Very interesting conference. I shouldn't be surprised that the binding principle of the conference was missional. :-)
Interesting sociology with so many different groups. You wonder how it might all hold together. The Wesleyan lunch group yesterday was interested but unsure how it might unfold. In many respects it felt "other." That's good to some extent, keeps us from becoming incestuous, as long as there's enough in common to be worth participation.
Although a couple missional Anglicans were on the schedule, the Anabaptist tradition was clearly the dominant theology, so occasionally some anti-institutional Christianity ideology featured. I suspect that any theology that holds this group together will probably have to be selective.
Very well put together! Kudos to JR Rozko and Chris Backert.
Showing posts with label Missio Alliance. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Missio Alliance. Show all posts
Saturday, April 13, 2013
Friday, April 12, 2013
Theology at Missio Alliance
I think there may be a sense around here at the Missio Alliance that one of the reasons the Emergent Village didn't really go anywhere or do anything is that it wasn't theologically grounded well. The emergent movement knew what they didn't like about evangelicalism-as-usual, but they tried to ground the thought of the movement in postmodernism. Since postmodernism is an anti-theology, that left the movement without any real grounding that would stick.
The theological framework invoked at the conference so far is missional, with Scot McKnight, Cherith Fee-Nordling, and David Fitch so far as its theologians.
Scot McKnight
You won't be surprised to hear echoes of his King Jesus Gospel here. The idea here is that the gospel is about Jesus as king. It's focus is not about some narrow sense of getting people to pray for forgiveness and get baptized. With the good news being about the kingship of Christ, then we have a robust sense of salvation that not only includes helping the poor and redeeming societal structures, but a sense of conversion that extends beyond a moment to a pilgrimage.
Nevertheless, I think I picked up a hint of a view of theology with which I disagree. If I heard him right, he invoked a distinction between an approach that aims at "the right way" and one that looks for relevance. This reminds me of the Barth-Finney debate over whether God is responsible for the effect of the word or whether we can do things that bring about a better sermon effect.
It may, although I'm not sure if McKnight meant it, have a tinge of Platonism and presuppositionalism that creates a dichotomy between truth and effect. Wesleyanism tends to be what I am now calling a "pragmatic theology." What I mean by this notion is that truth should not be divorced from its effect but that, to a very large extent, truth is a function of effect.
Truth in this universe is, in general, what works in this universe. God has built truth into this universe as what works in this universe. In that sense, it is misguided to mistake ideas as the sources of truth that somehow play themselves out in this universe, as if the universe is some kind of Platonic copy of a divine ideal. Nor will we most accurately understand truth if we think of it in terms of revelations in God's mind that he has revealed to us in the Bible.
Rather, when God reveals truth, he is revealing the way he has made us and the world, how we and the world work. Therefore, theology when it is most true is also most useful. I may post on this later, but my point is that theologians should not think that revivalist traditions are unthinking because they do not always articulate a theology "behind" their practice. Rather theology is intrinsic to practice. It is most accurate when it is most closely tied to its effect. This is a superior form of theology to the abstracted version of it so loved by the stereotypical theologian.
David Fitch
I'll mention Fitch first. It was interesting to have him next to Howard-John Wesley. HJW's presentation might not contradict his as much if you take the pragmatic theological approach I just offered. The question becomes, "What do their theologies look like in practice?" If their theologies result in a similar effect or look, then they are kindred even if the abstractions contradict each other.
And they did at least sound like they did. But I do not think HJW's disagreed with David's so much in practice.
Fitch was trying to move beyond old fundamentalist categories like inerrancy to a storied approach to the Bible. We live into the world of the Bible and experience its authority as the authority of God over us in his story of walking with the world. There's no question in my mind that this is a much more accurate theological abstraction than the one neo-evangelicalism came up with in the 50s.
Cherith Fee-Nordling
Her presentation by far has been the best of the conference. If I were to sum up her main point it would be a plea against Gnosticism. The world is not evil, only fallen. God created a good world. We are not spirits waiting to be released to our true heavenly home. Rather, the earth is our eternal destination, a redeemed earth. Jesus might have become human just to be with us, even if Adam hadn't sinned and didn't need redeemed. Jesus was truly and fully human... and he liked it.
I continue to think that the best theological descriptor of this group sociologically is post-conservative and that the best theological category to describe it is "missional." Wesleyanism at its best fits well here.
The theological framework invoked at the conference so far is missional, with Scot McKnight, Cherith Fee-Nordling, and David Fitch so far as its theologians.
Scot McKnight
You won't be surprised to hear echoes of his King Jesus Gospel here. The idea here is that the gospel is about Jesus as king. It's focus is not about some narrow sense of getting people to pray for forgiveness and get baptized. With the good news being about the kingship of Christ, then we have a robust sense of salvation that not only includes helping the poor and redeeming societal structures, but a sense of conversion that extends beyond a moment to a pilgrimage.
Nevertheless, I think I picked up a hint of a view of theology with which I disagree. If I heard him right, he invoked a distinction between an approach that aims at "the right way" and one that looks for relevance. This reminds me of the Barth-Finney debate over whether God is responsible for the effect of the word or whether we can do things that bring about a better sermon effect.
It may, although I'm not sure if McKnight meant it, have a tinge of Platonism and presuppositionalism that creates a dichotomy between truth and effect. Wesleyanism tends to be what I am now calling a "pragmatic theology." What I mean by this notion is that truth should not be divorced from its effect but that, to a very large extent, truth is a function of effect.
