sent his Spirit to breath life into his church. Even so, Jesus does not ask Saul why he is persecuting the church. He asks Saul why he persecutes him. The voice from heaven makes a clear equation. The Church = Jesus Christ.

We must, therefore, correct an earlier comment. In light of Paul's conversation with Christ on the Damascus Road, Paul's "body ecclesiology" is not a metaphor. It is not a comparison. It is not a literary device. It is a declaration. Christ is really and truly present in the world! His presence, however is not in one human body, but in the many who have been baptized into his death and resurrection.

OK, so where I am going with all this? If we began to understand that the Church = Christ, then we really have to ask some hard questions about the way we understand "church": its worship, its mission, its witness, its programming. Is what we do a continuation of Christ: who he is and what he did? Does our worship continue Christ's relationship to the Father as revealed in scripture? Does our mission and the way we accomplish our mission faithfully and truthfully continue the mission and ministry of Christ as revealed in scripture? Is the life of the church clearly revealing to the world not only the goal of Christ's life and ministry, but also the means by which Christ accomplished his divine goals? In short, is the church fully and totally cruciform in all that it is and all that it does? Does the church bear faithful witness to the "peacable reign of God" (Bryan Stone, Evangelism After Christendom)?

My contention is that much of today's evangelical church cannot honestly answer those questions in the affirmative. Such a church would place such things as "unity, holiness, catholicity, and apostolicity" at a premium. Yet many of us live and minister in churches that view such values as undesirable. We are happy being sectarian, so we continue trying to convert Orthodox, Roman-Catholics, and all others not like us to Christianity. We are happy holding "relevance" as the highest goal, so we have removed all that is sacred for the sake of being understandable, sensitive and contemporary. We certainly don't want to be confused with the catholics, so we insist that we believe in "the holy universal church." And most of us probably can't pronounce - let alone spell - apostolicity.

It is time we take our ecclesiology seriously and recover [our] place in the community of the Church catholic. We ARE the body of Christ, and its time we think seriously about what that means.

... but I thought the AEF CALL isn't biblical?

1. On the Primacy of the Biblical Narrative

We call for a return to the priority of the divinely authorized canonical story of the Triune God. This story-Creation, Incarnation, and Re-creation-was effected by Christ's recapitulation of human history and summarized by the early Church in its Rules of Faith. The gospel-formed content of these Rules served as the key to the interpretation of Scripture and its critique of contemporary culture, and thus shaped the church's pastoral ministry. Today, we call Evangelicals to turn away from modern theological methods that reduce the gospel to mere propositions, and from contemporary pastoral ministries so compatible with culture that they camouflage God's story or empty it of its cosmic and redemptive meaning. In a world of competing stories, we call Evangelicals to recover the truth of God's word as the story of the world, and to make it the centerpiece of Evangelical life.

[reprinted without alteration with permission from: www.aefcall.org]

I have heard it so many times I feel nauseous. "You don't believe in the Bible." "You promote non-biblical doctrines." "You endorse clearly non-scriptural practices." Of course what such comments really mean is "You approach the tasks of interpreting and applying scriptures differently than I do" which, of course, sounds much too congenial to actually say. Isn't it much more fun to just accuse others who are different of being wrong?

And then there is the issue of repeating the history we failed to learn. This "it's not biblical" argument is simply a return to one of the big issues that confronted the reformers. There were (and still are) two basic lines of thinking: the permissive and the prescriptive. Those who approach scripture with a permissive paradigm suggest that if a practice is not clearly forbidden in scripture, then that practice ought to be permitted in the church. An example of this might be clerical vestments. Scripture is silent about what a pastor ought to wear when conducting worship and celebrating the sacraments. Therefore, a pastor ought not be forbidden from wearing vestments. Further, in judging the tradition in the church of pastors wearing liturgical vestments, since scripture provides no guidance, then tradition can be deemed appropriate for practice and faithful to scripture.

However, those who approach scripture with a prescriptive paradigm suggest that Christians ought only be allowed to do those things that are prescribed in scripture. Using the same example of liturgical vestments, a prescriptive proponent would argue that scripture does not require clergy to wear any distinctive uniform. Therefore since scripture does not prescribe vestments, the church should not prescribe vestments. In fact, to prescribe the donning of liturgical vestments is viewed as unbiblical and many prescriptionists would go so far as to say any use of clerical attire, prescribed or not, since it is not found in scripture, is unbiblical.

