Been reading recently some essays in The community of the Word.Ed.s Mark Husbands and Daniel J. Treier (IVP 2005) This book grew out of a conference at Wheaton 2004 exploring the title.
I'd like to highlight selected chapters I enjoyed and engaged me:(I'll do this over the next wee while)
PART ONE:
Chpt 3 Practicing Church: Evangelical ecclesiologies at the end of modernity.
Jonathan R. Wilson.
This essay takes 4 popular authors and explores their implicit and explicit ecclesiologies: Francis Schaeffer' Chuck' Colson, Rick Warren and Brian McLaren. The reason for this is that Wilson, thanks to an article by Jackson Carroll reveals that clergy reading has no 'theologian ' ie after the likes of Bloesch, Grenz, Barth, Motlmann, Pannenberg, Torrance, Lindbeck etc among their favourites in reading, 'no theology is among thier most recently read books, and no theological journal is among their frequent reading.' (p63). [What is more disconcerting in this is that other essays also point to a lack of ecclesiological understanding and thinking as a whole in students].
Wilson speaks of Improvisational or Instrumental? he wants to add to missional ecclesiology an improvisational dimension - so that there is maintained a commitment to mission and a faithful flexibility to our commission. this enables us to adapt to each context 'under the guidance of the Spirit'. Schaeffer and Colson's ecclesiologies are of this ilk. However, instrumental ecclesiology is the opposite of improvisation - resistant or clinging to past forms or disconnects church from its life source. For Wilson, Warren's ecclsiology is instrumental. (Wilson states that it is actually difficult to discern any ecclesiology that guides his book, discerned only perhaps in the 'silences' Cautiously he notes: absence of critical examination of culture - assumed unproblematic, though does argue for cultural sensitivity; look in vain for anything of treaditional oneness, holiness, ctholicity of Church; leaves untouched the individualism of N. American culture - it IS about you and your fulfilment.
Mclaren, he regards as closer to Colson and Scheaffer, sensitive to the cultural context and the world as 'opposition' to Church and Gospel. HE does note a 'fear of irrelevance' in McLaren in his ecclesiology which is seen as a work in progress, 'still developing'... 'emerging'
Much of this Jazz metaphor is more fully developed by others these days and little new may seem to have been said in this chapter, but what was helpful was something I feel strongly about - that 'one, holy, catholic and apostolic' as characteristics, rightly understood, relate the church properly to its mission in the world and enable improvisation. For Wilson this sets the direction for ecclesiology into the future. The essay may have been more helpful, with more space to develop what is his conclusion and engage more fully with how Wilson intends the metaphor of Jazz improvisation at a level of thinking about the church beyond that of Warren and others. Something I do think needs consideration within such a framework, otherwise we dangerously cut loose from some 'core' tradition that addresses every age and we perpetuate an unthinking, uncritical ecclesiology and then we are in a dissonant mess!
Indeed, improvisation as a metaphor has for some time now been engaged with in organisational science and teased out. Perhaps that is what he needed to open up more fully in a critical way.
The Church rests on the grace of God, the judging, atoning, regenerating
grace of God which is holy love in the form it must take within human sin.
Wherever that is heartily confessed and goes on to rule we have the true
Church. P.T Forsyth
