The challenge of the 21st
century Church in the West is its relevance to its immediate cultural context,
because ecclesia / church is inseparably connected to the culture it finds
itself within.[1] The
world craves relevant and genuine incarnational community and the institutional
church has failed to deliver it. Frost and Hirsch write, “We must admit that
Christendom, particularly its ecclesiological and its missiological
manifestations, amounts to something of a failed experiment.”[2]
It is no wonder there is a movement within postmodernism to express itself
through a willingness to challenge contemporary and institutional expressions
of church, church in a box. Leonard Sweet in his endorsement of the book, The Shaping of Things to Come writes,
For the first
time we in the West are living in what has been called a ‘post-Christendom
era.’ Most people throughout the Western world have seen what the Church has to
offer, and they have found it wanting. The current credibility gap has made it
hard to communicate the gospel with clarity and authenticity. Paradoxically,
this is the case even though it is currently a time of almost unprecedented
openness to the issues of God, faith, and meaning. This is a time when the need
for, and relevance of, the gospel has seldom been greater, but the relevance of
the Church has seldom been less. If ever there was a time for innovative
missionary effort in the West, it is now.[3]
The postmodern discontent challenges the contemporary and
institutional churches praxis (practices) and has led to the missional church movement.[4]
The missional church movement functions through the perspective that Christ
followers are to posture themselves to live out the Gospel in culture, as an
incarnational community of Christ followers versus the Attractional, Propositional
and Colonial system of the contemporary and institutional church.[5]
George Peters asserts, “If man is to be reached, he must be reached within his
own culture.”[6] Church
culture in the West has followed the pattern of “Attractional, Propositional
and Colonial”[7] as
its default system throughout the modernist period. Sweet observes, “The
attractional church thinks that if they build it, and build it hip and cool,
people will come.”[8] The
missional church movement is concerned with what does it really mean to be the
ecclesia / church of Christ in culture? The emerging American mission field
with its postmodern, post-Christendom, its paganism and neo-paganism, diversity
and pluralist shift has led many in the missional movement to question the
formation of the church’s ecclesiology. Craig Van Gelder, noted professor of
congregational mission, asserts the challenge of the changing culture requires
a reassessment of ecclesiology,
This involves
the issue of ecclesiology (ecclesia = ‘church’; -ology = ‘the study of’). In the midst
of our changing world, we are in constant need of continuing to engage in the
study of the church, to explore its nature, to understand its creation and
continuing formation, and to carefully examine its purpose and ministry.[9]
One of the most prominent missiologists to emerge in the
conversation about the issue of ecclesiology is Lesslie Newbigin.[10]
His ideologies’ concerning what has become known as the “missional church conversation” has helped to largely form the
missional theology. He questioned the churches methodology for engaging culture
in the West, he writes, “What would be involved in a missionary encounter
between the gospel and this whole way of perceiving, thinking, and living that
we call ‘modern Western Culture?”[11]
Newbigin helped provide a renewed reflection on the issue of the ecclesial expression
in the western cultural context. Sweet describes the construct of the missional
church’s identity as it seeks to express itself as it in emerging cultures. He
constructs this in the acrostic MRI, Missional, Relational and Incarnational. Sweet
asserts, “Missional is the mind of God. Mission is where God’s head’s at. Relational
is the heart of God. Relationship is where God’s heart is. Incarnational is the
hands of God. Incarnation is what God’s hands are up to.”[12]
All this has led to tension filled conversations about the postmodern and post-Christian
culture that has lost interest in the church and how it intersects with
mainstream culture, but of even greater concern than the mainstream culture are
the culturally marginalized for whom Jesus is concerned.
[1] Paul
G. Hiebert and Eloise Hiebert Meneses, Incarnational Ministry: Planting
Churches In Band, Tribal, Peasant, and Urban Societies (Baker Books, 1995),
41.
[2] Frost
and Hirsch, The Shaping of Things to Come, 15.
[3]
Ibid.
[4]
For more information concerning the history of the missional church Brad Brisco
delineates the development of the movement in relationship to Western culture; “History
of Missional Church « Missional Church Network”, n.d.,
http://missionalchurchnetwork.com/history-of-missional-church/, (accessed
August 23, 2011).
[5] Missional is defined as people or
“individuals actively committed to living a ‘sent’ life in the context of
community.” Incarnational: “. . . the
posture, tone, motives, and heart of Jesus; those who physically represent him
in a particular location.,” Hugh
Halter and Matt Smay, The Tangible Kingdom: Creating Incarnational
Community: The Posture and Practices of Ancient Church Now, 1st ed. (San
Francisco CA: Jossey-Bass, 2008), xi;
Sweet, So Beautiful, 17–21.
[6] George
W. Peters, A Biblical Theology of Missions (Moody Press, 1984).
[7] Sweet,
So Beautiful, 18.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Craig
Van Gelder, The Missional Church and Denominations: Helping Congregations
Develop a Missional Identity (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2008), 2.
[10]
For a biographical background see Lesslie
Newbigin and Paul Weston, Lesslie Newbigin: Missionary Theologian: a reader
(Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2006); George R. Hunsberger, Bearing the
Witness of the Spirit: Lesslie Newbigin’s Theology of Cultural Plurality
(Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 1998); James M. Hunt, Lesslie Newbigin:
Apologete to Our Postmodern Society (Wake Forest University. Dept. of
Religion, 1995).
[11] Lesslie
Newbigin, Foolishness to The Greeks (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 1986),
1.
No comments:
Post a Comment