This brief lesson in history serves to give background to much of the contemporary debate. The AEF Call is obviously shaped by the permissive paradigm. It is clear in its call for the scriptures to be understood as the "divinely authorized canonical story of the Triune God," that the story of God is "truth" and that sacred scripture is to be the "centerpiece of evangelical life." With this, doubtless anyone could disagree. But it also realizes the limitations of scripture. Scripture, while authorized and inspired, by an infinite God, was written by finite human beings. As such, scripture must be understood to be written by particular human beings, with a particular perspective, in a particular place, at a particular time, and from within a particular culture. Scripture, then, cannot be approached prescriptorally. First century Jewish men could not begin to prescribe all that is necessary for 21st century life. Nor could they speak from within a 21st century culture or with a 21st century vocabulary. Thus the issue is not with Scripture, its inspiration, its authorization, its content, etc., but with how it is interpreted and applied.

The AEF Call seems to recognize two dangerous tendencies that have arisen within the contemporary evangelical church. The first is to attempt to interpret and apply the scriptures in a vacuum. That is, to suggest that we can interpret and apply them without giving thought to what they have meant in the past. A seminary professor often reminded us that a passage cannot mean what it never meant. In interpreting and applying scripture, we must take into consideration what the author meant and what the audience understood, as well as how the passage has been interpreted and applied throughout the 2,000 year history of the church. In an attempt to address the danger of isolationist interpretations of scripture, the AEF Call seeks to recover the concept of a "Rule of Faith" that guides the appropriation of scripture and defines biblical orthodoxy for the church.

The second dangerous development is identified as the reduction of scripture to a set a "propositional truths." It cannot be denied that scripture contains "propositional truths." However, scripture is not to be understood as "propositional truth." What seems to be missing is an adequate understanding of truth. Truth is much larger than logical arguments and propositional statements. For as long as humans have been able to talk they have told stories in order to convey truth. In fact, Jesus' own preferred way of teaching was telling stories. Does the fact that the story of the prodigal son was not a historical story with real life characters that actually did what we are told change the truth of the story? Of course not! Was Jesus a liar because he told stories that didn't really happen? Of course not! Stories can certainly be true despite lacking historical factuality. Properly understood, scripture is a story. It is a story that does contain historical people, in historical places, that acted in history. It is a story that contains propositional truth. But to reduce scripture to a set of propositional truths by ignoring the relevancy of the story of God is a great danger. Therefore, the AEF Call reminds "Evangelicals to turn away from modern theological methods that reduce the gospel to mere propositions, and from contemporary pastoral ministries so compatible with culture that they camouflage God's story or empty it of its cosmic and redemptive meaning."

I fear, this post has already droned on too long and rambled to broadly. The point is simply this: the AEF Call is not "unbiblical" as many of its critics accuse. Rather, it seeks a full, robust understanding of scripture that returns the story of God / the story of salvation to its rightful place at the center of Christian thought and practice.

Resurrection Peace,

Eric +

Why an Ancient Future?

Prologue

In every age the Holy Spirit calls the Church to examine its faithfulness to God's revelation in Jesus Christ, authoritatively recorded in Scripture and handed down through the Church. Thus, while we affirm the global strength and vitality of worldwide Evangelicalism in our day, we believe the North American expression of Evangelicalism needs to be especially sensitive to the new external and internal challenges facing God's people.

These external challenges include the current cultural milieu and the resurgence of religious and political ideologies. The internal challenges include Evangelical accommodation to civil religion, rationalism, privatism and pragmatism. In light of these challenges, we call Evangelicals to strengthen their witness through a recovery of the faith articulated by the consensus of the ancient Church and its guardians in the traditions of Eastern Orthodoxy, Roman Catholicism, the Protestant Reformation and the Evangelical awakenings. Ancient Christians faced a world of paganism, Gnosticism and political domination. In the face of heresy and persecution, they understood history through Israel's story, culminating in the death and resurrection of Jesus and the coming of God's Kingdom.

Today, as in the ancient era, the Church is confronted by a host of master narratives that contradict and compete with the gospel. The pressing question is: who gets to narrate the world? The Call to an Ancient Evangelical Future challenges Evangelical Christians to restore the priority of the divinely inspired biblical story of God's acts in history. The narrative of God's Kingdom holds eternal implications for the mission of the Church, its theological reflection, its public ministries of worship and spirituality and its life in the world. By engaging these themes, we believe the Church will be strengthened to address the issues of our day.

[reprinted without alteration with permission from: www.ancientfutureworship.com]

---

The opening sentence lays the foundation. I hardly think anyone would disagree that the goal of the Christian life is to know God in such a way that we become like God. We only know God because God became human in the person of Jesus Christ who perfectly revealed God to the world. We can only know Jesus as the Holy Spirit reveals him to us through the story of Christ recorded by the apostles (i.e. Scripture) and passed down to us from generation to generation by the great cloud of witnesses - the communion of the saints - that has gone before (i.e. Church). This is the base of all that is to come: A Triune God who works to sanctify God's people through the scriptures and in the church.

