Discipleship in a post-literate culture? Part 1

In looking at this issue I want to start with a couple of important disclaimers.

Firstly, what follows are observations based on personal experience. With this in mind I am perfectly willing to admit they may be peculiar to my mission context - however, as they say, "if the cap fits ..."- if you find something that resonates or rings bells with your context/experience, then please, jump in with some observations of your own.

Secondly, this whole topic is one that I see as being increasingly relevent for the church as a whole as we move into the 21st century and away from the ideals of modernism that were once entrenched in our ecclesiology and culture but which are now quickly falling into irrelevance (again, my opinion - feel free to disagree). Having said this, I want to make it clear that what I am really interested in is the method or practice of discipleship - it is the appraoch the church takes in making and growing disciples that I am calling into question not neccessarily the message we are seeking to impart through the process of discipleship.

I suggested this topic as it is one that I find both interesting and infuriating. Interesting because it represents a challenge I face almost daily and infuriating because of the apparent lack of clarity or open discussion about post-literate, post-christendom, post-modern discipleship in practice in the real world. And the overall lack of available resources dealing with this topic.

I'll start off with a table reproduced by Michael Frost in his article, "Preaching in a post-literate age" as I think it helps shed light on the contrast between the "old" and the "new" in our present culture.

MODERN	POSTMODERN
Things may be proved	Things may be probed
Uses science to remove mystery	Welcomes & celebrates mystery
Truth by reasoning (cognitive)	Truth by experiencing (emotional)
Go from truth to life	Go from life to truth
Deals in facts, dogma, concepts	Deals in interpretations, opinions
Uses exact language	Uses approximate language
Communicates via technical terms	Communicates via myths, symbols
Sees universe as closed, predictable	Sees universe open, unpredictable
Values independence	Values Interdependence
Individualised dreams	Corporate dreams
World view determined by what we see	What we see is determined by our world view
Objectivity possible: Observer & observed are separated	Everyone is subjective: Observer is part of observation
Beliefs held dogmatically	Beliefs are open for discussion
Life viewed analytically	Life viewed holistically
Concerned with what things are (Truth is absolute)	Concerned with how things relate (Truth is relative)
There is one way to live	There are many ways to live

The modern, evangelical church, at least in part because of a shift in culture, has become increasingly irrelevant as a vehicle of the gospel because, while it has been good at the business of theory, it hasn't been great at linking this with practice.

While it may be a generalisation, I think it is an accurate one; the practice of the faith in the majority of modern, evangelical/pentecostal churches can be equated with attending a service on a Sunday, attending an "academic" bible study on a weeknight (or day) and engaging in various church-run social activities at other different times.

You could also throw into this no small amount of pressure put on individuals within churches to "evangelise" their friends by bringing them along to church run or sponsored events where they will have an opportunity to hear a special, evangelistic message.

Now what I have been talking about is the practice of faith within the Christian church. It is the focus or point of the practice of the faith that I believe holds the key in understanding discipleship in the post-literate context and the increasing ineffectualism (did they ever really work?) of the "old" ways of practicising the faith.

I guess none of this is really new. We've debated it for ages, been accused of focussing on negatives, church bashing, or throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

But ...

... I think, if they are completely honest with themselves, most churches know:

1) That their efforts are not as effective in bringing new individuals into the (catholic) church community as they once were and in many cases, actual community engagement beyond the four walls of the church is non-existent.

2) That transferance is the real cause of growth in the churches whose numbers are increasing.

3) That it seems to be increasingly difficult to get any substantial percentage of those attending on a Sunday involved in a more meaningful way, than simply attending the Sunday service or church run social events.

4) That the gulf between the church and community outside its wall's is big - even if this is only acknowledged in the frustration felt from not seeing "new" growth (as opposed to transfered growth).

This is post is starting to get long. I'm going to split it in two (or more bits if I need to). So now I've kinda nutted through the problem (in a very general way), in part 2, I'll try and focus more on my experience with specifics.

This is a synchroblog - If you would like to join in, please let me know and I will link to it and get you to link to other participants.

Synchrobloggers so far -
Glenn Hager - Re-dreaming the Dream
Mmmm, That's Good Coffee

Hermeneutics Quiz

Rick Meigs posted on this neat little quiz designed by Scot McKnight.

I scored a 59 making me a moderate - kinda where I thought I would have fit.

The main sway in the questions seemed to be between a "fundamentalist" literal understanding of scripture, a contextualised approach that takes into account the historical setting of the original author and recipients and a "liberal" stand that assumes little relevance in the text for modern readers.

My answers swung between all three depending on the questions.

