Is seeing where God was at work in the world and jumping in to help etc, the last gasp of a Church that still believes itself to be at the Centre rather than Marginal in its Existence?

Paul writes – I’ve recently finished reading an essay by Robert W. Jenson, What is a Post-Christian (included in this interesting collection of essays) in which he argues that in a post-Church / post-Christian (I’d say “post-Christendom”) context the invitation of the Church is to uphold and embody its distinctive beliefs. In many ways his argument is not dissimilar from the likes of Stanley Hauerwas. 

Jenson writes:

“We … need to face [the] fact often spoken of but rarely acted upon: that the West is now a mission field. We can no longer count on the culture doing half our work for us. On a mission field, the church has to do its own work, and that means first of all that it has to know what is not … in the culture, that it hopes to bring to it. Which is to say: it must know and cultivate its difference from that culture. All that talk a few years ago about the world setting the agenda, about seeing where God was at work in the world and jumping in to help etc, was the last gasp of the church’s establishment in the West, of its erstwhile ability to suppose that what the culture nurtured as good had to be congruent with the good the church had to bring…” (Pp. 29-30).

The first thing that strikes me in this quote is what on the surface seems like a critique of a popular definition of mission which goes like this: “mission is discerning what it is that God is doing and joining in”; it’s a way of talking about mission that prioriterises what God is doing and its an invitation to partnership and collaboration.  Is this what Jenson is critiquing? A reading of the preceding and following paragraphs doesn’t really help!

Given the title (and subtitle) of the book and its emphasis on evangelism is the critique around the lack of a distinctive narrative (worldview) and thus an inability to evangelize (to extend an alternative story and invitation – see yesterdays post for a definition of the kind of evangelism I have in mind)?

However, read within the context of the overall thrust of his essay, it seems to me that Jenson is critiquing a church that has nothing distinctive to say (and embody) in relation to its host culture(s); a church that lacks distinctiveness and thus public prophetic voice. A distinctive church is one that embodies and offers an alternative. Is he, to rework a statement by another contributor to the collection of essays, saying that the gospel only emerges in comparison with what is not the gospel?

Has anyone else read the essay? How do you read the quote (above)?

If on the other hand Jenson is suggesting that somehow God is not at work in the world then I would want to disagree with the statement. Mission is God’s mission, not the churches, so in that sense it seems to me perfectly correct to understand the mission of the church as being about discerning God’s invitations and joining in on what God is doing or wanting to do in God’s world.  Also, if the implication is that it’s an either/or in relation to distinctiveness and missional engagement, i.e. contextual engagement and embodiment, then I would likewise want to disagree. “Yes” distinctiveness and “yes” contextualization!      

Comments

[Ben Sternke]

I think part of the question is whether the church is to be understood as instrumental to God accomplishing his purpose in creation, or whether it is the expression of that purpose itself.

In other words, does God need the church? If not, then why is it here? What was Pentecost all about?

Gerhard Lohfink wrote a book on this topic that is on my "wish list": Does God Need the Church? Simon Chan also addresses the question in the first chapter of his Liturgical Theology.

I have been struggling to mesh this "strong" ecclesiology with missional thinking, because I think they're both right. They fit together somehow, I'm sure ;)