Where do open-minded and free-thinking people fit into the modern church? At my parents’ church last Sunday, it seemed like people who had ideas of their own (!) would have a hard time fitting in at a large traditional church where everything was formalized and structured.

Dan Kimball has long realized that many people are insulted by the level of intellectual conformity required in churches, and the relative shallowness of evangelical sermons’ theology:

Don’t insult people’s intelligence or desire for spiritual depth. If I went to a Buddhist temple to have a deep spiritual experience and upon walking in received a fill-in-the-blank sheet with an easy-to-remember acrostic for the three steps on how to “M-E-D-I-T-A-T-E,” I imagine it woudl catch me off guard. if I were then subjected to an upbeat, seminar-style teaching message with a flashy PowerPoint presentation, I’d feel a little confused and let down.

Likewise, people in emerging generations attending a worship service hunger for a deep experience of God’s wisdom. If we distribute sermon notes, they should be comprehensive and give the historical context for the Scripture passages we use. The Emerging Church, p178

If you want to grow a group of people who all think the same and don’t question what the group does, it’s not hard. That’s exactly what I saw on Sunday. There are many intelligent and open-minded people there, but that almost seems to be an accident, and even the ones in leadership positions tend not to rock the boat. The average person-in-the-pew, even after many years of following Christ (for that is what they are doing - I don’t want to give the impression that they’re selfish or uncommitted), does not have even the slightest idea that there may be other, equally viable groups of Christians outside our denomination, or that scripture can be interpreted in multiple ways, one of which is not necessarily totally correct to the exclusion of others. The message is, “What our group teaches is truth, and others don’t have it. If you bring up something other than what we all agree on (though we never actually discuss it), you’re strange and out of line.”

Kimball encourages me with this quote, headed “The importance of developing a culture which encourages questions and thinking.” He mentions the famous Bereans and their inquiry into scripture as examples for the church today:

We must cultivate a culture that allows dialogue. Evangelicals have been criticized - many times rightly so - for being dogmatic and closed-minded. For too long we have been doing all the talking, without any dialogue. We are now serving generations that have serious trust issues, and trust is not earned by talking just one-way. We must disarm this criticism and regain trust. We need to encourage, not discourage, people to think, to question, to discover. Why are we so afraid of encouraging people to think for themselves? We may need to set up open forums in which people can engage in deeper dialogue about the message. I’m sure Paul the apostle used dialogue in certain preaching settings. At the very least, we need to constantly encourage our listeners to check out our teachings for themselves, measuring them against Scripture. p193

I could go on with this quote, but it would get quite long. Very good stuff here. Kimball next cites the Jewish Midrash, the “tradition which emphasizes struggling with numerous possible interpretations of the Scriptures” (193). He encourages dialogue, questions, and a less-fearful attitude about people’s questions and interpretations.

What I’m reading here reminds me of Grenz and Franke’s Beyond Foundationalism. Much of the fear that people have of open-minded inquiry is that the “foundations” of their faith will be eroded or damaged, and the whole belief system will come crashing down. Isn’t this ironic - that, in the name of ensuring faithfulness to the truth, people would mark off inquiry as a dangerous and subversive activity?