Integrated mission for global historic Christianity

This month at the theology reading group we discussed Integrated Mission: Recovering a Christian Spirituality for Evangelical Integral Transformation by Sarah Nicholl and published by Langham.

Sarah is a member of the reading group. The book is based on her recent Ph.D. thesis. She recently gave a talk on the book at Theology on Tap Brisbane.

Sarah considers the Lausanne Movement through the statements issued at their three global congresses: Lausanne (1974), Manilla (1989), and Cape Town (2011). [The book was completed because the most recent congress, held in Seoul last month]. 

Her focus is on the lack of discussion of the role of Christian spirituality in mission. She creatively addresses this by listening to four voices: John Wesley, Ignatius of Loyola, Orlando Costas, and Segundo Galilea. 

Major themes in the book. These themes are to varying degrees explicit and implicit. 

Integration. Since its origin, Lausanne has stimulated debates about the relationship and relative priority for Christians of evangelism (defined as the verbal proclamation of the Gospel to those who do not identify as followers of Jesus) and social action, such as serving the poor and addressing unjust social structures. These debates led to the concept of integral mission, which does not prioritise one but integrates them. This perspective was pioneered by some attendees, including Costas, who are sometimes identified as "radicals".

The book explicitly focuses on the integration of spirituality and mission (being and doing, acts of piety and of mercy, heart and hands,...). Implicit is a broader perspective on the need for integrative thinking and action in other areas. Dualities such as public/private and secular/sacred are briefly mentioned.

Ecumenical. Both Lausanne and Sarah identify as evangelical and Protestant. Nevertheless, unlike some, Sarah considers there is much to learn about mission, spirituality, and the Christian life from Catholics. Two of her dialogue partners, Ignatius and Galilea are Catholic. Ignatius pioneered The Spiritual Exercises, including the Examen, that are increasingly used by Protestants. Sarah is also sympathetic to a form of sacramentalism.

Sacramentalism. This sees all of life as sacred and considers that engagement with even mundane aspects of life can lead to a rich experience of God, just as for acts that are explicitly identified as sacraments, such as baptism, the Eucharist (holy communion), or marriage. Sarah explicitly discusses a sacramental view of mission in terms of Matthew 25. In that passage, Jesus says that those who feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and provide shelter, are actually doing it to him. Hence, such acts of mercy are encounters with Jesus.

Ministry at the margins should be central. Jesus was a friend of sinners, tax collectors and prostitutes. He embraced lepers, cripples, the demon-possessed, Samaritans, and Gentiles. He came from Galilee and commenced his ministry there. Jesus was scorned by the religious establishment and warned of the dangers of wealth, social status, and worldly power. In summary, Jesus operated on the margins and embraced those on the margins. 

Yet, the history of Christianity has been characterised by an unrelenting desire and embrace of power, wealth, social status, and formal institutionalisation. People on the margins (social, economic, health, political, ethnic, geographical, educational, theological, gender,...) have been and are marginalised. Nevertheless, again and again, in the long term, at the centre the church dwindles, loses vitality, and diminishes in influence. In contrast, on the margins, the church grows in numbers, dynamism, and influence. Shifts and struggles in Lausanne are a reflection of the Majority World involvement.

All four voices engaged by Sarah testify to the importance of ministry from and to the margins. This was most clearly articulated by Orlando Costas, who emphasised the Galilee roots of Jesus' ministry.

Similarity in difference. The four voices came from vastly different contexts, spanning 400 hundred years, from Europe to Latin America, and from Catholic to Protestant. Yet they were all involved with mission, albeit in different ways. Furthermore, they all believed in and practised integrated mission. Their outreach was sustained and influenced by a personal spirituality and visa verse. Sarah follows David Tracy who considered that such "similarity in difference" can be a pointer to truth. 

A person or community's perspective on any matter is influenced by their own context and life experience. Assessing the level of influence is difficult, especially whether the context is determinative of the perspective. This is important because if context is determinative it means the perspective may not be valid or helpful for other contexts. On the other hand, different contexts producing similar perspectives may be suggestive of truth.  

