So I'm about as committed to this blog as I am about doing my own journal, which isn't much. Sorry my performance has been so sporadic. But there's been lots going on.
I attended a conference led by Dan Kimball of Vintage Faith church in Santa Cruz, CA. He's written a handful of books, most noteworthy is Emerging Worship. He's about creating worship gatherings for new generations of folks as we enter our own postmodern world that defies definition. There's no dumbing down of worship, but a lifting up of worship that reclaims some of the most ancient practices of the church.
Anyway, he led a conference that I attended and had an interesting metaphor that I want to explore. His contention: Most Christians have become citizens of a bubble instead of citizens of God's kingdom. To support this he lifts up how Christians have carefully created their own forms of entertainment (Christian music, movies, and art), their own forms of clothing (T-shirts, jewelry, socks) and, yes, their own forms of candy (see Scripture Candy).
By doing so, Christians have been known in the world not for their ability to announce the coming of God's reign in and through the person of Jesus of Nazareth but for their ability to consume and to look weird while doing it. Kimball asks the question of: What do we look like to the world when we seclude ourselves in such a manner? Do we lose any ability to relate to those who do not know Christ?
We have become citizens of the Bubble. I recognize it within my own sense of self. I have grown up in the church, made most of my friends in the church, and over the last five years have sequestered myself by studying about the church in Seminary. Now that I am out into the world, I'm discovering that I'm having a hard time figuring out what questions the non-churched are exactly asking of us. This scares me.
Jesus said to go out into all the world. We have gone out, staked out our territory, built our buildings, and have waited for the world to come and search us out. I belong to another bubble within that bubble called the ELCA. Citizens of the ELCA bubble have a hard time relating to other Christians and their take on faith. I even saw in recent confirmation curriculum that it's recommended we poke fun at the faith stories of other Christians in order to show our own faith stories of a life lived by baptismal faith. This scares me even more!
Over time, the longer you are in a church community, the less non-Christian friends you will have. I spoke with a woman recently who is fired up about evangelism, but doesn't know where to start because everyone she knows, all of her friends, belong to the church. She lives in the bubble and the bubble has been exposed for her. Now she's reaching outside that bubble.
So how do we pop the bubble? How do we extricate ourselves from behind our well-fortified buildings, theological systems, and liturgies in order to encounter the ones to whom Jesus sends us? How do we motivate and equip those whom we lead with the mindset that we are Christians as a verb, the ones who are sent, not the ones who sit down?
The answer starts by popping your bubble. Check it out!
Grace and peace,
pt
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There's no doubt that the church has to catch up with the times -- not only our cultural time, but more so our kairos time to discern the wonderful new opportunities Holy Spirit is calling us to for the proclamation of our ancient story. However, I must say from what I've read, including the link to the booklet, I'm left wanting.
It seems to me that these are technical changes -- some drastic and some minor, but not much more than rearranging furniture in the church buildings. If we truly are to escape our bubble then we need to honor it first. Only once we recognize the value it has in serving Christ for so many centuries will we then detect its limitations. We need to let the story of God's revelation in Jesus shape us and send us.
It took the church nearly 100 years after the beginning of the Enlightenment to catch up with moderninty. Now the majority of the church clings to moderninity as some leaders within try to catch up with postmodernity 80 years after its conception and now on the down side of its peak. By the time the church catches up to postmodernity some new era will have already replaced it.
We need to be conversant w/ culture, no doubt. But we need to know the line not to cross -- the point at which culture begins to shape church over against the story of gospel. I'm not saying what I read here does that...just that we always have to have this concern at the front of our minds.
The only way to escape the bubble is not to pop it (it does serve a purpose). Rather, we need to be shaped with in it, then follow Holy Spirit sending us out to be conversant, then gathering us back in for more shaping.
I'm rambling, and making statements out of ignorance. I hope Holy Spirit equipped you with many gifts through this conference and learning...Then you can just pat me on the head, nod at me, and smile with that look in your eye that says, "that's nice, Kevan."
LOL.....nonetheless, Shalom my friend.
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