<Theofragen>

While growing up, I had a beautiful black Labrador Retriever named Chessy. Chessy, like most labs was great with kids and generally of an amicable disposition. She tirelessly endured the playful abuse of my sister and me. Through it all… through trying to ride her across the yard like a miniature pony, through reenacting my favorite wrestling moves between Andre the Giant and Hacksaw Jim Dugan… she never once snapped at us nor bit us. She did, however, hold her joviality in abeyance while she was eating. When her food was set before her we knew not to bother her until she finished eating. Any deviation from this practice resulted in a slow, deep growl and a penetrating gaze that alerted everyone in my family not to screw around with her.

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I never quite figured out why she did this. Was it because she was embarrassed about her table manners, having resigned herself to eating from a bowl on the floor while the rest of the family ate at the table? Perhaps her mealtime despondency was a vestige of her wolfish ancestors and the survival instinct associated with competition for food? Whatever the reason, I learned that when she was given some space, Chessy was free to eat her meal without agitation. Conversely, something about perturbing her while she ate not only kept her from eating, but also threatened the rest of our family.

Perhaps it is similar with dogmatic Fundamentalists. Let me say it stronger still: I think it is the same with such folk. I recall as a young theology student how defensive I became when my “liberal” professors and colleagues challenged my fragile presuppositions that bolstered, albeit precariously, my dogmatism. When antagonistic questions threatened the feeble foundations of my “orthodoxy,” the growl would begin as a low rumble deep within my soul and, sadly enough, I often verbally bit my antagonist.

It was not until I was given space, often late at night with a theology book or early in the morning with my Bible, that my dogmatism began to wane. “What if God didn’t create the world in six literal days?” “Might partriarchal sexism be intricately interwoven into the fabric of the New Testament?” When I was alone with my thoughts I could explore, with greater profundity, such issues that threatened my tenacious fundamentalism. When I think back about how vehemently I fought against certain ideas in public and how, on a solitary jog around campus, I would wrestle with “Truth,” I am challenged to rethink the way that I interact with dogmatic Fundamentalists today.

Maybe the best thing we can do for such folks is to pose a few questions and let them eat their supper in peace, undisturbed. Then we can allow them space, in their unguarded time, to think through these issues on their own. Hmmm?

posted by Jake at 10/23/2005 01:36:00 PM

Chris Seay in Atlanta

Today I attended an event sponsored by McAfee School of Theology. The featured speaker was Ecclesia pastor, Chris Seay. The title of Chris' talk was "Understanding Emergent Congregational Life."

Both his message and approach were helpful for the assembled group of seminarians and pastors. The main point of his lecture was about living out the Gospel incarnationally in our respective communities.

Here are my (somewhat incogent) notes

Entering into incarnational community—Living a holistic gospel in a fragmented world
--Seeing God’s work everywhere//not such a harsh divide between sacred/secular
--Christianity is essentially about incarnation!
--Because the world is forever changing, traditions become a hindrance when they obviate incarnational ministry

--Primary enemy of the Gospel→consumerism
[we need to do what we do, not in order meet their “felt needs”, but because it is the right thing to do in our context to embody the Gospel missionally]
--At Ekklesia, they don’t care about their felt needs but about their real needs→love God and love your neighbor!
• Move people from consumers to co-creators
• “What the bleep do we know?”
Incarnation is ultimately about being dirty, we can’t live incarnationally without getting messy in other people’s lives
--modernity—knowledge, figuring it out
--postmodernity—beauty, mystery, spiritual

Scientific method for exegesis: observation:interpretation:application (by this we “propositionalize Christ”)
Lectionary is used so that the whole story is covered

Three ways of thinking:
• Linear (Romans)
• Circular (Ecclesiastes)
• Webthinking (spiderweb style)

Moving to a more eastern or Hebraic way of teaching
Tony Jones: “breaking the pastoral contract”
• We want them to leave asking questions, not thinking they had the answers (we want them to ask the right questions)
• Bruggemann—Prophetic imagination (painting a picture of the world and a picture of how the world should be and letting others live in that tension)

Ekklesia’s purpose
—to provoke people to relationship with God
Art and music are tools used to tell the story of God

posted by Jake at 10/11/2005 07:43:00 PM

Rethinking Baptistic Decorum

As a "free and faithful" Baptist, I affirm the historic Baptist convictions in the priesthood of the believer and the autonomy of the local church. This first facet of Baptist life basically means that I, and other Baptists like myself, maintain that as individuals created in God's very image and as regenerate Christians--endowed with the Holy Spirit--individuals are free, under Christ's lordship, to make decisions before God without external interferences. The second principle avers that local churches are free, again under Christ's lordship, to order worship, elect and ordain officers/ministers (regardless of sex!) and enter into relationships with the church catholic for the purposes of missions, social justice and evangelization.

Even though I am a postmodern-recovering-evangelical-repentant-fundamentalist-kind-of- Baptist, I still genuflect to these basic principles of Baptist identity. I am, however, unconvinced how these principles relate to matters of decorum within congregational polity. Said another way, the tenants of Baptist identity recounted above typically are translated in matters of church government (polity) to the notion that every member of an autonomous Baptist congregation has the opportunity to express her opinion and to vote on matters of community significance. I have been a part of Baptist churches in the past where this opinion is carried out ad absurdum. We even had to vote one time on changing the toner supplier for the copying machine!

Conversely, if church conferences and business meetings are so wonderful, then why do committees and ministers often go out of their way to minimize the full brunt of congregational opinions (especially dissenting ones)? What I mean is that smart pastors quickly realize that anytime one assembles a group of autonomous individuals who are extremely proud of both their autonomy and individuality, it behooves said minister to play a bit of politics before the church actually votes on anything. In fact, I can't remember a time since I discovered how to play Baptist politics that my church has ever made a tabula rasa decision about anything. Typically, key people who yield church-wide influence are 'set loose' to use their influence to get the church to agree with the recommendation of the committee or pastor. How, then, is this any different from presbyterian polity?

Similarly, sometimes church conferences are held at such a time and date that the least number of people will be present. In super-small print on the back of a bulletin one might read of a church-wide conference next Wednesday night (a service that typically is sparsely attended). This is either done to bolster attendance at the Wednesday night prayer meeting, or, more likely, it is designed to mitigate the likelihood that dissenters will show up to 'influence' the votes' outcome.

Here is my question: does the priesthood of the believer and autonomy of the local church necessitate congregational polity?

P.S. It seems to me that if we still want to maintain these historic Baptist convictions and congregational polity is the best expression of these convictions, then ministers, church officers and committee members should go out of their way to make sure that everybody gets a vote. We would want to open the opportunities for God's Spirit to communicate with our particular congregation. Hmmmm?

My Silly Dog

Chris Seay in Atlanta

Rethinking Baptistic Decorum