Here's what Scot had to say about the "moderate" score:

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The moderate hermeneutic might be seen as the voice of reason and open-mindedness. Moderates generally score between 53 to 65. Many are conservative on some issues and progressive on others. It intrigues that conservatives tend to be progressive on the same issues, while progressives tend to be conservative on the same issues. Nonetheless, moderates have a flexible hermeneutic that gives them the freedom to pick and choose on which issues they will be progressive or conservative. For that reason, moderates are more open to the charge of inconsistency. What impresses me most about moderates are the struggles they endure to render judgments on hermeneutical issues.

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What did you score?

Discipleship in a Post-Literate Culture - Synchroblog

One of the most critical challenges facing Western Christianity today, particularly within evangelical/pentecostal circles, is the growing irrelevance of modernist (primarily acedemic) approaches to discipleship.

In a lot of ways the Missional Church is at the coalface when it comes to these issues - its willingness to critique, experiment and adjust are important attributes in facing the problem of making and growing disciples in a world where the absolutes of the church's former modernist approaches to Bible study and discipleship are fast losing relevance. Particularly when it comes to taking the gospel beyond the safe streets of the middleclasses.

So the critical question is, "how do you see discipleship taking place in the increasingly visceral world of the 21st century?"

What approaches have you used? How successful have they been or are we still so much in a state of flux that it's really not possible to say? How can we help each other as pioneers (within or without established churches) in coming to terms with and moving beyond the confines of our modernist past in the area of discipleship?

If you would like to join in this synchroblog please drop me a line or a comment and I will make sure to link back to you.

Here's something from Michael Frost to whet your appetite (Preaching in a Post-Literate Age):

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• The Bible is not a textbook (contrary to much evangelical dogma). It is an account of God's self-disclosure, the drama of a developing relationship between God and humankind;

• Biblical truth is often best discovered and applied in Christian community in a spirit of mutuality;

• Christ's truth cannot be fully grasped by mere cognitive processes. It must be discovered spiritually, experientially, emotionally, as well as cognitively;

• People cannot be compartmentalised. They must be viewed holistically in relationship with one another;

• God's starting point with us is our present need. In Scripture, we see God moving from life to truth, as his people discover more and more about him depending upon their life circumstances.

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The Gospel According to Judas

When I was in Perth last week I was browsing the book section of a department store when I came across an interesting looking little book, entitled The Gospel According to Judas by Benjamin Iscariot. When I opened it I saw it was laid out a lot like a biblical text. It was broken into chapters and numbered verse and even had "red letter" sections.

My first thought was it must have been a publication of the Gnostic Gospel of Judas which created a bit of a stir in the media last year. I flicked to the back of the book, past the ribbon book mark - another "biblical" addition to the binding - and saw that it was actually a work of fiction by non-other than British lord and onetime jailbird, Jeffrey Archer.

Archer approaches the "gospel" as the work of Benjamin Iscariot, the fictitious son of Judas and heir to the true story of Jesus. The younger Iscariot recording the gospel during a visit to his father at Khirbet Qumran where the now elderly, Judas fled following Jesus death.

The story starts with Benjamin assuring his readers that Judas did not believe Jesus was the Messiah and that Judas himself was the victim of a smear campaign who did not take his own life or do many of the things claimed of him by the traditional gospel writers.

The blurb in the front cover says that Archer wanted to make the "gospel" as authentic as possible (which probably helps explain the leather-look cover, complete with ancient Christian symbolism and the scripture-like layout of the text, including biblical cross references) and so consulted Catholic scholar and major superior of the Salesians of Don Bosco, Prof. Francis J. Moloney. The end result, according the publisher is "... a project as bold as it is simple. Archer would write a story for twenty-first-century readers, while Moloney would ensure that the result would be credible to a first-century Christian or Jew".

The idea is certainly an interesting one which poses a number of questions. However, Archer doesn't appear to have approached the task in a terribly original way. The Gospel According to Judas is really just a retelling of the accounts of Jesus life recorded in the synoptic gospels. The main difference being Archer's/Iscariot's focus on the thesis that Judas was unfairly treated by later Christian authors, that he did not knowingly or willing betray Jesus but ended up becoming a scapegoat and that he did not believe that Jesus was the Messiah.

The "gospel" ends with Judas living among the Essenes in Khirbet Qumran and finally, at the age of 70, being crucified by the Romans, for which "... he gave thanks to YHWH when he learned that he would suffer the same fate as Jesus" (p. 90 or if you prefer Judas 25:59!).

In terms of practical uses for this book, I guess it could be used to stir up discussion on why we accept the Gospel authors accounts of Jesus life, on some of the so-called contradictions within the gospel accounts, and even as the basis of a comparative study of the quotes and parapharases of the synoptic authors used by Archer/Iscariot to support the claim that Jesus did not want people to view him as the Messiah.

Ancient Egypt and the Afterlife

As we had to visit Perth yesterday for a doctors appointment for one of the kids, I thought we would take the opportunity as a family to check out the Egyptian Antiquities from the Louvre exhibit at the Art Gallery of WA.

