Manifesto

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We, like many of our peers, have spent no end of time riffing on the various popular trends in American Christianity. From seeker churches to old-school baptists to every flavor of pentecostal and charismatic to the so-called New Evangelicals/Emerging Church/emergent, we never fail to find tasty chunks of sacred cow to grill.

There has been something seriously wrong with every solution the North American "christian media" machine has deemed fit to popularize. It's almost as if they have it in their best interest to perpetually sell us the next great thing, which always turns out to not quite be great enough, which the next next great thing promises to remedy.

The blogosphere also seems to have trouble putting together a productive response. Perhaps it has something to do with the relative ease of using narrative to critique and deconstruct what someone else has built and the tremendous cognitive discipline required to construct a cohesive affirmative system as an alternative. We have, after all, become a habitually lazy civilization -- in our bodies, in our minds, and in our spirits.

So, in contrast with Nashville's self-perpetuating publishing enterprises and with our deconstruction-loving friends, we're going to try a little revenue-free experiment and formulate an affirmative framework for thinking about God, faith, theology, church, and all the rest, which is viable, theologically rich, practical, and (most importantly) Biblical - the neoredemptive framework.


Contents

Collapse of the Enlightenment Project

The Enlightenment posited an anthropocentric worldview (humanism) in place of a theocentric one, suggesting that humanity itself, and human reason in particular, is the measuring stick of humanity, and that the triumph of human reason would produce that most desirable of effects, "progress" (although what "progress" was to be measured against has never been made clear).

The 20th century effectively emptied the enlightenment project of its hope, and it consequently collapsed under the weight of its inability to come to terms with its epistemological self-referentiality; a system of reason ultimately must rest upon axioms or "givens" which are beyond itself, and rationalism is logically incapable of providing a rational account for its own veracity, thereby contradicting its premise of the sufficiency of reason. (It does offer a utilitarian account for reason, but this is likewise self-referentially incoherent.)

The shapes and forms of enlightenment rationalism are still present in today's western culture and thought, but they no longer reflects the outworking of a cohesive view of humanity, knowledge, and the world; instead, they are retained either because they have been found to be "useful" to various ends (e.g., the development of new technologies, the furtherance of consumerism, or the facilitation of particular cultural communities) or out of pure unreflective (and perhaps linguistic?) habit.

Downfall of the Evangelical Project

As documented by David Wells (see in particular The Courage to Be Protestant), the evangelical project has unwittingly succumbed to modernity, and today its identity is more sociological (even political) than it is theological. Its decline is further documented in Reclaiming the Center, in which the authors spend no small portion of their time vetting the historic content and boundaries of Evangelical theology for the purpose of demonstrating that massive swaths of the present-day "evangelical" movement are not, in fact, Evangelical in the historic-doctrinal sense of the word.

The Post-Conservative critique of evangelicalism as hopelessly wedded to Enlightenment thought forms makes a compelling narrative, but its conclusion is almost always grossly overstated; doctrine and careful theological thought were an apostolic and patristic obsession as much as a modern one, and univocal agreement around matters of the unique necessity of Jesus and the authority of Scripture predate Descartes by well over a millennium. Where Evangelicalism erred by becoming obsessed with doctrine to the exclusion of experience and spiritual formation, they were following the example of the ancient gnostic and scholastic sects as much or more than that of the Enlightenment's anthropocentric rationalism.

Failures of the Pentecostal/Charismatic Project

The fastest growing sector of the church both domestically and internationally, in no small part because of its near-ubiquity among megachurches, one would be hard-pressed to argue with the numerical results of the twentieth-century "Holy Spirit" movements. Having said that, numbers aren't everything; while it is a bad thing to produce very little good fruit, it is arguably far worse to produce large amounts of bad fruit.

The spirit movements of the 20th century have largely missed their opportunity by overlooking two critical points. The first is their failure to be deliberate about spiritual formation (translating spiritual experiences into transformed behavior); the second is their relative lack of theological reflection, particularly where the issues of prophets, prophecy, the prophetic ministry, and "hearing God" in general are concerned.

The first problem has produced an experience-addicted Charismatic subculture that is constantly chasing whatever this week's "new thing" is while diminishing the rather unglamorous and wearisome disciplines of moral development, character formation, and renewing the mind after the Word of truth.

The second fatal oversight is characterized by many of these movements riding a wave of antagonism toward "theology" which, due to its own lack of reflection, fails to recognize that its antagonism is itself a kind of theology. There has never been any real question whether any church or any Christian will do theology; we do it by definition whenever we think or speak of God. The only question is whether we will do it well or poorly, and when we habitually denigrate the watering, pruning, and cultivation of good dogma there should be little surprise at the results.

