Previous Post – In Defense of Radical Mission
Over this last week, I had the opportunity to attend a local church planting summit put on by Church Planting Canada. It was an intensive week of deep reflection, hard questions & great conversation. It inspired me to look back at some of those deep stirrings that led us to forming Little Flowers Community. While there is more to share than can be fit in one blog post, my mind (and heart) has continually returned to the same theme: What does true community require?
The world we live in is a beautiful one, but it is one clearly ravaged by the divisions and destruction of sin. Even the Church is not free from its impact. All too often Christianity in our culture has represent itself more by what we are against, by who we are not, than by the hope-filled promise of redemption and salvation. This is why I have been so encouraged by Rachel Held Evans’ “Rally To Restore Unity”. Perhaps we can start to represent ourselves differently to the world without even having to gloss over our important differences. While I am hopeful, the truth is, though, that such unity will take a lot of work to build and even more to sustain. So my hope here is to explore a few dynamics of what kinds of communities- what kinds of people- makes such a change possible.
As our culture becomes increasingly less welcoming to our faith, it is natural & understandable to be concerned. However, all too often the changes around us, both in the wider culture and within the Christian sub-culture(s), inspire fear in us. Fear invariable pushes us into a defensive posture, where we find security in tighter rules, sharper hierarchies and more demanding criteria for acceptance. While these sources of security have merit, when they become the primary dynamics in shaping our communities (and thus our identities), we further separate ourselves from the world and the other communities of faith we are meant to be One Body with.
For those of us who find ourselves in positions of leadership within our churches (both formally and informally), we must be committed to resisting the impulse to immediate fulfill the longings the fear produces in the community. It is a huge temptation to do so, as it can effectively rally large numbers of people together, seeming to validate itself by sheer force and size. Instead, leaders must commit themselves to serve their communities by creating a different context in which peoples fears can be transformed into loving mission.
Consider the response of people to the assassination of Osama Bin Laden. Within minutes of the news, Christians were already debating and defending their feelings and responses to the news. Far too quickly, lines were once again drawn. In the midst of it all, however, we were confronted with difficult and complex questions: Is it ever right to celebrate the death of an enemy? Shouldn’t we take joy that the world is that much safer? Should the church ever advocate violence? How can the church not demand action when millions suffer? Instead of facing these daunting questions, especially those ones that push against our own natural inclinations, we allow the brokenness that made those questions necessary divide us even further.
Let me be clear: I am not advocating that we linger in these questions out of some epistemological ambiguity. Neither am I saying that we should provide clear answers to people whenever we can. Rather, I am suggesting that we must help shape communities where people are willing to ask these questions without fear, facing their own uncertainties and seeking together the leading of the Holy Spirit in how to respond. To do so is not to deny or diminish the absolute truth of God, but rather to acknowledge our own brokenness and inability to always get it right.
Perhaps if we can learn to do this together we can shift from reactionary protectionism to proactive creativity. When we look to the future with all its challenges as a place of rich possibility, not primarily a set of problems to be solved, I believe we will begin to see a new unity formed in the Church where difference is not a threat, but a reflection of the diversity of membership that is essential to the whole Body of Christ.
Thanks Jamie. I had picked up on some of Rachel’s work around unity so am pleased to read yoiur post. I posted briefly on bin Laden’s death yesterday (http://radref.blogspot.com/2011/05/death-of-bin-laden.html). On this occasion I didn’t feel I had more to say. The ‘lines’ are reminders that unity is far more than bringing denominations together. Before I became a Mennonite I was a Methodist. I still work for the Methodist Church. In the UK there’s been talk of Anglican/Methodist union for years. It’s always foundered on one issue or another – from the Methodist side, a fear of losing identity and arguments over episcopacy.
Ultimately I wonder if we’re going about unity in the wrong way. The focus always seems to boil down to dogma. Dogma always carries the seeds of idolatry because our conceptions can pose as God or ‘absolute truth’. I wonder if family resemblance is a better approach to unity. Families tend to have’skeletons’, disreputable uncles and family feuds as well as the the positives but the principle is – we’re still related at the end of the day. We have the same parentage and share an older brother. Often mysticism has been viewed as an individual pursuit but it’s also a unifying connection. Shalom, phil
Great thoughts, Phil. Sometimes people assume unity means a complete blending into uniformity. However, I think our very differences are necessary to healthy unity. Thus, while denominationalism based on exclusion should decrease, if those distinctions reflected unique giftedness of the Body, that would be healthy unity without requiring institutional “oneness”.
Peace,
Jamie
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