Knowtown…

When I refer to myself as an ecclesial dreamer some people get the wrong idea. I am not always a very clear communicator so this is not too hard to understand, but it does cause a lot of frustration. When I talk of an ecclesial dream I am not trying to avoid the “real world” of ministry in the church context but I refuse to believe that the way we do things is as good as it can be. I dream of something better. Sometimes I reach a point where I am going to give up dreaming and simply settle. The last few weeks were such a time.

I was involved in several conversations all related to church at some level. In some of these conversations I was in a minority place and in others I was in the majority. In all of them I behaved badly. It seemed no matter what side of the conversation I was on the goal became to marginalize the other voices. While these conversations were going on I was reading a book (Everyman Revived: The Common Sense Of Michael Polanyi) about Michael Polanyi’s thought. In this book is a chapter titled “truth in the free society” that describes Polanyi’s understanding of the scientific community. As I read this chapter my heart broke. Part of my ecclesial dream is that I would belong to a community of faith that could be described in the same way Polanyi described the scientific community. Of course, being a selfish, human ecclesial dreamer it takes me a while to realize that I am my own worst enemy in these things. When it finally hit me that I am the one who makes the dream a nightmare I was ready to give up. But then I read something that made me think others understand this dream is intended to be a reality:

“William Placher notes how curious it is that the church lives with four Gospels. One might have thought, at some early point, the church would settle down with one authoritive Gospel, would have attempted to harmonize all of the Gospels into one. Why not? Placher surmises that we have Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John because the church practices nonviolence. The only way to achieve unity would be to do violence to someone’s voice, to exclude or to coerce artificial unity. So the church’s peaceful life together produces a wonderfully rich and diverse community, not because the church affirms some limp value like diversity or inclusiveness, but rather because the church practices nonviolence.” (from Stanley Hauerwas and Will Willimon’s Book titled The Truth About God: The Ten Commandments In Christian Life, quoting Placher’s book, Unapologetic Theology: A Christian In A Pluralistic Conversation.)

While this certainly added fuel to the fire of my ecclesial dream it was also very convicting. This creates questions for me that I do not know how to answer. How do we achieve unity in a wonderfully rich and diverse community? Who defines when unity is genuine and not artificial? Is it possible to leave a friendship or a community that is based on “coercion to an artificial unity” in a way that is not divisive? How do we practice radical inclusiveness and still remain orthodox? I am really wrestling with what it means to be an ecclesial dreamer in a pluralistic community. I have much to learn and (perhaps more importantly) unlearn in how this gets played out in the context of my faith community. One thing I know beyond all doubt—I am going to need a lot of help.

The last week for me has been very difficult for many reasons. One is because there is a lot of things going on at my church that make me feel like it is unraveling. As an ecclesial dreamer I do not like this. The other is I have been participating in an interesting discussion online that has been pretty heated at times. Finally, I have been forced to do some serious thinking on some very important issues. It has been a week of being challenged, encouraged and corrected by friends and people I do not know at all. Through it all I have come to a very surprising conclusion about myself– I am an elitist. This term has been used this week in a negative way with the adjective “intellectual” towards a friend of mine and contributor to the DEA blog. What I found surprising was the idea that this label was used to marginalize a particular view. As I was really wrestling through this issue it occurred to me that we are all elitist by definition, we just draw the line in different places. The idea of elitism is basically that only certain people(s) should participate in certain topics. So I guess an intellectual elitist is some one who believes that only intellectuals should contribute to intellectual conversations. Now this may sound harsh at first but think about it. We all do this at least at a subconscious level. Like I said, we just all draw the line in a different place.

I would like to address here the fact that we are all hermeneutical elitist. Some of us may not want “intellectuals” being at the top cramming there ideas down to the “ignorant” masses, but we still would say that the Jehovah’s Witnesses or maybe the Mormons do not interpret scripture correctly. What we are saying is that we are elitist. We do not give everyone’s interpretation equal weight. We hold at some level that some people are more “qualified” to interpret scripture correctly and some people are not. No matter how you slice it, that makes us elitist. So the question becomes where are we going to draw the line?

Some people try to make the claim that it is possible to hold a theology that is not based on some form of human philosophy. So anyone who allows any philosophy to influence their interpretation is not allowed to faithfully interpret scripture. The problem I have with that is all theology has roots in some philosophical system. If we really believe that reformed theology is not based on enlightenment philosophy we are not being honest with ourselves. In recent discussions the target has been “postmodernism” and the “relativism” that goes with it. I find it interesting that we have not learned anything at all about church history. The first church council recorded in the New Testament book of Acts ended with a change in ministry that was more culturally relevant. Since then there is a long record of resisting every form of change. Galileo and the Reformers illustrate the church’s refusal to learn that all truth is God’s truth has made the church look pretty silly. Perhaps we would be better off if the ideas that the flat earth was the center of the universe were never deconstructed.

