Distinctiveness as a missiological strategy?

Paul writes – One of the characteristic themes woven through Stanley Hauerwas’ writing is that of “liberation”. For Hauerwas this typically centres on a two-fold dynamic: (1) The liberation of the church from its captivity to agenda’s, values and practices intrinsically alien to its character and calling; and (2) liberation (in order to) restore the church to be and act as what he terms a “free agent” of the Kingdom appropriate to God’s agenda of the salvation of the cosmos and its re-creation (cf. Rev. 21:1 or Rom 8:22).

Thus, as John B. Thomson writes, “... for Hauerwas, liberation starts not with the liberation of the humankind, or with the cosmos, but with the liberation of the church” in order that she can recover and deepen her distinctive gospel identity to be in the world, but not of the world. Thomson reminds us that a recovery of the integrity of the church arguably extends, by its distinctive witness and ways of being in the world, the promise of the liberation of all that comprises the world and the cosmos.

It is as the church (and here I read, “Local churches” as much as the “Church universal”) acts as a contrast that the world becomes aware of the possibilities of its own liberation and freedom to enter into the life, transformative love and wholeness extended by God in Christ Jesus.

Hauerwas believes that “unless this missiological strategy takes place, the world remains incarcerated in false ‘liberations’ and the church likewise contributes to that enthralled state.”

While for Hauerwas, distinctiveness does not mean withdrawal (i.e. in order to be distinctive the church withdraws from the world and disengages from culture), it does mean that he wants them to be in the world, in their various roles etc as Christians. My question though is, “is it even possible for the church to be sufficiently distinctive? Does it ever arrive at that point?” And if it doesn’t embody a gospel-shaped distinctiveness in what it does and how it is in its various contexts, then what’s the point, and does it have anything meaningful to say?”

Comments

[Jason Goroncy]

Yes. Yes. Yes. These are precisely the questions that arose afresh for me recently (and for which the continuing haunting of I am most grateful) as churches in the antipodes were again called upon - or called upon themselves - to be chaplains to a state recalling the Anzacs.