The Quest for Holiness of Heart and Life

In my last post I referred to Harvey Cox's Feast of Fools and the idea that the church has lost its sense of festivity and fantasy at a critical juncture in history.  Both are necessary to creating new, more effective paradigms for the church.  As I continued to reflect on this it occurred to me that the church has also lost two other critical dimensions that characterized the church in the first few centuries, namely the prophetic and the charismatic dimensions.  In this post I want to focus on the prophetic dimension.  With the loss of the prophetic the church loses three elements that are critical to its future.  The first is voice - its ability to hear the voice of God and to subsequently be God's voice to the world.  If the church does not echo God's voice, in whose name does it speak?  Second, imagination.  With the loss of imagination comes the loss of the ability to invision the Kingdom.  The church then turns to other means to measure its "effectiveness" - size, number of services, the beauty of its physical plant, income...all of the external trappings of success that the prevailing culture uses to measure itself.  Finally, the church looses its ability to recognize miracles. We live in a world surrounded by miracles; and yet we fail to see them.  The mundane becomes the ordinary.  We lose our capacity for wonder and awe.  Only that which passes the test of scientific inquiry is real.  That world is not all that exciting to me.  I would rather stand in the shoes of the prophet.

"There are only two ways to live your life:  one is as though nothing is a miracle.  The other is as if everything is.  I believe in the latter"

Albert Einstein

I was purusing my bookshelf recently and my eye was caught by a copy of Feast of Fools by Harvey Cox.  I decided it was time to revisit this forty-year old gem.  Cox hits the nail on the head with his observation that we and our institutions have lost our capacity for festivity and fantasy and our world is a much poorer place because of it.  The fact that he wrote this book forty-one years ago and his observations are as, if not more, pertinent today as they were then reinforces how impoverished we are.  Our world values hard work and intellectualism, but has little time for play and imagination.  No where is this more obvious than in the institutional church.  What passes for festivity has become rote, predictable ritual.  Much of its meaning has been lost to expediency and efficiency ("get them in and get them out in time for the parking lot to clear for the next service".  Even the term "church service" is telling).  Fantasy and imagination has given way to orthodoxy and buracracy.  In the words of Harry Trimble in The Magestic, "where's the magic"?  I believe we are on the cusp of a number of paradigm shifts.  We need fantasy and imagination to make the most of these opportunities.  For as Cox says, "fantasy [is] the faculty for envisioning radically alternative life situations".  This is a faculty we require in our ever changing world, for the definition of insanity is: to continually repeat the same behavior and expect different results.

It has been two years since I added something to this blog.  Where have I been?  Well, it has been two years of reflecting rather than writing.  I am at a point in my life where the prospect of retirement looms large.  While I enjoy my current career - teaching theology - I believe that it is time to move on to the next stage in my life.  And that leads to the question, "What next?"  What will be the next project I undertake to make a contribution?  I have a couple of exciting prospects that I may discuss further in this forum in the future.  I also became a grandfather during this "sabbatical" that I have taken from writing this blog.  This is also an event that causes one to pause and reflect on both the past and the future.  My house church continues on its journey and combine with my continuing encounters with various aspects of the institutional church to reinforce my belief in the need for a paradigm shift.  All in all, I think I have ample material for future musings in this forum and I hope that you will join me in discussing them.  As always, I encourage you to read, reflect, and comment on the Ten Transformations and the other issues that I have brought up her in the past and bring your own thoughts to the table.

In several weeks our house church will celebrate its second anniversary. It has been an interesting journey for me personally. My wife and I come from a denominational background that is quite different from the rest of the members. We gather in our common faith in Jesus Christ. Our experience of The Church, however, has been different and in our initial phase of development as a house church those varied experiences were topics of discussion and curiosity. Before long, however, "where we came from" became less and less important as "who we are" and who we want to become as disciples of Jesus rose to the fore. This has brought into focus for me something that I have long felt, namely that it may well be that "corporate Christianity" has run its course and has become more of an obstacle to real individual and world transformation than a help. I come from the perspective of graduating from two seminaries and many years in pastoral ministry. My view is from both the "inside" of the church and the "outside" of the church. From this vantage point this is what I see: The corporate church has become a self-serving entity whose primary function is self-preservation rather than aiding in salvation. Its vast resources, more often than not, are devoted to "keeping the wheels spinning". The church is becoming less relevant in people's lives. Not because they lack faith; not because the don't feel the need to gather with other people of faith; and not because they don't want to share their joy of the Lord with others. It is because the corporate church makes it increasingly difficult to do so. Too many self-important clergy have confused the call to serve with a call to BE served. The corporate church is fast becoming an exclusive club that most people don't want to join. Intra-congregational and inter-denominational disputes are painful, hurtful, and run counter to the message of the Gospel. Ultimately such disputes destroy the credibility of the church to speak for justice and transformation - both individually and socially. The "times they are a changin'". People of faith need to band together and and recapture the spirit of the New Testament. In the words of the late Martin Luther King, Jr., "Now is the time".

It has been awhile since my last post because I have been awaiting responses to my last post requesting feedback from those who have been involved in the Pentecostal or Charismatic movements. Regretably I have received none! I find it hard to believe that no one who has been Baptized in the Spirit reads this blog. I know that the issue of the role of the Holy Spirit is a hot button one in the Small Church movement. I continue to invite feedback...this is an issue that I care deeply about and want to learn more. You can respond here or email me directly at: goldengopher72@gmail.com. Thanks and I wait to hear from you.