An Ecclesiology that "Starts with the Spirit"

Last weekend at synod assembly you were discussing the decline of Protestantism in America. On Facebook your theology-nerd friend was proclaiming, once again, the Barthian notion that the church is a Word-Event. Meanwhile, your child moves home from college with a book on communio-ecclesiology, and says the source and norm of church is the Eucharist.

Then Brian McLaren comes and knocks on your door and wants to talk about emergent Christianity. That night, you go to an art exhibit and Alan Hirsch is there discussing the missional church. Some Pentecostals walk in and start singing in tongues.

Okay, so this never happened in reality. But if you are paying attention to reflections on ecclesiology (theologies of 'the church') then in all likelihood you've had at least some exposure to almost every single one of these streams.

So which is it? Is the church a word-event, or communion, or missional, or emergent, in decline, or what?

Here's where Cheryl M. Peterson's recent work, Who Is the Church?: An Ecclesiology for the Twenty-first Century, gets to work. In four laconic chapters, Peterson walks the reader through Protestant decline, neo-orthodox Word-Event ecclesiology, Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox inflected communio-ecclesiology, and missional/emergent theologies of the 21st century.

Many readers will not find anything especially new hear, but the one thing that will be new is itself worth the time. Peterson ably lays each of these ecclesiologies side-by-side in lucid detail. The early part of her book is analysis, after all, rather than innovation.

So first, Peterson wants us to stop dreaming Christendom dreams. Many if not most people are no longer looking to the church for the kinds of volunteer and community resources they did in the last century. There are many contexts to volunteer and build community in the 21st century. The church is just one. To stop dreaming such dreams, the church needs to discover once again what it is for, and who it is.

One faithful push in this direction is an approach to church as Word-Event. Informed by theologies of Barth and Forde, this ecclesiology sees the church as in a sense "created" by the proclamation of the gospel. This places emphasis on the God who acts, and centers the church in the Word. Peterson's primary concern with this model (a model she views primarily positively, it should be added) is that it focuses on the Spirit's work of gathering the church rather than sending the church.

Vatican II, especially in the work of Yves Congar, centered much of the global conversation on ecclesiology in communion ecclesiology. Here there is a quest for the unity of the church, grounded in God's communion as Trinity, and our communion with God in the Eucharist. Engaging the work of Robert Jenson and Phil Butin (my neighbor here in Fayetteville!), Peterson notes how communio-ecclesiology both centers and de-centers the church. "The gracious privilege of participating in the koinonia of God's trinitarian life cannot be possessed or kept by the church" (Phil Butin, 76).

Which leads us to the missional/emergent tradition currently shaping much of present-day ecclesiological conversation in North America. Engaging especially the work of Craig van Gelder and Darrel Guder, Peterson argues that Van Gelder's Spirit-led ecclesiology offers sufficient critique to the Guder emphasis on the missio Dei in that it notes that the missio Dei begins with the Spirit.

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In the last two chapters, Peterson offers her constructive argument. Drawing on "Pentecostal" insights, Peterson begins with a narrative method, allowing the story in Acts and the creeds itself to narrate  a pneumatologically informed ecclesiology.

Building off of George Lindbeck's Israel-like ecclesiology, and taking this "interfaith" and ecumenical approach with full sincerity, Peterson proposes that the church "receives its particular identity and purpose through the Holy Spirit, which in the Acts narrative is promised by Jesus after his resurrection and received at Pentecost" (105).

From Acts, Peterson takes her cue, and proposes three roles for the Holy Spirit in relation to the church:

1) The Spirit is mission director, guiding and directing the church's witness by giving prophetic speech to various leaders in the church, who are described as being 'filled with the Spirit' in order to witness to Jesus.
2) The Spirit as 'verifying cause' by which certain groups are incorporated into God's eschatological people.
3) The Spirit as supervisor and sustainer of those in Christian community or koinonia.

After a brief chapter illustrating how the ecumenical creeds teach us to develop our ecclesiology "starting with the Spirit," Peterson offers an epilogue, a vision for revival. This is quite different from a "plan for survival" (another type of ecclesiology Peterson warns readers away from in her first chapter).  For Peterson, a Spirit-breathed church will reflect the experience of new life that the Holy Spirit brings in and through us.

Peterson's book is a great starter book on a pneumatologically-informed ecclesiology. I look forward to her next book, which I hope will be an even more in-depth constructive theology of the church that starts in the Spirit.

Great Summer Reads 2013

I know, I know. Not everyone goes around creating summer syllabi. And most of us
are completely able on our own to select books to read while chilling at the coffee shop or lounging in a canoe.