While there are exceptions to each and both of these observations, the overall climate of spirit-filled culture in America remains dominated by these two flaws. Again, this seems to be symptomatic of a spirituality rooted in part in Scripture and in part in the spirit of this age.

Limits of the Seeker Church Project

Donald McGavrin, Robert Schuller, Bill Hybels, and Rick Warren are the popular spokesmen of a broad shift within later-20th-century evangelicalism we call the seeker church movement.

There is great virtue in turning the eyes of the church toward evangelism and the lost, and in doing our homework to tease apart the wheat of the gospel from the cultural chafe we so often confuse for it. However, several decades of experience have demonstrated that the seeker model that emerged from the first generation of renewed interest in this question is not the right answer.

We must first acknowledge that much of the seeker church's thought and practice does not in fact revolve around "seekers" (in any meaningful sense of the word), but rather around the "lost" (a broader category including seekers, the ambivalent, the indifferent, and the hostile). And while being focused missionally upon the lost is a good (indeed, essential) thing, being focused ecclesially upon them brings with it a host of compromises to the health of the church as a church. Said another way, it is one thing to use the gathering of the church to consistently turn its eyes toward the harvest fields; it is quite another to do away with the essential ordinances of the gathered church so the gathered-in wheat won't be made uncomfortable (see Normative Principle for a discussion of balancing novelty and ecclesiastic essentials).

Frankly, we find no warrant in Scripture for ordering the doings of the formally gathered church to cater to the spiritually disinterested person. We are to welcome and love them, yes; we are to speak comprehensibly, yes; we are to preach the gospel compellingly, yes; but it is only through the church doing those things that are distinctly of God (e.g., preaching, prophesying, and the ordinances) that they come to say "surely the Lord is in this place!" And this, ultimately, is where the seeker movement has hit its limit. It is able to attract a crowd, and it is able to win their sociological allegiance, and it is even able to convince them intellectually to give assent to relatively conservative doctrinal positions. What it has been unable to do, however, is generate the kind of world-shaking awe, vision, total surrender before God in Christ, love for each other, and compassion for the downtrodden that is to be the hallmark of Christianity in every culture.

Furthermore, we feel that the emergent wing of the emerging church conversation is simply the seeker church ethos translated from modern suburbanism into postmodern urbanism and elevated from a method of practice (what do we do on Sunday?) to a method of theology (how do we think about God?). Said another way, the emerging church is to the seeker church as post-modernity is to modernity: it starts with the same premises, but mercilessly and brutally carries them through to their rational end, laying waste to all that stands in the way of the all-consuming nihilism at its core.

The Misdirection of the Post-Conservative/Emergent Conversations

The latest "hot trend" in church methodology and hot debate in practical theology is the Emerging Church conversation, which we understand ourselves to be a part of. One wing of this conversation is the emergent project, characterized (roughly) by a post-conservative theological method, multi-sensory worship, and methodological biases toward community over leadership, narrative over proposition, and experience over doctrinal agreement (confession). The broader emerging conversation is engaged with these same questions, but stands does not necessarily share these biases within them.

TODO: Theological critique

TODO: rewrite -- What this stream lacks in theological credulity, it does not make up for in methodological strength; its methods may be successful for reaching young, disillusioned urbans with a liberal bent and some meaningful church background, but it is largely incapable of transfer into other western sub-cultures, and completely powerless to even gather a crowd outside of areas where there is a high concentration of the "creative class".

Additionally, the problems with "modern Christianity" which post-modern/emergent thought imagines it addresses are almost never actual "modern/post-modern" issues, but are rather almost always "sin/righteousness" issues. The problem is that we see God and Jesus wrongly, but the solution is not to substitute one anthropocentric philosophy for another. The solution is to humble ourselves before God, confess that Jesus is the Christ, repent of our sin, and be filled with and transformed by the Holy Spirit, and that applies whether our worldview is medieval, post-modern, or stone-age.

Starting with First Things

We believe that the correct place to begin thinking about Church is not with rationalism or with social agendas or with experiences or with linguistics or with culture, but with an orthodox understanding of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

What is the Gospel? There are many caricatures of the gospel with wide circulation within the church today. Some of the more painfully inadequate ones include:

We call these caricatures because each resembles the authentic gospel in its own way. The resemblance is distorted, exaggerated, and partial, but real none the less.

