The Kingdom and the Congregation: Some Recent Books About the Local Church

In worldview classes and sermons about being what God wants us to be, I often come back to the radical call to be bodily “non-conformed and transformed” found in Romans 12:1-2. The biblical warning not to be "taken captive” preaches well as an invitation to reflect on ways we are influenced (unknowingly?) by our culture and the diverse ideologies and philosophies which abound. Sitting at a Starbucks, I spot a poster laden with worldviewish notions and pagan assertions; browsing the aisles of my local video store, I’m assailed with not-too-subtle messages and (alleged) heroes. The evening news gives me the major media view, daily shaping my view of the world. Without vigilant “guarding my heart,” I surely risk having some of these perspectives and value-systems become a part of my subconscious. (That I even said that — subconscious! — proves my point.)

Those who hear me teach in the context of campus ministry know that I enjoy pointing out the significant implications of this aspect of biblical discipleship for students and scholarship. I know fine friends of Jesus who know their evangelical doctrine and strive for holiness (they wouldn’t think of getting drunk or yielding to gross sexual temptation), but who are nonetheless utterly “captive” to the reigning ideas in the given fields of their academic lives. They perhaps have done very serious and very secular graduate work and have (with hardly a thought about it) adopted as an operative vision notions that frankly are at odds with a consistent Christian worldview. From assumptions about the meaning of work, housing, leisure, the role of techno-medical interventions in childbirth, to the task of the state, or the way in which we think about our emotional “needs” or our “rights,” or our expectations about technology, all sorts of worldly ideas and ideals have shaped the ways Christians live out their daily discipleship.

Hence — as all of us in the CCO know well — the need for a Godly approach to the thinking that undergirds the arts and sciences, especially as it is professed in institutions of higher education. It is not adequate to just be a professor (or student) of economics or communication or psychology who happens also to be a church-going Christian. We truly need to recall the work of George Marsden, author of The Outrageous Idea of Christian Scholarship or James Sire, whose classic Discipleship of the Mind: Learning to Love God in the Way We Think tells us just how to help students and faculty develop the Christian mind. As it is often put, we need to integrate our faith and our scholarship, allowing our biblical perspectives to color how we think about and live our our vocations in the marketplace, public square or modern university. (The www.JubileeNow.com Web page is a guide to networking folks who want to think about this very stuff.)

It would seem to me that Christians of a variety of traditions — Presbyterians, Catholics, Mennonites and Pentecostals — would all agree. Who would not agree that Christian doctors, say, ought not to be cavalier about the ethics of reproductive technologies or that Christians in the field of business dare not cede too much to the greedy zietgeist which permeates most MBA programs. Regardless of denomination, wouldn’t we all agree that Christians whose job it is to supervise others should break with old school assumptions about hierarchy, gender and notions of productivity and efficiency? What Christian filmmakers think about nudity in art, what Christian coaches think about competition and what Christians in computer work think about virtual reality really are religious questions; our churches must help us ask these sorts of questions as part of the local congregation’s task to equip the faithful in day-to-day righteousness. We are, after all, God’s “workmanship,” as Ephesians puts it, and we are to walk in good works, doing all as unto the Lord. Our local church should help us raise these questions and live more faithfully, serving Christ with excellence and integrity wherever our callings take us.

Our hearing of weekly sermons and our participation in Sunday school, small groups, informal worship and regular Eucharist should affect us, should it not? On this very matter, former Jubilee keynote speaker William Diehl has written Ministry in Daily Life: A Practical Guide for Congregations (Alban Institute, $14.95) as a book to help local churches wanting to assist their members’ service in the world. All of us — Weslyans, Episcopalians and Baptists — should draw upon our theologies and traditions (and the strengths and insights of traditions which may not be our own) to help us learn how better to be “in the world but not of it.”

As one who is inspired greatly by Abraham Kuyper’s Dutch Calvinism that encouraged the development of non-ecclesiastical cultural ministries, think-tanks, social reform organizations and distinctively Christian social institutions (see some of my recent reviews of books about Kuyper to learn more about this titan of 19th century faith), I am confident that the CCO, along with most American Christians, surely needs to heed the call to emphasize the role of the institutional church (which, by the way, Kuyper did. He was, after all, firstly a pastor, devotional writer, and preacher as well as a journalist, statesman, labor organizer and philosopher.).

Hearts & Minds Bookstore remains committed to offering literature which attempts to help Christians (and others) live meaningfully in the world, but much of our business, in fact, comes from serving local churches, Christian educators and parish leaders regarding congregationial life. We firmly believe that there is an immense, irreducible connection between the local church and the broader mission of faithful folk in the world.

Since its beginning the the early 1970s, the CCO has prided itself in being a campus ministry that partnered with local congregations in college towns (unlike some purely para-church groups who do not). So foundational has this been, it may be that we’ve neglected to adequately school our young converts and disciples into a deep awareness of the local, worshipping Body. (Might the phrase we’ve taken it for granted ring true?) Some have suggested that it seems like the CCO doesn’t care about the local church and her practices since we so often talk about “outside the church” evangelism, the reformation of culture, social change and public justice issues.

Therefore, I would suggest that CCO staff work a bit in this area — read some books about the church, about worship and liturgy, about your own denomination. Of course, always make it clear that our on-campus fellowships, coffee shop study groups and short-term mission projects are everywhere and always a manifestation of a local congregation. Our proper proclamation of the gospel good news that the Kingdom of God is at hand dare not exclude the essential teaching about the relationship of the Kingdom to the local church and the church universal. Further, our study of such things should not be abstract — studying about the church in theory — but should actually be done in the context of a real, live congregation.

This, I think, is one of the important points that has come out of recent discussion within the CCO (and is one of the beauties of Chris Noyes’ marvelous vignettes each month). Worldviews, theologies, discipleship patterns, ministry goals and the like are all shaped — tacitly or not, intentionally or not, for good or ill — by our role (or not) in a local worshiping congregation. John Howard Yoder did not have his tongue in cheek when he did a little book (recently reissued) called Body Politic. The stuff we do at church — sharing bread, allowing children in our midst, giving space for silence, talking candidly about our sin, regularly passing the peace to others we may not like, saying out loud “forgive us our debts” and even (in some traditions) washing one another’s feet — has vast political and cultural implications. Liturgy, religious ceremony and ritual shape our worldviews, and we should take every opportunity to talk about the relationship of liturgy and living, worship and way of life, ritual and reality, the Eucharist and the everyday.

And so I offer these resources for your consideration.

Click here for page 2 (these resources).

July 2001