“[It is] urgent … to reclaim a Big Tent Christianity, a centrist return to ‘just Christian’ in word and action. The two poles are driving each other ever further apart, spawning ever deeper hostilities. The solution — in American society as in the church — certainly is not to let the other’s anger fuel my own. As leaders it’s our task to help break the cycle of anger, of rejection leading to rejection, and to foster a radically different understanding of the heart of Christian faith.”

- Philip Clayton

There is an upcoming conference entitled Big Tent Christianity, which attempts to embody the above values and transcend some of the differences between Christian denominations and traditions today. Is it possible to get back to being “just Christian”?

I grew up in a tradition that typically identified itself as “just Christian.” For most of my childhood until I graduated high school my home church was an independent non-denominational Christian church. When anyone would ask us where we went to church and what denomination that was a part of our typical response was, “just Christian.”

For the last four years, however, I have been a part of a church which belongs to the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, a big-time denomination boasting over 4 million members. When someone asks us about our church and which denomination we belong to, we say the ELCA.

The interesting thing to me, though, is that in my experience the big time denominations are more likely to embrace this idea of Big Tent Christianity than are the smaller, independent churches who already claim to be “just Christian.” People who are presbyterian, methodist, episcopal, and lutheran, to a large extent, do not seem threatened by the idea of seeing Jesus at work in other churches. We tend to hold our theology with an open hand and be open to working together to achieve common goals.

The irony is that in a Big Tent Christianity world, denominations will cease to exist–at least in their current forms. When we are open to working with other churches based on a common mission rather than belonging to a common group, then the obvious outcome will be less and less of a priority on denominationalism.

And that is good news for denominations.

You see, denominations are already facing heavy decline. Denominational leaders are trying hard to keep their huge ships afloat in a world where the waters are becoming more shallow and ever wider, a world build for small, agile boats. What is at stake for many of these denominational leaders, I believe, is mission. There are many great things that 4 million members in the ELCA can do together that we cannot do separately, things like eradicating malaria in Africa. If these huge denominational structures cease to exist, won’t these efforts suffer?

Not in a world of Big Tent Christianity.

Big Tent Christianity seeks to bring people together based on their common missions. Big Tent Christianity transcends denominational borders in order to reach common goals. We can be confident in a world of Big Tent Christianity that Christians can still do Big Things, dream Big Dreams, and tackle Big Problems without resorting to the old forms of bureaucratic denominationalism. Big Tent Christianity will help us continue to do the things that we can do better together, things that we cannot do separately. Big Tent Christianity can continue the mission in the absence of denominations.

Though denominations are dying, the mission of the church is not.

After washing the disciples feet, after eating the Last Supper, Jesus finds himself in the Garden of Gethsemane, doing what he often does: praying. He prays for us, his disciples, knowing that the road we will have to travel will, like his road, be a difficult one. That Jesus prays for our protection implies that we will face danger. He knows that we will be called to follow him in death.

As we are called to walk the road which Jesus walked, we are also called to be people who often find ourselves in prayer. Prayer, like the washing of feet and the receiving of communion, is also an act that forces us to die to ourselves. When we pray, we acknowledge that we are not in control. When we pray, we cannot lie, we cannot deceive, we cannot position ourselves for power or status, but we are laid bare as we come to our Maker. In a world where people manipulate one another for selfish interests, prayer is perhaps the only place where we are unable to manipulate someone else. We are utterly powerless in prayer to make ourselves out to be anything other than what we already are. In prayer the masks we wear come off and the real person underneath begins to emerge. In biblical terms, prayer is the death of the old self and the rising of the new creation.

On this night we remember the meal that Jesus gave us, the meal that we celebrate every week. A piece of bread, a sip of wine. This is the body and blood of Christ. The apostle Paul tells us that in this meal we “proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.” This meal is a proclamation of death.

But it, like the foot washing, is also an act of dying to ourselves. Jesus tells us that the road he traveled is the road we must travel. The cross he bore is also our cross. The death he died is also our death. “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me,” Jesus says. The weekly act of receiving communion is a part of taking up that cross and dying to ourselves. Weekly we are reminded that we are in need of the body and blood of Christ in order to forgive our sinful selves. We come to the altar, and kneel, lowering ourselves to our knees. This position is one of penitence and humility. Such a position forces us to die to ourselves. We put out our hands while we are on our knees, almost as a beggar, knowing that we are undeserving of the grace we are about to receive, and yet knowing that this grace is our only hope. In this act of receiving the body and blood of Christ our pride is stripped away as we come to the altar and ask for forgiveness.