A major theme in the background

The fraught legacy of modernism for mission. Sarah briefly mentions the views of David Bosch. His classic book, Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission,  has a chapter that is 90 pages long, Mission in the Wake of the Enlightenment. Bosch identifies seven contours of the Enlightenment worldview:

1. The supremacy of reason

2. Subject-object dichotomy

3. Elimination of the idea of purpose

4. Optimism in Progress.

5. Distinction between facts and values

6. All problems are solvable in principle

7. Humans are emancipated and autonomous individuals

These issues are also explored in depth in next month's book, Mangoes or Bananas? The Quest for an Authentic Asian Christian Theology, by Hwa Yung

Implications for me

There were several things that the book challenged me on personally. These were not necessarily new ideas, but rather the struggles of practical and regular implementation. Hearing from the four voices was helpful and challenging.

Be engaged personally, especially with the poor. Just giving money is not adequate.

Spiritual practices and mission are communal and not just individual.

Contemplative reading and prayer. 

Minister on the margins. Listen to marginal voices. Engage with the suffering of those on the margins. Empower those on the margins. 

Lectures on Science, Christianity, and Apologetics

I prepared a series of online lectures on Science, Christianity, and Apologetics. There are four parts. Each part consists of about six lectures lasting about 20 minutes. They were prepared for a South Asian audience but should be relevant to many contexts. Here is the first part.

The transformative power of grace

I have been listening to Les Miserables again. I also rented the 2012 movie for a weekend and watched it twice. One of the songs that stood out is "What have I done?" Jean Valjean sings it after a priest shows him mercy. The song sets the stage for the unfolding story.

What have I done?

Sweet Jesus, what have I done?

Become a thief in the night

Become a dog on the run

Have I fallen so far

And is the hour so late

That nothing remains but the cry of my hate

The cries in the dark that nobody hears

Here where I stand at the turning of the years?

If there's another way to go

I missed it twenty long years ago

My life was a war that could never be won

They gave me a number and murdered Valjean

When they chained me and left me for dead

Just for stealing a mouthful of bread

Yet why did I allow that man

To touch my soul and teach me love?

He treated me like any other

He gave me his trust

He called me brother

My life he claims for God above

Can such things be?

For I had come to hate the world

This world that always hated me

Take an eye for an eye

Turn your heart into stone

This is all I have lived for

This is all I have known

One word from him and I'd be back

Beneath the lash, upon the rack

Instead he offers me my freedom

I feel my shame inside me like a knife

He told me that I had a soul

How does he know?

What spirit comes to move my life?

Is there another way to go?

I am reaching, but I fall

And the night is closing in

And I stare into the void

To the whirlpool of my sin

I'll escape now from that world

From the world of Jean Valjean

Jean Valjean is nothing now

Another story must begin

Source: Musixmatch

Songwriters: Herbert Kretzmer / Alain Albert Boublil / Claude Michel Schonberg

What Have I Done? lyrics © Alain Boublil Music Ltd.

Jesus and postmodern political life

What does Jesus have to do with politics, whether at the local or the global level? How do Christians live and witness in a pluralistic and fractured multi-cultural society?

This month at the theology reading group we are discussing
Jesus and the Powers: Christian Political Witness in An Age of Totalitarian Terror and Dysfunctional Democracies by Tom Wright and Michael F. Bird

The relationship between Christianity and politics is a complex issue with theological, historical, cultural, and social dimensions. I appreciate that Wright and Bird do not gloss over the complexity of the issue and yet write in an accessible, balanced, and winsome manner. I found the book easy to read and enjoyable. Overall, I found it encouraging and challenging.

On the other hand, I should point out that after I wrote most of this post I read a critical but appreciative review of the book by John Nugent at Englewood Review. He considers that Wright and Bird are too uncritical about Christendom, and that they view things too much through the lens of the creation mandate (Genesis 1:26).

The section, Building for the Kingdom (p.83ff) is inspiring. God builds God's Kingdom. But he invites us to participate in this work.  "we do well to distinguish between the final manifestation of the kingdom and the present anticipations of it." In other words, it is now but not yet.  Christians are to build for the Kingdom. This includes engagement at all levels of society, motivating small and large acts. Wright draws on 1 Corinthians 15:58

So, my dear family, be firmly fixed, unshakeable, always full to overflowing with the Lord's work. In the Lord, as you know, the work your doing will not be worthless."