Truth in this universe is, in general, what works in this universe. God has built truth into this universe as what works in this universe. In that sense, it is misguided to mistake ideas as the sources of truth that somehow play themselves out in this universe, as if the universe is some kind of Platonic copy of a divine ideal. Nor will we most accurately understand truth if we think of it in terms of revelations in God's mind that he has revealed to us in the Bible.
Rather, when God reveals truth, he is revealing the way he has made us and the world, how we and the world work. Therefore, theology when it is most true is also most useful. I may post on this later, but my point is that theologians should not think that revivalist traditions are unthinking because they do not always articulate a theology "behind" their practice. Rather theology is intrinsic to practice. It is most accurate when it is most closely tied to its effect. This is a superior form of theology to the abstracted version of it so loved by the stereotypical theologian.
David Fitch
I'll mention Fitch first. It was interesting to have him next to Howard-John Wesley. HJW's presentation might not contradict his as much if you take the pragmatic theological approach I just offered. The question becomes, "What do their theologies look like in practice?" If their theologies result in a similar effect or look, then they are kindred even if the abstractions contradict each other.
And they did at least sound like they did. But I do not think HJW's disagreed with David's so much in practice.
Fitch was trying to move beyond old fundamentalist categories like inerrancy to a storied approach to the Bible. We live into the world of the Bible and experience its authority as the authority of God over us in his story of walking with the world. There's no question in my mind that this is a much more accurate theological abstraction than the one neo-evangelicalism came up with in the 50s.
Cherith Fee-Nordling
Her presentation by far has been the best of the conference. If I were to sum up her main point it would be a plea against Gnosticism. The world is not evil, only fallen. God created a good world. We are not spirits waiting to be released to our true heavenly home. Rather, the earth is our eternal destination, a redeemed earth. Jesus might have become human just to be with us, even if Adam hadn't sinned and didn't need redeemed. Jesus was truly and fully human... and he liked it.
I continue to think that the best theological descriptor of this group sociologically is post-conservative and that the best theological category to describe it is "missional." Wesleyanism at its best fits well here.
Thursday, April 11, 2013
Missio Alliance Day 1
A good Day 1 of the first Missio Alliance meeting on "The Future of the Gospel." I've been reflecting all day on what the cohesive principle is for this group of 700. In some respects, it is a very diverse sociological group consisting of:
To invoke Wittgenstein, it is not so much a common core as a common constellation of values. Some share more than others. The constellation includes things like multi-ethnicity, women in ministry, social justice, optimism of grace, openness to the Spirit, free church, non-fundamentalist valuing of Scripture. Sociologically, it is a group that does not want to have the excluding tone of the Gospel Coalition without losing orthodoxy like the Emergent Village. They are post-conservatives who can use the word "evangelical" but feel a little uneasy about it.
But if I had to describe it positively, I think the word that really best describes this group is missional. And by missional I mean the real deal, not its knock offs. Missional means getting on board with what God is doing, not trying to get people to come to my church or using gimmicks to try to attract people to my group. Missional means a full sense of the gospel that is king Jesus focused and doesn't have some narrow focus on getting a person to say a sinner's prayer.
It has been somewhat theology heavy and I want to process some of that in a different post, maybe in the morning. For now, I'll leave it at that...
- Arminian Baptists
- Charismatics/Pentecostals
- Anabaptists and free church
- Wesleyan-Armininans
- Evangelical Anglicans
To invoke Wittgenstein, it is not so much a common core as a common constellation of values. Some share more than others. The constellation includes things like multi-ethnicity, women in ministry, social justice, optimism of grace, openness to the Spirit, free church, non-fundamentalist valuing of Scripture. Sociologically, it is a group that does not want to have the excluding tone of the Gospel Coalition without losing orthodoxy like the Emergent Village. They are post-conservatives who can use the word "evangelical" but feel a little uneasy about it.
But if I had to describe it positively, I think the word that really best describes this group is missional. And by missional I mean the real deal, not its knock offs. Missional means getting on board with what God is doing, not trying to get people to come to my church or using gimmicks to try to attract people to my group. Missional means a full sense of the gospel that is king Jesus focused and doesn't have some narrow focus on getting a person to say a sinner's prayer.
It has been somewhat theology heavy and I want to process some of that in a different post, maybe in the morning. For now, I'll leave it at that...
Off to Missio Alliance
I'm flying today to DC for the first Missio Alliance conference, The Future of the Gospel. If you look at the sponsors, you'll see not only that The Wesleyan Church is a sponsor (with Wesley Seminary splitting the sponsorship), but that the sponsors are an Arminian-fest.
What excites me about this group is that there are a lot of Christians in America today who are fully orthodox, love the Bible, are fully devoted followers of Christ, but who do not really have a group to concentrate their voice. We're talking about a group that has a robust sense of what it means to spread the gospel (it's way more than getting people "saved"). We're talking about a group that understands that social justice is part of the lordship of Christ. We're talking about a group that fully affirms women in ministry as a sign of the age of the Spirit. We're talking about a group that pursues a church that looks as diverse as the kingdom of God actually is.
It's no coincidence that a lot of Wesleyan-Arminians are behind this conference. The description above is exactly what the Wesleyan tradition is all about...
What excites me about this group is that there are a lot of Christians in America today who are fully orthodox, love the Bible, are fully devoted followers of Christ, but who do not really have a group to concentrate their voice. We're talking about a group that has a robust sense of what it means to spread the gospel (it's way more than getting people "saved"). We're talking about a group that understands that social justice is part of the lordship of Christ. We're talking about a group that fully affirms women in ministry as a sign of the age of the Spirit. We're talking about a group that pursues a church that looks as diverse as the kingdom of God actually is.
It's no coincidence that a lot of Wesleyan-Arminians are behind this conference. The description above is exactly what the Wesleyan tradition is all about...
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