The Anthropological Study of the Vineyard Movement and its Implications

Last month I hosted a series of profiles and discussions on papers presented at the first annual Society of Vineyard Scholars conference. There was plenty of great dialogue and around some excellent papers.

However, I was really surprised there weren’t any comments or questions on Jon Bialecki and Jamie Wilson’s paper concerning Jon’s anthropological study of the Vineyard movement and Jamie’s response.

The study of Christianity in the West has been a recent development in the field of Anthropology (only about 10 years), and during that time the study of the Vineyard and other charismatic streams has been relatively hot, for a variety of reasons. In fact, Jon is not the only anthropologist presently studying the Vineyard, and as Jamie points out in his theological rejoinder, there are valuable insights about our present and our future to be gained by engaging with these social science analyses of our little tribe.

So, consider this a gentle nudge to all you Vineyard pastors and leaders out there to go back and read their excellent paper, profile, and interview and pitch in your thoughts and questions.

Technorati Tags: Anthropology, Christianity, Jamie Wilson, Jon Bialecki, Society of Vineyard Scholars, SVS, Vineyard Churches, Vineyard Movement

After SVS 2010: Matt Croasmun, The Cross, Eucharist, and Imitation in the Gospel of John

Today is our final installment. After SVS 2010 is an extended dialogue with presenters from the first annual Society of Vineyard Scholars conference, held Feb 11-13, 2010. Monday through Friday until March 26th we’ll profile an SVS presenter and dialogue with them around their paper. Click here for a brief intro and link directory of the series. Full text of papers are available to SVS members.
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Matt Croasmun: “The Cross, Eucharist, and Imitation in the Gospel of John”

Abstract
This paper consists of two parts. The first is an exegetical exploration of the “missing Eucharist” narrative and peculiar chronology of the passion narrative in the Gospel of John in a literary-canonical mode. Here, it is shown that the Gospel of John indeed includes a Eucharistic narrative and that this event takes when it does in the Synoptic accounts, though, in John’s chronology, Eucharist happens on the cross, as Jesus eats his food (bringing to completion the work of the One who sent Him) and drinks the cup which He obediently receives at Gethsemane. Using the foot-washing narrative as a lens through which to interpret this displaced Eucharist, the mimetic significance of Jesus’ death and His Eucharist is contrasted with the mnemonic function of Eucharist in the Lucan-Pauline tradition. The second part of the paper considers the systematic coherence afforded Vineyard theology as a whole in emphasizing the mimetic function of Jesus’ death. Here, it is noted that Johannine texts have long served as the source for the Vineyard’s basic mimetic stance towards the ministry of Jesus: that is, the Vineyard reading of the gospels has been a call to Johannine imitation of the Synoptic Jesus. The exclusion of the Cross from this exegetical program is a result of a confusion regarding the inimitable nature of Jesus’ death, understood exclusively as once-for-all atoning sacrifice. Receiving from John a Eucharistic theology that regularly invites us into imitation of Jesus’ obedience to the will of the Father and self-lowering love of others exhibited on the Cross promises to bring greater systematic unity to the Vineyard’s hermeneutical strategy in the gospels and to provide the Cross a more central place in the movement’s theology as a whole.

Q: How did you become interested in your topic?

A: Several years ago, before I started Divinity School, I sat in on Harry Attridge’s course on the exegesis of the Fourth Gospel. Harry has substantial interest in the sacramental theology of this text. And, of course, the key problem with thinking about sacraments—especially Eucharist—in John is that there is no institution narrative. So we puzzled over this problem quite a lot in that course and I remember continuing to puzzle over it long after.

Around the same time, I was reading Bill Jackson’s history of the Vineyard church and noted there that the Vineyard had taken some flack for not teaching the Cross as much as the critics would have liked. I suppose it’s a sign of the times, but I’m really interested in the ways that larger narratives frame and in some sense control our theological reflection. So, in thinking about the problem Bill Jackson had highlighted, it occurred to me that perhaps integral to this problem was the Vineyard’s narrative of the Kingdom. Was there something about the way the Vineyard was understanding the Kingdom that left the cross on the sideline? When I went and read the Vineyard Statement of Faith, my suspicions only grew. Eventually, I stumbled upon the possibility that it is the radical imitation of Jesus (which is really the heart of Wimber’s hermeneutic of the gospels) that could provide the “hook” in the Vineyard’s meta-narrative on which to hang a distinctively Vineyard—distinctively “Kingdom”—theology of the cross.

The last piece of the puzzle for me is the methodological approach I’m trying to take in the paper. A mentor and friend of mine gave me Stephen Moore’s God’s Gym to read when I was in Divinity School. Of course, Moore’s conclusions are profoundly troubling—though, I think worth wrestling with. But I found his method of interpretation absolutely exhilarating. It was playful, it was deadly serious at times. It broke down the walls of historical criticism that have always seemed fundamentally out of touch with the ways that actual people of faith read the biblical text and encounter God there. So, I guess I wanted to try my hand at something that might skew toward the “literary” in approach. Interestingly, I was surprised at how little push back I got on this at the SVS conference. I thought for sure some large number of folks would want to skewer me for going right at the fissures in the biblical text, making much of them, and playing out their tensions exclusively in a stubbornly non-historical, literary way. Does this count as “exegesis”? Is “exegesis” a good description of what people of faith are actually after in their encounter with God in the biblical text to begin with?

Q: How do you think your paper is relevant to the Vineyard movement at large?

A: First, on the meta-level, I think the paper is relevant inasmuch as it might serve as a invitation to further reflection on the Kingdom and the Cross. How does the Cross fit into the Vineyard’s narrative of the Kingdom? I think I’ve offered a textual way into something like an answer to this question, but, presumably, there are others.