He explains the significance of this in the following inspiring passage:

what we do matters because it carries over into the final new creation....

We are - strange though it may seem, almost as hard to believe as the resurrection itself - accomplishing something which will become, in due course, part of God's new world.

If that is true, then, every act of love, gratitude and kindness; every work of art or music inspired by the love of God and delight in the beauty of his creation; every minute spent teaching a severely disabled child to read or to walk... all spirit-led teaching, every deed that spreads the Gospel... - all of this will finds its way, through the resurrecting power of God, into the new creation that God will one day make.

 The work we do in the present to build for the kingdom gains its full significance from the eventual consummation of the kingdom in the time appointed by God. Applied to the mission of the Church, this means that we must erect in the present the signs of that kingdom, providing a preview of what everything will look like when God is ‘all in all’, when his kingdom has come and his will is done ‘on earth as in heaven’. When the people of the new creation behold its wonder and beauty, it should strike them with an acute sense of déjà vu, as if to remind them of a prayer they once heard prayed, an act of mercy they saw performed, a song that they had once sung that now echoes all around them, a sermon about Jesus that they now see spring to life, a cry for justice that is now answered, and a love that was even better than what they were told. We build for the kingdom, because what we do for the King carries forward into his royal realm.

Consistent, with the above passage, Wright and Bird have a broad view of what Christian witness is. It is not just words but also actions.

What about worldly governments, good and bad? The consider Romans 13:1-7 and 1 Peter 2:13-17. Rulers have been delegated by God to administer justice and so they are accountable to God. Just because a ruler's authority has been given to them by God does not give them carte blanche to do as they please or an obligation to their Christian subjects to blindly affirm and obey them. As rulers are accountable to God it is appropriate and responsible for Christians to remind them of this, particularly when they are agents of injustice. Furthermore, there is room for civil disobedience and in exceptional cases perhaps even violent resistance. (page 42-3)

The sacred versus secular divide is a false dichotomy, including in politics, where it plays out in church-state relations. This dichotomy may express itself in two extremes: theocracy (where the state enforces the orthodoxy of one religious community, as in Oliver Cromwell or in Iran) and autocrative secularism where the state is used to eliminate any public expression of religion (e.g., in the former Soviet Union and China).

Christianity is not primarily about "going to heaven" but "heaven coming to earth" (with now but not yet caveats).

(pages 61, 65, 66)

Another false dichotomy to avoid is the Kingdom of God versus the Cross of Christ. In extreme this puts social justice in opposition to evangelism, and the Gospels in tension with the Pauline Epistles. Wright discusses how when he was Bishop of Durham he oversaw churches that had a sole emphasis on one or the other.

(page 78ff)

“What is clearly not in mind is that preaching the cross to the ‘lost’ would happen in one church while acts of mercy for the poor would happen in another church. Advancing the kingdom means promoting the gospel from Jesus and about Jesus. Kingdom-work is continuing to do the very same things that Jesus himself did among individuals in need, challenging self-assured religious types, offering mercy to the downtrodden and forgotten, warning of judgement, exhorting faith in God’s generous forgiveness, and speaking words of truth in the halls of political power.”

Against Christian Nationalism (p.129ff)

“Christian nationalism is impoverished as it seeks a kingdom without a cross. It pursues a victory without mercy. It acclaims God’s love of power rather than the power of God’s love. We must remember that Jesus refused those who wanted to ‘make him king’ by force just as much as he refused to become king by calling upon ‘twelve legions of angels’. Jesus needs no army, arms or armoured cavalry to bring about the kingdom of God. As such, we should resist Christian nationalism as giving a Christian facade to nakedly political, ethnocentric and impious ventures.”

Against Civic Totalism (p.136 ff)

Under the guise of being "progressive" a state seeks "to regulate the individual's beliefs, convictions, conscience and religion". This has a strong "culture war" dimension and I feel that sometimes this threat is overblown by some politically "conservative" Christians.

A strong case is made for liberal democracy as the best form of governance, albeit the best among bad options.

