Missional Living » Dangerous Church

Feed

Dangerous Church

Feb 4th 2009

By: tom cottar

5 comments

A A

One of our local Christian radio stations has a tagline that turns my stomach.

There. I said it.

Now, I know what they mean by it. But, still…it makes me queasy. Every 6 minutes, some velvet-throated DJ says, "This is positive, encouraging ———. Safe for the whole family."

And every 6 minutes I throw up a little bit in my mouth.

Christianity should be anything but safe. Following Jesus should be everything but safe. Kingdom living should cause a raucous. Some commotion. It should stir up the complacent. Annoy the comfortable. Make us squirm and wrestle. Cause us to hate injustice and fight for redemption.

And, yes, what they mean is that there is no subject matter that is inappropriate for children on their station. No derogatory lyrics about women, drug use, Miller Lite during the SuperBowl. No foul language. No references to sex. (Not even within marriage relationships…but that’s another story.) Furthermore, with 2 small kids (and one on the way), I fully appreciate the safe environment for my kiddos and myself. So, I chew a lot of gum and carry pocket-sized bottles of Scope mouthwash to make it through.

We need is dangerous Christianity. Something less sanitized, homogenized, and shrink-wrapped. Less shiny. Dangerous churches filled with dangerous disciples.

Ed Stetzer (wicked-smart missiologist, in case you didn’t know) has some thoughts on being a Dangerous Church in the next decade. One of the most timely things he points out is this:

If current trends continue, some of you… will lose your jobs, your church budgets will decline, and your church will have less money in the coming years. But, your church will probably see more people come to Jesus.Economic growth and evangelical church growth are counter cyclical. They are somewhat counter cyclical for mainline churches according to a study by a professor at Texas State University. (Details at www.edstetzer.com.)

So, which should you pray for?

Read the entire speech here, then leave your thoughts below.

Share this

theology

Comments
- Comments (5)
- Trackbacks (0)
- rss
- Leave a comment
- scott
  
  February 5th, 2009 at 09:32
  
  Return to top
  
  Ok. I’ve read the speech. So I’m willing to engage it. I will say that I’m ambivalent about the phrase ‘Dangerous Church’. Most of the connotations and images that spring to my mind from that phrase seem to have little to do with Christianity. It’s not even really correct to say there is nothing safe about Christianity. That’s never been true. I even think it’s a subtle misunderstanding of what C.S. Lewis (for one) meant. He is good. And he is love. And that love, unveiled, is a purifying fire. But he is also our refuge. When we cannot stand, he will cover us. When we are broken, he will heal us. So, though not in the saccharine sense above, this is indeed our place of safety. So I’m not thrilled with the term, but I gather it’s one he was given by the conference.
  
  His cautions, in some ways, simply look to me like he’s advising people to take off their modern, rose-colored glasses and put on some postmodern shades. Don’t believe the hype? Be more cynical? Those are more descriptive than prescriptive to me. And it would certainly be better if more inside the evangelical bubble had something like an accurate understanding of our times rather than whatever it may be that they believe.
  
  Moving on to the meat of the notes, I don’t really have an opinion on his comments on economic opportunity. It sounds to me like he’s just saying that things are going to change from what you’re used to experiencing. I’ll go along with that.
  
  Sexual ‘brokenness’? What does that even mean? Yet another code word for homosexuality? It seems to be the only thing he talks about in this section. The whole question of what it means to be a human being, most definitely including our sexuality, is in play right now and has been my entire life. If all you see is homosexuality, frankly you can’t even see the landscape. In the broader sexual landscape, I will note that it’s not just ‘younger’ people. Everything has changed, whatever age you may be. Even senior adults act according to changed sexual mores in ways that are more similar to some of the changes usually attributed to their children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren. If you don’t see that, then you aren’t really seeing anything.
  
  You’ve been privy to almost all my thoughts on gender, so I won’t rehash it here. I will say that I don’t accept his characterization of ‘complementarianism’. It’s a form of hierarchicalism, which inherently means it’s not equal, whatever else you may call it.
  
