Missional Canadian

A few years a ago a small group of us within the Christian & Missionary Alliance family of Churches began to describe ourselves as being in the “radical middle,” of the theological and philosophical spectrum of church life. But after reading Adam Hamilton’s “Seeing Gray in World of Black and White: Thoughts on Religion, Morality, and Politics,” I realized that my definition of “middle,”  was bound by a much narrower spectrum of “the church,” than that held by Adam Hamilton, pastor of the 14,000 strong United Methodist Church of the Resurrection, in Leawood, Kansas.  Cleary our “radical middle” is a bit to the right of what Hamilton calls the “radical center.”

Hamilton is promoting what he calls a middle path between the fundamentalism of Jerry Falwell and the liberalism of John Shelby Spong. Truth is, typical of so many from evangelical backgrounds, I’ve never included John Shelby Spong along with those of the Jesus Seminar ilk, within the spectrum of what I understand to be the broader church family. I figure you need to at least be able to affirm the historic creeds such as the Apostles and Nicene creeds to make any claim to be authentically Christian. Some would call that an “evangelical bias,” but many of my Catholic and Orthodox friends also hold to that bias.

And on the other-side, while Jerry Falwell lies clearly to the right of where I land, his life and ministry was far more moderate than that of many fundamentalists. Making it even more interesting, while that small group of Alliance friends see ourselves as being in the “radical middle,” others within our own church family might describe us being a bit to the left. It does all depend on where you draw your lines.  

And while my “middle” lands to the right of Hamilton’s “middle,” I found his overarching theme of the need to bring the social gospel and the personal evangelical gospel together, understanding that neither is complete apart from the other, as a much needed corrective for the church today. On the issue of holiness, his call to find the “sweet spot” between legalism and libertinism is critical for any church desirous of having lasting impact in our culture.

My sense is that he aligns with Brian McLaren and McLaren’s views of “Generous Orthodoxy,” and in the process arrives at a few conclusions related to an understanding of the bible and salvation that are quite left of where I’m comfortable. However unlike some of my friends who land to the right of myself, I don’t see these guys so much as dangerous heretics, as much as I see them as sincere Christ followers who have allowed themselves to drift further than what I believe is biblically warranted. I see them as brothers in Christ with whom I do not see eye to eye. That doesn’t prevent me from appreciating them and learning from them.

 Back in the late 70’s when I attended what is now Tyndale Seminary in Toronto, the ethos my professors impressed on me was the well known quotation of unknown origins, “In essentials, unity, in doubtful matters, liberty, in all things, charity.” Even if my middle lands to the right of a guy like Adam Hamilton, I’m reminded of the need to remain charitable and to be willing to listen and dialogue and learn from those like Hamilton to the left of me, or those to the right of me who align with the theology and philosophy of a Jerry Falwell. 

So I do like the idea of “generous orthodoxy,” even if I don’t appear to be as generous in my orthodoxy as some. I like the idea of seeing gray in a world of black and white, even if I don’t see gray in quite the same places.  In my passion to uphold the Jesus ethic of love of God and love of neighbour, I will choose remain charitable towards those who draw their lines differently than myself, especially those who hold tenaciously to a personally relationship with Jesus as their forgiver and leader.  

I’ve been listening to the new U2 Album (they still call it an album on iTunes!), “No Line on the Horizon,”  and I found myself linking some of the introspective lyrics with NT Wright’s “Surprised By Hope.”

Those of us raised with well honed theological formulations will tend to struggle trying to figure out exactly where Bono and U2 are trying to go. The words are not neat. They don’t fit comfortably with how we’ve been trained to think. They are the words of an artist and poet more than those of a theologian. Hence before we dismiss them too quickly, maybe we should wrestle with the underlying message that touches the heart of seekers, committed Christ followers and even unbelievers.

“No Line On the Horizon,”  tends to reflect the dissonance most people feel about the state of our current world and what we deeply  know should be. As I listened, I got the sense that U2 would remind us, as NT Wright does in “Surprised By Hope,” that while this is earth and not yet heaven, there is hope – hope, that we can bring a bit more of heaven to earth, hope that starts with the here and now  but goes beyond.

