Deep Church

I agree that christianity is meant to be lived communally, that we relate to a trinitarian God and that unmediated relationship with God is impossible. However, I’m slightly concerned that the phrase ‘the immediacy of God becomes a recreational commodity’ might put people off from relating to God on an individual basis.

My understanding of the new covenant is that Jesus removed external impediments to God such that ‘No longer will a man teach his neighbour, or a man his brother saying “know the Lord”, because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest. For I will forgive their wickedness and remember their sins no more” (Hebrews 8:11-12).

If this is really the case, then the danger might exist that we so oppose ourselves to a consumerist approach to God that we neglect any good that He might want to show us personally.

Hi Alex, the danger of a blog is you always overstate your suggestions!

Without Christianity there is no understanding of the individual in western history. Christianity makes possible the understanding that no person controls our access to God.

What I’m writing about is the abuse of that notion, that we find no place for our relationship with God to be mediated at all. Yes we have full access to God, as sons and daughters (Eph 1 for instance), but that relationship is mediated through being part of the body of Christ, with the social God.

Too often we collapse things into just me and God/Jesus, which seems to be what has happened with the Gospel/Church life of the modern western world in consumerism.

I was sorry not to be there on tuesday evening for the book launch.

For a theology of meditation see the work of Colin Gunton, whose theology could be view as trying to build a theology of mediation. See also John Colwell’s book Promise and Presence. There he argues that our relationship to God (I’m not sure he would use that language) is meditated through Christ and the Spirit, through church and scripture, through baptism and communion. Colwell writes ‘God as narrated in the gospel cannot be presumed upon, manipulated, or encountered in any unmediated or ultimate way in this present age.’

In reaction to the traditional church the modern church as you say removed the removing traditional practices of mediation, such as word and sacrament.

And in some ways understandable. The scarements not on are Holy but are also tools provided by the early church to help us connect to God.

The trouble is the baby went out with the bath water and it has been the emerging church that has looked to introduce theologically sacremental practices (from a fresh perspective) back into the evangelical church.

As long as we are careful the way ahead should be exciting

I think the experience of being “post charismatic” (which is not the same as anti charismatic) is exactly what you’re talking about. I particularly liked and resonated with this:

“It’s why many of us are finding that assigned daily prayers, the church calendar, are more than cool aesthetic experiences, but deeply formative mediations that root our immediate experiences of God.”

I’ve had some conversations with my charismatic brothers and sisters wherein I discuss this issue and they struggle with the understanding that these practices are part of the “Holy Spirit experience”. For so long, we charismatics have been taught (inadvertently sometimes) to abandon the ancient practices for the new practices of immediacy and individual experience of the holy spirit, so the idea of integrating those things again is very foreign to most I know.

we’re discussing this issue in our community of Revolution this month - talking about the social WHOLE CHURCH>WHOLE WORLD component of the atonement.

thanks Jase, if that is the logical conclusion then churches become something like a gig i go to for live music or for prayer, when i want someone to lay hands on me because i need a god experience to help me in someway…

In part we have not been helped in the charismatic tradition that discovering intimacy in our sung liturgy has meant that we now focus on the I - most of the songs we sing are sung between me and Jesus - how I feel about God or how God feels about me. We can worship and not even hear anyone else sing other than the voice of the singer(s) in the band and it becomes an isolated experience.

At least with a spoken liturgy there is something of a sharing of voice - we all speak together rather than just the one. And therefore often the language used feels more inclusive/community orientated.

All this leads me to think we need both mediation and immediacy expressed in our worship life - the glory of Christ alongside the suffering of Christ, the calling of us as individuals with unique identies to be part of a communal people who bear the image of our tri-une God. God is both the God of the new and of the old, the present, the future and the past.

I think the deep church conversation offers us a way of not just having a unique experience every week of God and being disallusioned when it doesn’t happen for us - instead it allows us to be part of a christian rhythm, to reflect that we experience different seasons where we can be present to God and each other - we can infuse practices of the old with practices of the new, for instance when i did a liturgy based piece, incorporating image and action on the I am sayings of Jesus
http://paulmayers.blogs.com/my_weblog/2007/05/worshipping_the.html

I just re-read “The Fall of Public Man” by Richard Sennett. He follows Max Weber by saying that Protestantism has led to modern (secular) narcissism in turning away from external or “objective” mediation (such as liturgy, sacrament and the visible church). Instead, the individual believer has to focus permanently on his or her emotions. In order to be known as a true believer you have to reveal intimate things to others. The world outside of the Self becomes less important, and so does social (inter)action. In the long run, it damages and destroys true community.

I believe there is an unhealthy desire for intimacy that makes it difficult for us to deal with experiences of God’s otherness, and makes us withdraw from the public sphere where self-expression ist guided by rules and roles and therefore less spontaneous and “immediate”. It troubles me deeply to realize how many of the modern worship songs reflect ideas of intimacy borrowed from romatic love songs (”I want you, I need you…”). In that sense, New Testament hymns are remarkably different from charismatic “liturgies” (yes, there is such a thing - and people are very religious about it when you try to alter it).

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