One Old Church Adapts

One of our alert members forwarded me this article from this week's New York Times. A white, Southern Baptist Church in Georgia that was sinking woke up to the changing reality around them . . .and changed radically!

An Old Church Adapts

Radical change has a cost and some people were left behind along the way. Not every congregation can and should so radically change, but perhaps far fewer do it who should.

One interesting aspect of this church's transition is the response the church made to a changing world. In their case, the change in the world was evident to those who had eyes to see--internationals were transitioning the neighborhood in significant ways.
For most of us the shifts are less obvious--but just as significant. Our community specifically has groups of people who are as different from traditional Baptist church-goers as the Eastern Europeans and Africans in Georgia. To significantly reach post-moderns may require shifts in our approach and outlook that rival that of the Georgia church and feel radical to all of us to varying degrees.

It seems like the big first issue is to recognize that we are increasingly in a post-Christian culture. This should be no real surprise to us. Peter said that Christians would be residents in an alien culture. The opportunities are no less than the Georgia church faced--increasing numbers of neighbors who do not know much at all about Christ and even less about church.

The second big issue is: what, if anything, are we going to do about it? How pro-active will we be in living out the gospel and sharing the story of Jesus right here in ways that meet people right where they are?

Sep 9 Town Hall summary

Thanks to everyone who was a part of our visioning town hall meeting last week.  The attendance and interest was impressive.  In a nutshell, on behalf of the visioning community, we presented three aspects of the process at this time.  1) We revisited ‘core beliefs’ and distributed a revised draft.  You can view that draft by scanning a couple of posts below.  We welcome your comments.  2) We began a process to identify and articulate core values of the church.  Core values express the ways that we do church.  Every church is different.  These values ought to express what is at the very center of what makes Broadus what it is.  3) We presented three areas in the community for focused ministry in the coming years: a) Senior Adults, b) Wilton Farm, c) Fontana, as representative of the many other similar neighborhoods in the Pantops area.  The visioning community has divided into three teams to research and examine these areas and paint a picture of what these ministries could look like over the next 10 years.  We will come back with a report and further conversation in Town Hall session on November 18.  Thanks for your input and continued participation in this process. 

What is postmodernism?

The term ‘postmodern’ gets thrown around a lot these days to describe everything from philosophy to architecture to technology, to how ‘disobedient and disrespectful’ the younger generation is today.  But what does it really mean?  Admittedly the definition is a bit slippery.  I heard a bit of an interesting conversation on NPR last night that was helpful to me in articulating what postmodernism is all about.  The speaker put it in terms of English grammar and a bit of history. 

 

When the Enlightenment emerged and, with it, science and reason, the world of thought was broken into two very different spheres: Fact and Opinion.  Facts were things that could be ‘proved’ scientifically.  Opinions were anything that could not be ‘proved’ by the methods that were approved for proving things.  Get it?  So, Fact and Reason is the world of science.  Opinion is the world of emotion and religion.  Religion, faith, belief—whatever you want to call it was (and still is) relegated to the realm of personal opinion.  So that’s how you get politicians who can say, “My religion will have no influence on the way I govern the nation.”  Think about that statement again.  What they are saying is that My religion (the world of opinion) will not have an impact on the way I govern (the world of facts and reason) the nation.  In a modern context that is a perfectly acceptable answer.  Or take a church-going religious person who prays on Sunday (his personal opinion) and then runs his business (the world of reason) during the week according to what is reasonable for generating maximum profit without any consideration for Christian virtues that might inform how he treats his employees. 

 

This distinction gives rise to breaking our lives apart into Public and Private.  Economics and Science are public.  Religion and Faith are private.  Thus, “My (private) religion will have no influence on the way I govern (public) the nation.”  Well, that’s just one example.  It’s really a question of how we know things.  How do you know something is true?  The modernist says, “I have facts that prove it.  If it cannot be proven by the scientific method, it’s just your personal opinion.”  

 

Now, in terms of grammar.  In grammar, there are three persons: 1^st, 2^nd, and 3^rd.  (I, you, he/ she/it)

 

First person is the world of opinion (What I believe to be true; what I feel)

Third person is the world of ‘fact’ (What is proven)

 

Postmodernism looks at this and asks two questions, “Who are you who believe something to be true?” and “By what criteria do you determine something to be fact?”  The answer that postmodernists offer for both questions is the 2^nd person—the world of social location—the you (plural, likely).  Each of us is part of a larger story that any of us standing alone.  Acknowledge it or not, you are part of a complex social matrix comprised of your socioeconomics, skin color, religious heritage, national identify, time in history, and on and on.)  This “2^nd person” identity is informative and formative for who you are even when you think you are coming to independent conclusions about what you believe.  And furthermore, this “2^nd person” identify is formative for how you determine what is factual (3^rd person). 

 

Some postmodernists go so far as to say that there is no 1^st person and no 3^rd person.  You cannot come to independent conclusions aside from who you are in your social location and there are no universal facts at all—everything is a product of your social location.  (While I’m compelled by the postmodern correction of modernism, I think this goes a bit far—but hey, who am I, right?)