Nevertheless, I can't help myself. So here are five-ish recommendations, great books to read this summer that won't leave you disappointed, may change your life, and at the very least will give your head some elevation if you packed your tent but forgot your pillow.

First, consider reading a straight up work of ecclesiology. Friend and colleague Cheryl Peterson has a new work out about which I'm totally excited. Periodically we need to be invited to re-think what we mean by "church." Cheryl's book "starts with the Spirit" as it considers what the church is for, what the church is.

Second, Rich Melheim's offers a compelling case for energizing simple faith formation rituals in the home. He not only encourages us, but offers us a path for making it happen. We are going to try and get Rich to come to Northwest Arkansas this fall. He's fun and full of energy and you will love this book.

Third, a book quite like Melheim's by Bruce Feiler, New York Times best-selling author, is also about helping families flourish. My wife and I are reading it this year and going out for meals and conversation around it.

Fourth, I don't think you'll be disappointed if you read The New Digital Age. Since Google has such an incredible influence on all of us, it isn't bad to know a little bit about the approach to our era their leading thinkers and leaders are considering.

Finally, I'm going to recommend two serious works of theology. This won't be for everyone, but if you've never read or seldom read theology, you might try it out. Retrieving Nicea is the more difficult read of the two, but helps offer historical context for Nicene Trinitarian theology. The other From Pentecost to the Triune God is a work by a Pentecostal on Trinitarian theology. It's very, very readable, and helps readers think about the Trinity starting from the Spirit.

As a kind of "sixth," let me recommend a book you can download for free, and that will free you and your community to "How Much Is Enough: A Deeper Look at Stewardship In Age of Abundance" to live in God's abundance. I'm recommending to all of my parishioners who lead our stewardship ministries or who hope to encourage us to greater faithfulness in this area to read this set of essays some time during the summer.
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This is the bonus section. Other books I'm recommending or plan to read, in various genres:

A book on writing: Daily Rituals: How Artists Work

A book on disorder: Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder

A book on leadership: The Practice of Adaptive Leadership: Tools and Tactics for Changing Your Organization and the World

Another Pentecostal book: Spirit of Love: A Trinitarian Theology of Grace

A theological book on creativity: Resurrection City: A Theology of Improvisation (Prophetic Christianity)

My main sci-fi read this summer: The Human Division

A book on improv: Bossypants

A book on liturgy: Liturgy as a Way of Life (The Church and Postmodern Culture): Embodying the Arts in Christian Worship

Rob Bell: Drops Like Stars: A Few Thoughts on Creativity and Suffering

A literary novel: How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia: A Novel

A critique of the internet: Digital Labor: The Internet as Playground and Factory

I most definitely and especially welcome readers' recommendations in the comments. Happy reading this summer!

And if you've read this far, two more books, forthcoming in the summer or early fall, that need to go in your purchase queue:

Tolkien, Elves, and Resurrection

Excerpted from Tolkien's:

ON FAIRY-STORIES

But the 'consolation' of fairy-stories has another as­pect than the imaginative satisfaction of ancient desires. Far more important is the Consolation of the Happy Ending. I almost would venture to assert that all com­plete fairy-stories must have it. At least I would say that Tragedy is the true form of Drama, its highest function; but the opposite is true of Fairy-story. Since we do not appear to possess a word that expresses this opposite. I will call it Eucatastrophe. The eucatastrophic tale is the true form of fairy-tale, and its highest function.

The consolation of fairy-stories, the joy of the happy ending: or more correctly of the good catastrophe, the sudden joyous 'turn' (for there is no true ·end to any fairy-tale): this joy, which is one of the things which fairy-stories can produce supremely well, is not essen­tially 'escapist', nor 'fugitive'. In its fairy-tale - or otherworld - setting, it is a sudden and miraculous grace: never· to be counted on to recur. It does not deny the existence of dyscatastrophe, of sorrow and failure: the possibility of these is necessary to the joy of deliverance; it denies (in the face of much evidence, if you will) universal final defeat and·in so far is evangelium, giving a fleeting glimpse of Joy, Joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief.

It is the mark of a good fairy-story; of the higher or more complete kind, that however wild its events, however fantastic or terrible the adventures, it can give to child or man that hears it, when the 'turn' comes, a catch of the breath, a beat and lifting of the heart, near to (or indeed accompanied by) tears, as keen as that given by any form of literary art, and having a peculiar quality.

Even modern fairy-stories can produce this effect sometimes. It is not an easy thing to do; it depends on the whole story which is the setting of the turn, and yet it reflects a glory backwards. A tale that in any measure succeeds in· this point has not wholly failed, whatever flaws it may possess; and whatever mixture or confusion of purpose.