The exhibition itself was spectacular with an amazing selection of artefact's dating back thousands of years and in amazing states of preservation.

One of the most interesting aspects of the exhibition was the focus on the religious beliefs of the Egyptians, particularly pertaining to the afterlife. It is almost as if the Egyptians were preoccupied with death and the life beyond the grave.

One of the more interesting exhibits was a beautiful papyrus dating back to c500BC containing what is commonly referred to as the "Book of the Dead" or as it was known by the Egyptians, the Book of going forth by day. This book is essentially a Lonely Planet guide to the afterlife. It contains everything a deceased Egyptian needs to know about traversing the lands beyond the grave, facing the judgment of Osiris and gaining entry into the field of reeds, the Egyptian version of paradise.

As we made our way around the exhibition, I was struck by how knowledgeable the Egyptians wanted to appear about the afterlife. From the way they prepared their mummies and tombs right down to the Book of the Dead and its descriptions of the things the dead would encounter and the spells required to make it through the hall of judgment to paradise on the other side. They seemed to have every base covered and in immaculate detail.

It slowly dawned on me how different this way of looking at the world was to the Judeo-Christian way, and how different the Egyptian equivalent, the Book of the Dead, was to the Bible. Whereas the ancient Egyptians claimed great knowledge of the life that came after death the Judeo-Christian scriptures really don't deal much with it at all.

Where the Book of the Dead covered everything the newly deceased needed to know to traverse the perils of the afterlife, the Bible covers everything its readers need to know to traverse the perils of this life. Very few claims are made about the afterlife by its writers.

I think this caused me to think again about our place in God's plan. The afterlife (or lack of) is a given, one way or another we will all experience it, yet, the biblical text makes it clear, what happens now is of much more concern than what happens afterwards. Whereas the Egyptians were preoccupied with death and the afterlife, we, as followers of Jesus need to be preoccupied with life, and living it to the full! That's the lesson I learned from the Egyptians at the Art Gallery.

Science and the Bible - Part 2

Post moderns face the same problem in rejecting dogmatic proclamations of biblical truth as in accepting modern scientific explanations for the origin and continuation of the universe and all it contains.

If post modern Christians would apply they same level of scepticism to scientific hypotheses, such as the big bang and neo-Darwinian evolution (not to mention pop-sci-fi such as string theory), as they apply to the historical text of the Bible, their arguments would, at the very least, show some consistency. Hopefully enabling them to see more clearly the way in which the cultural ideals which resulted in fundamentalism in Christianity in the first place have also contributed greatly to fundamentalism in cosmological science.

In reality creationist beliefs (even those accepting of a cosmologically young earth) regarding the origin and continuation of the universe and the life which exists within it do not have to pose a problem for post-modern Christians. Rather the focus of their attention should remain on the over emphasis placed on these views as core tenets of the Christian faith and the out-moded approaches to apologetics that seem to be advocated by those who specialise in modernist apologetical models as a whole.

The post-modern Christian therefore must avoid all temptation to play the man and must stick to playing the ball – the ball being the questionable mode of apologetic operation, and not the origin belief of the individuals pursuing it.

Science and the Bible

What's the problem with this quote?

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In our experience, anti-evolution materials that do not use the Bible are overall much less effective. This is because the conflict is not over scientific facts fundamentally, but over the presuppositions that determine how we interpret those facts. The Bible provides the correct presuppositions about the past, enabling us to understand the scientific data correctly. If a person doesn’t accept the Bible as being inerrant revealed truth from God, then, since all beliefs about the past are equally impervious to scientific proof, there is no imperative for them to relinquish their evolutionary beliefs, even though biblical creation explains the bulk of the scientific evidence more plausibly.

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Gary Bates, Creation Ministries International

Babylonian Tablet Confirms OT History

I found a reference to this article on Matt Stone's blog (Journeys in Between).

It talks about a Babylonian cuneiform tablet dating back around 2500 years on which is inscribed the name of the Chief eunuch of Nebuchadnezzar II, king of Babylon.

What makes the find so interesting is that the same guy - the chief eunuch - is also mentioned by name in the OT book of Jeremiah.

This is Holy Ground

My Family in Boranup Forest

I stand on holy ground when ...

• I am staring at the night sky, soaking up the immensity and beauty of the Milky Way, or the rings of Saturn, or the folds and fine detail in the Great Orion Nebula, or the cratered surface of the Moon, or the motion of the Galilean Satellites as they dance around Jupiter.
  

• When I am on the summit of Bluff Knoll (the mountain in this blog's title image) looking out over the other peaks and the farm land and the bush, watching the wedge-tail eagles soar higher and higher on thermals.

• When I'm walking along the beach absorbed in the sound of the crashing waves, watching dolphins playing in the surf and terns dive for bait fish.

