THE DANGERS OF IDEALISM AND ELITISM

For the context of our original discussion, go to:
Covenant Thinklings: Scheduled for Retirement?


I want to respond a little more to Brian’s “high dudgeon” post (it is around 90 or 91 in the thread). It shook me a little bit and caused me to do some internal inventory.

Basically, I want to underscore my agreement with his points and highlight how important his comments were. There is nothing I personally dislike more than “insider” thinking and elitist attitudes. Next to that, what I most dislike is idealism, in the sense of romanticizing certain conceptual ideals as more ‘pure’.

It seems to me that this is always the greatest danger in times of transition and renewal. There is a legitimate dissatisfaction that comes at the end of an age, and a restlessness for what ever is coming in the new. The dangerous trap is to fall into a critical spirit toward what has gone before and is need of change, and to enter into the new out of a reaction to the old. When we try to do “new” out of reaction to the old, we will almost always end up reproducing what we don’t like in the old. Gothard calls that the power of a ‘negative’ focus.

Two key teachings in the last 20 years have impacted me in this area of transitions. One, by Charles Simpson, dealt with transitional leaders in periods of epochal change. He gave this series in 1986, and used the dispersion of national Israel with the Babylonian captivity as his chief example. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Daniel, Ezekiel, and Nehemiah were all key transitional leaders, called to help lead God’s people through a brutal and abrupt change of epochs. Simpson talked about the dangers of shipwreck in navigating around the horn, because of the confusion that comes when two oceans come together with differing tides and wave patterns. I remember the emotional impact it had on me when he said “even experienced ship captains experience shipwreck in this transition.”

The second one was by Bob Mumford last fall in October, in Columbus, Ohio. He gave a brilliant talk on God’s “Five-Hundred-Year Steps in History” referring to the epochal changes with the coming of Christ, the Constantinian church, the rift between Eastern and Western Christianity at the end of the first millennium, and the Reformation of the church. In each period of change, according to Mumford’s thesis, God is having to release the kingdom of God from the stifling grasp of the old wineskin, in order to allow the kingdom to break out into the world. Mumford predicted that God was in the process of shaking the ‘modern’ church, in order to release the activity of the kingdom into the world once again, and to raise up a ‘postmodern’ church (his words, not mine).

These two series, plus all of the statistics compiled by Barna, Neighbors (where do we go from here), Gallup, David Barrett (World Christian Encyclopedia) The house church folks, Brian McLaren, Neil Cole and more recently Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch, tend to persuade me that we are in another major period of epochal sea-change, both in our culture and in the church.

Brian’s warning about the danger of seeking ‘pure’ forms of “New Testament” Christianity and church life are well founded. All throughout history, groups have splintered off from the church and isolated themselves from the ‘universal’ church in their attempts to be ‘pure’ and to be ‘true’ New Testament churches. At worst, they have quite often fallen into spiritual pride (the worst kind), elitism, and insider thinking, or even sectarian heresy. At best, they have just stagnated and become irrelevant.

We were part of a group that fell into this kind of romantic idealism and reaction against the larger church in the mid-70s. To our credit, we listened to our critics and managed to humble ourselves and stay connected with the body of Christ. Brian pointed out the romantic idealism of the ‘family-values’ group. I would say the same thing about the house church movement. Most of them are people I would not want to spend time with because they are so negative toward the church and reactionary toward anything that they consider ‘traditional’ church.

Brian is quite right in pointing out that we do not know which spiritual DNA will prove healthy and adaptive for the church. It is a “living system’ after all, operating on the edge of chaos. None of us know if we have the right DNA. I am glad that Hirsch puts the “Lordship of Christ” at the center of the mDNA.

One other thing I will point out is the attitude of Jesus and the apostles to the Jewish religion during another huge epochal change. Although Jesus wept over Jerusalem, and brusquely confronted the religious leaders, he did not seem interested in attacking or challenging Judaism or the system of Synagogue worship. He was after the ‘fulfillment’ the law, not its destruction. Paul also honored Judaism and tried to fit in with it as much as he could without betraying his core convictions about the avenues of grace.

I probably am most critical of my own conservative Evangelical background because I have seen and experienced many of the shortcomings up-close and personal: in my own life and in my own family. Within that, I am also most critical of my own mistakes as a Evangelical-Charismatic missionary, pastor and church planter.

This has caused me to be more open to other expressions of faith, such as Catholicism and Orthodoxy. While I have serious reservations about the ultimate value of mega-churches, I was instrumental in helping my friend Bill Carp find a role in one of the best and most missional mega-churches here in Miami, and both Bill and the senior pastor, Kevin are very close friends. I highly respect their heart for the marginal and the hurting and they are making an impact on our city.

So here is the challenge that Brian brought to us. How do we discern those areas in the church that must adapt in order for the church to be effective in the new epoch, without reacting to the change? How do we experiment with new approaches, without making our friends in established congregations feel that we are questioning value of their experience of ecclesia?

How do we keep ourselves open to change and innovation while loving the whole body of Christ? How do we adapt to the changes in our culture, while cherishing and drawing from our heritage and our history? It may feel like walking on the edge of a sword, and yet we dare not fall off to the left or the right. We need to hear the sill small voice that says “this is the way.” As Robert and Brian have been rightly pointing out, this is a significant challenge in navigating through troubled waters and changing tides and seas.