Seeing the wood for the trees
18 Feb 2009
I have a supervision for my PhD later today, which is an opportunity for me to stand back from the reading I have been immersed in and look at what I have learned, and most importantly ask what direction and shape is my research taking.
With each book I read, there opens up so many new and alluring avenues of possible exploration. So how do I keep focused, on track, and see the wood for the trees, with something that can address the problem I am exploring, in a meaningful way?
So I thought I’d take a big step back, and see if I could blog a summary of what it is I am trying to address, and how, and as ever value your input as this research takes shape. I’m two years into a 6 year process, looking at my starting point, it’s amazing (to me at least) how far my thinking has been shaped, and at the same time, how some of the original ideas I started with remain in focus.
So here we go…
1. Problem
There are so many problems the church faces, and within those I have picked one that has surfaced in my life and role as a church planter. That no matter how much we are theologically and culturally engaged as a church, people are largely unable, and unwilling to convert to Christianity (at least in a european secular consumer context).
People engage with us socially, and pastorally, they may even experience what they see as answers to prayer, yet once the moment of that experience has passed, they seem to turn back to a higher reality, of life as usual, away from a life around Jesus with others. No meaning making worship aesthetic, or experience with Christian spirituality and mission, leads to the awareness, and desire to convert, to hand over their reality for life and being to one around the mission of Jesus with his people.
That higher reality and life ordering seems to take it’s narrative from the consumer story of the ‘good life’. All relationships, time, energy and commitments, are ordered around achieving that life, and all experiences and resources of the Christian faith, are there to further those ends and needs, and realities.
At it’s crudest the real missional narrative of life seems to be, to own your own home in a beautiful location, live a long life, have regular holidays, engage in certain experiences (preferably 1001 of them before you die), to achieve the overall goal of being happy, having created the life you want to make. Some people have Oprah, or scientology or NLP, whilst Christians have Jesus to establish that life order.
In essence does this missional narrative, represent a new religious order, and reality, fueled by the resources of consumer and secular culture? And in response are we forming ecclesiologies that support this consumer and secular religion, and it’s inherent nature of spiritual formation.
If we have been worried, and rightly so, that church has become about dispensing religious goods and services, with it’s programmes and practices, have many of the new emerging ecclesiologies continued on this trajectory despite their hopes and aspirations. Has the role of church has collapsed into supporting the self creation and formation of the individual consumer, into private God spaces, social withdrawal, isolation and fragmentation?
So with the collapse of religion into the realm of the private, for consumption and self creation, is there a concomitant current movement of the church into the private, and social withdrawal from public life, that is ultimately a genetic dead end in terms of christian conversion and formation?
I wish to explore these issues, to establish if this is the case, and discover what responses might we make with regards to ecclesiology, how church might better respond to this situation to facilitate the conversion and formation of Christian identity?
2. Method:
I want to approach my exploration within the resources, and the location of political theology for several reasons:
Political theology is concerned with how talk about God and humans relate to each other, and how that relationship takes shape and form in society as ‘lived’ communities.
It has a particular focus on theological understandings of the social and economic arrangements of life as they relate to the relationships of God and human beings.
It also has a specific concern, for how the traditioned resources of Christian history can be brought to bear on these reflections. In other words, how the Christian faith has been lived and incarnated in history, provides primary resources for understanding the nature of our current context, and how church might be ‘lived’ today.
It also deals directly with may of the manifestations of the problem I have described, of how bodies, are organised in time and space.
In other words I want to think theologically about the problems I have raised, with reference to the resources of the ‘lived’ church in history, to provide a real world response that might facilitate conversion and growth in christian community. Political theology seems to offer a home for this exploration.
3. Outline of my Chapters
(1) Chapter 1: The Problem & Method Location
In my first chapter, I will describe and establish in more detail the problem mentioned above, and how political theology might attend to this situation, and a description of the rest of my research outline.
(2) Chapter 2: Literature Review of the resources of Political Theology
In this chapter I will provide a review of the literature from political theology that connects immediately to my problem area, that describes it, and surfaces an initial diagnosis, and description, that allows me establish a more detailed research method and any thesis I wish to pursue in response to this problem.
This will include the works of Bernd Wannewetsch, Oliver O’Donovan, Reinhard Hutter, Eric Gregory, William Cavanaugh, Michael Polayani, Max Weber, Vincent Miller.
This chapter is where I will explore some of the key symptoms of consumerism as religion, the privatization of faith, the loss of the ordinary, the collapse into worship aesthetics and experience, misplaced and misdirected desire, the idealisation of church, the loss of institutional confidence and imagination, the battle of agency and wills, and find theological correlations to this issues.
