Sacred & Secular: What We’ve Missed #4

Today’s a good day to continue the series ‘What We’ve Missed – Missional Church Reflections’. Here’s the links to Part I, Part II and Part II.

Chris Gensheer quotes Ray Bakke on the subject of urban ministry. Bakke says the following (taken from the book ‘The Urban Face of Mission‘ edited by Harvie Conn and others):

“…far more than two billion of the world’s nonchurched people are no longer geographically distant from the church, they are culturally distant. They live in the largest cities of the world.” (You can read the rest of the quote and Chris’ post here)

How is it that people who live next door to us, go to our shopping malls, play sport at our sports clubs and eat at our restaurants are culturally distant from us – in a missions sense?

I think there’s a simple answer to this question: We, in the church, have completely embraced the ‘sacred/secular’ distinction. Our Christian lives are heavily compartmentalized.

We behave ‘Christian’ or ‘sacred’ for two hours on Sunday and another two hours on Wednesday night at cell group. Some of us even do ministry for the church and so on Friday night we put on the ‘sacred’ hat for three more hours as we teach teenagers. The rest of the week we remove the ‘sacred’ hat and replace it with the ‘secular’ hat and carry on as if we were just one of the crowd.

Its not that we’re culturally distant from everyone else its just that we’ve got ourselves to a stage where we’re unable to merge the two areas and so from a Christian point of view we are culturally distant from everyone else around us.

The missional Christian, on the other hand, doesn’t make that distinction. He/she merges the sacred and secular realizing that all of life is lived in worship to God and so all must, in some sense, be sacred. At the same time he/she recognizes that not all of the secular is antagonistic and opposed to the sacred and so he/she adopts, culturally, as much as possible of the secular, into those times that are set apart, organizationally, for the ‘sacred’. In a sense the church becomes more ‘worldly’ (in a good way) and the Christian becomes more ‘heavenly’ as he/she lives in the world each day.

If we don’t make strides in these two areas we will continue to alienate the people next to us from the church and continue to live with a false dichotomy in our lives between the secular and the sacred. The missional Christian walks a line that is completely culturally savvy and yet at the same time completely counter-cultural as he/she brings the demands of Christ’s lordship to bear on the creation through word and deed.

I realize that there are many dangers in trying to live out this missional Christianity, but just because its dangerous doesn’t mean its wrong. As Christians we don’t just adopt paths because they’re ‘safe’ and free of danger – instead we adopt paths as we become convinced of God’s will from the scriptures danger or no danger.

Are you living in the secular, sacred or both?

Slaves and Women at ‘Conn’-versation

There’s a great post over at ‘Conn’-versation which, in part, discusses William J. Webb’s book ‘Slaves, Women and Homosexuals‘. Webb’s book has been something of a controversial book in recent times due mainly to the new ground he attempts to break in the area of hermeneutics. It’s worthwhile to go over and check out both the post and the stream of comments discussing the ideas of the book – notably Tim Keller chips in with some food for thought on the issue. My opinion (albeit brief) is there amongst the comments too just in case you’re wondering.

Conn and Apartheid

I got through the foreword and the first chapter of ‘The Face of Urban Mission – Ministering the Gospel in a diverse and changing world‘ by Harie Conn and others. The foreword is a testimony to the very practical ministry of the late Harvie Conn and his deep passion for the gospel to be practised in a holistic manner.

In chapter 1 he hits the nail on the head of probably the biggest problem in modern missions – the ‘apartheid’ that separates mission from theology. Normally when one brings up this subject the blame is either laid at theology’s door for being too stuck in its ‘ivory towers’ to be of any practical use OR at the door of missions for being to pragmatically driven to take real cognisance of theology. Conn doesn’t pick sides – rather he highlights the errors on both sides and suggests, drawing quite a bit from David Bosch, something of a way forward that seems to be emerging where both are integrated. I wonder what Harive Conn would make of the Emerging Church in its current expression? I’m looking forward to the next lot of chapters and getting into some of the nitty gritty of urban mission.

Mission and Books

Since mentioning recently that I’ve been battling to find missioligists who combine great missional insight with sound exegesis I’ve got my hands on three helpful books in this area. It’s going to take me some time to get through them all, but I think the authors involved in these books make up some of the most reliable names in missions:

The Mission of God – Chris Wright

The Face of Urban Mission – Harvie M. Conn and others

Salvation to the Ends of the Earth – Andreas J. Kostenberger & Peter T. O’Brien 

BTW – If you’re in Cape Town this coming week then don’t miss out on hearing Chris Wright speak at the Easter Convention. 

Missions and Exegesis

I’m doing a course called contemporary issues in missions, and one thing I keep finding over and over again is that for all the wisdom that these various missiologists impart the general standard of exegetical skill amongst them is rather poor. I’ve been reading Bosch, Escobar, Newbigin etc. etc. and whilst every page has great wisdom and insight I find that when these guys turn to the texts they’re rather weak in their exegesis.

I’ve really enjoyed reading Harvie Conn because he seems to be able to combine missional thinking with fairly decent exegesis – Peter O’Brien is also great, but to date I haven’t been able to get my hands on much of his missiology stuff.

Does anyone out there know of missiologists who are very careful with their exegesis of Scripture, who are sensitive both to the literary genre and redemptive historical context?

Conn Blog

One of my favourite missional thinkers is the late Harvie Conn who previously taught at Westminster Theological Seminary. My special interest in urban ministry means that one of the most treasured books on my shelf is Dr. Conn’s big volume called Urban Ministry. So it was to my delight this morning that I found a blog by a few Westminster students dedicated entirely to the life and work of Harvie Conn. If you’re at all interested in what missional thinking from a Reformed tradition looks like then you have to give Dr. Conn a look.