This meal is not to be only a weekly occurrence of humbling ourselves. No, this meal reminds us that we should always be on our knees, always acting in humility, always aware that we are creatures in need of God’s grace. This meal does not end our week, but begins it. We begin the week on our knees, in submission to our Lord.

This meal is a reminder of the cross that Jesus bore, but it should also remind us that we are called to always die to ourselves, to always be in a position to be receptive to God’s grace, to “Take up our cross,” as Jesus said.

The first of the acts of Maundy Thursday has an obvious connection to dying to oneself. Most of us have heard the significance of what Jesus did on that night as he washed the disciples’ feet. Peter knew–he tried to refuse to let Jesus lower himself to the status of the lowliest of servants. Only if Jesus had already died to himself, and rejected the seduction of power and status in his culture, only then would he be able to take a towel, wrap it around his waist, and wash the feet of his disciples, his followers, his friends. The act of washing another’s feet required a dying to oneself in order to be able to complete the task.

But an interesting shift has occurred since Jesus’ day. In the biblical story it is Jesus who must empty himself in order to wash the disciples’ feet. The disciples would have been comfortable letting another person touch and wash their feet. It was a common custom, not out of the ordinary.

Today this is no longer the case. The modern day practice of foot washing in our culture requires discomfort by both parties. Not only must the person washing another’s feet lower oneself to a place of servant hood, but the person whose feet are being washed must bear his or her feet to another. This is not something we tend to do. We like our shoes, our flip flops, and our distance. Oftentimes the only person who sees, nevertheless touches, our feet is a parent or a spouse. To take off one’s shoes and to allow another to touch one’s feet in today’s culture requires a stripping away of pride; it requires a dying to oneself.

Are free markets incompatible with secularism?  Is the only hope for the free markets a Third Great Awakening?  Or maybe the first Global Great Awakening?

Or, to put it another way, is the current financial crisis the church’s fault?

Update: David Fitch has a great post asking good questions about how this financial crisis might affect the church.

1. On the outside of the packet there was a teaser from a sign company: “The first step in growth? A quality church sign.” Then, on the real advertisement inside, it said: “This is the sign that reached the family and brought them to church.” [Next to a picture of nice, white family with an SUV and quite large 2-story house in the background]. “Make the drive-by congregation of today the members of tomorrow.” At least the signs are vandal- and graffiti-resistant.
2. Another one was an advertisement for custom-made folders you can hand out to visitors containing basic information on your church: “Church leaders agree: [XXXXXXXXX] Visitor Packets are the #1 choice for welcoming and enfolding new people. The reasons are clear: Unparalleled quality. Unequalled designs. Unmatched excellence.” I’m not even exactly sure what it means to “enfold” someone.

Everyday Theology: How to Read Cultural Texts and Interpret Trends

First, a cultural text, like written discourse, has a locutionary dimension and employs either language or some other signifying medium (e.g., art, television, film, music, products, social practices). Second, cultural discourse raises the same questions about its illocutionary act as does written or oral discourse, namely what is a cultural text doing in saying/showing/signing such and such? Third, cultural discourse achieves certain effects (e.g., cultivation, spiritual formation) by saying/showing/signing. (45)

The CliffsNotes version:

• locution: the medium and what is being said
• illocution: what the “text” is doing
• perlocution: the effects of what is being said

Think of the common prohibition to yell “Fire!” in a crowded movie theater. Such a prohibition is not based on the locution of the act, because it is not criminal to speak, or even to generally yell in a crowded movie theater. I could talk to my wife about the campfire we had at youth group and not worry about being given a citation. The problem with yelling “Fire!” in a crowded movie theater is its illocutionary and perlocutionary effect: the desire to bring about and subsequent bringing about of needless mass chaos, hysteria, injury, trampling, etc.

