When I read Wade Hodges blog post called, Emergent Church of Christ, it was a lit match that has set flame to some fuel gathering in me for a while. This new series called, "Becoming Unchurched" starts now with an introduction, which was my comment on his blog - comment number 10 I believe.
Wade commented on his tribe, the Church of Christ (my tribe as well), and how we will fare as the postmodern turn turns. We're a modern tribe, born of modern parents. How can we live in postmodernity? You might want to read his post here to get the gist.
Here is what I said in comment #10. THis will also serve as the intro to the series:
I’m going off, so beware.
If our tribe is going to have a snowball’s chance, then we are not merely going to have to make lingustic changes, which frankly will be intolerable for many, but we are going to have to flat get unchurched.
Our disease is that we are so churched up that we cannot see dead people. Heck, we can’t even see ourselves. We have no idea whatsoever how embedded we are into our church culture.
For our tribe to think, even for a minute, that we are going to be able to continue to elevate trival and nonsense “issues” like instrumental music and communion correntness and be relevant to people who would love Jesus if they ever saw Him, we are out of our minds.
Practically everything that distinguishes a Church of Christ from any other church denominations is a back burner issue compared to what Jesus did and hoped that we would do. Furthermore, what makes us the same as any other church tribe is even more disturbing than what makes us different. We are unified (whether we like it or not) with conservative evangelicals with a severe, chronic, and probably fatal case of churchitis.
Without acting now and relatively decisively to change our direction, approach to scripture and people, if we do not expand our hermeneutics as it relates to interpretting the scritpure and interpretting people, we are doomed. They’ll put us in the church museum with the Amish.
7 comments:
GO AHEAD ON, BROTHER! Thanks for directing us to Wade's blog, and I look forward to your series. I think you have a calling to be a prophet amongst us. I hope we have ears to hear.
In HIM,
DU
But if you have truth, and truth is ultimately finite and knowable, why would you change, because at that point, change would be sinful.
Here's what I see happening:
Progressive churches like Highland and Woodmont Hills and Oak Hill will continue to look less and less like Churches of Christ most of us know and the more conservative ones will continue to either maintain their levels of membership or continue to decline.
This is an interesting time in our churches and a time of critical transition. The peculiar thing to me is that the result may really look like a synthesis of the two. A strong focus on grace and faith but also doing good works as a response to that.
But that's just my opinion.
Why in the world does something have to look like a Church of Christ? I really mean that. I'm fine if something accidently looks like a Church of Christ, and I really don't care how it got started. But efforts to intentionally make something look like a Church of Christ because there is something inherently right/better/enlightened about it is sapping energy from trying to be the Body of Christ.
How long are we going to chase two rabbits? The Kingdom of God and the Church of Christ are not synonyms. The faster we learn this the better.
***Crap, I'm going off again. Phil, I'm not going off on you by the way***
What I am going off on is the idea that we should preserve something when parts of it are not preserving, NO, are not advancing the Kingdom of God.
What is the point?
Oh, I agree with you, Fajita. Trying to look like something is a mistake, whether it's the current Church of Christ or even the first century church, because it defies those models or patterns above being like Christ.
I'm pretty positive that we agree on this.
I think we may be headed for another non-denomination-wide split -- kind of like we had 100 years ago. Only it'll be the "Wineskins" churches vs. the traditional churches. It's already here in practice; it's just not official.
I think that the Church of Christ splitting is a funny concept (although splits are in and of themselve not funny).
What makes it so funny is that it must fall under the definition of a denomination if it is to split. Yet, we adamantly claim not to be one. We claim not to be a denomination and we do it by splitting. Hmmm.
We do ourselves a tremendous disservice wehn we say we are not something the very moment we are acting like one. It's kind of like writing this sentence, "I am not writing this sentence."
Further, splits inthe future will not look splits in the past. Future splits, which John Alan Turner has poiinted out, will be more like what is already happening in Churches of Christ. It'll just be practiced, but not stated.
I think that the Church of Christ splitting is a funny concept (although splits are in and of themselve not funny).
What makes it so funny is that it must fall under the definition of a denomination if it is to split. Yet, we adamantly claim not to be one. We claim not to be a denomination and we do it by splitting. Hmmm.
We do ourselves a tremendous disservice wehn we say we are not something the very moment we are acting like one. It's kind of like writing this sentence, "I am not writing this sentence."
Further, splits inthe future will not look splits in the past. Future splits, which John Alan Turner has poiinted out, will be more like what is already happening in Churches of Christ. It'll just be practiced, but not stated.
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