From the now-famously recalled-but-not-retracted statement from Forge:
Forge remains theologically funded by an orthodox theology whilst being committed to a radical missiology based on innovating church and mission in the post-Christendom West. The predominant issues for us remaind the pursuit and recovery of a full-orbed biblical Christology which in turn will fund our missiology which then informs all subsequent ecclesiology. Holding to this approach, we would argue that all attempts to try [to] contextualise spirituality, theology, and worship divorced from, and prior to, an active missional engagement remain futile and frustrating. Contextualisation must always remain a subset of missions and not the other way around. And yet it seems that is precisely what is taking place in many Emergent conversations whether they have intended it or not.We believe it is precisely this non-missional contextualising that is frustrating efforts to find a new way of being church in the new landscapes of the West and is the focus of the anxiety of the evangelical conservatives such as Carson. (emphasis added)
Hamo has asked that the PDF of Forge’s open letter no longer be distributed, because there was concern that people would see it as a criticism of Emergent, which it was not intended to be. The letter does a good job, though, of explaining why the Australian EC is more focused on mission: because to do anything else is to get the cart before the horse.
The horse, in this case, is Christology - who is Jesus? What do we know about his nature, his life, his teaching? Then, how can we live in congruency with that? How can we do church in alignment with what we know about Jesus, in our context?
I think there is validity to contextualizing theology for our post-foundationalist cultural climate in the US, and I suspect that an even more postmodern attitude is present in Australia. Most people from conservative backgrounds would agree, though, that not everything associated with the EC in the US is orthodox enough for us to be comfortable with it. People are quick to point out that we don’t have to be comfortable with a theology for it to be right, and often good theology challenges us and makes us uncomfortable. But to be honest, some of what we’re doing in the American EC is more focuses on being cool by our culture’s standards than on conforming to our best Christology and missiology.
The sequence should be like this:
Christology > Missiology > Ecclesiology > Activities & Resource Use
I must admit that I have put ecclesiology first in a lot of my thinking. Often there is a good Christological and missional basis for the ecclesiology that I am advocating, but there are still distortions when first things are not placed first.
good thoughts, man…
Thought provoking! I’d like to hear more about how missiology is prior to ecclesiology. Can you flesh that out a bit more…what does that functionally look like?
Van S, Here is some of my recent writing on this (new book coming up…published by Brazos early 2006). I couldn’t upload a diagram I use to try visualize this process. Hopefully some words will do the trick.
By my reading of the Scriptures, ecclesiology is the most fluid of the doctrines. The church is a dynamic cultural expression of the people of God in any given place. Worship style, social dynamics, liturgical expressions must the result from the process of contextualizing the gospel in any given culture. Church must follow mission. We engage first in incarnational mission and the church so to speak, comes out the back of it. But if it is consistent with incarnational practices, that church will take the shape of the cultural group it is trying to reach. Mission in the incarnational mode is highly sensitive to the cultural forms and rhythms of a people group because these are the means of meaningful relationship and influence. Incarnational mission thus engages people from within their cultural expression. Once this essential missional listening, observation, connecting, and networking has been done, then the forming of Jesus communities can take place. This is the only way to ensure that the Christian community truly incarnates itself and is fully contextualized.
Only this way can the church actually become part of the cultural fabric and social rhythms of the host community. Once it has achieved this, it can therefore influence it from within. And it doesn’t matter what group that might be. In our neighborhoods are literally hundreds of different ‘tribes’ that can be meaningfully reached by such means. Through the missional-incarnational approach Jesus is introduced into their imaginations and conversations in a really evocative way.
[...] ing some of the ideas presented in the paper on Forge and Emergent, which I also discussed here. Van S ( [...]
Missional DNA? Describing Foundational Missional Concepts
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Thanks Alan.
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