“we wish to prosecute the thesis that in a world with a human propensity for evil, greed and injustice, liberal democracy stands as the least worst option for human governance. Liberal democracy is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for a just society, but it can be an enabling condition for a just society.”

Eight benefits of liberal democracy are given. One is "Economic opportunity and equality."  There is substantial evidence for this, as argued in the best book that I read in 2019.

Following John Inazu, the authors advocate for "confident pluralism".

“Confident pluralism has a very simple premise, namely, that people have the right to be different, to think differently, to live differently, to worship differently, without fear of reprisal. Confident pluralism operates with the idea that politics has instrumental rather than ultimate value. In other words, politics is a means, not an end. No state, no political party, no leader is God-like, or can demand blind devotion. Any attempt by political actors to create social homogeneity by compelling conformity, by bullying minorities or by punishing dissent, whether in religion or in policy, is anti-liberal and undemocratic. "

What is missing from the book?

Any discussion of the problem of smartphones and social media. Today, they completely shape popular political debate, making it superficial, divisive, and polarising. There are several important dimensions to this. Christians are addicted to their phones and this undermines discipleship, contemplative practices, and incarnational ministry. Tech companies are now "powers" for evil that need to be grappled with.

There is a good emphasis on the multi-cultural nature of the church. In this context, it should be acknowledged that the global church is now centred outside the West. In the West the largest and fastest growing church are not white but immigrants. I would like to hear their voice on these topics. My limited experience is that many of these voices are less sympathetic to liberal democracy.

One book from an African perspective is The Church and Politics by Bernard Boyo.

John Nugent points out the book also lacks any engagement with alternative visions of political theology, such as due to Karl Barth, Stanley Hauerwas, or John Yoder, who are more wary of the church engaging with worldly powers. Admittedly, they might have made a longer book. In fairness, page 34 does mention Hauerwas's critique of Christendom.

The Undeceptions podcast has a good episode where John Dickson interviews Tom Wright about the book.

The Doge Leonardo Donà Worshiping the Virgin and Child. by Marco Vecellio (1545–1611) The Doge's Palace in Venice

For me this captures the ambiguity of Christendom. Who is worshiping who? 

Formulation of the doctrine of the Trinity was an intellectual revolution

The way we think about any manner of topics has been shaped by our experiences and contexts, including family, education, friends, churches, and culture. We all have an intellectual history and are embedded in contexts with an intellectual history. The way I think today in Australia is probably quite different to how a Gentile in the time of Jesus thought. Political histories are sometimes marked by revolutions, such as in China, Russia, France, and America. Intellectual histories also involve revolutions, such as the Renaissance, Enlightenment, and Protestant Reformation.

Colin Gunton has argued that the formulation of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity was an intellectual revolution, in his book, The Promise of Trinitarian Theology Until I read this I thought of the Trinity as purely an issue in Christian doctrine, not an issue that addressed fundamental issues in philosophy.

The philosophical concept [and field of study] of ontology concerns the nature or being or existence. In other words, what is real?

It was the function of the homoousion, the teaching that the Son is ‘of one being’ with the Father, to express the ontological relation between the Son and God the Father. 

It is to establish a new ontological principle: that there can be a sharing in being. According to Greek ontology, to be is either to be universal or to be individual: to be defined by virtue of participlation in universal form or by virtue of material separation from other beings...

the Nicene theologians introduced a note of relationality into the being of God: God's being is defined as being in in relation...

God is being in communion. "The substance of God, "God", has no ontological content, no true being, apart from communion" [This is a quote from John Zizioulas, Being as Communion]

page 9 

The crucial move in the process was to distinguish between two words whose meaning until then had been virtually synonymous, ousia and hypostasis, both meaning `being'.

page 10 

They had previously meant the same - being or substance. Their use in the doctrine of the Trinity made possible the distinction and yet holding together of the unity and plurality of God.

Scientific aside: there are similarities here to how a material is not the same as a state of matter, e.g. water (H20) is a material but atmospheric pressure is found in three different states: gas, liquid, and solid (ice).

