On Becoming Missional in the Twilight of Christendom

I’m in Snowbird, Utah all this week at the General Assembly Council meeting for the Presbyterian Church, U.S.A. Today we are having a joint meeting with Middle governing body executives. Through a variety of presentations and discussions we are going to be exploring what it means to be a missional church.

One of the resources we are looking at is an article by Darrell Guder called The Challenges of Evangelization in America: Theological Ambiguities, published in Antioch Agenda. He concludes the article with a series of questions with bullet point observations of Christendom by its heirs must address these theological ambiguities, in constant interaction with the global, non-western community. To do so, it is helpful to ask:

What has the theology of Christendom reduced that needs to be restored to fullness?

• The gospel of the kingdom reduced to the gospel of individual salvation.
• The calling of the church to witness to the world reduced to the management of salvation.
• The baptismal calling of each Christian to apostolic witness reduced to the clergy-lay distinction with different possibilities of spiritual faithfulness and obedience.

What has the theology of Christendom equated that cannot be equated?

• The culture of western Christendom with normative Christianity.
• The kingdom of God with the institutional church.
• God’s promised rule with a particular human program of social, political, and economic design.

What has the theology of Christendom separated that may not be separated?

• The benefits of the gospel from the missional calling of the Christian (Barth’s critique of the ‘classic definition of Christian identity’) – another way of describing the individualistic reduction of the gospel.
• The calling of baptism from the calling of ordination: two or more classes of Christians.
• The present from the future: the loss of the impact now of that which is promised and still coming.

Then Guder goes on to identify some challenges to evangelization:

Confronting the conformities: Romans 12:2

Receiving “transformation by the renewal of the mind” (Romans 12:2)

The crucial role of the world church, calling the heirs of western Christendom to account.

• “Can the west be saved?”
• “Can we be good stewards of our legacy especially our property and wealth, for the upbuilding of the entire body of Christ around the world? Should western churches see themselves as the Hellenistic congregations formed by Paul, carrying out their financial responsibility for the Christians in Jerusalem/the non western Churches?
• “Does the accession of the Christian movement to social and economic power fundamentally change its calling as defined by the NT?”
• Challenge now in the “next Christendom” – African countries officially calling themselves “Christian nations!” while Europe is arguing about how it can refer to its own Christian past!
• Can we really articulate, as a world community of faith and witness, what we commonly believe and testify to, what practices we share that are the same in all their cultural differentness, and what we commonly hope and expect from God’s hand?

These are the issues we are addressing as we reflect on being a missional church.