Second, in terms of the specific answer I offer, I really do think that it’s crucial when we talk about “doing the stuff” to consider Jesus’ death as an integral part of “the stuff” that Jesus was doing. We need to anticipate that imitation of Christ’s rejection, humiliation, and death is an integral part of imitatio Christi. I suggested in broad strokes in my paper that this mostly looks like self-lowering love of others; obviously, there’s so much more to explore there. A necessary caveat to that—the response I should have given to the excellent question posed from the feminist point of view—is that, of course, Jesus’ death is precisely also His exaltation—John uses the pun on Jesus being “lifted up.” So our imitation of Christ in his death is not fundamentally self-destructive; it is our salvation and access to true power and authority.

Q: What do you think might be the practical implications of what you’re exploring?

A: In our church, we’ve changed some of the ways we do communion. First of all, we take communion every week—partly because we want to make sure that the cross is shaping everything we do and are becoming. We receive communion right after the sermon, which has given us the discipline of having to have every talk land us back at the foot of the cross. At the same time, because we do communion every week, we have freedom to let the invitation to the table look radically different from week to week. That’s been a great practice for us. And, certainly, a fair number of communion invitations in our church are invitations to imitate, rather than simply “remember.”

Matt will be available for questions and interaction in the comments below

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Matt Croasmun lives in New Haven, Connecticut and is a PhD student in the Religious Studies Department at Yale University. He is studying New Testament, focusing on mythological language in the Pauline epistles. He has been in the Vineyard for 12 years, serving in worship and youth ministry, and helped to plant the Elm City Vineyard in New Haven where he and his wife Hannah provide senior leadership.

Technorati Tags: Jesus, John, Matt Croasmun, Society of Vineyard Scholars, SVS, Vineyard Community of Churches

After SVS 2010: Doug Erickson, Advice To Vineyard Theologians

After SVS 2010 is an extended dialogue with presenters from the first annual Society of Vineyard Scholars conference, held Feb 11-13, 2010. Monday through Friday until March 26th we’ll profile an SVS presenter and dialogue with them around their paper. Click here for a brief intro and link directory of the series. Full text of papers are available to SVS members.
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Doug Erickson: “Advice to Vineyard Theologians (and Philosophers, and Scholars…)”

Abstract
Due to the diversity of interests and shall we say, the “complexity” of the short Vineyard history, there is some variety of opinion as to just what the “center” of our center-set movement is. For some, the center is our commitment to social justice issues: caring for the poor, and bringing the kingdom of God to the last, the least, and the lost. Other options could be a renewal movement, a signs and wonders movement, a power evangelism movement, a church planting movement or a pneumatologically orientated movement. I argue in my paper that while these elements are all important as to what it means to be a Vineyard, the true “center” is our enacted, inaugurated, eschatological vision of the kingdom of God. I really like the way people like Derek Morphew and Don Williams have expounded on this. We say enacted because we are committed to not only talking about the kingdom, but doing the works of the kingdom which includes things like social justice and evangelism, but much more: praying for the sick and demonized, bringing hope and restoration to hurting people, and doing our best to tend the garden- that is, taking care of this amazing creation that has been entrusted to us. We say inaugurated because this kingdom mission is established, inaugurated and primarily understood through the life, ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus. This picture of the kingdom is Eschatological because we see in the inauguration, the in-breaking of the powers of the future, into the present. When we pray for a sick person, and the Holy Spirit comes to heal, that is a prolepsis event: a “down payment” if you will, on the future age when there will be no sickness or suffering. This kingdom ideal can be loosely defined as the effective range of God’s rule, that is, it is encompassed by those places where God’s will is done on earth, as it is perfectly expressed in heaven.

This theological self-identification is important for a young movement like the Vineyard as we, more and more often, are engaging in dialogue with Christians from other theological traditions. As Christ’s prayer “that they shall be one” calls us to ecumenical dialogue, we must, and can, enter into this dialogue from our decidedly Vineyard presuppositions and commitments. I contend that we have a unique and significant contribution to the larger body of Christ, but we are just beginning to discover what those contributions may be.

Interview with Doug:

Q: How did you become interested in your topic?

A: I became interested in this topic because although I haven’t been in the Vineyard that long, less than 17 years, even in that time that have been several twists and turns as we have struggled to identity ourselves. The question of “what does it mean to be a Vineyard” has been answered many different ways. To some extent, there are different answers to this related to the issues of theological commitments or praxis, although the two are obviously related. So in this paper, I wanted to re-establish what I, and many others, consider to be the central theological distinctive of the Vineyard: our commitment to the practice and proclamation of the already-not yet conception of the kingdom of God. In my view, our eschatology drives other theological commitments, so rather than being a pneumatologically driven movement, I see that eschatology conditions our pneumatology, especially the work of the Spirit.

Q: How do you think your paper is relevant to the Vineyard movement at large

A: I think this paper has some import on the movement especially as pastors and structural leaders are increasingly moving into discussions and dialogue with Christians from other traditions. A base element of ecumenical dialogue is answering the question, “what makes you tick?” or, what theological doctrines do you ground yourself in? How do these grounding beliefs affect other areas of theological reflection, such as the doctrine of God, anthropology, soteriology, or ecclesiology? At the conference, I was quite amazed and encouraged by the breadth and depth of theological reflection ongoing in the movement. We are just now probably entering into a stage where we can began some significant constructive theological development, so understanding our central theological distinctive is absolutely crucial as we move into this type of work.

Q: What do you think might be the practical implications of what you’re exploring?

A: It’s a tautology that theological commitment influences praxis and visa versa. So there is an obvious connection between what we teach, train and preach and what we practice. For those of us in the academic community, understanding our theological grounding should assist us in dialogue with believers from other traditions. Practically as a movement, we can think about how the various areas of  cultural engagement intersect with kingdom grounding. We are a movement known for caring for the poor and seeking justice, and that should continue. We are not however, primarily a social justice movement; we are a kingdom movement, who sees caring for the poor as an essential feature of the kingdom message. We embrace evangelism and power ministry, but again, centrally we are not just an evangelistic movement; we do evangelism because we see that a central feature of the kingdom conscription is to “go and make disciples”. Many of our churches and structural leaders have embraced the challenge to creation care, but we are not primarily an ecological movement, we are a kingdom movement that sees the call to tend the garden as an element of the kingdom message. So as we enter in to all of those areas, our engagement should reflect our central belief in the enacted, inaugurated eschatological kingdom of God.

