Author: David Opderbeck

Interesting discussion on Jesus Creed about how a younger pastor interested in the emerging church movement can relate to an older pastor who is wary of it.  Here’s a comment I posted for discussion, offered here for discussion as well.

Scot and others, I’m curious for your take on this rumination. So this idea of “orthodoxy” has been nagging at me for quite some time. I wonder if in the context of the young pastor’s conversations with his senior pastor, we could use a word like “authenticity” instead. “Orthodoxy” and “central to the gospel” to me sound like hard demarcations based on mere assent to propositions. You agree with this list, or you’re out. Perhaps even, “if you get this one wrong, you’re not really among the elect / saved / Christians.”

But as I read scripture, the central concern seems to be “authenticity.” The epistle of 1 John, for example, is heavily invested in “orthodoxy,” because one of the writer’s central concerns is to distinguish authentic Christians from false teachers (possibly Gnostics) who are denying the deity of Christ. But the overall emphasis is on right relationship — the false teachers were ultimately unable to exhibit a right relationship to Jesus issuing in the prime virtue of love, because they were not coming to Jesus as he is, as the God-man. The sense, I think, is not to ossify a certain statement, expression, or contextualization of faith, but to encourage and enable people to remain in authentic, transforming relationship with Jesus. I’d suggest that other places in scripture in which proto-creedal statements are passed along perform the same function.

So maybe the starting point for this cross-generational, emerging-to-conservative-evangelical conversation is to shift focus from the demarcations of “orthodoxy” to the purposes of “authenticity.” Then the younger pastor can say something like “here’s how I think what NT Wright / Willard / McKnight / McClaren / etc. helps people deepen an authentic relationship with Jesus”; and the older pastor can say “here’s where I see some concerns with authenticity.” Not hard analytical lines, but relational boundaries.

I’ve lost count of how many missions events I’ve attended where the theme was “reaching the lost.”  I’ve always had a visceral aversion to this term, “the lost.”  It’s an aversion that’s bothered me at times — am I just afraid of the exclusiveness of the claims of Christ?  Perhaps, but I recently noticed this post on church growth seminars that resonated with me on this and other related topics.

I think at least some of my negative reaction to the term “reaching the lost” is ethically and theologically right.  Ethically, “the lost” is a way of objectifying people.  It moves us out of the responsibility to develop authentic two-way relationships with real individuals, in which we might learners and receivers as much as teachers and givers.  It sets us up as “better,” more enlightened, more knowledgeable than those who we’re trying to “reach.”  It devalues the personal story of the “other” and insists that “our” stories take priority.

Theologically, “the lost” ignores God’s sovereignty.  Ultimately God, and only God, knows who has received and who will receive the grace that is available in Christ.  Moreover, we do not “reach” people.  Rather, the Holy Spirit changes people, and God sometimes uses us in that process.  Finally, often this idea of “reaching the lost” is coupled with a sense of desperate urgency.  There is an urgency in that the “fields are white unto harvest” and we are called to go into those fields.  But there is no urgency in the sense of whether God’s plan of redemption will be accomplished. 

So, I’d rather set aside talk of “reaching the lost.”  Let’s instead talk of “announcing good news.”  God’s reign, His peace, has come in Christ, and we invite all to participate.