gathering in light

One of my favorite New Testament scholars Anglican Bishop NT Wright was on my favorite evening talk show, The Colbert Report. On the show they discuss Wright’s latest book “Surprised by Hope” and what that has to do with heaven, the mission of the church, and new creation.

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This is the third part of the Church in Mission series where I am attempting to appropriate some of John Howard Yoder’s thinking in direct relationship to the mission of the church in our culture today.

Series contents | Introduction | Part Two | Part Three | Part Four | Part Five

So far we’ve look at the church in relationship to the question of how the church is to remain “relevant” to our culture, and secondly the question of how Jesus interacted with his own culture. Another way of thinking (that is complimentary to what’s been said) about the mission of the church as something over and against commodified relevancy can be seen this in Yoder’s primary missiological text, Jeremiah 29:7:

“But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the LORD on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.”

For Yoder the Jews’ being scattered into the Babylonian empire is not a sidetrack of their history, but a new beginning. “It was rather the beginning, under a firm, fresh prophetic mandate, of a new phase of the Mosaic project” (For the Nations, 53). Dispersion is now the calling of the Jewish community of faith (52). And within this dispersion, YHWH calls the Jewish people to “Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile.” » Read the rest of this entry «

Series contents | Introduction | Part Two | Part Three | Part Four | Part Five

A big question concerning the church in Western culture is, “how do we make the church more relevant for today’s world?” We see this question get answered in many ways: from youth pastors using the video games like Halo to evangelize their teenagers, to church buildings with Starbucks, to Jumbo trons pumping out “Christian commercials,” to building structures designed after today’s modern malls, to churches creating myspace groups or online social networks. I know I have been guilty of thinking that relevancy is the most important question the church faces, and while the best of intentions are behind this, I ultimately think it’s the wrong question.

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