I'm in Snowbird, Utah, at the General Assembly Council meeting for the Presbyterian Church, U.S.A, all this week. Today we are having a joint meeting with the Middle Governing Body executives. We will explore what it means to be a missional church through various presentations and discussions.
One of the resources we are looking at is an article by Darrell Guder called The Challenges of Evangelization in America: Theological Ambiguities, published in Antioch Agenda. He concludes the article with a series of questions with bullet point observations of Christendom by its heirs must address these theological ambiguities in constant interaction with the global, non-western community. To do so, it is helpful to ask:
- The gospel of the kingdom is reduced to the gospel of individual salvation.
- The church's calling to witness to the world is reduced to salvation management.
- The baptismal calling of each Christian to apostolic witness is reduced to the clergy-lay distinction with different possibilities of spiritual faithfulness and obedience.
What has the theology of Christendom equated that cannot be equated?
- The culture of western Christendom with normative Christianity.
- The kingdom of God with the institutional church.
- God's promised rule with a particular human program of social, political, and economic design.
- The benefits of the gospel from the missional calling of the Christian (Barth's critique of the 'classic definition of Christian identity') – another way of describing the individualistic reduction of the gospel.
- The calling of baptism from the calling of ordination: two or more classes of Christians.
- The present from the future: the loss of the impact now of that which is promised and still coming.
Then Guder goes on to identify some challenges to evangelization:
The crucial role of the world church, calling the heirs of western Christendom to account.
- "Can the West be saved?"
- "Can we be good stewards of our legacy, especially our property and wealth, for the upbuilding of the entire body of Christ around the world? Should Western churches see themselves as the Hellenistic congregations formed by Paul, carrying out their financial responsibility for the Christians in Jerusalem/the non-Western Churches?
- "Does the accession of the Christian movement to social and economic power fundamentally change its calling as defined by the NT?"
- Challenge now in the "next Christendom" – African countries officially calling themselves "Christian nations!" while Europe is arguing about how to refer to its own Christian past!
- As a world community of faith and witness, can we really articulate what we commonly believe and testify to, what practices we share that are the same in all their cultural differentness, and what we commonly hope and expect from God's hand?
We are addressing these issues as we reflect on being a missional church.
Leave a Reply