11.17.09

Deep Church

Posted in books, culture, ekklesia, gospel at 5:00 am by len

I finally have Jim Belcher’s book in hand. I am appreciating his taxonomy, which is both analytical and storied. Jim has been in relationship to a few of the “names” in the emerging church conversation since its beginning. His perspective is thus somewhat unique. Like some others, he is highly sympathetic to the conversation while remaining on the edge.

The first section where I started to slow down is the section on foundationalism. Jim identifies one of the issues that has made communication between traditional evangelicals and emergents very difficult: the way the term “postmodern” is used and interpreted. Where writers like Colson use “postmodern” to represent relativism and loss of moral authority, others like McLaren and Pagitt use it to highlight the break with Modernity. These latter thinkers do not approve of relativism, but approve of the post-foundationalist critique of reason.

Jim relates a helpful conversation with Nick Wolterstorff (78-83). Nick notes that the trick is to be neither foundationalist nor anti-realist. We stand firmly in what Newbigin calls, “proper confidence,” and what Franke calls “chastened rationality.”

I appreciated the application that followed, making the connection to the bounded-set, centered-set frame. Churches that move within the foundationalist frame of Modernity tend to create arrogant Christians who always push for boundaries (in-out) to be crystal clear. Churches which operate with a post-foundationalist ethos are more likely to function as center-set communities, not worrying about what defines in and out but articulating core values and practices, and then determing belonging by relationship to that center. The illustration popularized by Frost and Hirsch is “fences versus wells” (85-86)

This particular discussion continues in the next chapter “deep evangelism” as the shift to “belonging before believing.” Jim relates the perspective of Tim Condor, who argues that conversion in the early church was much more like this post-foundationalism frame. Bounded-set thinking has impacted our witness.. moreover, it tends to reduce to gospel to an intellectual transaction that impacts morality, instead of a relationship that transforms the whole of life.

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