EngineeredTheology

Last month there were two conferences taking place. The first was in Wheaton, and was a large group to discuss the impacts of N.T. Wright on modern Christian theology. The second was Together for the Gospel (T4G) which is a “bi-annual conference that encourages pastors to take their stand together for the gospel” (from their FAQ). Fortunately for me, both are available on line: T4G and Wheaton.

To me, it is quite fitting to have two conferences occurring at the same time. One focusing on how N.T. Wright’s reading of Paul has changed the landscape of the discussion about justification, and the other focusing on protecting the gospel from just such changes. In listening to both, I’ve tried to be as neutral as possible (which is quite impossible because I already have strong agreements with Wright). Without getting into anything actually said, this has been my overall impression.

Lexicon and Presentation
From the start, there is a large difference in how the lectures were prepared. The Wheaton conference was highly technical, focusing on very academic debates. For those not already well versed in their “ologies”, there would have been only one speaker that would have been largely understandable. While there were jokes (and some quite funny ones), they would really only be understandable to people really following along. Otherwise the presentations were basically dry and like a collegiate lecture. On the other hand, the lectures at T4G were on the level of a Sunday sermon. No expectations of terminology and dramatic swings in tone and volume at important points.

Criticism
The Wheaton conference was conducted as a scholarly debate. While all the speakers generally agreed with Wright, each one brought forth the main point they think he has missed, overlooked, or completely gotten wrong. There was criticism within the people in the room, but stressed unity for the church as a whole. T4G is a conference to defend a certain idea. Because of this, there was unity within the room, and criticism for the church as a whole.

A priori
Even coming out of the gate of their talks, there were certain things that were explicitly stated as assumed. At Wheaton, it was assumed that to understand Jesus, you need to understand a historical Jesus. He was a real man who walked on the earth in a certain time. It is foundationally important to understand Jesus in this context, and to read the gospels in such a way that they would have made sense in that setting. At T4G, most explicitly stated by John Piper, the assumption is that understanding Jesus does not require, and is in fact hindered by, historical research. Jesus is completely found by what is contained in the bible, and it is complete in its portrayal of him.

In all these things, there were certainly good points in each. I suspect that the average attender of the T4G conference (mainly pastors and some laypeople) had logged more hours in seminary than at Wheaton (current students, some pastors, and laypeople). The main drawback to the Wheaton conference is the high barrier of theological entry. Without a strong foundation in the topics, many people will be lost in the talks. It isn’t that the concepts are too difficult, but I don’t think the speakers have reached the ability to state things simply (with the exception of N.T. Wright).

It is the comparison in criticism that worries me. At the Wheaton conference there seamed to be a stronger desire to look for what is true vs. the T4G conference protecting what they know is true. Personally, I get concerned when we speak of absolute truths. It isn’t that they don’t exist, but we need to be extremely careful when we presume to have them. I can not in good conscience turn off my mind to search for god in new ways and assume that where I am is the culmination of Christianity.

The a priori assumptions then comes down to personal belief, but is obviously one of the key differences in the content of the conferences.

I hear often the informal critiques of the emergent church movement as dangerous because of relativistic thinking. Usually it plays out as “they don’t believe the bible is true” or “they don’t believe Jesus is the only way” or “they don’t believe in X” – substituting X for whatever astounding point is that makes the critique more sensational. I suspect the real frustration with relativism (and I’ve hard this used against Rob Bell) is that many in the emergent church find ways to not give straightforward answers to yes or no questions. It is not due to an attempt to be evasive or dishonest, but some questions cannot be so simply answered.

To begin the explanation, we must start with the idea of a worldview. As we grow up, we learn facts. If, as someone was growing up, they also told by their parents often that they are really smart. They learn to read before their friends, they head to school and their teacher comments how well they are doing. We would expect the child to take these facts and put them together in a logical fashion to build a worldview – I am smart. Once this is put together, every piece of evidence is measured against their worldview. If the child gets an A on a test, it agrees nicely with their worldview. If an F, they will need to explain that in terms of their worldview (I am smart, but I must have been tired, or the teacher was bad, or the test was unfair). As time goes on, the worldview can change. If a student begins to do more an more poorly on tests, these facts begin to get more difficult to explain; the worldview must be modified to accommodate this new information. So, the worldview is deconstructed, and a new worldview is built with the new pieces of data – I am average.

Raw data has no meaning of its self. It must be filtered and assembled together with other data to create meaning. Raw data is always objective “I was driving 60 MPH”, “John 1:1 is X in the NIV” and comes from standard measurements. Meaning is always subjective “I was driving too fast”. Making sense of data (providing meaning) is the process of taking a new piece of data, comparing it with the other data we have assembled (worldview) and assembling it together in a logical way to create meaning.

