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I’ve just been listening to a lecture given by N. T. Wright, Bishop of Durham (Episcopus Dunelm), on Jesus’ knowlege of his own identity.  Vocation has been on my heart of late; not only in the missiological necessities but in its relationship to our true identity. 

Wright manages to do something that I have rarely seen among true scholars - and even among many who merely bear the name “teacher” - including myself: he is able, through his deep scholarship and understanding, to lead us, not into an academic exstasy, but into true worship and discipleship.  Even amidst the fluency of many languages - Greek and Hebrew being the most obvious here - Wright leads us to a deep understanding of Jesus which inspires true relationship with God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit, rather than footnotes.

I have long held that Christian scholarship and education, rightly practiced, is a true vocation in and of itself.  As such, it can be, for the scholar/educator, an act of worship, a source of true joy, and a vector for others to be drawn up into worship.  Nevertheless, my experience has been that many scholars take so much pride in questions and deconstruction, in academic debates and frank scoffing that rarely has scholarship led me to worship.  The exceptions, of course, are many of my truly Christian professors from Seminary, and a few other scholars whom I have met in books.  In these cases even the footnotes were the adornment of the priestly uniform as we act as the kingdom of priests serving God for the world’s renewal.

As a teaching preacher, I must remember that this mature expression of scholarship need not work itself into a frenzy to bring out passion, but instead speaks so lovingly of the God whom it has come to know academically that, even where we differ or do not understand, we still resonate with to the glory of God. 

Ah, that one day I may become like that.

I listened to a talk today by NT Wright on Jesus and the Kingdom, in which he said a very profound thing:

There is a profound difference between seeing Jesus as having good ideas and having Good News. 

What do you think?

Yesterday I promised some thoughts reflective of the contextualization issues presented. 

So today, let’s begin with my context:

Living in a city of around 40 000 in a self-declared rust-belt area, bereft of its once-prosperous steel mills and automotive industry, the economic issues weigh on everyone’s mind.  Those with the will to leave are doing so - looking for work elsewhere.  The younger generations who have stayed have compounding social issues including lack of education, early family starts, with non-traditional families being the statistical norm, and rates of substance abuse higher than the national average.  There are still siginificant racial divides and the rich and poor are worlds apart.  The governments in the area, in the popular mindset, are hopelessly corrupt and self-serving, and incompetent to solve the ills of the area, or even to salve the wounds of the people.  Despair infects much of daily life.  The way people talk around here a lot of times, you’d think they’re stuck in the worst place on earth.

But when God speaks to those issues, when God transforms despair into hope, hatred into love, poverty into abundance, corruption into justice, then the message of Christ truly may take hold here in this Mahoning Valley.  The contextualization issues are not so much social customs or language (although the church is a foreign concept to increasingly significant numbers of people), but more the attitude and approach to life in the society that has those serious issues.

How we contextualize the message of Christ in this environment is an essential question.  Do it well, and the community turns around.  Do it poorly, and God will send someone else.  Of course, N.T. Wright’s comments about taking on the powers that call themselves “Lord” in this community will create a ruckus, when they discover what is really meant by “Jesus is Lord,” just like it has everywhere for all time since the days of Christ. 

The first step here is to acknowledge injustice, despair and powerlessness over economics, politics, etc., and invite people to invest faith in Christ’s transforming power.  The power of Christ will change nations. 

Any other thoughts?

This evening I read several articles about issues of Contextualization, the missiological concept of bringing the Good News of Jesus to bear on a culture other than one’s own.  From the missiological angle, we had Andrew Jones’ series of three articles (here, here and here), interacting with some rather obtuse comments by some serious theologians and relating it to actual mission work.

The context of his last article is this:

I am writing from an internet cafe in the downtown city of Dubai, United Arab Emirates. All the men around me are in turbans and are smoking Sheeshas. I have just drunken a long fruit drink as I contemplated what would happen if I just stood up and starting sharing about Christ without any regard to context. How would I communicate it? What have they heard already? If they decided to submit to Isa and follow him, would they still remove their shoes to pray or wear them like the westerners? Could they call him “Isa” as in the Quran, or should they use the English name “Jesus” and would he then be a blue-eyed blond-haired Jesus?

Much to think about. Carelessness kills.

(from part 3)

Jones contrasts this with that causes-us-to-wince-these-days way of doing things:

When some missionaries went to Africa with complete disdain for contextualization, they brought pipe-organs with them so the natives could worship God properly, without their nuances of culture.
When some missionaries went to North America with complete disdain for contextualization, they took away their native dances and forced the converts to learn English so that they could worship God properly, in the correct language, and without their nuances of culture.

(from part 1)

The contrast in thought-patterns is amazing.

Then, in the worship context, we had Steve Taylor, the Emergent Kiwi:

I’ve been thinking about worship this week. I’m feeling stuck in a loop that goes like this:

Most contemporary church worship I experience simply invites me to sing songs. Up the band comes, away they play and down I sit. I’m tired of this limited vista.

Most alt.worship I experience invites me into stations. Out comes the art, in comes the creativity and down I sit. I’m tired of the individuality of it all. Me in my small experience.

At least when you sing, it’s corporate. At least when you sing, it invites you out of your head and into your intuition and emotion.

So here’s the question that’s bugging me: what are ways that we might connect with God that are corporate and non-rational, that are NOT sung worship?

From his article here.

The struggle to engage people in a way that truly connects them to God’s life, as Steve is struggling to do, is truly the driving force behind contextualization in missiology.

And then, via Paul Fromont (another NZ [Kiwi] writer), the Right Reverend Bishop of Durham, N. T. Wright:

If the church is to be shaped by mission, mission is to be shaped by eschatology, and eschatology by the Bible itself… Ecclesiology, in other words, is not simply the extrapolation of a historical community from the first apostolic foundations: it is also the anticipation in the present time of what God intends as the summing up of all things in Christ [i.e. Eschatology].

So far, so good… but then the real gem, also quoted by Fromont:

Let the Bible shape your eschatology; let that biblical eschatology shape your mission; and then let that eschatologically-shaped mission shape your view of the church; and you’ll find that, instead of the shrill functional pragmatism of today’s muddled left, insisting on breaking old rules because they’re outdated, and the equally shrill and functional pragmatism of today’s muddled right, insisting on keeping old rules because they’re the old rules even at the cost of unity, you will have a robust, biblical, Christ-centred, Spirit-led, costly ecclesiology that will be in good shape to take forward God’s mission into the next generation.

Of course, Wright is wrestling with the Anglican Communion issue, but this, I believe shapes the church of today.  I’m still forming my own thoughts on all of this, but all of these writer-practitioners seem to be drinking of one and the same Spirit.  As I process my thoughts I’ll try to put them here.

But, as usual, your thoughts first.