  I will also say that to reduce it to the question of whether or not women should be ordained as pastors is an exercise in missing the point. For instance, the manner in which Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox (though very different from each other) approach the specially ordained priesthood (as opposed to the priestly ordination into which we are all inducted at Baptism) doesn’t really bother me. They take seriously the priestly role of every believer and accept and honor all that women provide. It’s also not a matter of what they say on paper. I’ve seen that play out in practice.
  
  By contrast, to borrow your phrase, the things many ‘complementarians’ say and do in practice make me throw up in my mouth a little.
  
  Of course, you can’t really even begin to deal with either the question of sexuality or the question of gender until you address the question of what it means to be a human being. And I’m not sure those within the bubble even realize that’s the fundamental question in play right now. Further, while I do believe there is a particular Christian answer to that question, and I believe I’m beginning to catch glimmers of it, I don’t find that it lines up particularly well with what I see and hear in evangelicalism.
  
  I was grateful to see him refuse to call anything that American Christians experience ‘persecution’. When you’re beaten, arrested, thrown in jail, or killed for your faith you can say you are persecuted. And, of course, he is exactly right that Christianity no longer has home field advantage. However, I’m not sure evangelicalism (in whatever form) can even work without that structural support. I will also say that Christianity has not been a cultural default in my lifetime. So it’s not as new a situation as some seem to think. Though I hate the metaphor, a lot of the shift has been happening for decades under the surface where the bulk of the iceberg is found. That’s why the culture war is ultimately doomed and has been from day one.
  
  Yes, we’re well into a ‘post-seeker’ context. I sorta get the baby boomers having been shaped by some sort of Christian experience and heading back to some kind of church at some point in their lives looking for God knows what. I sorta get it. Intellectually and as an observation about the data. But I don’t really understand it. Spiritual seeking in my context means a whole lot more than looking for a better Christian church experience. It goes back to that whole question about what it means to be a human being. Even if someone doesn’t express it in those words, that’s typically the question on the table. Christianity has a deep and rich answer to that question, even when compared to any other answer. Evangelicalism, by contrast, tends to offer a pale shadow of the Christian answer.
  
  On his next point, I read the Christianity Today series he discusses. I most deeply appreciated Dr. Brad Nassif’s contribution to the series. Our gospel is too small because of the poverty of our love. Of course, the statement didn’t originate with him. He was drawing on the deep and ancient wisdom of the Desert Fathers. But it strikes to the core of the matter. My sense from the article was that Ed Stetzer doesn’t really believe his gospel is too small. We’ve just lost confidence in it. That wouldn’t surprise me.
  
  I think he’s wrong. Personally, I find it too small intellectually. But that’s almost irrelevant. Our gospel — all of us — is and will remain too small until and unless we begin to overcome the poverty of our love. I’m included in that as much as anyone else.
  
  I didn’t really grasp his evangelical confusion comment. Has the word ever meant much as a category? If it has, I guess I missed it. I just sorta use it as another way of saying Protestant. And that tradition is such a chaotic mess, I think it’s doubtful it will ever be anything other than confused.
  
  Of course, Dallas Willard and others have been urging Protestants to actually focus on making disciples for decades now. So I’m not sure why the Reveal study surprised anyone. We don’t make disciples very well, in part, because our gospel is too small. An awful lot of the time, the question of Christianity is reduced to the question of your ‘eternal’ state. Where are you going to go after you die? As Willard asks: Does the gospel you preach naturally lead to the development of disciples? If the answer to that question is no, then you need to look at what you’re preaching.
  
  It’s not clear to me what he means by denominational catharsis. We live in a post-denominational world. And that’s hardest on Protestantism where denominationalism has been everything. Our tradition is all about dividing people up according to the very specific individual beliefs they hold rather than any sense of trying to be ‘one holy catholic and apostolic Church’. I’m really not sure what’s going to happen to the Protestant tradition in an ever-increasingly post-denominational world.
  
  Similarly, I don’t know what he means by ‘networked’ and how any sense of that term (I’m familiar with in a business sense and in a technical sense) applies to the Christian Church. I’m not sure I agree, but since I have no real clue what he means, I can’t really tell.
  