If we had to summarize the gospel in a single word (and thank God we do not; we do here purely for purpose of contrasting emphasis), it would be redemption. We must account for the cross from all sides - why it happened (our need to be redeemed from the curse), what it accomplished (our access to the redeeming power of God without reliance upon anything in our fallen and unredeemed nature), and where it takes us (through the discipline and adventure of expressing God's redemptive agenda in our selves, our churches, our cultures, our world, and the hereafter).

Of course, in order for us to agree upon this gospel and build our lives together upon it, we must agree upon the source of its content, and that is the Bible, the authoritative and inerrant Christian scriptures. We are neither in the business of second-guessing scripture, nor of arguing with it, nor of arguing around it; we come to it expecting to be confronted and challenged by the things of God, and with the intention of allowing God's unwaveringly true revelation to reshape us and not the other way around.

Truth and Experience

Something of a false dichotomy has been set up by some theologians between objective truth and subjective experience. We believe that scripture clearly illustrates both as indispensable to our life in Christ. The faith, delivered once for all, consists in sound doctrine (read: right beliefs) about God, ourselves, each other, and the relationships there-between; this right doctrine then necessarily expresses itself not only dogmatically and intellectually, but also through a rich array of subjectively felt encounters and experiences with the Living God through His Spirit dwelling within us (not only propositionally or even ontologically, but also effectually).

In plainer words, that which denies the foundational creeds and doctrines of the Christian gospel is not Christianity - but neither is an adherence to those points of doctrine without an accompanying healthy range of experiences meeting with, listening to, and wrestling with God. Like Job, we are neither content with uncertainty nor with simply knowing - we will not be content until we see our Redeemer face to face.

Theological Method

We are unashamedly conservative in our theological method. We believe that absolute trans-contextual truth is knowable (imperfectly but not incorrectly). This does not mean we are foundationalists, because we do not believe there is anything self-evident about God's revelation (down that road lies natural theology, which is too squishy for our tastes); that which is self-evident is "general revelation", but the only knowledge we can possess of the salvific and redemptive agenda of God has come through his "special revelation" - God has chosen to reveal Himself to us truly and salvifically in the person of Jesus Christ, through Scripture, and by the witness of the Holy Spirit (where these three always concur). It has been our experience that all other models of theological truth ultimately degenerate to anthropocentrism, relativism, or utilitarian systems of thought in which one is left with no consistent rational means of differentiating between the Christian faith and all competing truth claims.

Praxis and Application

We believe that all theology is intensely and intrinsically practical. By this we do not mean that theology should be judged by how well it translates into instructions for personal piety or for ecclesiastic management. Rather, we mean that all things which are true about God, ourselves, and creation by their nature can (and should) shape the way we think and feel (if we are willing to think and feel theocentrically), the way we choose to interact with every circumstance of human existence. If God's sovereignty is not a practical doctrine, then we are living in a false world by a false set of rules. If God's omniscience is not a practical doctrine, then we are fools to ask His wisdom and prophecy. If God's final victory is not a practical doctrine, then neither is our present eschatological life as partakers of the Kingdom of Heaven. And if God's indwelling of us by the Holy Spirit is not a practical doctrine, then we can have no expectation of the fruit of the Spirit, the gifts of the Spirit, or of God's comfort and empowerment to do "all things through Christ we strengthens me".

In working out our praxis, we hold to a chastened version of the Normative Principle: that, for the church, all things not forbidden by scripture are permissible. We say "chastened" because we are also ever mindful that -- as Paul wrote -- all things may be permissible, but not all things are profitable. We are to test all things and hold on to the good. (This approach is hardly novel - the Wesleyans called it Sanctified Pragmatism.)

We are also Inspired Plagiarists. We are under no illusions that we can come up with even a small fraction of the God Ideas needed by the Churches we participate in. We listen to our congregations and to the broader community of faith for whatever ideas, models, wisdom, and inspirations God may be sending our way. Neither do we limit ourselves to "church" literature -- there is much wisdom to be had from secular writers, speakers, and thinkers. (On a less encouraging note, we often find it necessary to apply the same filters when processing products of the "christian media" as we use when exploring "secular" sources. This says a great deal about the unfortunate effects of consumerism upon the Christian cultural ghetto.)

We do not believe in binding ourselves to particular polities, programs, or organizational structures. Every incarnation of the church must wrestle with these questions, drawing from the deep wells of Scripture and the tradition and experience of other churches, but simultaneously mindful of their own unique makeup, strengths, weaknesses, and contextual challenges.

Particular details of our praxis:

In Summary

We believe in building redemptive churches - churches that bring the redeeming work of God to bear upon every aspect of their leaders, their members, their neighborhoods, their cultures, and all of the world to the furthest extent of their reach. Our goal is that nothing we touch or do should lack the marks of the Master at work in us.

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