Reflecting on the Scandal of the Evangelical Memory

As I'm working on putting together interviews for the podcast, I've been working my way through the Missio Alliance "Writing Collectives", a great collection of blog posts that I think really hit the nail on the head when it comes to the state of the church today. I've been posting highlights and thoughts here. 

About four years ago Missio Alliance leader Geoff Holsclaw started a 5 part series of posts entitled "The Scandal of the Evangelical Memory". His idea was the following: 

Like Douglas Quaid in Total Recall, we have been given fake memories and don’t  know who we are.  Our lives are not our own. Our memories have been replaced. And most of us don’t even know it. 

Others have written on the Scandal of the Evangelical Mind and the “Scandal of the Evangelical Heart”, but we need to ask about the Scandal of the Evangelical Memory.  Most of us have had our memories erased, and obviously, that’s a problem.

To be more specific, Holsclaw calls into question the collective memory that many Christians have that says that the rising and falling of Reformed theology is the definitive history of "true" evangelicalism. His argument is that, while there is certainly some overlap, evangelicalism in the sense of faithfulness to the gospel of Christ is a very different and much larger tent than that of Reformed theology. And his hope in writing this series of posts is that all those in the, as he calls it, "messy middle" of evangelicalism are really its true heirs. 

I find these posts just as, if not more, critical today as they were 4 years ago. The identity crisis facing the messy middle of evangelicalism has probably only worsened since Holsclaw wrote these posts. On the one hand disciples of Christ rightly see discipleship as something that cannot be done halfheartedly or with lightly held convictions. On the other hand these same disciples rightly view with suspicion the theological in-fighting that seems to be one of the hallmarks of the "evangelical" church. The messy middle, what I take to be those disciples of Christ who refuse to be labeled either fundamentalist or universalist, is suffering from an identity crisis, and it only seems to be getting worse. 

Holsclaw's response is to recast the narrative of evangelicalism/gospel faithfulness. He starts in his first 3 posts by bringing the story of evangelicalism out of the narrative that it is the pure strain of fundamentalist theology that survived the assault of modernist theology in the early 20th century. Instead he argues that the true story of evangelicalism begins in the 17th century with Pietism and Puritanism. This is important because both of those movements, and subsequent related movements in later centuries, were generally responses to the "mainlining" of Christianity and the over-institutionalizing of the church. In other words, Holsclaw's argument is that true evangelicalism is not a "conservative movement within a liberal society". Rather it was and is a movement of spiritual revival, theology and practice that is radical, not institutional, and oriented towards the reform/transformation of both church and the world. 

Or, to put it even more simply, the true story of evangelicalism is that of radical Christian discipleship versus institutional Christianity. 

The messy middle of evangelicalism of today does have an identity and a lineage. Those in the messy middle represent a long line of disciples who have endeavored to radically follow Christ in and for the world even though the Way of Jesus may not fit into a neat and tidy theological label. Those in the messy middle push back against theological rigidity, recognizing that too often humans turn to it out of fear or pride, and that theology (especially systematic theology) is always limited by human language and can never capture fully the whole truth of God. 

With this in mind, Holsclaw proposes that what the church needs to do next is form a broad evangelical consensus, one that affirms a "Whole Gospel" understanding of salvation (versus a "Soul Gospel" understanding), and one that affirms that each denomination and tradition must be open to learning from others, recognizing we all have our own dangerous blind spots. This broad consensus must also wholeheartedly reject the "Dream of a Christian America", a Tower of Babel that coopted the true radical and life-giving mission of Christ. 

His hope is that Missio Alliance would help facilitate the coming together of this broad evangelical consensus. It's been 4 years and there's a long, long way to go, but it seems like they're going in the right direction! 

toward a helpful critique of the megachurch

As I'm working on putting together interviews for the podcast, I've been working my way through the Missio Alliance "Writing Collectives", a great collection of blog posts that I think really hit the nail on the head when it comes to the state of the church today. I've been posting highlights and thoughts here. 

One of the themes that I'm catching from the writing collectives is a clearer critique of the mega-church. Now I recognize that mega-churches make an easy target, and that in reality they're like every other church: a mix of good and bad, ugly and beautiful, and wonderful and tragic. But what I appreciate about the critique fleshed out in the writing collectives is that it gets at a few blind spots in our culture that, once recognized, really help Christians lead the church in a way that grows and cultivates disciples. 

One such blind spot: our affinity for well-run organizations   

Ever heard of "sheep swapping" or stealing? Again, another easy label to slap on the mega-church. The rebuttal is often that it's actually Christians moving from a bad or dying church to a better one. Survival of the fittest so to speak. And in reality some amount of circulation is good for followers of Christ, and some churches do indeed need to close their doors.