If you think about it, many laws operate in the these arenas. But at times, Christians have been known to only worry about the locutionary aspects of cultural texts to determine if they are appropriate or not. See this quote by Vanhoozer:

To be sure, Christians should not rush to judgment on the basis of superficial criteria. It is not enough to simply know that there are “bad words” in a film, for this takes us only as far as locutions. Of much greater importance are the illocutions and perlocutions: what is the cultural text doing with these bad words and what effects does it bring about by using them in just this way? (53)

Where Vanhoozer does not go with his argument is to point out that context matters greatly when dealing with perlocutions. I can yell “Fire!” almost anywhere without repercussion. But because of the context of a crowded movie theater, performing that same act produces a completely different (and criminal) perlocutionary effect.

The point I would like to make is that a perlocution of a text upon an individual greatly changes with the development of the individual. Thus, lots of “bad words” in the ears of a small child will likely result in that child repeating those words with a degree of harmless innocence. Take that same exposure to “bad words” to an upper elementary child and they will likely repeat the words but often with malicious and prideful (“I cuss therefore I am cool”) intent. A teenager has oftentimes moved past the prideful dimension of cussing, but is still likely to use the words derogatorily in an attempt to gain social capital. Married adults secure in themselves often simply use those same words because that is the only way they know how to talk. So, the exposure to certain words has different perlocutions depending upon the development of a person. That is why a 24 year old like myself can watch and see certain things that we don’t want a 5 year old to see; it really is a completely different scenario.

This also shows the logic behind the idea that we shape things and then our things shape us. The cell phone is invented (locution) in order to ease communication between people and to make a profit (illocutions), but the inventors of the cell phone have absolutely no control over the perlocution. The perlocution (one of which is making people work-a-holics) is determined after the “text” of the cell phone has achieved widespread acceptance. Most ads work this same way. They all have the same basic illocution. What are ads doing? They are trying to make you want their product. But there are ripple effects of the perlocution of that ad and the culmination of thousands of ads that drastically shapes our culture. They shape identity, define worth, cause people to go into debt, and so on.

I enjoyed Vanhoozer’s essay immensely, as it provided some sound ground for evaluating things in culture. We do need to get beyond the locutionary dimension of cultural texts and really ask what the illocutionary and perlocutionary effects are of commonly accepted cultural texts like advertising, education, text-messaging, and more. And we must do all this, especially people working with children and teenagers, with the understanding that similar texts can have vastly different effects upon individuals (and communities for that matter) based on their context and development.

(PS – I know the title on this post is obscenely long, elitist, and high-snootin’, but I’m doing a little experiment to see how well I get ranked in search engines for these obscure words.)

When we define Christian maturity simply as studying the scriptures “in-depth” for an hour once a week, we turn Christian maturity into an appallingly easy thing to do. It lasts maybe two hours, we can put it on our calendar, we know exactly when it will happen, and we can feel better about ourselves because we are mature.

Christian maturity is not something that you can schedule. It does not fit neatly onto a calendar; Christian maturity invades your calendar. It invades everything you do. To relegate it to something you can fit into a couple of hours every Tuesday night is short-sighted and deceptive.

Try putting justice, compassion, reconciliation, and forgiveness onto your calendar once a week and see how well that works out. Yeah, it’s not that easy.

No, Christian education is not a bad thing. But it is not equivalent with Christian maturity. We shouldn’t fool ourselves into feeling good about our Christian maturity because we can cram it into a few hours between work and going to bed at night. The call to discipleship is much more pervasive and penetrating than that.

You may notice I don’t talk about the Bible much in these posts. There is a reason for that. Quite simply, I’m trying to keep my posts fairly short. I want these to be able to be read easily the first time you glance at it. I could write longer posts, but then you’d need to schedule reading my blog into your calendar. I don’t want that. (Nor do I think anyone would actually do that. Well, Brit might.)

So, I don’t have a whole lot of space to go into the biblical and theological basis of a lot of my convictions. For instance, you may be asking why in my recent post I think that local and contextual is better than big and pre-packaged. I have many a biblical and theological reason for that, I can assure you. My convictions are a result of a lot of reading, reflecting, discussing, praying, ministering, living, and all that. I refuse to simply quote a bible verse in every post in order to make it “biblical.” That does an injustice to the depth at which those of us in youth ministry need to be considering these issues. I believe my posts are already biblical because I think they line up with scripture, not because I stick a reference onto every post.

Perhaps one day I will make a series of posts on the biblical and theological basis of my convictions. But it would be too long to try and do that all at once right now. For now, you will just see the (current state of my) conclusions in the Neo-Youth Ministry Series.