It is because of this that statements such as “I read the bible for what it says (objectively)” is nonsensical. It would imply that if they were asked what the bible says about a topic (say abortion) they would pick a verse out at random and allow the hearer to make their subjective analysis. Any organisation automatically puts meaning behind the text, which means their own personal worldview has been read into it, and therefore must be subjective. This is where my standard (and understandably annoying) response to “but the bible says X” comes from (e.g “the bible says a lot of things”). What scares many people is that if we cannot ever definitively say the bible says X about something, it then implies the bible says nothing.

The way out of the dilemma is to understand the reason why I can not say “the bible says X”. The reason is because my worldview is built on a very small sample size of all the data. I respect people who have different worldviews because they have different pieces of data to work with than I do. It is no longer an argument between “right” and “wrong”, but a give and take to understand why someone would put the puzzle together in a certain way. Hopefully by understanding them, I can strengthen my worldview to more fully encapsulate more data, and take one step closer to truth. Truth, much like perfection, is a target – never a destination.

Truth does exist, but I am not so arrogant to believe that I have it pinned down.

I’ve been working through stacks of books (the current ones having me bogged down for some time). I’m wondering what is the right balance between reading the thoughts of others vs. spending time to discover things for myself. On the level of the bible, what is the correct ratio of studying the base narrative vs. all the meta-narratives (or even meta-meta-narratives). The problem is that I can read a science or philosophy book and somewhat tune out (like watching a movie). I am a passive participant in learning. Actually pondering the same thoughts on my own involves firing all the neurons (and having the time to do so) – it’s really tiring work.

Certainly there is no dichotomy of propriety between the two, but a balance of both to both steer you farther and also keep on course. I think my balance is far too heavily weighted by lethargy.

The terms modern, postmodern, and emergent have been getting thrown around quite a bit within the Christian circle for the past 4-5 years. While these terms have some meaning outside the Christian subculture, they take on some specific connotations when referring to religion.

To start, there was a pre-modern time. This was the term we give to the time before the renaissance. For Christian thought, this was the time when the holy catholic (with a lower-case “c”) determined what was orthodoxy. We would label much of the belief as dogma because there was no identifiable logical progression of ideas.

The age of enlightenment then came to shed light on the dark ages. Dogma was examined and belief was transformed. Theology began to be determined solo scriptura, and the bible studied to define exactly what was, and was not being taught. As we have progressed into the 1980′s and 1990′s extra biblical text and histories began to be compared against the bible. Groups like the Jesus Seminar then compared biblical text and began to define what was most likely, and likely not factual history.

In very broad terms, the age of enlightenment came to help organise and define the world. If there was an idea that could not be categorised and logically defined, it was cast out for one that was more scientifically sound. This sort of reasoning drove the industrial revolution and helped bring the technological advances we have today.

The church, for at least the past 30 years has found its self in uncomfortable waters. When the light of science came squarely to bear on the Christian faith, the church saw its self staring down into heresy and areas it could not go. The resurrection, divinity of Jesus, and the recorded miracles in the bible were non-negotiable. When faced with meeting modernity head on with these questions, Christianity fled back to much of it’s pre-modern dogma. To date, the majority of Protestant churches have halted their theology advances with C.S. Lewis (and the Roman Catholic churches far earlier). Even some of his ideas, if observed closely, would be somewhat suspect by today’s mind. Have theologians had nothing to contribute to Christianity in the last 50 years?

While Christian thought has halted, the organisational structure has embraced modernism wholeheartedly. Much of modern American Christianity has become very structured, organised, and logical. Christianity is big business, with sizeable money and political influence. What we have is a super fit state of the art body running off of a wilted underused mind.

Post-modernism is labeled aptly for the period after modernism. For me, most of what is labeled as post-modern is not what I would define as a departure from modernism, but the evolution of modernism. Much of the green movement and the current spirituality shows much of the same fingerprint as modernism. It isn’t so easy as to label Hummers and Twinkies as modern and call the Prius and Whole Foods post-modern. Both come from the same industrial, logic driven, marketing machine. Organic food has some scientific backing to be better for us than McDonalds – and we have realised that the Hummer lifestyle is not sustainable. This is not a departure from modernism, just its next evolution. For me, the Christian face of post-modernity is Mark Driscoll. While it is probably unfair and short sited of me, much of the post-modern movement has been a new marketing scheme (with new Web 2.0 graphics!!) wrapped around much of the same pre-modern theology.

