Dave Tomlinson in the Waikato – Part 2

Paul writes – In his foreword to the US edition of The Post-Evangelical Dallas Willard writes: “…What Dave Tomlinson calls post-evangelicalism is by no means ex-evangelicalism. There are, of course ex-evangelicals, and even anti-evangelicals, but post-evangelicals are evangelicals, perhaps tenaciously so. However, post-evangelicals have also been driven to the margins by some aspects of evangelical church culture with which they cannot honestly identify…” He continues, “Tragically, this kind of incongruity [between “the genuine commandments of God” and “the traditions of human beings”] drives people – who will never be anything but evangelical in their deepest beliefs – to the margins or out of the doors of the evangelical church” [this thought could be expanded on, for the interested reader, by an engagement with Alan Jamieson’s incredibly useful book A Churchless Faith: Faith Journeys Beyond the Churches].

Willard finishes his foreword by reflecting that “…the post-evangelicals among us – and they are among us, in large numbers – are for the most part those who, because of their evangelical insights or suspicions, cannot accept a form of evangelical religious culture that makes the heart of evangelical faith irrelevant and the heart of the prophetic biblical tradition anything but subversive…”

 

Dave’s second key-note address was titled: “Identity and Change in an Age of Uncertainty”. In this address he explored how we listen and respond to what is happening in the world, while continuing to listen, and remain faithful, to our Christian tradition (in this case, specifically “Anglican” stream of Christianity). He asked what we might need to let go of, in respect of our tradition, or conversely, what we will need to hold on to. He finished his talk by exploring how the Anglican tradition might be reconfigured and re-spirited to meet new needs and to bring gospel into a more fruitful and faithful conversation with culture. In part, this talk drew on chapter 12 (‘Re-Spiriting Church’) and chapter 15 (‘Mission Statement’) in Dave’s Re-Enchanting Christianity.

 

The church has a priestly function in the wider community. We are for this wider community of which we are a part. Visible church and invisible church overlap – we are called to name the places of overlap; the places within the church congregation (the “solid core”) and beyond the walls of the church in the wider community. God is at work in both places. There is no dualism. The church is solid / committed at the centre and open at the edges (Dave acknowledged the link, at that point, to Mike Riddell, who in a nice touch was sitting in the audience. The mission-defining motto of Ponsonby Baptist in the mid-1980’s was “Committed at the Core, Open at the Edges”. The missional implications of this period in Ponsonby Baptist’s journey was helpfully described in Chapter 9 of a 2002 privately published book by Peter Renner titled Cores and Edges: How You Can Shape Your Church). Mike’s book Threshold of the Future: Reforming the Church in the Post-Christian West and the co-written (with Mark Pierson and Cathy Kirkpatrick) The Prodigal Project: Journey into the Emerging Church remain very useful books (though dated in a few places, particularly when stories of churches are told) and I commend them to anyone who’s reading or has read Dave’s Re-Enchanting Christianity. They go well together.

 

Nothing that Dave described is the “end-game”, but is rather a particularly 21^st century Anglican approach to engaging the oftentimes messy, experimental work of change, reform and renovation. We heard stories and theological reflection which described an approach to being church that had concerned its self with making possible a faithful, re-spirited, re-traditioned and authentic response to both the Holy Spirit and the spirit and rich heritage of Anglicanism. What we heard about were churches that celebrated and enjoyed life - and God – with passion, creativity and imagination; churches that wanted to change, grow and thrive (not die!) for the sake of God’s purposes in the world.

 

I’ll finish with the concluding prayer from the 7:30am Eucharistic service that began Day 2 which included Dave’s 2^nd and 3^rd talk, plus an impromptu one for 30-40 clergy interested in the practicalities of liturgical creativity.

 

 

When we fall,

let us not fall into darkness,

but fall into you,

that you may keep alive in us

a new vision of life with Christ

Amen.

 

A few thoughts from Session 3 and other comment to conclude these three posts (part 1 here) will be posted soon.