The real issue with growth by transfer is that too often it doesn't lead to the making of disciples, or to the planting of disciple making communities. This is David Fitch's argument in his post Mega Churches Steal Sheep: My Ongoing Debate With Ed Stetzer. When Christians consolidate together into larger, more efficiently and well-run congregations, this tends to amplify two things: 1) Christians identifying first as consumers rather than active agents in Christ's in-breaking Kingdom since there's so much that is run behind the scenes and doesn't involve the typical member, and 2) disconnecting followers of Christ from the day to day, season by season realities of being called as disciple makers and proclaimers of Jesus' Lordship and reign. 

Here's a silly yet hopefully helpful way of looking at it: followers of Christ aren't called simply to show up to the donut shop once a week, we're called to actually learn how to make the donuts, and to do it together. At a mega church there's so much that we don't do that we easily become consumers rather than active participants, and then the fatal next step, at least in the discipleship sense, is that we grow far too comfortable with thinking that we just need little, once a week slices of spirituality to get by, rather than a life filled with the "mysterious and mind-blowing partnership between the presence of Christ and our human activity...His presence is a frame through which to view our practice… and our practice is a frame through which the world can see His presence." 

Churches that are run more professionally and efficiently are generally much easier to attend, and often more attractive. There's fewer problems that we feel need fixing, and we feel we get more bang for our buck (not only financially but also in terms of choosing where to spend a precious weekend morning). But disciples of Christ need to recognize what we give up when we over-prioritize professionalism and efficiency. Making donuts is messy business, and teaching people to make donuts is even messier. But if we avoid or fear the mess, we'll end up missing the whole mission. 

Great, Foundational Stuff

So one of the organizations I came across while praying and discerning about Christ's church is Missio Alliance. What I liked and still like about this organization is how they're reimagining the church for the future. Not only do they hit the nail on the head regarding a lot of the core issues facing Christ's church in a way that many other organizations miss, they back up their talk with walk. In other words, they're actually planting new churches and helping existing congregations to thrive. 

Part of the way Missio Alliance does this is via their blog, which they call their "Writing Collectives".  As part of my own journey I've been reading through their stuff in chronological order, and I want to share a bit. I've covered from 2005 to 2011. Here's one highlight: 

Leadership and Church-Planting Amidst the Post Christian Cultures (2005):

David Fitch, professor at Northern Seminary, church planter, and writer of many of these posts (especially the earlier ones) posed back in 2005 what I think may still be one of the most critical questions facing the Christ's body today: 

In a post-Christian culture, where a.) consumerism, b.) enslavement to big house mortgage, two cars, c.) commitment to the over-achievement for our children so they can compete in the marketplace, robs so many of us from being able to make the church the social center of our lives. How are we to start churches that don’t turn into consumerist businesses that distribute religious goods and services as George Hunsberger has so brilliantly described? It would seem entrepreneurship and lack of a serious call to discipleship might be the key traits of a pastor who could succeed in starting a church in this environment. 

In other words, the church cannot overestimate the sway of consumerism over how it measures success and therefore what mission it pursues and what kinds of leaders it raises and grooms.

Fitch proposes an intriguing alternative: start churches not on the back of The Charismatic Leader, but with a small core team (3-4) of disciples who complement each other's giftings. Integral to this strategy is making sure that the entire team is bi-vocational, meaning that they are not paid or provided health insurance by the church plant, which means that the church and leadership team have the flexibility to adjust the leadership structure as the community needs. 

This gets me thinking: how often is the church forced to fit the structure of The Charismatic Leader when leaders are really called to serve the church? Now I think it's probably not a zero sum game here. Leaders must lead, and that often means challenging the community to grow in ways that maybe the community wouldn't think to initially. But along with consumerism comes an unspoken and even unconscious affinity for "excellence": we are always looking for the next, newest, and/or best, and have a pretty low tolerance for the messy, the broken, and the disorganized. And guess what: churches led by The Charismatic Leader tend to be pretty shiny. (Oh sure you can throw some distressed wood in there, but make no mistake: everything is very well organized and well produced). So it shouldn't be a surprise that there's a lot of built-in resistance to changing leadership structures as the congregation grows...who wants to trade shiny and well organized for what often feels like in the moment a waste of our valuable time? 

But the trade off is costly. A church that is too committed to the excellence of its own structure is then too committed to its own survival. And the church cannot be faithful to Christ's mission when it is not willing to die to itself. 

On the other hand, a church led by a flexible but committed team of leaders is radically free to move, reorganize, and reinvent as Christ's Spirit moves in the community. Think the early church in Acts. Yes, there was some structure there, but it was always in service to what the Spirit was doing in the body of Christ, not the other way around. Think Paul being commissioned to leave leadership positions instead of being given a title and a pension. Think about churches that were planted and led by Priscilla and Aquila, but then were ready to send them off when God called them to other cities and regions.  

Anyway, there's a lot more posts I love from this blog, and I'm going to post about a few of them here as I continue to put together interviews for the podcast. Would love to hear your thoughts!