• When I'm walking through Boranup forest, surrounded by the tall, white trunks of 100 year old karri trees, and immersed in the cool shadows of the undergrowth, watching a male fairy wren dance for his mate.

• While watching my children play, using their amazing imaginations to create entire worlds and then to feel the soft touch of a small hand slipping gently into mine and to look down and see two soft, blue eyes looking lovingly back at me.

• When watching the sun set over the ocean with my beloved, feeling her closeness, knowing together we share more in memories and emotions and experiences than any words can express and that she is my gift from my creator.
  

At these times I know I am standing on holy ground.

Sometimes we fall into the trap of making one particular place more holy than another. I am thinking specifically of our churches or sanctuaries. How often have you heard the church building called "the house of God"?

The truth is the house of God is not made of bricks and mortar, it is a living temple. In Old Testament times God dwelt in the Tabernacle, but now he dwells in his people. We - the living, called out assembly of believers - Christ's physical presence in the world, are the temple of the living God and the universe is our cathedral.

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So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit. Eph. 19-22

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Thanks to Holly for inspiring me!

Captivated by Christ

This morning I spoke at our Sunday meeting for what is going to be the last time for a while. I have requested I be taken off the preaching roster so that I can have the time to prepare for an increase in workload associated, primarily, with the new Friday evening meetings we are starting in February.

The message I gave today is one directly related to my own personal experience over the past few months. And I want to share a little bit of it here. I wasn't sure how it would go down but, as is usually the case, God was able to work through my words (and His Word) to touch the hearts of those who heard it. To say I am moved by the response would be an understatement.

A few weeks back, in a quiet moment at Kick Start, I picked up a Bible and began to read Phillipians (you can read my response at the time here). When I got to the middle of chapter 3 I read something that hit me like a brick. It solidified, qualified, made real so much of what had been spinning around my head for the last couple of months.

The crux of it is this: I think we (and I include myself in this), the church, have made many things more valuable than Christ. The way baptism should take place, the things we "have to know" before we can become good Christians, the way we dress, look, speak, behave. We have made all these things and more, benchmarks against which to measure our godliness. Inevitably Jesus comes in a little further down the list.

As I was preparing for today I found myself thinking back to the 14 years I spent as a drug addict. They were terrible years. I wasted so much of my life and did so much damage - to myself and to others. But somewhere in the middle of all of this I managed to remain captivated by Jesus. The Jesus I had been introduced to as a young boy, sitting in a little dusty room of an ancient house attached to a little Methodist church in a country town.

It wasn't doctrine, it certainly wasn't church, and it wasn't even Christians. At least not the vast majority of Christian's I had had dealings with. No it was the person and work of Jesus Christ.

I was captivated by Him. By who He is and what He represented and by the way He lived His life. And this is what kept me going, kept me struggling on in the hope that one day I would know freedom.

In Matthew 11 Jesus says something striking - it's something that I have found myself time and again engrossed by, but something that, until very recently, I haven't really understood, at least not in the context of what I equated with the "Christian" way of doing things.

Jesus said:

Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

This is the Jesus I want to know. I don't what to know the Jesus of the spiritual "Pharisees" - the Jesus of rules and regulations and conformity. That Jesus doesn't captivate me. No, the Jesus I want to know is the Jesus of the Gospels. The Jesus that transformed the life of a religous man called Saul, when he met Him on a dusty desert road.

When I read Philipians 3 7-12 I fully understand what Paul was talking about. Last week I was a Pharisee too. Last week I gave religious importance to stuff that was, in reality, garbage! This week though - and hopefully into the future (I am sure I will need reminding) - I am a new creation! I am putting off the binds of the Law and living in the knowledge that I, as Paul says it, belong to Christ!

Amen.

Once Valuable - Now Worthless

It's a bit quiet at Kick Start today. The really busy stuff will start next week when I am forced to run around like a headless chook (= chicken) trying to finalise exit plans for the last lot of young blokes to go through for the year.

I brought a "Surfers Bible" in today for one of the guys - he didn't show up and so the Bible's sitting on my desk. I picked it up and started reading Philipians. I am often struck by how complex and how simple Paul can be, all at the same time.

In 3:7-11 he wrote:

But Christ has shown me that what I once thought was valuable is worthless. Nothing is as wonderful as knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. I have given up everything else and count it all as rubbish. All I want is Christ and to know that I belong to Him. I could not make myself acceptable to God by obeying the Law of Moses. God accepted me simply because of my faith in Christ. All I want is to know Christ and the power that raised Him to life. I want to suffer and die as he did, so that somehow I also may be raised to life. CEV

Forgive me Lord for the times I have put other things, religion, in front of simply knowing Jesus Christ. For the times I have made worthless things more valuable than your Son. Thank you for loving me and accepting me anyway and allowing me to belong to you!

You can read it in the ESV here.