This 'joy' which I have selected as the mark of the true fairy-story (or romance), or as the seal upon it, merits more consideration.

Probably every writer making a secondary world; in fantasy, every sub - creator, wishes in some measure to be a real maker, or hopes that he is drawing on reality: hopes that the peculiar quality of this secondary world (if not all the details) are derived from Reality, or are flowing into it. If he indeed achieves a quality that can fairly be described by the dictionary definition: 'inner consistency of reality'' it is difficult to conceive how this can be, if the work does not in some way partake of reality. The peculiar quality of the 'joy' in successful Fantasy can thus be explained :as a sudden glimpse of the underlying reality or truth. It is not only a 'consolation' for the sorrow of this world,· but a satisfaction, and an answer to that question, 'Is it true?'

The answer to this question that I gave at first was (quite rightly): 'If you have built your little world well, yes: it is true in that world.' That is enough for the artist (or the artist part of the artist). But in the 'eucatastrophe' we see in a brief vision that the answer may be greater - it may be a far-off gleam or echo of evangelium in the real world. The use of this word gives a hint of my epilogue. It is a serious and dangerous matter. It is presumptuous of me to touch upon such a theme; but if by grace what I say has in any respect any validity, it is, of course, only one facet of a truth incalculably rich: finite only because the capacity of Man for whom this was done· is finite.

I would venture to say that approaching the Chris­ tian Story from this direction, it has long been my feeling (a joyous feeling) that God redeemed the cor­ rupt making; creatures, men, in a way fitting to this aspect, as to others, of their strange nature. The Gospels contain a fairy-story, or a story of a larger kind which embraces all the essence of fairy-stories. They contain many marvels - peculiarly artistic, beautiful, and moving: 'mythical' in their perfect, self-contained sig­nificance; and among the marvels is the greatest and most complete conceivable eucatastrophe: But this story has entered History and the primary world; the desire and aspiration of sub-creation has been raised to the fulfillment of Creation. The Birth of Christ is the eucatastrophe of Man's ·history. The Resurrection is the eucatastrophe of the story of the Incarnation. This story begins and ends in joy. It has pre-eminently the 'inner consistency of reality'. There is no tale ever told that men would rather find was true, and none which so many sceptical men have accepted as true on its own merits. For the Art of it has the supremely convincing tone of Primary Art, that is, of Creation. To reject it leads either to sadness or to wrath.

It is not difficult to imagine the peculiar excitement and joy that one would feel, if any specially beautiful fairy-story were found to be 'primarily' true, its narra­ tive to be history, without thereby necessarily losing the mythical or allegorical significance that it had pos­ sessed. It is not difficult, for one is not called upon to try and conceive anything of a quality unknown. The joy would·have exactly the same quality, if not the same degree (The Art is ·here in the story itself rather than in the telling; for the Author of the story was not the evangelists); as the joy which the 'turn' in a fairy-story gives: such joy has the very taste of primary truth. (Otherwise its name would not be joy.) It looks forward (or backward: the direction in this regard is unimport­ant) to the Great Eucatastrophe. The Christian joy, the Gloria, is of the same kind; but it is pre-eminently (infinitely, if our capacity were not finite) high and joyous. Because this story is supreme; and it is true. Art has been verified. God is the Lord, of angels, and of men - and of elves.

Legend and History have met and fused. But in God's kingdom the presence of the greatest does not depress the small. Redeemed Man is still man. Story, fantasy, still go on, and should go on. The Evangelium has not abrogated legends; it has hallowed them, especially the 'happy ending'. The Christian has­ still to work, with mind as well as body, to suffer, hope, and die; but he may now perceive that all his bents and faculties have a purpose, which can be rede­emed. So great is the bounty with which he has been treated that he may now, perhaps, fairly dare to guess that in Fantasy he may actually assist in the effoliation and multiple enrichment of creation. All tales may come true; and yet, at the last, redeemed, they may be as like and as unlike the forms that we give them as Man, finally redeemed, will be like and unlike the fallen that we know.

Want to hear more? Listen to these podcasts, lectures by Professor Gregory Walter of St. Olaf College on "what a fairy story is.

Part One:  http://bit.ly/WTyOhH

Part Two:  http://bit.ly/VVA5os

Missional Networks Spread by Losing Control: Presentation at ELCA Three Leadership Tables Workshop

Clint Schnekloth @ Three Leadership Tables workshop from ELCA Churchwide Organization on Vimeo.