Emerge or Submerge
Back at Imago Dei in Portland, the emphasis of how to make the Gospel relevant to the local community is not based upon slick brochures and edgy programming. People wrapping their arms around homeless children, prostitutes, and other forsaken members of society live out the truth that is taught through the church. Church members are called to missionally live out God’s Story, the Gospel, in their everyday relationships with hairdressers, co-workers, neighbors, and family.
Culmination
As we speak into and become part of emergent ministries, let us teach, write, and research in a way that calls the emergent movement to return to Peter’s ancient metaphor of being “resident aliens” (1 Peter 2.11). That metaphor captures the tension as well as any. To be “resident” is to be present and incarnational. To be “alien” is to be countercultural—forming a kingdom culture.
In the words of N.T. Wright (1999), “We live at a time of cultural crisis…Some people are still trying to put up the shutters and live in a pre-modern world, many are clinging to modernism for all they’re worth, and many are deciding that living off the pickings of the garbage heap of postmodernity is the best option on offer. But we can do better than that” (p. 195).
Yes! We can do better than that. I don’t want to embrace modernism or postmodernism. I’m not overly concerned whether our students and colleagues include “cultural relevance” in their lists of values. I’m more interested in calling them to minister by becoming a countercultural presence. “As a countercultural community, Christians will proclaim that Christianity isn’t about me, my needs, my happiness, my fulfillment and my meaning. Countercultural Christianity is also not one of many stories or perspectives on life from which we can borrow this or that insight to create our own religion” (Webber 2003, p. 125). Countercultural Christianity is seeing our role as the historical form of Christ today and following Christ’s incarnational and revolutionary life and ministry.
I hope to challenge others the way my friend Luke challenged me—who not only engaged in dialogue with me about this crucial issue, but embodies countercultural following of Jesus in his family, his ministry, his role as part of the Imago Dei Church in Portland, and much more.
Wolf (2003) says, “To people of faith, I say this: ‘You have been shaped by American culture far too much to insist that you remain countercultural. You don’t want to admit the extent to which your religion has accommodated itself to modern life in the United States’” (p. 4). May sociologists like Wolf draw a very different conclusion when they view the emerging church ten years from now. May they see living pictures of Jesus—both our loving, incarnational presence, and our revolutionary, affrontive lifestyle. Soli deo Gloria!
PR
Sources
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Category: Ministry, Winter 2007
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