We have been in Georgia this past week. I have taken time to read and study as I continue my doctoral work. I have read two books this week and would like to give you an overview of what I am reading.

The Church Between Gospel & Culture

The first book is a collection of essays by leading thinkers of the church’s relationship with culture.

We live in tension relating to culture. We (the church) must learn to live in culture in a manner of relating to culture; yet we must also strive to keep the gospel free from cultural entrapments.

If there is too little identification with the culture, the church becomes a subcultural ghetto. If it assumes too much of the culture’s perspectives and values, it domesticates and tames the gospel. The latter has become the major problem for the churches of North America. p. xvi

These essays challenge the church to carefully critique the culture, discerning how to bring the gospel into it. We need to assess our culture with a careful eye.

If the churches of North America are to engage in a missionary encounter with our culture, it will require them to learn skills enabling them to engage in the task of carefully exegeting the cultural context. p. 56

These authors assert that too often, the church has uncritically adopted culture and watered down the gospel. Therefore, the church needs to discern the gospel. This requires us to carefully consider what parts of the gospel are tied to culture. We must then learn to live out the gospel as a community. This may require us to reconsider ways that we currently function as a church. We discern this only through the power of the Spirit.

In this posture – standing on both the culture side and the gospel side – we must seek our identity. The crisis of the moment pushes us to it. The missionary essence of the church assumes it of us. The Spirit of Christ lead us there. p. 297

Finally, the essays point us toward living in this discernment. I especially appreciate the clarification of how the pastor serves. Alan Roxburgh describes the pastor as apostle, poet, and prophet.

The pastor/apostle is one who forms congregations into mission groups shaped by encounters with the gospel in the culture, structuring the congregations shape into forms that lead people outward into a missionary encounter. p. 328

As poet, the pastor articulates the experience of the church.

Poets are the articulators of experience. They image and symbolize the unarticulated experiences of the community, identifying and expressing the soul of the people (functioning as the dancer in worship who interprets the experience). The poet is listener and an observer, sensing the experience of the body and giving that experience a voice. p. 330

He further explains this dynamic.

In such a discourse the poet/pastor brings to voice their story so that there occurs a “Yes! This is who we are! This is who we meet when we touch the fear and confusion about being God’s people in this culture!” The pastor weaves together the people’s voices so that the story of who they are and what they actually experience is articulated, called forth, and owned. p. 330

The pastor also serves as prophet, communicating the Word of God to challenge the people to the new places that God is calling them.

I found this read encouraging, in the sense that we are heading in the right direction. It was also challenging, affirming that we have much to do in becoming the church that God intends for us to be.

The Great Giveaway

The second book is written by a Northern Seminary professor, David Fitch (Dr. Fitch is my professor for this course).

Dr. Fitch asserts that the modern church has given away its true essence.

The thesis of this book is that evangelicalism has “given away” being the church in North America. Simply put, evangelical churches have forfeited the practices that constitute being the church either (a) by portioning them off to various concerns exterior to the church or (b) by compromising them so badly that they are no longer recognizable as being functions of the church. p. 13

He asserts that we have fallen into the traps of culture, evaluating church in terms of size, efficiency, and business effectiveness. He proposes faithfulness over effectiveness, quality over quantity.

The goal is not bigness. The goal is to inflame the inner workings of the body. This success rejects naïve goals of modernists management for largeness and efficiency that overlook the substance of what goes on that makes the church his body. p. 43

He examines the way we view evangelism, leadership, worship, preaching, justice, spiritual formation, and moral education. His ideas are thought provoking and would provide fantastic discussion. Fitch envisions a church “practicing the practices”, living out the sort of community recorded in Acts, and moving away from the cultural models of success and bigness.

I will not detail the entire book, but would welcome discussion around either of these books. I hope you all have a fantastic weekend.