One fear (perhaps the biggest) of postmodernism is that it leads to a view of truth that destroys absolutes and leaves us in a state of relativism. I do not fear this because I really do not believe truth was, is or ever will be absolute. I believe that if Jesus is the Truth than truth cannot be absolute it must be infinite. So no matter how far we push in our discovery, philosophy, theology, or quest for truth we will never find a systematic way of encapsulating it and saying, “Ah-ha! We found it! We can all stop looking and start spending our time teaching the whole world the search is over.”

I say we keep exploring. Of course I believe that we need to stay in step with the story of the Creator as he has continuously been revealing it to those who follow. But who can we trust in this ongoing adventure? Should we follow people who thought the world was flat? Should we follow people who believe that all theological truth was discovered when Martin Luther nailed his 99 thesis to the door? Should we follow the best foundationalist thinkers the 20th century had to offer? Should we trust the new messiahs of postmodernism? I say we need to follow those who have the ability to approach all of God’s general and special revelation, look at it in it’s historical, geo-political and cultural context and find a way to apply it in the moment of history in which we live. This will require people who are familiar with history, world religion, anthropology, science, etc… Certainly we cannot expect anyone to fill this role. Proof-texters and lazy exegetes need not apply. So, my name is James, and I am an elitist…

One of the problems of being an ecclesial dreamer is having to deal with that pesky dream-crusher— REALITY. It is always easier for me to see this in other people’s dreams than it is in my own. For whatever reason, reality always seems to sneak up on my dreams and find me unaware. Over the last few days I feel like I have been in an ambush. I am beginning to see that my ecclesial dream is most likely going to stay a dream for longer than I thought. This reality has left me drained and tired. I wonder if this is how Captains Lewis and Clark felt when they got to the headwaters of the Missouri River only to discover the Bitterroot Mountains. The thing they were looking for (an all water route across the continent) did not exist. The only options that remained were giving up and turning back or the long, uncertain, difficult task of pressing forward.

In my church, I was so close to the dream that I could almost taste it. That is hard for me to believe considering just three years earlier I was ready to give up on church altogether. And now I feel like I am right back at Camp Disappointment, once again ready to give up. Perhaps I just do not have the courage to keep going. Maybe it is time to give up on the dream for a while and settle someplace in the geography of reality. Could it be time to wake up from this dream and realize that what I am looking for doesn’t exist and that I will forever be a stranger in the Promised Land?

Maybe Camp Disappointment is actually a place where the Good Shepherd will allow me to sit beside still waters and restore my soul. All I know for sure is that right now I am tired. The more experienced ecclesial dreamer Jason Clark talks about how sleep is a grace from God reminding us that the dream of God continues, even without our help. So maybe I just need to stop and rest for a while.

One of my favorite musicians is Billy Falcon. He has a CD titled Pretty Blue World (1991, Polygram records) that is simply incredible. It is hard to find but well worth the search. He has a song on that CD called Still Got A Prayer that has been playing in my head a lot lately. With everything that is going on at church it is sometimes easy to get discouraged but this song reminds me that sometimes when things look there worst is exactly when they are the best. Some of the lyrics of the song go like this: “As he took his last breath on Calvary’s tree, It didn’t look good, no there wasn’t much hope, for my brothers and me…” So no matter how bad things are, you still got a prayer.

On Wednesday night I had some great conversations with some of the current leadership team of the church—Leanne (and Roger) and LaVona (and Bud). My friend Mark was there as well. He used to be on one of our leadership teams too. It was just like the good old days, when I was still on the leadership team. I forgot how much I enjoyed those conversations. I am not certain that the direction the church is going as it searches for a new pastor is one I agree with or not. It is not that I am against what they are thinking and doing, it is simply that I do not have a lot of inside information on how they are going about the process or what their vision for our church is. So for the time being I have to sit and wait to hear what develops. In the big picture it is much more important to get the pastor the church needs and not the one I want and I am all for that. But on the other hand, as an ecclesial dreamer, it is hard to sit on the sidelines.

Leanne and I talked a lot about this. Should I step up and try to get involved in the process or sit back and wait for them? She thinks that perhaps I could offer a lot to the discussion and I agree. But I countered that I have a lot of ideas and opinions that could stall the discussion as well. As much as I believe that our church needs to go in a new direction, “emergent” ideas are still a minority in the church climate. I guess I’m just not sure there are enough people in our community who are willing to deconstruct what we have been doing enough to build something new. And maybe they don’t need it as much as I do (see my previous post about small pox). I also think that I lost my right to speak to this issue when I stepped off the leadership team. The answers for the church lie in the group that is still leading. I feel that it is their responsibility to make these decisions, not mine. If they decide they want input from the congregation they will ask for it. If they do not ask for it, it is their choice.

So I told Leanne that for now I will wait and hear what direction the leadership team decides to go. When they answer what kind of church they want to have I will find a way to contribute to it. Right now my impression is that things will not go far enough in the direction I would hope for, but I still got a prayer…