Doug will be available for questions and interaction in the comments below

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Doug Erickson is from the Duluth Vineyard in Duluth, Minnesota, where he makes constant supplications to St. Columbanus, the patron saint of motorcyclists. He is currently writing his Ph.D. dissertation from Marquette University on the relationship between eschatology and pneumatology in the Vineyard movement. He teaches for the Vineyard Biblical Institute in the U.S. Doug is married to Sandi, they have three kids and the entire family enjoys the outdoor lifestyle that Duluth offers.

Technorati Tags: Doug Erickson, Society of Vineyard Scholars, SVS, Vineyard Community of Churches

Schedule Changes to the After SVS Series

For everyone following the “After SVS” we’ve had a slight change to the schedule. Doug Erickson’s profile – originally scheduled for yesterday – was pushed due to a delay in posting Jon and Jamie’s profile. Doug’s piece “Advice to Vineyard Theologians” will now appear Monday. Also, I’m glad to announce that Matt Croasmun’s excellent paper, “The Cross, Eucharist, and Imitation in the Gospel of John,” has been a late addition to the schedule and will appear on Tuesday.

Thanks for all your dialogue and comments in this series, and please continue to jump in!

Technorati Tags: Society of Vineyard Scholars, SVS, Vineyard Community of Churches

After SVS 2010: Jon Bialecki and Jamie Wilson, Social Science Analysis of the Vineyard and a Theological Rejoinder

After SVS 2010 is an extended dialogue with presenters from the first annual Society of Vineyard Scholars conference, held Feb 11-13, 2010. Monday through Friday until March 26th we’ll profile an SVS presenter and dialogue with them around their paper. Click here for a brief intro and link directory of the series. Full text of papers are available to SVS members.
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NOTE: Today is a unique profile because it involves two people – Jon, an anthropologist, and Jamie, the Vineyard pastor whose church Jon has studied for the past several years. Consequently, this profile is much longer than the others, but well worth the extra effort.

Jon Bialecki & Jamie Wilson: “Surprise, Return, and Futurity: Social Science Analysis of the Vineyard’s Temporal Imaginary of the Kingdom and a Theological Rejoinder”

Abstract
This paper presents a conversation that arose from an anthropological participant-observer study of Southern California Vineyards, and consists an initial secular social-science reading of limitations to the Vineyard’s capacity to imagine its own future, and then concluding with critical theological reflections on the central claim that is presented, from the point of view of a pastor who was part of the study that gave rise to this argument. Observing that the Vineyard is at a moment of anxiety over generational change, and to a degree rethinking its future as a movement, Jon Bialecki argues that it has two ready choices. Working on implicit logics of temporality and representation that can be identified in the phenomenology of the Charismatic Gifts, Bialecki claims that these modes of figuration also informs the Vineyard’s attempts to imagine future directions. The mode of picturation that results in informed by a logic of surprise that sees the Kingdom as that which is not a part of the current social order, and hence that which cannot be anticipated; this in practice limits the capacity for coalitional and institution building. Alternately, the Vineyard could make use of another modality of thinking that is dependent on a logic of return to a (possibly phantasmatic) past, but which has its own dangers. Responding to these claims, Jamie Wilson probes to what degree they are constant with the Vineyard’s articulation of Kingdom theology, whether an orientation towards surprise is supplemented by a legitimate expectation of eschatological presence of the future in contemporary grace, and how theologians (such as Moltmann and Yoder) and historical figures (such as Booth and Wilberforce) can provide ways for the Vineyards to take up the difficult task of imagining its own future as an instrument of the Kingdom.

Interview With Jon

Q: How did you become interested in your topic?

A: I hope you will excuse me for being long-winded on this point, but my particular position as a secular anthropologist means that any discussion of my interest in this topic also necessitates folding in a discussion of my interest in the Vineyard itself as a movement. Shortly after 9-11, I became concerned about the possibilities for political engagement and mutual understanding between secular and believing Americans, and so I set aside plans for an anthropology PhD fieldwork project on Islamic modernism in Malaysia to study the Vineyard. My initial question was the nature of the relationship between two aspects of Christian practice and thought that are often treated as analytically distinct by anthropologists who study Christian populations; the areas were (on one hand) understandings regarding, and phenomenological experiences of, Neo-Charismatic/Third wave spiritual practices such as prophecy, deliverance, and healing, and (on the other hand) the economic and political imaginaries of believers. While I am still interested in this topic, I’ve since become captivated by transformations that the Vineyard, as a movement, is itself undergoing – its own internal debates and attempts to chart its future.

When SVS was announced, long-time dialogue partner and Vineyard pastor Jamie Wilson suggested that we collaborate on a project, and of course I accepted. In the last two decades, cultural anthropology has been experimenting with collaborative attempts at producing and presenting material, so there was a lot of enthusiasm on my part for this project. We ended up splitting our paper into two parts. I presented what was in part a bird’s-eye view of my dissertation project, framed as an analysis of what I feel is one of the core antinomonies in the movement today; and Jamie presented a theological re-framing and critique of my material, and a reflection on how the Vineyard, as a movement, might go forward.

Q: How do you think your paper is relevant to the Vineyard movement at large?

A: Again, as a friendly outsider, but an outsider nonetheless, I’m hesitant to discuss either the relevance or implications of what I have to suggest, though it seems to me that a tension between picturing the divine as either utterly other, or as foundational and as the known, seems to lie at the core of the early- to mid-period Vineyard, and does have some important implications.

