I periodically love poetry primarily because I am envious of those who can put such images into words with such beauty and depth. I was thinking the other day about Oliver Goldsmith’s 18th century poem “The Deserted Village.” You may remember that he is looking with idyllic eyes and the village that had become the victim of the industrial revolution: “Sweet Auburn, loveliest village of the plain.” He remembers the very positive dimensions of human relations, integrity of the character, caring community—then laments that it is all a thing of the past. The church was part of Goldsmith’s memory and the gentle preacher who ministered gospel and human kindness with such grace.

But Auburn is now deserted, and it’s memory leaves an aching void in Goldsmith’s heart. There was so much that was meaningful in that restricted, provincial life. The tragedy is that we in the 21st century have a tendency to preserve the church-life patterns of that era in a culture that is as different as the industrial revolution was from the agrarian life of this rustic British village. We miss so many of the meaningful traditions, yet have forgotten the mission.

Sometimes I feel like an exile in the church. It all looks and sounds so familiar to one who has inhabited its institutional precincts from birth. Yet, I can’t connect what I see and hear and experience to much that determines this postmodern information age. I even have a difficult time trying to be positive about how any of this relates to the profound mission of God to "make all things new" in Christ. It smacks of spiritual entertainment, or (as one described it) “therapeutic deism.” So much of our leadership is even schizophrenic in that it sees “missional church” creativity positively, but whose own default mode is incorrigibly “Christendom” with all of the institutional and ecclesial paraphernalia. Confusing.

But I suppose it is bound to happen. Alan Roxburgh has popularized the word “liminal” as that transition period between cultures in which there is no pattern and no knowns and no roadmaps, … so that we have to “feel our way along” into the unknown future.

Or, as per the title of this Blog, I think of Marist priest Gerald Arbuckle, whose study on why the Maryknoll Order’s ranks were diminishing rather ominously a few decades ago. His conclusion was that when an order was initiated it was totally absorbed in a unified sense of vision and mission, which provided a dynamic. But, … as that “founding myth” (vision, convictions, theology, mission) was “diluted, displaced, or forgotten,” then the “order reverted to chaos.”

Somewhere in those images lies the dilemma that we face in the North American church, clinging to an archaic and essentially non-Biblical ecclesiology that was the dominant image for centuries, but simply doesn’t fit such a radically new culture. Yet there are all of those dynamic and fruit and creative episodes of missional community that keep emerging in places no one would expect.

Little publicity accompanied one of the hugely fruitful awakenings in recent decades in such places as Harvard, Cal Berkeley, and such institutions. The gospel came through ad hoc communities of students and faculty who had a vision, an image, if you will, of a bold engagement of the gospel of the kingdom of God (with all of its cultural dimensions) with the somewhat hostile and secularized culture of these universities. Institutional churches were only marginal in this. Universites tended to be suspicious and resistant.

Yet those participants, those ad hoc communities had not “diluted, displaced, or forgotten” what the New Testament gospel and mission were all about, and how culturally forming and transforming it actually is. Nor did they lament the former glories of institutional Christendom churches whose impressive sanctuaries and architecture adorn the very campuses on which these forums of Christian presentation were taking place (not to mention the cities and villages of the land). These church institutions and the communities of "members"that inhabit them have long-since become forgetful of the Mission of God and their role as its redemptive and transformation dynamic as Spirit-filled communities.

Arbuckle concludes that we need to "refound the church." Missional church leaders are calling for cultural engagement and creativity in the form of the missional community. The Veritas Forum is calling for bold prayers and intentional engagement as creative and thoughtful communities with the hopelessness and darkness of the culture surrounding us.

That’s worth pursuing. E-mail me your response. To be continued …

Bob Henderson

Very occasionally I get some word on my e-mail that some dear person is actually reading these musings of mine. I am now getting my act together after several months of some physical stuff that has rather nailed my foot to the floor -- and intend to be begin posting some thoughts and, maybe, suggestions week by week.

By the way, if you do read Bob's Blogs, would you do me a favor and drop an email to my address listed somewhere on this site and tell me so? I would be so grateful to you. I am motivated when I know I'm not just talking to myself.

I actually am working on a written piece (whatever form it will finally be, I don't know) spring-boarding off of the NT text that says that we should "not forsake the assembling of yourselves together." I want to know "why not?" What is the aroma, form, and flavor of being together that makes this critical to our welfare -- and if that form, flavor, and aroma doesn't exist, is there any reason why we should inflict meaningless assembling on ourselves?

To be continued ...

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