Rants and Rainbows

I usually read 'The Baptist' - the official magazine of the Baptist Churches of New Zealand - as soon as it comes out, but for some reason I didn't pick up the June issue till this week. As usual I went straight to the Letters to the Editor - I do this with the NZ Herald and the Listener as well - and what an interesting followup it was to the seminar at Carey Baptist College about which I posted last week. Having discerned there that the Baptist movement in New Zealand is a strange foment of deeply-held convictions, held in tension with widely-varying practices, I was further exposed to the sharp contrasts in the Kiwi Baptist landscape, through Letters to the Editor from Baptists with radically different concerns.

The letters from 'Barry' and 'Murray' were cases in point. I don't know Barry but he describes himself as a Baptist of forty-years standing who is blessed to attend a church where the pastors and elders "uphold biblical truth." From this superior perspective he launches into a scathing critique of the principles and practices of errant Baptists over the last thirty years, which he attributes to "neglect of biblical truth." John Wimber, the Toronto Blessing, the Alpha Course, Rick Warren's Purpose-Driven movement, and Brian McLaren and the Emerging Church all come in for harsh criticism as false teachers who have "insidiously contaminated" the Christian Church. Of particular concern to him is the trend to jettison biblical truth in favour of Roman Catholicism, mysticism and ecumenism. Check these heretics out, he says, and "prepare to be appalled!"

I too have been disturbed by some imbalances in these global seasons in Christian life, but would still value their gifts.

• The Signs and Wonders movement did not have adequate answers for key issues such as those who were not healed - but it did remind us that the healing and prophetic ministry of Jesus is part of our legacy as His Body.
• The Toronto Blessing phenomenon placed inordinate emphasis on seeking emotional and physical experiences of God, and did lead to some ghastly abuses and excesses, but reminded us that down through salvation history God has often touched people in dramatic ways to accomplish their spiritual transformation.
• The Alpha Course was developed in a particular season of church life at Holy Trinity Brompton, and led to a disproportionate focus on some transitory expressions, but has been the vehicle for thousands to come to faith in Christ.
• The Purpose Driven Life book and associated material has a number of inadequacies, due in the main to over-simplification of complex biblical, theological and ethical issues. Nevertheless it has enjoyed wide success in challenging people to attend to God's voice in their daily life and in my experience was helpful in giving the whole church a shared language to talk about matters of faith.
• Brian McLaren goes further than I would on many issues, but engages with many who had given up on faith, and is still passionately committed to Christ and his church.
• I have in the past been disturbed by some movements within the church , eg Promise Keepers, Victorious Ministries through Christ, Answers in Genesis, etc, but on reflection have usually found they have something to contribute to the life of faith that has been missed by others.

The letter from Murray took quite a different tack. This time I do know the writer, having heard him present issues of social justice to an audience of young adults in an engaging, perceptive and biblically-grounded manner. His letter is a response to an (earlier) attack on the emergent church, a critique which had made similar points to the charges laid by Barry. Murray, who has a doctorate in ethics, and teaches Kiwis about developing spiritual resources for justice, simplicity and community, clearly identifies himself with the emergent church movement which has influenced some local Baptist churches. This global reshaping of Christian community, which some prefer to characterise as "fresh expressions" of the church, has wide appeal to postmodern pilgrims seeking to connect faith with the twenty first century world. Murray's letter says:

"This movement is able to sustain faith in an age where much of what has built up as

Christian belief and practice by past generations seems no longer theologically tenable

or spiritually sustaining...the emergent church offers a way forward. Every generation

needs to make sense of faith in its own culture, and its understanding is shaped by that

culture. The delusion is that one particular view can be labelled "biblical Christianity"

in some trans-historical way."

I am not totally convinced by all the arguments of gurus of the Emergent Church like Rob Bell and Brian McLaren, but I think their voices need to be heard. (I will not go into a detailed explanation here, but Kevin Ward's 2009 article contains some helpful insights). As a Kiwi Baptist pastor, committed to the historic Scriptures but open to what the Spirit is saying, I think Murray's point is well made, and Barry's rant is cause for deep concern.

What Barry terms "Biblical truth" comes to us in a collection of documents written in a different language, and context, and with different concerns from our own. God has chosen to reveal himself, through the Living Word, and in the story of that Word in human words. I don't want to devalue the status of those words as revelation, but I do want to say with Tom Wright that if God wanted us to have a series of propositional "timeless truths", he would have given them directly to us and not embedded them in a bunch of stories and other texts from which we have to extract them. I would also suggest that much of Barry's version of biblical truth is not objective, but rather the interpretation of a particular school of thought that has been passed down to him, sometimes by only a few generations of evangelical Christians. The argument that his perspective is "true' and that of others is not, does not pay sufficient heed to the inherent ambiguities of biblical hermeneutics.

The third Letter to the Editor I found of interest in the June Baptist magazine was one that described the church as a rainbow of colours, blending into each other at various points but each reflecting the light of God in a different hue. I like that image. I bring to the Baptist movement my own 'take' on theology, history and faith, and the fact that my contribution is a different colour from that of others is cause for delight, not diatribe.

To Chew Over: How do you respond to Christian believers who describe their spirituality in radically different ways from your own? What brings you together?

He drew a circle to shut me out

Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout

But love and I had a wit to win

We drew a circle that took him in.

Edwin Markham