If the Kingdom is to a degree structured in the way that charismatic experiences like ‘hearing from God’ is structured, and if one of the chief indices of hearing from God is the surprising nature of the communication, something that must be divine because it could not be seen as being a part of quotidian thought and sensory experience,  then it seems to me that the Kingdom as a social/political project also will always be something that could not be anticipated – and the organizational and political challenges that follow from collectively planning for that which cannot be anticipated seems obvious; this may be in part why there is such a vogue for spiritual formation these days. Also, this yearning for a truly different order seems to effectively preclude a large swath of possible coalition partners, in as much as most of these partners might be grounded in a politics of this world and of the known.

On the other hand, an alternative politics of ‘the known,’ which might ground itself on some paradigmatic real or imaginary past, seems to me to be potentially toxic – that is the kind of logic found in many kinds of contemporary political and religious fundamentalism, desiring to return to a fantasized previous order of things situated in some halcyon vision of the 19^th or 18^th century, or even earlier. Neither approach, though, seems like it can be entirely rejected – it is hard for me to imagine any kind of contemporary Christian movement that does not at least harken back to some kind of Christian primitivism, and in my discussion of a nostalgic fundamentalism I think I’ve already suggested the dangers inherent in that approach. In short, neither approach alone seems salutary, but creating a dialectic between the two could very well be either unstable, or simply result in a ‘bad infinity,’ an endless vacillation between two poles.

This, by the way, is a problem not limited to the Vineyard alone, though I think that there are historical reasons why this tension might be seen in particularly sharp relief in the Vineyard (think of the oppositions captured in the phrase “Empowered Evangelicals”). By coincidence this morning I attended some sessions of the “Nurturing the Prophetic Imagination” conference at Point Loma Nazarene, and the poet Kathleen Norris, one of the plenary speakers, gave a talk that could be read almost in its entirety as an attempt to work through the same series of oppositions that I see running through large segments of the Vineyard. You can even see traces of these oppositions in non-Christian formulations, such as fair-sized portions of contemporary critical theory – works that may have a genealogical link to Christian, but works that all the same certainly present themselves as predicated on an atheistic, if not agnostic, ontology.

Q: What do you think might be the practical implications of what you’re exploring?

A: Again, as an outsider, and as someone who is perhaps constitutionally incapable of being practical in the first place, I’ll have to demure, though it seems to me that for those who feel that my picture here isn’t entirely a misrepresentation of the Vineyard, and does bring up concerns that have to be thought through, Jamie Wilson’s discussion might be an excellent place to begin.

Interview With Jamie

Q: How did you become interested in this topic?

A: Several years ago, Jon approached me with some questions about our church in the context of his doctoral research.   That has led to a rich friendship, some fun mental sparring, and a greatly expanded reading list for me.  We have spent years talking about God, politics, anthropology, and culture. When SVS got started, I asked Jon about doing a joint paper, and I would have been happy to respond to any of his numerous observations on the Vineyard. That being said, it was a particular pleasure to get to think together about how our understanding of the kingdom plays out in practice at a grassroots level.

Q: How do you think your paper is relevant to the Vineyard at large?

A: In the general sense, I hope that this paper can help encourage interdisciplinary critical reflection within the Vineyard.   Our theology and biblical studies will be stronger if we can engage in conversation with social science disciplines like anthropology, sociology, or history, and vice versa.  Likewise, I hope that our movement can build a robust tradition of discourse with scholars who are not Christians.

In the specific sense, the Vineyard would do well to hear Jon’s point that our culture of valuing surprise as an authentication of God’s activity could in practice deter the formation of coalitions that combat injustice.  We should note the potential eddies that develop in the current of our thoroughly eschatological understanding of the kingdom.  This is precisely the sort of observation that we are unlikely to see without outside help.

Q: What do you think might be the practical implications of what you’re exploring?

A: The paper addresses Jon’s argument that the importance we place on surprise may hinder our participation in social justice coalitions. Does our understanding of the kingdom encourage us to work arm in arm with others for the sake of the common good? The road forward begins as a matter of the imagination. What does our theology enable us to image in the future?

I submit that his point is very well taken, and I proceed to suggest three resources to strengthen our ability to work in coalitions.  First, we must keep the cross at the center of our theology of the kingdom. To the extent that our theology becomes a theology of glory rather than a theology of the cross, we lose not only our historical mooring but we also compromise our capacity to imagine coalitions which undertake the hard work of suffering with the oppressed. As we understand that the gospel of the kingdom is the gospel of the suffering king, we are empowered to engage in suffering.  Second, I point to Jesus’ jubilee reference in Luke 4 as a Biblical resource.  I think we have tended to use a strong already/not yet hermeneutic with the first part of the Nazareth question but then dropped the ball on the announcement of the “year of the Lord’s favor.”  Finally, I suggest that we undertake more serious historical study of people like Booth and Wilberforce. At a popular level, it is already the case that they have been admitted to the Vineyard hall of heroes.  Now is the moment to take the next step toward more serious historical analysis.  We need to explore the ways that these leaders understood church and state relations.  We need to explore how they understood the advance of the kingdom of God in their own contexts.

May we do the theological, biblical, and historical work necessary to better position ourselves to work arm in arm with others for the sake of the common good. These three resources suggested at the end could all be put into practice at the local church level.

Jon and Jamie will be available for questions and interaction in the comments below

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Jon Bialecki is a lecturer in anthropology at the University of California, San Diego, and has just finished a three-year posting as a visiting assistant professor at Reed College in Portland, Oregon. His recently completed UCSD anthropology dissertation, “The Kingdom and its Subjects,” focused on the interrelations between Charismatic religious activity, economics, and politics among Southern Californian Vineyard believers; he has also written on the anthropology and ethnography of global Christianity.