For me, what is a departure from modernism is not well defined (but the least threatening term I hear is emergent). If it is a departure from the structured logic and definition of modernism, it is not very surprising that the movement is largely undefined (and unnamed). It is not a retreat into pre-modernism, but an acknowledgement that not all life is conveniently defined and organised. It has reviewed the best that modernism has to offer and found it wanting. Theology has been redefined, and the problems that kept the church away from modernist theology are found to only exist within modernism.

This current time is difficult because a modern church cannot accept any theology outside of it’s own orthodoxy. With a deterministic viewpoint, you have mapped out the truth and anything outside of that truth must be false. A truly postmodern viewpoint does not even traffic in the same thought patterns, so little effective communication is had over the wall. I can feel change coming, and I suspect a lot will be changing in the American Christian landscape over the next 10 years – into what I cannot say.

For a while now I have contemplated the role of a pastor (and implicitly church organisation as a whole). I use the word pastor knowing that technically the word pastor has a very defined meaning. I use it the local form to mean “the guy running the church”. Most pastors I have come in contact with feel, and represent themselves, as the shepherds of the people in their congregation. What the lingo boils down to is a conglomeration of many roles. They are the chief visionary, expositor of God, primary counsellor, and director of finances. Basically, they are the head in chief of everything. Most pastors do this not in any megalomaniac sense (but some do), but they feel it is their responsibility and what it means to be a “pastor”.

For a while I have reacted negatively against this role. There is no one person is capable of fulfilling all these roles, and those who try find themselves burnt out after a very short period of time. I came to wonder if the true role of a pastor is not specifically the leader, but just another (equal) role needed in a healthy church. Much as teachers are needed, they are not pastors. Nor are theologians, counsellors, prophets, etc. A pastor may have a gift in one of these areas, but can often cause harm when those roles are not left to others in the congregation who have those specific gifts. A pastor would be one who brings these different entities into one cohesive unit. He is no more in charge than any one else who chooses to help lead, but is responsible to helping all these people come to some forms of agreement. In short, they are the chief administrator, nothing else.

While we are not just called to repeat history, I began to think about the role of the pastor in the early church. There is no doubt that in the Pauline epistles and in early Christian writings the pastor did lead the church in a more directive way than I laid out above. This leadership was not the CEO type leadership that many assume it to be, but a father/child relationship with the congregation (Gal 4:18, Eph 6:1, 2 Cor 12:14, etc). This view of that role tends to split the difference between the two roles. I am everything to my children. I provide for all their needs, their primary counsellor and teacher, expositor of God, and also their disciplinarian. What many pastors have forgotten is that children need to grow up. If I am still performing all of these tasks in the same way for my children in 20 years I will have failed as a parent. There must be a point in time when a parent moves from being the chief of their children, to not just an equal, but to hope that their children become wiser and more capable than the parent. Failure to realise this has left churches in their current state – an overworked pastor performing duties he should no longer be doing and a congregation full of overgrown children.

I did some quick statistics check from the Barna Group to see how many people give regularly to a church. The statistics I’ll quote are from this article, but I’ll use generic terms because the article’s definitions of “evangelical” and “born-again” are a little deceiving.

Less than 10% of card carrying christians give a substantial portion of their income (churches, not for profits, etc). Of the “active” subset of those, around 25% give substantially. The assumption I will make is that people who give money, are often the same group who give of their time (it is one thing to give $10 a week to starving kids in china and feel like you did your part, but I have a tough time believing people would give many thousands of dollars a year to something and not be at least somewhat invested in what is going on). At the same time, I can imagine there are some very active christians who do not give significantly. That being said, I can not expect there are a large subset of people who are willing to meet needs with significant investments in time without similar efforts to meet financial needs.

Since not 100% of the people walking through a church door are “active”, let alone card carrying, I’ll make another assumption. I will give that 25% of churchgoers are spending significant portions of their time or money to advance what they feel like christianity is telling them to do.

Now, what if? What if church asked one Sunday for those 75% of people who are just taking up space to stay home that week (then asked the same thing the next week, and the week after until they got the hint)? By giving this many christians the pink slip, church would just dramatically decrease its overhead (both monetary and resource needs) without having any significant impact on income or manpower. The church now has 300% more resources to actually help people. Time to mentor the people who are actually doing something. Money to give to those who actually need it (and time to oversee that money to ensure it is actually doing some good). Time to take care of people in trouble, instead of wasting time pandering to the apathetic.

Of course the idea is crazy, but I’m having a tough time figuring out why…