Understanding this, we must always have a spirit of discernment, for our context is rapidly changing. Many want to deny that the world is changing, but sticking our heads in the sand cannot stop the sands of time from shifting. To understand this shift - and to understand part of the motivation of the AEF Call, Dr. Webber (in "Younger Evangelicals") gives some characteristics that are descriptive of the changing world. Some of them include (see p 54, I won't list them all here):

1. Have recovered the biblical understanding of human nature
2. Differ with the pragmatist approach to ministry
3. Stand for the absolutes of the Cristian faith in a new way
4. Recognize the road to the future runs through the past
5. Committed to the plight of the poor
6. technology [savy]
7. Highly visual
8. Communicate through stories
9. Grasp the power of the imagination
10. Advocate the resurgence of the arts
11. Appreciate the power of performative symbols
12. Long for community
13. Committed to multiculturality
14. Committed to intergenerationality
15. Demand authenticity
16. Realize the unity between thought and action.

All this is to say that people are different, with different values, with different thought processes, with different world views than they were a generation ago. Everyone agrees that ministry must be contextualized. It would be ludicrous to go to Africa and simply recreate a American model of church (some could argue that is what we've done - but this is not the place for that). A church in Africa must be an African church. It must do what a church does in an African way, in a way that will speak to Africans and allow Africans to speak to God. What we are seeing here in America is the emergence of a new context. And with that new context the church has to be a new church, in a new way, that will speak to new people and allow new people to speak to God.

Further complicating the situation in which the American church finds itself at the start of the 21st century are some very un-Christian developments in the the mainstream evangelical world. The conflation of the national and the religious to the point that much of evangelicalism equates nationalism/patriotism with one's religious identity. The reduction of religion to a merely rational enterprise. The loss of any communal element of faith and the defining of faith in strictly private terms. And the embracing of an "ends justify the means" mentality. All of these developments leave the church in a very precarious position - starting a century behind the eightball if you will.

So how does the church respond to these developments within the church and the changing cultural context in which the church exists? Only with the discernment and wisdom of the Holy Spirit.

It is often said that those who do not learn from the past are doomed to repeat it. Younger evangelicals seem keenly aware of the truth of this proposition. We are not willing to sit by and watch the church repeat past mistakes (heavens know we've made more than our share). So as we look forward, we also look behind us. We look for things that might help us confront our current situation. We look for things that might enhance our ministry. We look for lesson to be learned from those who went before us. We understand we cannot know where we are going if we do not understand from where we came. We are fully aware that who we will be is largely determined by who we have been. It is quite a natural part of the maturation process to ask about our identity, where we came from, family stories, family traditions, etc. Those are the things that make us who we are and shape who we are going to be. We are not entering waters never before sailed. In our 2000 year history the church has been there and done that. The past is a powerful tool for present work and there is no reason to ignore it and what it has to teach us.

The AEF Call was cast in order to keep our compass firmly fixed on Christ as he is revealed in scripture and has been embodied in the church. The AEF Call is all about a faithfully Christian future. We trust that the Holy Spirit will guide us into that future, but even so, Maranatha - Come quickly Lord Jesus!


For you and with you,

Eric+

I have not written much of late for three primary reasons. First, I have not had the time. Second, when I have had time to write have I enjoying contributing to the sanctifying worship blog. Third, I have been deeply affected by the explosion of divisive blogs appearing on the Nazarene blogosphere. At first, I just watched with interest as the "fundamentalists" clashed with the "emergents" -- both labels I avoid giving myself for various reasons. But then one of these Christian extremist blogs called me out by name. Let me be clear, I have not read any of these blogs that explicitly demand any kind of action by the people who hold ideas they oppose. However, there are very clear implications to their opposition -- implications that are neither a stretch nor invalidly/inaccurately implied.

To this point I have been silent, not wanting to further any rifts within the church and for fear that my hurt would manifest itself in such similar personal attacks as have been launched against me and my friends. However, I have decided that I must respond to the accusations leveled against me and my friends. Not out of anger, not out of a need to be right, not for any reason other than to further the discussion at hand and to facilitate the transformation of lives by the renewing of our minds. With this as my goal, I propose to respond not so much to the allegations made, but rather to discuss exactly why I support A CALL TO AN ANCIENT EVANGELICAL FUTURE.

The call is composed of 6 paragraphs plus a prologue and an epilogue. I will be committing to you all to include 1 blog to address each of the 8 sections of the call. I hope and pray that our Lord will be glorified by our discussion and that it might be used to bring to fulfillment Jesus' High Priestly prayer that we all might be one. I look forward to discussing with you all soon.

Holy Week Blessings,

Eric+

Time for an update...

Sorry I have been absent for so long. I've had my hands full of late. Perhaps you saw the news yesterday and I wanted to simply let you all know that though I have been excommunicated, I am still alive and well.

Peace,

Eric+