I will attempt to show how a further reading of the traditioned resources, that have informed these thinkers, of Anglican (Radical Orthodoxy), Anabaptist (Hauerwas), Reformed (Luther/Augustine), and Catholic (Catholic Social Teaching), should be read further against these identified problems.
I will suggest that the way I wish to read them is against the thesis that our theological anthropology, determines our soteriology and then our ecclesiology. In other words our understanding of the human condition, determines our understanding of how the problems of that condition are met, with the subsequent ordering of Church around that reality and process.
I want to read the key discourses that have informed these state of the art political theologies against my rubric of anthropology-soteriology-ecclessiology (A-S-E) to provide a more detailed description of my problem area, and to surface the implicit ecclesiologies within these traditions, and see whether the attend to the issues of my problem.
Chapters (3), (4), (5) & (6)
In these chapters I will provide these readings of these 4 traditions, as above.
(7) Chapter 7: Synthesis
In this chapter I will take all the previous work, and seek to distill and recapitulate my findings for my problem around my A-S-E thesis.
(8) Chapter 8: Baptism & Emerging Ecclesiologies
I will suggest Baptism as an embodied and theological practice that enables this research to be read against my current context and practice. In other words why is baptism so absent from emerging ecclesiologies, and what possibilities does Baptism offer for understanding christian communities that lead and form Christian identity, in our consumer culture.
(9) Chapter 9: Conclusion
So what are the concluding implications for ecclesiology, what are my suggestions for how church might understand itself and construct itself in relation to my problem area, so that we might see more Christian conversion and formation?
I expect to land on how church must recover itself as a genuine public, and alternative to politics and the market, that forms Christian identity through worship and mission.
Tagged: ecclesiology
19 comments
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Comment by fernando
12.19 pm on 18 Feb 2009
I’d love to hear your supervision goes. But, it feels like (from a million miles way) that your thinking is progressing really well. I think you are right that your ideas are growing, but you haven’t lost sight of the problems you came to the thesis with.
it’s just such a shame you weren’t around when I was there!
Comment by Jason Clark
4.09 pm on 18 Feb 2009
Just got back, my head is spinning. Got some clearer focus, but as ever the challenge of work/family and giving the research the time it needs seems overwhelming.
I’ll blog some more about the new focus, and outline soon. Thanks for your encouragement as ever mate,
Jase
Comment by Jason Clark
4.16 pm on 18 Feb 2009
…and likewise it’s a shame your not at Kings whilst I am!
Comment by denise
12.46 pm on 23 Feb 2009
A couple of books you might find helpful in relation to the relationship between baptism and christian formation and ecclesiology:
“Gathered Before God” by Jane Vann
“Bed, Bath, and Table” by Fred Edie
Comment by steven hamilton
12.58 pm on 18 Feb 2009
really compelling jason! the piece about baptism makes me think of how our ancient deep church predecessors had to go through a quite drawn-out process of education and formation to come to the point of baptism and joining “the Church”…do many nowadays “rush to baptism”? i understand some of the why’s of baptising people immediately (just like the eunuch in acts) but how can we re-imagine and incarnate the life-changing aspect of baptism in Christ and born-again into the new human family of God as practiced in the here-and-now of where-we-happen-to-be?
Comment by Jason Clark
4.12 pm on 18 Feb 2009
I’m struck by how absent baptism is from the emerging church conversation, and think it’s a symptom of the lack of any real and conversions to Christianity.
Also there is the nature of worship and community identity within baptism that much of the move to private god space worship mitigates against.
Some percolating thoughts…:-)
Tnx for your encouragement too mate.
Comment by James Prescott
3.05 pm on 18 Feb 2009
This looks great Jase. I am convinced one of the dangers in the modern church is becoming another method of dealing with the consumer life, rather than trying to be an alternative. That instead of being a radical, revolutionary and counter-cultural community/faith, instead of trying to re-define our culture to a different set of values, we get confused with trying to be relevant too much, and become so obsessed with not offending people that we allow people to extend grace so much it becomes ‘cheap grace’ as opposed to ‘costly grace’. Although there is room for grace and acceptance, there also has to be a clear vision that being a Christian is not about servicing our consumer religion, but about re-defining our cutlure away from consumerism. We need to be distinctive and radical, but accessable, we need to speak truth of the Bible, but also be relevant, speak holiness, but show grace and mercy and accept people as they are. Its a difficult balance to achieve.