Jamie Wilson lives in San Diego with his wife Michelle and their three children. He pastors Coast Vineyard together with Michelle, and he is the Area Pastoral Care Leader for San Diego. He holds an M.A. in Biblical Studies from Fuller Seminary. Jamie is passionate about coaching fully committed risk takers to advance the kingdom of God, and his ideal dinner party would include Augustine, Conrad Grebel, John Wesley, William Wilberforce, Jurgen Moltmann, Peter Xu, several homeless people and the woman who broke the alabaster jar full of perfume and poured it on Jesus.

Technorati Tags: Anthropology, Jamie Wilson, John Bialecki, Society of Vineyard Scholars, SVS, Vineyard Community of Churches

After SVS 2010: Steven Schenk, Examining The Contradictions Between Theology and Praxis

After SVS 2010 is an extended dialogue with presenters from the first annual Society of Vineyard Scholars conference, held Feb 11-13, 2010. Monday through Friday until March 26th we’ll profile an SVS presenter and dialogue with them around their paper. Click here for a brief intro and link directory of the series. Full text of papers are available to SVS members.
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Steven Schenk: “Power and Purpose in a Cross Shaped Community: Examining the Contradictions Between Theology and Praxis”

Abstract
We are haunted. In spite of literature, conferences, and personal exhortations to ‘administrate yourselves into mega-churches;’ we cannot shake the nagging suspicion that God’s Church could be revolutionary in beauty and purity.  In every denominational stream are those who have grown weary of a Church that feeds on high-dollar advertising, well-funded ministry teams, and the greatest technologies.  We are haunted by suspicions that our notion of ‘success’ might be an idolatrous distraction from God’s true purposes. This suspicion is fueled by the disconnect between theology and praxis.

If you want to know what someone holds to be true, attend to their lives instead of their words.  The unfortunate truth is that our carefully crafted statements of theology say less about our understanding of God than our everyday decisions.  In the area of Church praxis this is most unfortunate, because our practices communicate a theology that is simply unorthodox. We will define Kingdom power and purpose as seen in the Cross, and then move to a more practical and more important purpose: calling Church practitioners to account for our complicity in ‘better business practices’ that largely ignore the implications of the theology we espouse. While practitioners give some thought to the implications for individuals, we are often ignorant of the ecclesiological implications of kingdom theology, and specifically the Cross.  The Cross reveals an approach to power and justice that threatens to shift our paradigm. We need this shift to happen in theology, but especially in praxis.  The implications of a cruciform Kingdom theology include:

• Power for Others
• Equipping Leadership
• Sending Leadership
• Outward Ministry
• Redeeming Trades
• Personal Transformation
• Deep Community
• Multi-Cultural Expression
• Social Justice
• Christian Storytellers
• Eucharist
• Carrying the Cross
• Identification with the Broken
• Necessary Failure

The Church crafts our praxis in ignorant contradiction to these Kingdom implications. Specifically, basic praxis, as simple as the language used to define terms and practices, how we measure success, what we prioritize, and what we display as our models for health.  We cannot continue moving forward with such an ill-conceived project. The ultimate subject here is praxis; others are better suited to exploring Kingdom theology, or the implications of the Cross on that theology.  Others will give a more comprehensive treatment to application. The aim of this paper is not to exhaustively detail the theology, or practice; rather to highlight the fact that our theology is contradicted by our practice, and few seem to notice.

Interview With Steven

Q: How did you become interested in your topic?

Technorati Tags: Praxis, Society of Vineyard Scholars, Steven Schenk, SVS, Theology, Vineyard Community of Churches

After SVS 2010: Steve Burnhope, Penal Substitutionary Atonement and 21st Century Mission

After SVS 2010 is an extended dialogue with presenters from the first annual Society of Vineyard Scholars conference, held Feb 11-13, 2010. Monday through Friday until March 26th we’ll profile an SVS presenter and dialogue with them around their paper. Click here for a brief intro and link directory of the series. Full text of papers are available to SVS members.
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Steve Burnhope: “Culture, Worldview and the Cross: Penal Substitutionary Atonement and 21st Century Mission”

Abstract
Evangelicals have customarily relied on the penal substitutionary understanding of the atonement in gospel presentations.  However, questions have recently been raised from within Evangelicalism as to whether this explanation is saleable in today’s world. In the Reformers’ day, judicial punishment through the infliction of brutal physical violence – such as torture, bodily mutilation, burning alive and drowning – was the normal sentence in criminal justice.  In today’s culture, though, where the judicial system no longer endorses these sentencing practices, is the message of a Saviour who took the brutal physical violent punishment we deserve (for even the smallest of sins), so saving us from God inflicting eternal conscious torment in Hell, still ‘good news’? “If the only gospel we’ve got solves a problem that nobody feels, then it’s no wonder our churches are shrinking” (Stephen Holmes).  Meanwhile, the Christian gospel is widely parodied. But do we have a biblical mandate to explain the ‘problem’ (of ‘sin’) and the ‘solution’ (how Christ dying ‘for us’ is efficacious) in other than ‘crime-and-punishment’ terms. Actually, throughout history, the Church has never insisted on a particular view of Atonement for Christian orthodoxy. In fact, Scripture provides sundry theories of the Atonement in metaphors, models, images or stories of salvation, congregating around spheres of public life (such as the law courts, commerce, personal relationships, worship and the battleground), all drawing on the life worlds of the audiences.  The ‘penal’, juridical view is but one. The Bible reflects a far broader understanding of ‘sin’ than the legal model to which Evangelicalism’s individualized telling has reduced it in Modernity.  The justice of God has been ‘too closely tied to individual sin and forgiveness and too loosely tied to the cosmic and social dimensions’ (Colin Gunton).  Sin affects humanity – as both perpetrators and victims (we are both) – and also, human society and the entire created order. Although penal substitution can be found in scripture, it lacks the exegetical support that any claim to hegemony requires.  This being so, we are not only justified in revisiting its central role in gospel presentations, we are compelled to do so.  To be effective evangelistically, our stories need to answer the questions people actually have, not the ones they ought to have or used to have.  A broader understanding of Atonement more authentically reflects the full biblical picture and enables the gospel to speak more powerfully in the cultural environment facing 21^st century mission.

