Changing the World with Lentil Stew

So, apparently there’s now this new…group..or organization…or something…of “Seminaries that Change the World.”   

“Seminaries that Change the World is an invitation to a generation of idealists, activists, volunteers and servant-leaders who have demonstrated a commitment to community service and social justice.”

According to this website (and I should note that mostly the reason I care is that my alma mater, Luther Seminary, is a part of this group), people should consider going to seminary as a route to changing the world.

Ugh.

The leading quote on the website is, “Give me a place to stand, and I will move the earth,” supposedly uttered by Archimedes (about, um, physics, not metaphysics, but whatevs, right?).  Anyway…no quotes from the Bible.  Nothing about the words of Jesus or the empowerment of the Holy Spirit.  Not even anything about a generic non-denominational, genderless “God.”  

All, 100%, totally in curvatus se.  So, definitely something Lutherans would want to be involved with.  (For those of you who are sarcasm-impaired, that last sentence includes a gigantic eye roll.)

Now look, if they wanted to throw some Jewish or Muslim seminaries (is that what they’re even called?) on this list, and then they’d need to back away from the Jesus stuff a little, okay.  I get that it is possible to be a trained leader in a non-Christian religion, and I don’t begrudge people that. (I think they’re wrong, but I don’t begrudge them, and I certainly don’t want to take away their religious freedom to believe and practice as they see fit.)  

But.  But.  All of the schools in the group are Christian.  

And Christians know – or at least, they used to – that the only person who has any real power to change the world is Jesus Christ.  Even if you’re operating from the perspective that “changing the world” is coterminous with “God’s mission in the world,” you still have to contend with verses like Phillippians 2:13, “…it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure.”

It’s just not about you.  It’s just not about you.  Say it with me, Christians, it’s just not about you. 

Carl Braaten, in discussing the “Two Kingdoms Theory” says this: 

“Historical liberation and eternal salvation are not one and the same thing. They should not be equated. The gospel is not one of the truths we hold to be self-evident; it is not an inalienable right which the best government in the world can do anything about. There are many people fighting valiantly on the frontline of legitimate liberation movements who are not in the least animated by the gospel. The hope for liberation is burning in the hearts of millions of little people struggling to free themselves from the conditions of poverty and tyranny. When they win this freedom, should they be so fortunate, they have not automatically therewith gained the freedom for which Christ has set us free (Gal. 5:1).”

This is excellent.  It is utterly, and absolutely, perfectly stated.  Yay, Carl Braaten.  (Why, why, oh why are there no theologians like him left in “this church”?)  “Changing the world” is great, so far as it goes.  But if we learned anything last week from Jesus’ takedown of the Sadducees, it’s that “this world,” and all it has to offer, is not the last word, and it is certainly not the only thing we have to look forward to do.  

“Changing the world,” is, I suppose, a noble task.  But it is not, in and of itself, Christian ministry.  And Christian seminaries should know this.  If the best we can be about is “changing the world,” with a little sprinkle of Jesus on top, then what the hell are we doing????  

“If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied….If the dead are not raised, ‘let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.” (1 Corinthians 15:19, 32)

Should seminaries be encouraging their students to live and practice the faith, and not just hunker down inside their own heads full of knowledge?  Of course.  Go forth, “change the world,” if that’s your thing.  So much good has been done, so much love has been shown, and so much gospel has been proclaimed in the concrete acts of love and mercy done by the Church throughout the ages, and let us pray that these might continue!

But these acts of love and mercy, of “changing the world,” have been done by a Church that was, as Braaten puts it, “animated by the gospel.”  By people who know that the death and resurrection of Jesus has already changed the world, and that we live and move and have our being on the basis of that reality.  Any so-called seminary that can’t see clear to that (and by choosing to associate with this “Seminaries that Change the World” it seems that they can’t) really doesn’t deserve to call itself Christian.  

