StretchyChurch

I read an entire book yesterday! Granted, it was only 67 pages long, but I’m still pretty proud of myself!

Let’s see… the last time I read an entire book in one day was in 3rd or 4th grade and the book was Henry and Ribsy by Beverly Cleary. Anyone remember Henry Huggins? One of my favorites as a kid….

Anyway, the book I read yesterday was The Missionary Congregation, Leadership, and Liminality by Alan Roxburgh. Terrific little book!

I just wanted to share one of the best insights this book gave me. Here it is:

The church has not been marginalized!

But that’s our mindset in the church. We act as though we were once in the center of the culture, but have now been relegated to the margins of our culture. We’re on the outside.

Part of our understanding is true–we were once in the center. It was a time called Christendom and it lasted from the time of Constantine (when he made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire) until a couple hundred years ago.

We think that since we’re no longer at the center of culture, we must be at the margins of culture. And we think that we have to find a way back to the center of culture.

That’s where we go wrong. The religious right thinks that by getting the right laws passed, we can return to the center. The seeker-sensitive movement thinks that by being cool, we can return to the center. The traditionalists think that by upgrading the organ, we can return to the center. The liberals think that if we can get the culture to see how open we are, we can return to the center.

The problem is that there is no longer a center to return to. Here’s how Roxburgh puts it:

Put in the language of postmodernity, there are no longer any grand theories of the whole; metanarratives have been uncovered as collections of context, value-bound positions. There is no longer a consensus about meaning and purpose, values and directions. Without this there can be no center.

So, you see, it’s not that we’ve been pushed to the margins, it’s that there is no longer a center. There are so many perspectives, world-views, spiritualities, that Christianity has simply become one world-view among many.

The challenge for the church, then, is not to try to get back to the center of culture–which, simply put, is impossible–but to figure out how to be the church in a world without a center. This will be hard, but I believe that if we follow the Holy Spirit, we’ll get there.