Interview With Steven

Q: How did you become interested in your topic?

A: Before I began theological study, the question of how Christ saved us always bothered me.  In fact, I began theological studies to answer a host of such questions that, for me, were never adequately answered by the standard explanations kicking around in popular Christianity.  I had faith that there were answers out there, but the Church didn’t seem to have them (and nor did it seem much to be aware that it didn’t!).

Q: How do you think your paper is relevant to the Vineyard movement at large?

A: I wouldn’t claim it’s any more relevant to the Vineyard than to the Church-at-large, save insofar as Vineyard is at heart deeply missional.  And, at the heart of mission, is how we tell the gospel-story.  Jesus is the answer, but very often the presumed question, that evangelists are working to in the ‘telling’, is anachronistic. Penal substitution has claimed hegemony in Evangelical telling, but it’s not sufficiently supported scripturally for that, and nor is it culturally compelling any longer either.  For example, it requires a latent sense of guilt.  In the Western postmodern world, people don’t feel guilty that way any more, as we might wish them to, and as the penal explanation requires them to. It also requires an ancient world view of crime and punishment.

That said, atonement is not about inventing therapeutic soteriological ideas to order, to suit popular predilections.  That would be an assimilation of culture, not the critique of culture – all cultures, not just postmodern culture – that Newbigin says is inherent in the gospel. However, the Bible explains the mystery of Christ’s work in a whole ‘kaleidoscope’ of models, metaphors, theories or stories of salvation, each reflecting a different aspect of this very deep and far reaching problem of ‘sin’ in us and in this world.  The ‘legal’ view of problem and solution is but one aspect.  The Bible authorizes an expansive range of images for comprehending and articulating the Atonement.  Since each image also presumes a portrait of the human situation, some will be more attractive than others, some will feel more relevant than others, some will resonate better with people in one time, and others to different people in another time.  We need to tap into this biblical material for our gospel to touch people where they are at.

Q: What do you think might be the practical implications of what you’re exploring?

A: Getting me lynched, in some circles, is one of them! Stephen Sykes has made the point that in postmodernity, not all people live in, or are persuaded by, one overarching metanarrative.  This can seem like a major problem in telling the metanarrative of the gospel, if we think of it in those terms.  However, Sykes sees in Atonement one concession that can easily be made to Postmodernity’s ways of thinking, because of this biblical ‘kaleidoscope.’  I think this is right.  However, it’s not about choosing (and sticking to) your preferred model, granting that hegemony instead, because all of them have something to say to us, but let’s at least start scratching where our audience is itching. It does not – to anticipate one obvious criticism – mean going soft on sin as human wrongdoing, or on judgement as an ultimate accountability for our lives and our choices.  We can certainly find different language and concepts in this area, which may be more helpful to the unchurched than some of the ‘lazy’ ways we’re used to parroting, so I do think one implication is that we need to work harder in our gospel-telling, but these essential truths need not be left out.

I think the other implication is that we have to concede (and this is hard for Moderns) that at the heart of the cross is a mystery. We really don’t have a single, conclusive explanation for ‘how’ exactly Christ’s incarnation, life, death and resurrection (not just his death, in my view) is efficacious for us.  To the Modern way of thinking, saying ‘we really don’t know, in any complete sense’, sounds like an apologetic weakness.  In postmodernity, though, we can live with mystery; our epistemology (way of knowing) doesn’t need a foundational understanding based on one most basic truth.  We can say, ‘it’s like this’, and ‘it’s like that’, and we frankly grasp it only partially, like looking at a dim reflection.  Of course, that we don’t know everything doesn’t mean we don’t know anything, but for some, this more humble and less assertive approach will be hard to accept.

There’s another implication here, too, in “What does it mean to be ‘saved’?”, but that’s for another time.

Stephen will be available for further questions and dialogue in the comments

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Stephen Burnhope lives in Buckinghamshire in the U.K. and is part of North Thames Vineyard, High Wycombe. He was awarded the Master of Arts with Distinction by the London School of Theology and will begin PhD research in 2010. His MA dissertation was on the atonement and contemporary culture. Stephen is married to Lyn, a religious education teacher and fellow MA graduate of LST, with four children and one grandson.

Technorati Tags: Atonement, Justification, Penal Substitution, Society of Vineyard Scholars, Steve Burnhope, SVS, Vineyard Community of Churches

After SVS 2010: Cathy Zellmer, The Divine Perichoretic Mission of Love

After SVS 2010 is an extended dialogue with presenters from the first annual Society of Vineyard Scholars conference, held Feb 11-13, 2010. Monday through Friday until March 26th we’ll profile an SVS presenter and dialogue with them around their paper. Click here for a brief intro and link directory of the series. Full text of papers are available to SVS members.
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Cathy Zellmer: “The Divine Perichoretic Mission of Love”

Abstract
A review of the historical doctrines of the Trinity, perichoresis, and love reveals the centrality of these beliefs to our distinctively Christian understanding of God.  Current theological trends with regard to the three doctrines show that their influence holds tremendous weight in the formation of contemporary work which sees humanity injected vertically into participation in the perichoretic circle, and horizontally into sharing the passionate perichoretic life, love, and activity of God with other.  This is of particular importance if the church is to respond in God’s power to the missional call to love and justice.

My method entailed briefly showing the early theological origins and development of the Church’s thinking on the Trinity and perichoresis I move to current trends in Western Trinitarian and perichoretic thought, linking them to the Christian distinctive of ‘God is love.’  I show the centrality of love to the act of creation, Jewish belief, and Christian faith.  I finish by binding all of these streams of thought together discussing the believer’s participation in the divine life of love and relationship both vertically and horizontally.  Throughout the paper, the theologians I relied the most heavily on were Jürgen Moltmann and Joy Ann McDougall.