Not only that, but the mission will ultimately fail.  Because “changing the world” comes from God, at the end of the day.  Because the problem with the world is not just that people aren't nice enough.  The problem with the world is sin, death, and the devil.  And the only - only - fix for that is Christ crucified.  Christ, and only Christ.  “Then the one who is seated on the throne said, ‘See, I am making all things new.’”  Not – “Then the one who is a nice person said ‘go out and make all things new.’” 

A seminary that is teaching its students to paint a veneer of religion over the mission of the Peace Corps is trading its rich heritage for a bowl of lentils, Jacob-and-Esau style.  

May the Lord have mercy upon us, and may He come quickly, to at last, once and for all, “change the world.”   

Missional Thoughts, part deux

Here's my other thing(s) about "missional", and then I'm going to be done.

It occurred to me while reading Missional: Joining God in the Neighborhood that what the "missional church" movement seems to lack is any sense of The Church.  For "missionalists" (or whatever we are to call them), "the church" seems not to exist beyond the bounds of one's own neighborhood.  "the church" is dying, therefore all must be changed.  "the church" is dying, so God must not be worried about "the church" and He is clearly instead worried about neighborhoods.  (Because he wasn't worried about neighborhoods before?)  "the church" is necessarily inward-looking and obsessed with its own self-importance, meanwhile people out in the neighborhoods are encountering God in ways we can't even imagine.

No.  "the church" is more than just "the church".  Any neighborhood "church" is part of The Church, the Bride of Christ, against which the gates of hell shall never prevail.  Alan Roxburgh wants to compare the church to dying coral reefs, but the problem with that comparison is that Jesus never made any promises about coral reefs vis a vis the gates of hell.  The churches in the West might have Coral Reef Syndrome, but The Church is growing like crazy in the Global South.  Maybe if we had a better sense of what God was doing in The Church, we'd be a little more apt to pay attention to what He's doing in "the church."

Also, "missionalists" seem to act like it's a bad thing to want people to come to church on Sunday morning.  Like, as soon as you say that you want people sitting there listening and paying attention, it's become all about you and your power and your self-importance.  Which might be true, if, you know, it were.  But for a lot of us (and this should be all Lutherans, along with the RC's, EO's, and the rest of the first-generation Protestants), we want people to come to church on Sunday morning because the Word of God will be preached and the Body and Blood of Christ will be given.  We want people to come to church on Sunday because it's an issue of the First and Third Commandments.  We want people to come to church on Sunday because we are told to "not give up meeting together."   We want people to come to church on Sunday because, darn it, it's good for them. 

Finally, I think that "missional" - discerning "what God is up to, out there" - fails to respect the Two Kingdoms doctrine.  Absolutely God is at work in the world, in ways and means outside the institutional church.  Without a doubt.  But He is also at work in and through the Church.  His work in the world, and His work in the Church are sometimes two very different things, and one cannot be elevated above the other.  They naturally intertwine at times, but they are not the same thing.  Carl Braaten says it best in a 2007 article titled "The Two Kingdoms Principle" published in Principles of Lutheran Theology:

“Historical liberation and eternal salvation are not one and the same thing. They should not be equated. The gospel is not one of the truths we hold to be self-evident; it is not an inalienable right which the best government in the world can do anything about. There are many people fighting valiantly on the frontline of legitimate liberation movements who are not in the least animated by the gospel. The hope for liberation is burning in the hearts of millions of little people struggling to free themselves from the conditions of poverty and tyranny. When they win this freedom, should they be so fortunate, they have not automatically therewith gained the freedom for which Christ has set us free (Gal. 5:1.) This is the barest minimum of what we intend to convey by the two-kingdoms perspective."

Could a more robust understanding of the Two Kingdoms somehow "save" "the church" from from her own self-indictment of irrelevance?

I'm not sure, but I think perhaps.

And now I'm all out of ranting about "missional."  Yay.  What's next?