If you have been following the comments on the last few posts, you know that I have been attempting to open up a conversation about the church and its responsibilities to those who are disappointed and disconnected. Let me be clear here that I am referring both to spiritual seekers (those who would not consider themselves Christians in any public way) and those, like Bono, the ultra-hip, prophetic voiced rock star and Neo, the equally hip, theologically astute, worldly and sentive, icon of post-modernity and "new kind of Christian" in Brian McClaren's "Adventures" novels are Christians but disconnected from what has been ruefully called "organized religion."
In Tim Stafford's CT article, "The Church: Why Bother?" has wondered if this Bono-Neo is a kind of faith is a kind of Christian gnosticism. A spiritual pursuit that is disconnected from the earthly reality of everyday life like people, pews and pledge cards. He examines with great sensitivity why people pull away from the church and by large concludes: It's because people let us down.
To which, I chime in: Yup. There is nothing more disappointing and confusing than what Eugene Peterson calls "the mystery and mess of the church."
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.
T.S. Eliot 1927
The concluding stanza of T. S. Eliot’s “Journey of the Magi” makes me think of so many of the Bonos and Neos of the world who have “left home”, traveled to a new experience of God and now are “no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation” of evangelical Christianity.
Frankly much of what I read in the “missional church” movement literature, and the “emergent” conversation seems like this. (And frankly, I like a lot of it.) We who have become restless in the old secure way of talking about and doing the Christian faith venture out to find something new, only to find ourselves back where we started. And in some ways more miserable and more glad at the same time.
The new perspectives that we bring to the church when we have allowed ourselves to leave behind an old way of looking at things is like a birth indeed. But soon we find that that birth is “a hard and bitter agony…like death…our death.”
However, I fear when I drop in on the conversations of “younger evangelicals” (to use Robert Webber’s phrase) that they are still enamored with the newness of leaving home. They are enjoying the shoving off from the old way and are speaking in rapturous terms of exploring new, organic and “emergent” ways of doing church. That’s all well and good, but there is nothing new here. Nor should there be. Our aim as biblical seekers is nothing less than the recovery of the Scripture’s wisdom and ways. And this, always includes the people sitting in the local, organized, regular congregation of Christians that are probably on your very block.
While deeply sympathetic to seeker movements, house churches, traveling with your own chaplain, the desire to "build-your-own community" or "plant a church for me and my generation," or call it "church" whenever I can get together with Christians who are like me and share my perspective and passion on life, I believe that this is still "adventuring without landing." In short, they are not home yet, and so not yet either disappointed or relieved.
The hard, good news of trying to build or be part of a genuine, authentic, scripturally rooted Christian community is that every attempt to “re-form” the church will only, must only, bring us back home again. We must die to our love of the new and novel, die to our disappointment and disengagement, die to our desire to be on the cutting edge or part of some movement. As for me, I find this particular death, a relief. And am glad.
Tomorrow, however. Beyond disappointment to bringing change.
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