To, For, and Enabled
My professor gave us an assignment for this week that I think I'd like to pass on to everyone. I'll post my (shortened) response tomorrow, but I'd like to hear how everyone would answer these questions:
1. What has the church done to you? (negatively)
2. What has the church done for you? (positively)
3. What has the church enabled you to do?
Have fun with these. They are pointed as specific churches/youth groups/college groups/etc., so don't think about the "universal" church, but about specific contexts throughout your life.
P.S.
Jenny, I responded to your comments on the last post. In case it gets buried, due to the proliferation of words, I think they were very insightful.
Well, read the link above (the title of this post) and let's discuss this. I am deeply disturbed by this mentality and am amazed at the comments from a seminary president that seem to be so illogical and downright nasty. I think "emerging" is a term that seems to spark controversy, but like most titles, it is used most often by those who define themselves as "not that". It's like Fundamentalist. Fundamentalists don't usually call themselves that, it's a term used by those who are not fundamentalists to describe people not like them.
In the same way, people are beginning to use "emerging" like they use "postmodern" or other terms that become curse words by a simple change of inflection. My professor Dr. Gibbs is fond of pointing out that the church is always emerging, so the term is given not so much as a title, but as a sort of shorthand way of understanding that we're talking about where the church in the West seems to be going. Christians who begin to take the view that we should view this culture the same way missionaries in China or Africa would view the contexts they find themselves in are developing new ways of understanding church. This happens constantly and there is no reason to fear it or denounce it.
I want to make one thing incredibly clear (to both of you who read this blog ;) the only reason to feel threatened by anything new is when you have developed a siege mentality. When we develop an institution, we feel the need to defend it against all assaults. Although I applaud the heart that wishes to protect the gospel from outside attacks, I have to say that it is the wrong attitude to have. We must not work to protect the gospel because it is not ours to protect. In fact, if we think the gospel is ours, it is only our version of the gospel. Mohler and Carson are doing more to defend the 1+2+3 version of the gospel developed that argues with someone enough until they agree with it than they are the actual gospel.
The gospel is God's, not ours. It is wild and cannot be tamed. All attempts to do so result in our diminishment, not the gospel's. We were confronted by the gospel and accepted it, but our relationship does not stop there! We never fully "get it". The older I get, the more I realize that God has so much to show and teach me about himself that it will truly be a lifelong endeavor and I won't even scratch the surface.
The problem comes when we think we "have" the gospel and we can now "give" it to someone else. This is a dead message, not the firey living entity as the Bible pictures it. We should approach it humbly and when we share it, we ask people to enter the story as we have done. The story is not over yet, though, and the gospel is still transforming us. This means that the people we share the gospel with will enter at a different point than we did. No matter how extensive we make a "gospel presentation", if we refuse to couple offering the message with offering ourselves we are not offering the gospel.
The gospel is good news and is the story of how God created us and offers us fellowship with himself. I'll get off the soap box in a second, but when I read those comments about the emerging church, they just seem to be mean-spirited and unwarranted. I have to ask myself what would cause such an attack. I worry whenever anyone gets too excited about "defending" God and his Word, because what they usually mean is "attacking." I also worry because it seems a very demeaning attitude toward God to think that he needs us to defend him. We are called to be the prophetic voice in this culture (and every culture) but that doesn't mean starting fights in the name of God to defend him against outsiders (you may remember the Crusades).
Ok, I'm stepping down from the soap box now. I want to know what you think about the article.