 

This move to postmodernism has everything to do with young people returning to Tradition in worship and church.  The modern manifestation of church is a worship service disconnected from the social construct (the Tradition) from which it comes.  It’s a ‘contemporary’ service that doesn’t use church language, church symbols, or anything having to do with church.  It only focuses on the 1^st person (what are you feeling today—what is your private belief in God and why you should have such a belief (the fact of the authority of the Bible).  Postmodern or ‘emergent’ movements return to the second person and young people are leading the way.  They are saying, “We know we are part of a bigger story and we want to experience it.”  So, let us experience the richness of the Tradition, but make that Tradition as expansive as possible, including elements not found in our parents and grandparents American, Protestant services—that’s not wide or deep enough.  Give us Celtic meditations, Orthodox prayer practices, Catholic candles, give us incense and silence, give us ways to express our own appropriation of the Tradition and then let us lead the way.  Be honest about the chaotic and mysterious origins of the Biblical letters and their formation as the church’s canon.  It’s a 2^nd person book of narrative, not a 3^rd person book of fact disembodied from the community that produced and collected it.  I want to be part of something bigger than me, but also something that makes me part of the community as well.  Give me a worship/ church experience that is 3^rd person (tell me what is known and I can trust), 2^nd person (let me experience who we are together), and 1^st person (let me experience all of this for myself and make it my own.)  Isn’t it interesting in light of the grammar of faith that theologians long ago figured that God is best understood to be Father, Son, and Holy Spirit--One in three persons.

 

      

Visioning Update--Core Beliefs

Thank you to everyone who came to the Visioning Town Hall conversation Sunday evening. I was impressed by both the number of people who attended and also the good questions, interest, and commitment demonstrated by so many of of you. Thank you! As promised, here is the draft of the core beliefs that we discussed. I can't figure out how to link to a word document, so I've just pasted it here. Enjoy!

Core Beliefs

September 9, 2007 Draft

Genesis
God created the world and all that is in it. He created human beings to be in relationship with Him, but when we choose our own desires and exercise our own wills against God, we repeat the sin common to all humanity, alienating ourselves from God, damaging our relationship with one another, fragmenting our society, and abusing our world. Shame, guilt, selfishness, arrogance, greed, and cruelty degrade our lives. All creation suffers in our broken world.

Gospel
The gospel is the good news that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, came into the world to restore us to full relationship with God. As the complete revelation and physical embodiment of God, Christ came to restore wholeness of body, mind, and spirit and to show us how to love as we were meant to love. When we confess Jesus as Lord and believe that God raised him from the dead, we experience reconciliation with God, forgiveness of our sins, fullness of life in this world, and hope for eternal life in the world to come.

Acts
We believe that a church is a local body of baptized believers whose commonality is their individual experience of Christ as Savior and whose unity is their voluntary association as a spiritual community committed to worship, evangelism, fellowship, study of the Bible, and service in Christ’s name. We desire to be worthy of the New Testament designation of the church as the “body of Christ”; thus, with Him as our Savior and example, and with the Holy Spirit as our empowering guide, we will strive to live as a community of faith, to embody the love of Christ in relationship with one another, to minister to the broken world, and to share the good news of Jesus with everyone who does not know him.

Reconciliation
We live with the assurance that God restores us to right relationship with himself through our faith in Jesus Christ. Having received this gift of salvation, we are called to share the gospel message and live our new life in Christ in ways that foster peace and reconciliation among people and nations.

Destiny
Until Christ returns, we will strive to be faithful stewards of God’s creation and
ambassadors of his kingdom on earth, trusting the future to God, knowing that he alone has the power and grace to bring all history to completion and fulfill our hope to live with him in the eternal and perfect kingdom to come.

Scriptures
We affirm the Holy Bible as the inspired Word of God and the basis of our beliefs. We interpret the Bible in the light of Jesus Christ as the fulfillment of the law and the prophets and the complete revelation of God.

Choosing a Bible Translation

I get asked from time to time, “Which Bible translation should I buy?”  It’s a reasonable question.  Over 50 modern translations exist in the English language.  But that is further complicated by the many commentaries and versions added to the biblical text: The Women’s Bible, The Student’s Bible, The Oxford Bible, The Ryrie Study Bible, etc.  These take one of the 50 translations and then add some commentary.  So which to choose?  Hard to say.  If I were going out right now to buy my first Bible to study and take to church, I would probably buy the Life Application Bible in either the New International Version (NIV) or the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV).  But the Bible I use these days is the English Standard Version with no commentary.  I enjoy this translation especially for use in preaching as it avoids the old English of the King James, but still reads nicely.  Plus, I believe it to be accurate in most cases.

Here’s an attempt from another pastor to give some help for Bible translations.  http://www.firstpresb.org/translations.htm.

Bottom line when you are standing in Barnes and Nobles looking at the shelves and shelves of Bibles: find the one you think you will actually read.  And then enjoy!