This intellectual (theological) revolution opens up new conceptual possibilities.

at the heart of the doctrine of being a four concepts: person, relation, otherness, and freedom...

Central will be the point that a person is different from an individual, in the sense that the latter is defined in terms of separation from other individuals, the person in terms of relations with other persons.

page 11 

A relation is first of all to be conceived as the way by which persons are mutually constituted, made what they are. (That does not mean, as will be argued in chapter 8, that the concept is limited to the concepts that we call personal. On the contrary, it is also fruitful for an understanding of the character of the whole of reality).

But we cannot understand relation satisfacturally unless we also realize that to be a person is to be related as an other. One person is not the tool or the extension of another, or if he is his personhood is violated. Personal relations are those that constitute the other person, as other as truly particular.

page 11. 

By free is not meant by the reigning conception of the term, freedom from others. It has to do with a free and mutually constitutive relation with other persons, as well as with a way of being in the world.

A holistic perspective on liturgy and secularism

When discussing "religion" in the modern world there are many dichotomies: religion and science, sacred and secular, mystery and certainty, faith and reason, supernatural and natural, clergy and laity, transcendence and immanence, church and state.

Each of us and the communities that we belong to need to make sense of these dichotomies, as they have profound implications in ethics, education, politics, science, theology, and human flourishing.

I recently found the underlying philosophical issues, particularly about secularism, addressed profoundly by an unexpected source.

For the theology reading group this month we are reading

For the Life of the World: Sacraments and Orthodoxy by Alexander Schmemann

I find it very helpful that this group leads me to read authors and books that I would not normally. I grew up in the Anglo-Catholic tradition. In contrast, my church experience the past forty years has been "low" church. Most of these churches have been dismissive of liturgy and tradition, and have marginalised the Eucharist (holy communion) and any notion of a "sacramental" view of rites such as baptism, marriage, and ordination. I have also not been able to grasp the thinking behind those who are enthusiastic about Catholic and Orthodox traditions. Perhaps, I am just too practical and pragmatic. 

However, in the past few years I have come to appreciate liturgy through the Every Moment Holy and Celtic Daily Prayer books of liturgy.

I have been blessed by this book. It is amazing! It is not at all what I expected. 

First, Schmemann shares my concerns about the way that liturgy can take on a life on its own, be an escape from the "real" world, and lead to obscure and inane ideas and divisive debates about issues such as transubstantiation.

Second, significant parts of the book are about deep philosophical issues such as I raised in my introduction. His analysis of secularism is brilliant and insightful, and at least fifty years ahead of analysis today. Schmemann contends that secularism is a Christian heresy. This resonates with a view promoted more recently by Tom Holland and Brad Gregory.

Sacraments are not "miracles" but transformations.

A sacrament -...- is always a passage, a transformation. Yet it is not a “passage” into “supernature” but into the Kingdom of God, the world to come, into the very reality of this world and its life as redeemed and restored by Christ. It is the transformation not of “nature” into “supernature,” but of the old into the new. A sacrament therefore is not a “miracle” by which God breaks, so to speak, the “laws of nature,” but the manifestation of the ultimate Truth about the world and life, man and nature, the Truth which is Christ.

page 102

“This is my body, this is my blood. Take, eat, drink.…” And generations upon generations of theologians ask the same questions. How is this possible? How does this happen? And what exactly does happen in this transformation? And when exactly? And what is the cause? No answer seems to be satisfactory. 

This leads to a discussion of the problem with a reductionist approach to sacraments.

Symbol? But what is a symbol? Substance, accidents? Yet one immediately feels that something is lacking in all these theories, in which the Sacrament is reduced to the categories of time, substance, and causality, the very categories of “this world.” Something is lacking because the theologian thinks of the sacrament and forgets the liturgy. As a good scientist he first isolates the object of his study, reduces it to one moment, to one “phenomenon”—and then, proceeding from the general to the particular, from the known to the unknown, he gives a definition, which in fact raises more questions than it answers. 

But throughout our study the main point has been that the whole liturgy is sacramental, that is, one transforming act and one ascending movement. And the very goal of this movement of ascension is to take us out of “this world” and to make us partakers of the world to come. In this world—the one that condemned Christ and by doing so has condemned itself—no bread, no wine can become the body and blood of Christ. Nothing which is a part of it can be “sacralized.” 