Interview With Cathy:

Q: How did you become interested in your topic?

A: In my very first seminary class the professor made what I consider a providential comment about perichoresis being one of the hottest topics in current theological thought.   After toying with other topics for that first research paper, I finally went with it.  As I delved into learning about the Trinity and their relationship to one another, I was just as enamored with them as Gregory of Nazianzus was when he said, “When I say God, I mean Father, Son, and Holy Spirit…No sooner do I conceive of the one than I am illumined by the splendor of the three; no sooner do I distinguish them than I am carried back to the one.  When I think of any one of the three, I think of Him as the whole, and my eyes are filled, and the greater part of what I am thinking escapes me.”  It brought me to worship, which I consider part of my identity and heritage within the Vineyard.

Q: How do you think your paper is relevant to the Vineyard movement at large?

A: I think it’s relevant in that just as ‘God is love’ and ‘God is Trinity’ were foundational to the early church, those two truths should be intrinsic to us in the Vineyard as well.  My hope is that somehow we might again bring to our flocks a greater understanding of the mystery of the Trinity.  Absolutely everything God does is an expression of His/Their love, even things like judgment.   As well, the members of the Trinity do nothing without the involvement of the others in the Godhead.  This understanding adds depth of worship, as well as a greater understanding of God’s invitation to participate perichoretically with the Three—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—in their activity to redeem and restore the world. In addition, as we understand the great privilege of God living in us, the responsibility of housing Him in our human temples takes on a much more sacred weight(I Cor 3:16), adding greater depth, I believe, to our liturgical practices.

Q: What do you think might be the practical implications of what you’re exploring?

A: I’ll be really honest.  I don’t think there is anything in our Christian experience that perichoresis doesn’t touch on, whether we recognize it or not, as one of the earliest definitions for perichoresis is “to make room for.”  So take for example creation care.   In my estimation, the responsibility to care for creation becomes more serious as we come to understand that the Trinity made room for creation in His being, and all of creation sprang from the currents of love and life within the Godhead.^[1] Our relationship to the earth and other creatures should not be one of condescension or disregard, but of ensuring that its/their space is kept.

Or women in ministry, in particular in conservative Evangelical churches.  An understanding of that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit make room for one another in the dynamic movement of the Godhead, and that they make room for us—male and female—as they invite us into relationship, leaves me at a loss as to how some men can bolt the door to allowing women into church leadership.  That is an unfathomable position viewed from a perichoretic perspective, as within the Godhead the Three are the source of mutuality and egalitarian practice.

Or forgiveness.  It is our job to ‘make room’ for one who has offended us, or repeatedly offended us, rather than push them away.  Or—to make room for other church traditions through ‘a generous orthodoxy’ and embody the divine communion.  Or….I really think the list could go on for quite a while.  Making room is a sacred act and part of our identity as participants with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

[1] Paul Fiddes, Participating in God: A Pastoral Doctrine of the Trinity (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 2000), 71-81.

Cathy will be available for further questions and dialogue in the comments

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Cathy Zellmer lives in Beaverton, Oregon, and is an MDiv student at George Fox Evangelical Seminar.  By far, the greatest majority of research that she has done to date has been on the perichoretic life of the Trinity.  Her passions are family and church life, seeing the conservative evangelical mold being broken by women in ministry, and concern for social and environmental justice.  She lives in a complex household enlivened by people and animals, including her husband, Paul, and five of their six children.  She has been part of the Vineyard for 27 years.

Technorati Tags: Cathy Zellmer, mission, Society of Vineyard Scholars, SVS, Trinity, Vineyard Community of Churches

After SVS 2010: Naomi Forrester, Science vs Christianity, A Battle To Be Won or Lost?

After SVS 2010 is an extended dialogue with presenters from the first annual Society of Vineyard Scholars conference, held Feb 11-13, 2010. Monday through Friday until March 26th we’ll profile an SVS presenter and dialogue with them around their paper. Click here for a brief intro and link directory of the series. Full text of papers are available to SVS members.
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Naomi Forrester: “Science vs Christianity, A Battle To Be Won or Lost?”

Abstract
Science and religion are perceived today as two opposing sides. The truth about this division is not simple, and blame falls on both sides. The church therefore has a responsibility re-evaluate her response. This division means that now to be an evolutionist is often to be perceived as an atheist, while in many eyes to be a Christian is to reject evolution as a theory and turn instead for solace to the bible. Those who profess both faith and a keen interest in evolution are seen as oddities, and often treated as though they were pariahs. The great irony of the Intelligent Design vs Evolution debate is that it was the Protestant reformation that gave rise to many of the scientific advances and the corresponding technological leap that occurred in the early 1600’s. However, the early Protestants were able to hold both scientific thought and biblical truth in concert as they recognised both poetical and empirical truth as having equal weight, and thus were able to reconcile scientific truth with faith. Modern western society has seen the rise of empirical truth as the only acceptable truth. This has led to the church treating the bible as if it were a scientific textbook and therefore rejecting many scientific discoveries if they are incompatible with the bible. The bible was never written as a scientific truth, but as a book to lead us closer to God – as John Wilkins says “for our faith and obedience”. I believe the church must re-evaluate its attitude to science and re-engage with science, so that advances in science and the impact of these advances on society are viewed through the lens of the kingdom of God. The decision that is before us is one of attitude. We can create a pseudo-scientific worldview acceptable only to Christians that ignores the latest research, or we can accept the ‘travel of the sons of men’ in the area of Science with all its flaws and potentiality. Science and religion are not opposite sides of the argument, but complement one another. Scientists regardless of their motives are busy exploring God’s creation, both good discoveries and bad. It is our job as a church to look at the impact of those discoveries, and as a people whose aim is the Kingdom of God, in turn to impact the way that they are implicated.

