Overarching all the issues presented by Van Gelder is the concept of bringing the gospel to the people in the world in which we find ourselves. Each of the 18 issues he then presents show how we have to change fundamental thought patterns to reach out to a world that is quickly abandoning modernity.
Part of the problem is that this missiology is still developing. We are still exploring what it means to be a church that recognizes that Christian people don't have their lives together any more than secularists and, from that point, figure out what it means to reach out to that fragmented world. We still have to figure out how to embrace diversity as a gift from God. We have to figure out what it means to be the ones in the minority and how we give a public face to the gospel as those in the minority status. We have to learn how to reach beyond denominational lines in order to work together to bring make the kingdom of God real in our communities.
If these changes are difficult to process on as grand a scale as North America, it is even more difficult on the local church level where such changes aren't just theories or ideas in a book written by a theologian or by a pastor who runs a megachurch that boasts a few thousand in attendance at a single service. The local church is where the rubber meets the road on missiologial issues. We can talk about reaching out to broken people, but what happens when the homeless guy shows up at Sunday morning worship with bags carrying all his possessions in tow? As Jason expressed in his example, what happens when people from a different cultural background show up at the door? Are the people in our churches willing to reach out to its community not as Catholics, Greek Orthodox, Baptists, Lutherans, Methodists, Church of God-ers and Brethren in Christ, but as followers of Christ, plain and simple?
3 comments:
Right on Tammie, the absence of a holistic gospel embodied in a kingdom community is the cry of ECM and radicals such as some Sojourners, Church of the Savior, Willimon & Hauerwas, Anabaptists, John Perkins, and others. . . I appreciate andn value your passion and zeal for the kingdom to become a "realized reality", in other words for the "aleady, yet not kingdom" to become a bit more already! The ECM has many facets and streams.
Right on Tammie, the absence of a holistic gospel embodied in a kingdom community is the cry of ECM and radicals such as some Sojourners, Church of the Savior, Willimon & Hauerwas, Anabaptists, John Perkins, and others. . . I appreciate and value your passion and zeal for the kingdom to become a "realized reality", in other words for the "aleady, yet not kingdom" to become a bit more already! The ECM has many facets and streams.
Tammie-
Thanks for your post. I like the way Van Gelder (I think) says it in that people need to be loyal to a shared vision rather than a denomination. The funny/tragic thing is that people have had pretty strong loyalty to a certain denomination, but really din't know the distinctives of their specific denomination. It is like today people that are loyal to a church (which isn't as strong today) but have no idea what the overall vision/misson statement is.
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