I look forward to reading your conclusions, but this post in itself is a real challenge to me.
Take care, J.
Comment by Jason Clark
4.15 pm on 18 Feb 2009
Tnx mate, a thoughtful response to my post
Comment by Daniel Jagt
8.39 pm on 18 Feb 2009
Thanks for posting this Jason, great food for thought.
Comment by Jason Clark
9.29 am on 20 Feb 2009
Tnx Daniel
Comment by Daveen Wilson
2.07 pm on 19 Feb 2009
This is first time I’ve been on this site – recommended by a Baptist pastor that you were speaking to in Midlands – but these issues seem so relevant. I’ve been working in a very poor rural community in NE Brazil for the last 20 years, and even here, consumerism is becoming increasingly a religion, especially with the introduction of television.
Have you read Peterson’s ‘Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places’? (Sure youWe are studying it together in our church (in Portuguese) and is slowly transforming the way we look at “ordinary” life, our community, and our stories.
Really would like to read your finished work.
God bless
Daveen
Comment by Jason Clark
9.30 am on 20 Feb 2009
Small world, and welcome
That is a wonderful book. His latest ‘tell is slant’ just arrived, and looks are though provoking and life changing.
Comment by Paul
7.17 pm on 19 Feb 2009
Sounds like quite a forest you’re wandering in
It does sound like the trail of bread crumbs you are laying will be invaluable for those of us following along in your wake.
It’s interesting that you focus on baptism as the missing ritual in emerging communities. Is this simply cos there are no conversions just existing christians having church their way? Or is it that we are ignoring or not grasping a crucial entry ritual, which raises questions about formation, catachism and commitment?
Then again maybe its because we struggle to work out to proclaim (whisper) the gospel in this secular age of private faith and therefore baptism is largely redundant for that reason?
I look forward to hearing your recovery strategy, will make a change from the usual focus on the eucharist
Comment by Jason Clark
9.33 am on 20 Feb 2009
You said’Then again maybe its because we struggle to work out to proclaim (whisper) the gospel in this secular age of private faith and therefore baptism is largely redundant for that reason?’
I think that is very much the case….and something I’m trying to explore the ‘whys’ and ‘wherefores’
Comment by Matt Wiebe
6.41 am on 20 Feb 2009
While I’ve really tracked with your emphasis on critiquing consumerism-as-religion, the way you deploy it in naming the emerging church’s lack of talk about the theology and practice of baptism is profound. Lots to ponder there.
Comment by Jason Clark
9.33 am on 20 Feb 2009
Tnx Matt
Comment by Andy Biddy
5.15 am on 21 Feb 2009
Hi Jason. This is my first time to your blog as well. I found it through an online course I’m taking called Essentials Red. I’m a very green (maybe I should say “wannabe” for now) church planter in New York City, and in the first year of the journey.
You said a few things that caught my attention. I’ll just stick to one of them. You said “People engage with us socially, and pastorally, they may even experience what they see as answers to prayer, yet once the moment of that experience has passed, they seem to turn back to a higher reality, of life as usual, away from a life around Jesus with others.”
It’s interesting how I find myself running into that very thing here as well. For example, I have some neighbors that my wife and I are getting to know and spend time with more and more. They are actors (as I am as well) and it is common in the industry to go from one gig to another with stretches of unemployment between. It can be a stressful lifestyle to say the least.
But what I’m noticing with them is that we tend to have more open-hearted discussions about God and Christianity when they are in those gaps of unemployment than when they have a job lined up. I’m finding it interesting to observe in them a false sense of self-confidence when life is dandy and a contrasting sense of humility and neediness when they don’t have that next job lined up.
I realize it’s not a novel observation and a situation that anyone is susceptible to. I just feel I’m watching them ride a roller coaster and wondering what will it take for them to realize their need for God in both the good and bad times. In the meantime I pray for them and continue to fix my heart on Christ and I know they’re taking notice at how we live differently through these seasons of employment/unemployment because they’ve brought it up. Without living it out perfectly, we have God’s faithfulness and promises to anchor us.
I look forward to reading more of your thoughts. And I pray the Church becomes more devotedly passionate in our worship-lifestyle to cause others around us to become intrigued and attracted to living under the provisions and promises of God.
Comment by Jason
8.46 am on 21 Feb 2009
Hi Andy,
You’re on a great course. Several of our worship team are doing this with Dan at present and loving it. Great to hear from you.
Thanks for taking time to share one of your stories that intersects with all this.
Warmly, Jase
Comment by bev
11.14 am on 24 Feb 2009
You are SO cool
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