  His last one made me laugh. ‘New innovations’ is firmly part of the redundantly say the same thing twice department. My deeper response depends on what people mean by ‘innovation’. It’s odd to talk about ‘innovation’ in the context of a two thousand year old faith. Any serious ‘innovation’ has usually been found to be heretical. If you mean some sort of change as the faith interacts with and works its way into a culture, then that’s a given.
  
  But a lot of the overt work has been done. We have a written language. There’s no need to develop one for us as Christians did for many different peoples (including the Slavs as I recall) from the first millenium on. The Scriptures and liturgies have largely been translated into english. Everything else must function as an organic interaction between Christians and our culture as we become actual disciples and live following Jesus even as we live and work and create within the culture.
  
  Other people did that part of the presentation, so I don’t really know what he meant by ‘innovation’. If he just meant some new kind of technique or technology, then I return to his first two points for reference.
  
  How’s that for some morning thoughts?
- jhellums
  
  February 6th, 2009 at 15:29
  
  Return to top
  
  Tom:
  
  I don’t think this tagline “This is positive, encouraging ———. Safe for the whole family.” has anything to do with the church being dangerous. It’s silly to appreciate all of which these adjectives describe and yet dislike the tag line.
  
  As to Ed Stetzer Dangerous Church, I scanned a portion of this speech and was very dissatisfied. I think the best thing in the speech was his quotation of Waggoner.
  
  “We discovered a problem with these self-perceptions for growth or decline,” Waggoner said. “Fifty-five percent of our respondents believed they had grown spiritually in the last year. However, based on SFI scores, only 3.5 percent showed a statistically significant level of growth.”
  
  The people of the church are not growing spiritually. It seems we have more of a Broken Church than a Dangerous Church.
  
  I am reminded of the great effectiveness of Billy Graham’s sermons, so simple a child could understand, but life changing enough to win millions to Christ because they were gospel/Jesus centered sermon’s. No polish, no “skating in the puke,” no post seeker…just Jesus. That’s all it takes.
  
  That’s my two cents.
  
  If I have not said it yet, Congrats, heard you guys are having a girl. God Bless.
- tom cottar
  
  February 6th, 2009 at 16:09
  
  Return to top
  
  jhellums! Great to hear from you, bro!
  
  I agree with you–the tagline has absolutely nothing to do with any kind of ‘dangerous church’, however defined. while I can appreciate the expletive-free on-air environment of such a station, it certainly doesn’t mean I can swallow the tagline.
  
  Good quote from Waggoner, btw. we have the disbelief that ‘spiritual growth’ is learning/studying, instead of going/making/fishing/doing. So, when we live in the land of small groups that focus on knowledge, we move further into Me-Ville.
  
  the great thing about Graham was his simplicity! what a great thought. compassion. love. and jesus. (not to mention his exemplary integrity in his personal life!) much of which would probably not be politically correct in some circles today.
  
  maybe then, the question should lean towards growth….?
  
  btw, thanks….and when are you guys due?
- jhellums
  
  February 6th, 2009 at 16:54
  
  Return to top
  
  Tom:
  
  I enjoy reading you blog!
  
  I have to turn John Tesh off…(is that the same station?!?)
  
  Due July 20th. We find out on Feb. 18 if we are having a boy or girl and I am getting very excited. Are you guys going out to Hot Hearts? (I think I heard ya’ll are). If so, see you than!
- Cody Pope
  
  February 14th, 2009 at 18:19
  
  Return to top
  
  a friend of mine & i were talking about that exact thing the other day. we used some similar thoghts in the UnChristian series we’re doing. good thoughts! btw Ed is a great guy & good thinker. he’s a lot of fun to hang w & knows everyone.
No Trackbacks yet

Leave a Reply

Click here to cancel reply.

Name (required)

Mail (will not be published) (required)

Website

Chat line is open

Name

Cancel

Make sure that you can see yourself.

Click "Allow" if prompted.

Tip: Wear headphones for better audio

Cancel

You're on the air!

Video chat is open in another browser window or tab.

Video Chat Hidden

You were disconnected. Please check your internet connection and refresh to join.

Podcast powered by podPress v8.8.10.12