True sacramentalism must go beyond a false dichotomy between sacred and secular. A false dichotomy is an fallacy that limits the possible options, reducing complex analysis to either/or choices and not leaving room for both/and or dialectic.

“to free the terms “sacramental” and “eucharistic” from the connotations they have acquired in the long history of technical theology, where they are applied almost exclusively within the framework of “natural” versus “supernatural,” and “sacred” versus “profane,” that is, within the same opposition between religion and life which makes life ultimately unredeemable and religiously meaningless.

Another example is the relationship between Word and sacrament.

“The sacrament is a manifestation of the Word. And unless the false dichotomy between Word and sacrament is overcome, the true meaning of both Word and sacrament, and especially the true meaning of Christian “sacramentalism” cannot be grasped in all their wonderful implications. The proclamation of the Word is a sacramental act par excellence because it is a transforming act. It transforms the human words of the Gospel into the Word of God and the manifestation of the Kingdom. And it transforms the man who hears the Word into a receptacle of the Word and a temple of the Spirit.…”

There is even emergence!

“the Greek word leitourgia. It meant an action by which a group of people become something corporately which they had not been as a mere collection of individuals—a whole greater than the sum of its parts. It meant also a function or “ministry” of a man or of a group on behalf of and in the interest of the whole community. Thus the leitourgia of ancient Israel was the corporate work of a chosen few to prepare the world for the coming of the Messiah. And in this very act of preparation they became what they were called to be, the Israel of God, the chosen instrument of His purpose.”

page 25

Beauty is important and should not be eliminated for reasons of functionality.

“Once more, the joyful character of the eucharistic gathering must be stressed. For the medieval emphasis on the cross, while not a wrong one, is certainly one-sided. The liturgy is, before everything else, the joyous gathering of those who are to meet the risen Lord and to enter with him into the bridal chamber. And it is this joy of expectation and this expectation of joy that are expressed in singing and ritual, investments and in censing, in that whole “beauty” of the liturgy which has so often been denounced as unnecessary and even sinful. 

Unnecessary it is indeed, for we are beyond the categories of the “necessary.” Beauty is never “necessary,” “functional” or “useful.” And when, expecting someone whom we love, we put a beautiful tablecloth on the table and decorate it with candles and flowers, we do all this not out of necessity, but out of love. And the Church is love, expectation and joy. It is heaven on earth,”

Faith is not just intellectual belief or assent to propositions. It is love, relational, and trust in Christ.

But faith itself is the acceptance not of this or that "proposition" about Christ, but of Christ Himself as the Life and the light of life. (I Jn. 1:2). 

In this sense Christian faith is radically different from "religious belief." Its starting point is not "believe" but love. In itself and by itself all belief is partial, fragmentary, fragile...  Only love never fails (I Cor. 13). And if to love someone means that I have my life in him, or rather that he has become the "content" of my life, to love Christ is to know and to possess Him as the Life of my life. 

(p.104-105)

Moses was a failure and so why do we project success

[Moses] dies, by all human accounting, a failure, and knowing that he is a failure, knowing that everything that he has worked for in leading, training, and praying for this community will unravel as soon as the people enter Canaan. 

It is a familiar story for readers of Scripture, even though frequently suppressed. What does this mean? 

It means that we have to revise our ideas of the holy community to conform to what is revealed in Scripture. 

It means that we cannot impose our paradisiacal visions of hanging out with lovely, upbeat, and beautiful people when we enter a Christian congregation. 

It means that God’s way of working with us in community has virtually nothing to do with the world’s idea of getting things done, of what ‘works’ and what doesn’t. 

It means that God hasn’t changed his modus operandi of choosing the ‘low and despised in the world’ (1 Cor. 1:28) to form his community. 

It means that we who want to get in on what God does in the way God does it in all matters of community, will have to give up pretensions of shaping an organization that the world will think is wonderful as we parade our accomplishments to the tune of ‘worship’ or ‘evangelism.’

Eugene Peterson, Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places, p. 266

Laura Cerbus has some helpful thoughts on this subject.