“Jesus was not in any sense a reformer championing new orders against the old ones, contesting the latter in order to replace them by the former. He did not range Himself and His disciples with any of the existing parties. Nor did he set up against them an opposing party. He did not represent or defend or champion any programme — whether political, economic, moral or religious, whether conservative or progressive. He was equally suspected and disliked by the representatives of all such programmes, although He did not particularly attack any of them. Why His existence was so unsettling on every side was that He set all programmes and principles in question.” Karl Barth, CD, IV/2, p.171-172
Left behind?
I moved to Scotland two summers ago after serving as a Presbyterian minister for six years in North Carolina. Currently I am pursuing a Ph.D. in theology, related to Karl Barth’s ecclesiology. I hope to find the resources that might help us articulate and embody a faithful theology of the church in the 21st century.
Maybe things seem to change at a faster pace when one is observing and taking notes from the other side of the sea, but as I have tried to pay attention to recent developments and future possibilities for the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), I cannot help but feel a bit resident-alienated amid a sea of changes. I not only wonder what the future of the PC(USA) will look like, but perhaps more selfishly, what my own role might be.
Will I be a dissenting voice? Someone whose ministry is — horror of horrors — irrelevant? Am I evangelical enough to maintain relationships with ECO and the Fellowship of Presbyterians? Am I progressive and tall-steeple enough to have a home in the NEXT church? Am I a lukewarm moderate who simply tries to play the ends against the middle?
Could I become a Lutheran? A Roman Catholic? Obviously they’re not perfect, but they aren’t sectarian either. They acknowledge the importance of theology to the church’s life. They include both liberals and conservatives and are known to offer a prophetic voice in the world. Perhaps more importantly, can my own church still become a church that believes Jesus Christ and his living witness in the world includes the causes of the right and the left at times, but transcends them both, confronting them, subverting them, and going way beyond them in the call and demands of discipleship?
Not a 90 percenter
I have not had the opportunity to attend the latest gatherings in the PC(USA). I spoke to a friend who attended several of them and remarked that at each one, 90 percent of those present were like-minded in their support of the presenting cause. Other than serving as echo chambers, I cannot see how such gatherings are constructive in the long run.
To paraphrase John Cougar Mellencamp, I was born in a small church, I grew up in a small church, I served a small church and I will probably die in a small church someday. In those churches (and I would wager in most Presbyterian churches), we were never a 90 percent gathering of the like-minded on the issue of homosexuality or other issues of the day. But instinctively and perhaps more formally, there was a sense of the catholicity of the church and the vastness of Christ’s body in the world that could messily hold together people of very different convictions and backgrounds.
While agendas and causes of the day were not left at the door, they could become relativized and de-centered by our common confession of Christ’s lordship and by our meager attempts to live together in Christian community. Our pet causes and virtues could be both included and challenged by the living reality of Jesus Christ, not just an advocate for our causes, but One who was likely to challenge, confront and call our causes into question.
Evangelical, catholic, Reformed, missional
I am not a 90 percenter and do not plan to become one. When I come home, I hope to work for a church that seeks to uphold and recover its evangelical impulse by planting new churches and establishing alternative intentional communities. When I come home, I hope to work for a church that seeks to be catholic rather than sectarian, working toward a universal witness to Jesus Christ across class, race, political commitments, and all ideologies in city, town, and hamlet at home and throughout the world.
When I come home, I hope to work for a church that understands and rejoices in the centrality of theology, particularly Reformed theologyin all its forms, for the life of the church. While the church is more than a theological community, it is never less than a theological community. Far too often, Presbyterian clergy and churches boldly proclaim that theology gets in the way of true ministry or the church’s members must leave theology behind and just love one another. A church that no longer sees the importance of theology or loses faith in the practice of theology is not only a blind church, but also a dangerous one.
While Jesus does not call us to take up our cross and become theologians, the practice of theology is part of the call of discipleship. To believe that true Christian discipleship is possible without theological practice in and for the church is just another form of the prosperity gospel that promises us Jesus without church or difficult-to-love neighbors or the hard work of discipleship.
Finally, when I come home, I hope to work for a missional church that has given up on the siren sounds of becoming “relevant,” a church that has abandoned its blueprints for institutional self-preservation and instead is willing to cash in all its chips (or talents) for the sake of those who live outside its walls.
The people who live in the shadows of our churches do not need all our fantastic programs or to become potential recruits for our pet causes. What they need and what we need is to hear the Gospel of Jesus Christ again in our own time. Daily we must hear again and afresh of Christ’s radical love for all people, but also about Christ’s high expectations for those who take up their cross and follow him.
Love that does not cost is not really love; neither is love that demands nothing. Christ’s mission to the world does not begin at the door of the church but well inside its own walls and crevices and hearts. Before we try to change anyone else or become bearers of the Gospel to others, we must pray to hear the Gospel again ourselves, seeking to become the people we are in Christ even as we pray that God will enable us to bear witness to others in our own locale.
When I come home … . Perhaps this is just one more syrupy vision for a church and kingdom hopelessly out of reach. But if Jesus challenges and transcends all our causes, if Jesus is about something more than meeting our needs or supporting our agenda, if Jesus also calls into question those needs and our selfish pursuits of them, and if such a way of life is our true home and kingdom, then might we work for a church that transcends and subverts our own personal ideologies and causes, calling us to embody a life and a kingdom that is much bigger and more demanding than the kingdoms of our own devising?
The particular causes and commitments of all of the throngs gathered around the Lamb at the foot of the throne seem at the very least put in proper perspective in the presence of the Light of the World. All John the evangelist reveals to us is the rejoicing and joyful obedience of the great multitudes before the Lamb. Do they all exhibit the proper mixture of evangelical, catholic, Reformed, and missional characteristics? Not likely. Are they all self-righteous Presbyterians? Even less likely. But might there be a glimmer of that New Jerusalem, a glimpse of the heavenly kingdom, an in-breaking of the City of God, in our attempts to live as a church of Jesus Christ in a different direction, one that refuses to merely to mirror the divide of culture wars, one that refuses to merely mirror the divide of culture wars, one that embodies an evangelical, catholic, Reformed, and missional life together?
To work for such a church and to pursue such a life with others is the most faithful way forward that I can see. But Christ’s coming kingdom is mercifully much greater and more extensive than my own vision. And so whatever happens, and whatever becomes of my own “agenda” for the church, it too must be subordinated to his lordship and find its own way into his mission and purpose for our future Presbyterian witness and life together in the world.
CHRIS CURRIE is an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) pursuing a Ph.D. in systematic theology at the University of Edinburgh School of Divinity.