I couldn’t help but think that there just might be some good eschatology, even missiology in this album, such as in ‘Get On Your Boots’:  The future needs a big kiss / Winds blows with a twist / Never seen a moon like this / Can you see it too? / Night is falling everywhere / Rockets at the fun fair / Satan loves a bomb scare / But he won’t scare you.

Mess and hope all mingled together.  Reminding us of the promise found in the book of Revelation  of a yet future recreated new earth and heaven together, where our God “will wipe every tear from our eyes. Where there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain.” Reminding us as well that until then we’ve been given a mission to pray for and accomplish, where we will “see God’s kingdom come, God’s will be done in increasing measure on earth as it is in heaven,” a mission that impacts lives individually and impacts the city and world we live in.  So yeah, maybe it’s time to “get on your boots.”

Oh … U2 won’t let me directly embed the video below, so if you want to see it, DOUBLE CLICK A SECOND  TIME after the “embedding disabled by request” message comes up and it will take you directly to the youtube vidoe, or go directly to youtube yourself: www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOwH6IqwRqM

It was reading the blog of Franklin Pyles, President of the Christian & Missionary Alliance in Canada, that prompted not only a response to his blog but the motivation to finish setting up this blog,

 So now, as one of the first posts to my blog, let me jump from some thoughts in Franklin’s post, “A Tipping Point for Christianity,”  (http://rebirthingsimpsonsvision.blogspot.com/) where he stated: “The program church has many advantages, but one of its disadvantages is that it totally absorbs the life of its key workers leaving little time or energy for them to coach or play kids sports, to sit on school councils, or to join in meaningful community activities. Thus, those who could be connectors are unplugged from the wider populace.”

Now I don’t dispute that balanced statement or the many other statements Franklin made in his blog. However the reality is for a lot of folk in most of our evangelical churches, that even if our churches were structured so that the average person in our congregations had time to be more involved in the lives of our sparsely churched neighbours and join with the people of our city in meaningful community activities, we have unfortunately discipled many in such a way, so as to strip them of the ability to truly enter into the lives of those apart from Christ. Our interpretations of holiness and separation even in these less legalistic days, still makes it hard for most of us to give ourselves permission to party, dance and just enjoy average everyday people. The old adage, “we don’t drink, dance, smoke or chew or go around with girls that do,” still holds a grip on us, more than we care to admit.

Living incarnational lives, being Jesus to the people of our city and world is met head on by a code of personal holiness that somehow has come to exclude normal interactions with our neighbours. (Hugh Halter & Matt Smay make this point well in their book, “The Tangible Kingdom.”)

And it’s so opposite to the way of Jesus. Think of how many folk we know who would be so uncomfortable to attend the kind of event where Jesus conducted his inaugural miracle, where Jesus turned water into wine. Why the miracle? Because they had already, imagine this, finished all the wine far earlier than the hosts had anticipated. Why did Jesus chose to turn water into wine at a party where in all likelihood, if you’re at all honest with the context, some had already had a bit too much? Why is this his inaugural miracle? I suspect it’s very intentional.

So while it’s easy to point the finger at how structure and programs rob us of time needed to interact with average non-church attending Canadians, we really have a much deeper systemic problem that needs to be addressed long before making church “simpler,” will have any kingdom impact.

The family of churches Redwood is a part of, the Christian & Missionary Alliance, are a part of what historically has been called the holiness movement.  My  hunch is,  we really need to wrestle far more deeply with what true holiness is all about. Perhaps we would do well to learn and teach more intentionally that holiness is more about who we become and what we can do instead of defining holiness as those things we don’t do. It’s not that holiness doesn’t bring limitations, it’s that holiness is so much more than that, and so often the limitations we list may not be consistent with the way of Jesus.

Further I would think after looking more closely at Jesus in the Gospels, that what holiness looks like more than anything else is love and that true holiness expresses itself by loving God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength and loving our neighbour as ourselves.

I suspect if we could learn to be holy even as Jesus was holy, if we would look and act and hang out in culture a lot more like Jesus, then program church versus non-program church, versus sticky church, versus creating a plausibility context and so on would really become non-issues.

Maybe I’m too simplistic, but I suspect that if those of us who follow Christ would just start to look and love a little more like Christ, and if our churches began to act a bit more like how we see Jesus in the Gospels, we would see spiritual transformation sweep across our cities, regions and nation and beyond.