Edgework

To state it negatively, most of our churches are not designed or equipped to promote and support the vision McLaren has outlined thus far in A New Kind of Christianity.

• Instead of offering hope for a restoration of all things in line with the Old Testament prophetic vision, God remains at best a “dreaded cosmic dictator of the six-line Greco-Roman narrative” who shows unlimited love to a select few.
• Instead of the Bible being a sacred library that keeps the questions we must reflect on alive, it remains a constitution that must be shown to be totally consistent within itself.
• Instead of envisioning a God of Love, God is conceived of as part wrath and part love in a schizophrenic kind of way.
• Instead of Jesus fulfilling a positive and dynamic story-line already found in the Old Testament, we tend to define Jesus in our own image which, in turn, supports the status quo.
• And, instead of allowing Jesus to define the gospel as the introduction of the presence of the Kingdom of God, we begin reading with Paul and make the gospel message one of escape from earth and hell to an eternal heaven.

It is understandable that the church as a whole is more intent on promoting traditional understandings on these questions. To adopt the new vision McLaren proposes leads invariably to the conclusion that “everything must change.” And that is asking a lot of any Christian institution with deep roots in its own history. To suggest that the church has been wrong for a very long time on some issues and that the Spirit is leading us in new directions is, it seems, a very difficult pill to swallow.

So what is an individual Christian, who has made some significant shifts along the lines McLaren suggests, to do? There are at least five options, all with their own merits and demerits. First, says, McLaren, you can choose to remain in the church with a sense of being “stuck.” While your vision of faith does not blend well with that of others in the church, there are personal and family reasons for staying put and keeping your head low. While this allows you to maintain important social connections it also tends to push you to the fringes of the community with fewer and fewer meaningful relationships. I have seen this happen frequently and have even experienced it myself at times.

Second, you can leave for a church more aligned with your thinking. While it is true you might find more friends on your page in the new church, invariably there will be some who don’t agree with you. (Remember, the church as a whole is not really equipped to embrace this new vision.) Does that mean hopping to another church, making an endless cycle going round and round? This is not a pleasant and helpful prospect, but one I have also witnessed and been tempted by.

A third option is to just drop out of church entirely. Some find this an attractive option because it allows them to remain “spiritual but not religious,” at least at first. The danger is that your “personal” spirituality often gets swallowed up by life away from a church community. Faith was never meant to be lived only in private. Yet some have tried this route and I have been tempted with it myself.

Fourth, you can move out with a couple of like-minded friends and begin a new church. But this option is harder than it may at first appear. And what keeps new people from joining this new church who have not yet made the transitions McLaren is calling for? While the original leadership may be able to keep the church vision on track initially, eventually newcomers will bring with them tensions related to some of these core faith issues.

A final option, and one that McLaren recommends, is to stay in your church community as a change agent. While this will require, “…courage, kindness, creativity, collaboration and perseverance” (163), you might be surprised how fruitful a faithful witness within the context of a committed community can be.

McLaren suggests, that instead of trying to get agreement in your church on the five areas the new vision speaks to, it will be more helpful to promote the mission of the church as being to “form Christlike people, people of Christlike love,” lived out “…in the world as it is and for the world as it could be, as agents of reconciliation” (164-165). Even within the traditional church paradigm, it is hard to disagree with such a vision. This will not automatically create a church without struggles, but it is encouraging to note that the New Testament churches had struggles too. When writing to one such church, Paul emphasizes that the key to unlocking the potential of the church is not agreement on every issue, but LOVE writ large (I Corinthians 13).

What it all boils down to is staying where you are, if that is possible, and becoming personally what your new vision calls for. Practice what you preach, with a greater emphasis on practicing than preaching. Become Christlike in love. Maintain your integrity. Become the message you are trying to convey.

Of course this is the hard part. It is relatively easy to stand at a distance and call for tectonic shifts within the church. Anyone can do that. It is much harder to be a gracious and creative protagonist for change in the heart of the community you love. So as a committed member of a faith community the challenge is to help create a community of love, “…which means a school of listening, dialogue, appreciative inquiry, understanding, preemptive peacemaking, reconciliation, nonviolence, prophetic confrontation, advocacy, generosity and personal and social transformation” (171).

And, just maybe, the church will gradually begin creating new wineskins to contain the new wine that you already hold in your heart in the center of the community you love.

For On-going Dialogue:

1. From your perspective, how major is the shift that McLaren has called us to in the last five chapters? Is there as much resistance to this new vision as he seems to suggest?
2. Have you been tempted to just leave for a community that is more in agreement with your personal views? Did you actually end up leaving? What has been your experience along the way?
3. Why does it always seem harder to stay that to go? In your opinion, in what kind of circumstances is there no choice but to find a new church community?
4. If you choose to stay in your church community, what challenges do you foresee? What advantages?