christianity: a marginal movement of discontinuity
I was planning for this post to continue the story of the last post, but I need to process through some things first (I also want to change the last post because my wife said it sounded cynical and bitter, which I am not; I love the church, I love this journey; I love how it started.) and will then continue the story.
I am thinking through a book called Metavista: Bible, Church and Mission in an Age of Imagination. As the author was describing Christianity in Europe in the 18th century, some things finally clicked in my head, things I have been processing for awhile.
There has been a word that has been flopping around annoyingly in my brain like a fish out of the water trying desperately to get back in: movement. This sums up what I want to play a role in starting both at SMU and my life’s work. It sounded really good, but I didn’t really know what it was exactly. At first it was the word I used to describe what I couldn’t: a shift of emphasis from building up an institutional church toward building up the kingdom of God through healing, saving, and transforming lives and culture. When I told people I was interested in being a part of a church plant, what was rolling around in my brain was a missional community that didn’t own a building, may or may not support a minister, with its time, energy, and money going towards renewing lives and culture it was engulfed in. The emphasis wouldn’t be on attractional methods of worship and church to bring in the already saved (not that I consider the attractional method evil; but it can be dangerous if that is all the church offers as it promotes consumerism over conversion), but rather on equipping the few to live life within God’s mission, drawing from his agenda for the day-to-day life rhythms. Growth, then, would not seek to come from the already Christians who appreciate the reframing of the goal of the gospel. [In fact, the opposite is usually true. Paul was right in describing his frustration with the already Christians as preferring milk to meat. It is easy to do, especially when ministers (myself included) proclaim the message of “you have to move to solid food?” while trying to achieve this with milk methods. We reap what we sow.] Growth in missional communities seeks to come from new conversions, never before believers whose lives have been transformed by the gospel of salvation and renewal.
This method, by default, is pushed to the margins. Since its method is to create practitioners and not observers, it attracts fewer people because it is not very attractive. But this is a good thing. This is where movements in history began: in the margins. Change rarely comes from the center; it comes from the fringe. Look at Jesus for example. His ministry was to the marginalized: the sinner, the tax collector, the prostitute, the murderer, the poor, and the leper. It started on the margins, both culturally and geographically. The powerhouse of the Jewish Temple institution was in Jerusalem, where Jesus’ ministry was never focused and not visited until the Passion week (and we all know how that ended). Jesus stayed on the outer edges, healing people and telling them to be quiet about his identity. He knew the title of Son of God would get him killed by the center, so he needed to minister at the margins until the time right. Margins are good. The disciples picked up where Jesus left off and stayed on the margins. And they rocked the house. The Jewish institution was challenged to its core with the message of Jesus that was flooding from the margins. The book of Acts is all about how the gospel of Jesus is Lord spread throughout the Roman empire by way of the margins (with the obvious “help” of the Spirit in Acts 2; he was handy to have around).
Many argue that Christianity started its slow death when it left the margins, under the leadership of Constantine in the 4th century, and wedded itself with the Roman government, thrusting it into the center.
Now amidst the rubble of the fallen Christendom in the west, many Christians feel like the hurt, angry child left behind after the bitter divorce between Christianity and government. They feel pushed to the margins and hate it. But there are some, especially within the emerging church conversation, that believe the margins will actually be the place where Christianity is saved. I whole-heartedly agree. Christianity, I think, is going through a transition in the west. It is transitioning from an institution and toward an organic, decentralized, messy-yet-beautiful movement.
Picking up on the idea two paragraphs earlier regarding missional community growth seeking to be from new conversions as opposed to a rejuvenation of the already Christian, movements strive best amidst discontinuity. This is where Metavista enters into the conversation. Colin Greene records the renewal of Christianity in Britain during the 18th century as a movement that began in discontinuity and later moved to continuity. He writes:
“The churches of the eighteenth century were not renewed by the transmission of the faith through families (continuity) but by the radical discontinuity of conversion.” (pgs. 162-163)
He further notes that the renewal came at a time, socially, when the institutional church was facing a wider decline and loss of significance within culture. However, as a result of the movement of discontinuity, the Anglican Church was changed. The margins challenged, and later changed, the center. The new narrative changed the old, existing religious narrative into something completely different and new. He then moves into present day history and concludes that it is possible to argue that, against the “haemorrhaging of attendance and membership” in present day churches, change will come, not from the center, but from the margins. It will come from the faith communities that embody the kingdom of God, who don’t preach the end of the gospel as just a personal ticket into heaven when you die, but the gospel as a means, or invitation, into God’s mission of making all things new where heaven is about the transforming of the old into the new as described in Revelation 21. The vibrancy and activity of these faith communities possess the ability to make new converts.
Please don’t hear what I’m not saying: I’m not saying that the center is evil and should be abandoned as Christ is no longer there. We need the center. We need ministers in the center who seek to transform it with the marginal narrative. The church is diverse, mysterious, and exists everywhere. God forbid I simplify it and force it into a cookie cutter image; a different shape yes, but an unnatural, forced cut nonetheless.
What I am saying is that this post is my Magna Carta. This is what I want to devote my life to. This is what I want to practice; Christianity as a marginal movement of discontinuity. To me, this is the best way to change the whole, from the margins to the center.
