This is the sixth post interacting with Brian McLaren’s A New Kind of Christianity. Please remember that I cannot reproduce the book in these posts. I will do my best to summarize without being overly simplistic or reductionistic. Each post will be two parts. The first will be a summary of McLaren’s discussion and the second will be my reflections.
The Church Question: What do we do about the church?
This is the first of five questions on how McLaren sees his vision of A New Kind of Christianity working itself out practically in the real world. McLaren paints a sad and realistic picture of the church. He says that owe are “divided, immature, confused about our purpose and identity, in danger of fragmenting our way into nonexistence, all at once bending over backwards and straddling fences, stiff of neck and soft of spine, and otherwise twisted and contorted in compromise. We have financial problems, sexual controversies, pride problems, schism threats, excesses in some forms of spirituality and deficits in others, and all manner of authority issues (165-166).” It is not a rosy outlook. McLaren reminds us that these were the same issues that the Corinthians faced and so he sets out to show how Paul dealt with these issues in 1 Corinthians.
Paul’s perspective, according to McLaren, can be summarized this way, “…the church most truly is: it is a space in which the Spirit works to form Christlike people, and it is the space in which human beings, formed in Christlike love, cooperate with the Spirit and one another to express that love in word and deed, art and action. (171)”
We are to become a people who take action by “listening, dialogue, appreciate inquiry, understanding, preemptive peacemaking, reconciliation, nonviolence, prophetic confrontation, advocacy, generosity, and personal and social transformation (171).” This is the mission of the church.
Reflections
I think that the picture that is painted of the church here is beautiful, powerful, and engaging. I think that McLaren has hit on something that we need to embrace again. If the Church looked like this then we would see a renewed engagement with the world that is far from Christ. We would see movements that seek to transform culture and build bridges to the gospel.
Nevertheless, there is something missing. I found myself getting excited about the picture that he was painting as it is very similar to the dream and picture I have of the Church. It is challenging. It calls the Church to a higher standard. However, in his exposition of 1 Corinthians there was again the absence of the discussion of the cross and the resurrection. McLaren handled the issues of knowledge, love, and power with insight but again excluded the cross.
Again, I must beg for more. I am concerned that McLaren “The Pendulum Swinger” (as a friend calls him) has removed the pendulum.
I heard McLaren speak once at a conference. He told a story I'll never forget. He described a meeting with his church staff. He ask them to list the biggest problems in the world today (this was several years ago). The answers were predictable – war, starvation, poverty, etc. They narrowed the list done to 10 items. Later he asked them to list the biggest problems their church was facing. Comparing the two lists, he then asked, why do these two lists have nothing in common? He then went on to describe a vision for the church much like the one above. I started to get very excited by what he was saying, but in the end I felt disappointed by what was missing too.
Wow. Could you imagine if the church's problems and the problems of its community were the same? That's called effectiveness. Then you add in the necessity of the crucified and risen Lord? Dang.
God's been pushing this idea through my head all morning and he added to the dicussion with your post. As a church, we are NOT a people who take action or initiative in many things. We "almost" do things rather than follow through and are comfortable with that…because we had a good idea or good intentions. I know I'm guilty of that. Whatever happened to INITIATIVE.
Initiative. Great word! It ties into another word that has been bouncing around our community at Grace Chapel for a little while: intentional. I wonder what would happen if intentional and initiative ever got married? That would be a movement!