Interview with Naomi

Q: How did you become interested in your topic?

A: I work in the field of evolutionary biology, I study the population dynamics of viruses as they go through a typical transmission cycle. As a Christian who works with evolutionary theory I spend a lot of time thinking about the interplay between faith and science. However, I really got interested in it when I started to realise that it was the people with whom I spent every day that I was finding it the hardest to talk to about faith. When I asked around I heard the standard response that they felt that Christianity was indelibly linked with the people who were creationists and trying to get intelligent design taught in schools. This seemed to put them off even thinking about investigating Christianity. The more I thought about it I realised how big a stumbling block we were putting in their way by not addressing this subject as a church. Additionally, science is a very enclosed world with its own arguments and issues and therefore part of the the problem is that science is not properly understood outside those who study it. Additionally certain areas have been hijacked for peoples agenda’s, which is nothing new, but again it distorts the view of science that should be held.

Q: How do you think your paper is relevant to the Vineyard movement at large?

A: As I said at the conference, I believe that the church firstly has to repent of its attitude to science, especially the fear of science and in many ways our hypocrisy. We are scared of science, of engaging in the debates that science throws up and yet at the same time we accept all the latest gadgets and things that science does to make our lives easier. We live in a world that refuses to deal with the hard questions and we reject any attempt to explore the universe that God created that does not fit into our Christian worldview. Don’t get me wrong I’m not advocating a hard shift anywhere. I think the important thing is to recognise that in our blindness and our fear we have alienated some people from Christianity. I’m not saying that everyone should believe in evolution, or everyone should believe in creationism, that is for each person to decide, but I am saying that for many scientists that I know, a hard sell of creationism or intelligent design is a major stumbling block. How the church reaches out to those people is probably for more intelligent people than me to decide, but I think it means surrendering the intellectual battle in order to love those people, and to choose to love them regardless of whether they accept our views or not. I’m obviously still thinking through many of these implications, but I am convinced that if the church refuses to debate the hard questions and instead withdraws behind its pseudo-scientific christianised thinking and refuses to engage with those who believe differently, then we have failed to fulfill what God is calling us to. It is scary to exist in a place where there is no hard answers to our questions, but we are called to live in the absence of fear, as God’s love casts out fear.

Q: What do you think might be the practical implications of what you’re exploring?

A: I would say in fact that the church should become far more vocal about the way in which we apply science. Science has brought many many benefits to mankind. We can travel to the other side of the world, and as a citizen of the United Kingdom I appreciate that ability as it enables me to connect with family. However, it is becoming increasingly apparent that this ability to travel over the world at will, is becoming a liability, as it is one of the many contributions to global warming. The church should be shouting even louder than it already about this, as it is the poorest and most disenfranchised that will bear the heaviest burden from the change in global temperature. The western world will encounter some changes that is certain, but with our levels of technology and our insulation from the elements we will not experience as devastating an impact as those who live far closer to nature. We are all enamoured with the latest piece of technology, the latest gadget, and the latest mobile phone. Everyone upgrades as soon as they can, just because it is available and we can. However, if the church recognised that the mineral components, especially coltan, involved in making mobile phones are contributing to civil wars in Africa, especially in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, we would be asking why we need the latest phone? Surely it would be more responsible as Christians to use our phones until they ran out, instead of instantly upgrading as soon as we are able to. It is this kind of subject that should be debated in every Christian community. How do we use science to build a more equitable society? How do we make sure that every person has an opportunity to have clean water, go to school and live without the threat of diseases that ravage the third world? Rather than spend our time and energy trying to maintain that science and religion are equivalent, we should be using religion to ask how to utilize the latest science to make this world a little more like the Kingdom of God. In addition to this we need to be asking how to reach the people in the scientific community, to examine our behaviour and ask how we are alienating them, and why we are doing it. I am ultimately convinced that fear is holding us back, fear of the unknown.

Naomi will be available for further questions and dialogue in the comments

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Naomi Forrester lives in Galveston, Texas and is a post-doctoral Research Fellow at UTMB in Galveston. She is studying the evolutionary history of alphaviruses and the way in which viral diversity affects long-term survival of the virus. She moved to Galveston from the UK three years ago and has had some difficulty getting used to Americanisms! She is a member of the Galveston Vineyard where she leads worship and serves on the leadership team.

Technorati Tags: Evolution, Naomi Forrester, Science, Society of Vineyard Scholars, SVS

After SVS 2010: Jonathan Rutz, The Case For Creation Care as a Defining Paradigm for the Vineyard Movement

After SVS 2010 is an extended dialogue with presenters from the first annual Society of Vineyard Scholars conference, held Feb 11-13, 2010. Monday through Friday until March 26th we’ll profile an SVS presenter and dialogue with them around their paper. Click here for a brief intro and link directory of the series. Full text of papers are available to SVS members.
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Jonathan Rutz: “The Case For Creation Care as a Defining Paradigm for the Vineyard Movement”

Abstract
There is a strong Biblical motif related to good stewardship of our resources, be they our time, financial blessings, or the environment we live in. The latter has too often been neglected by the Christian community, and we have yet to fully integrate Biblical stewardship into our theological worldview. Global shifts in climatic patterns and the strains they are placing on world populations are increasing the urgency for us to do so on a daily basis. While disagreements continue as to the causes with valid arguments on both sides, it is becoming increasingly apparent that human actions may be the driving force behind many of these changes. Of special note is the connection between how often the effects of these changes impact the disadvantaged and Jesus’ emphasis on social justice, especially as it relates to the poor. Regardless of whether or not the industrialized world is to blame for the problems, it is our responsibility to be part of the solution. By embracing the concept of creation care the Vineyard movement (and all Christian churches, in general) will not only fulfill a host of Biblical commands, but also reap the many benefits of becoming a culturally recognized guide in the area of environmental stewardship.

Interview with Jonathan:

Q: How did you become interested in your topic?

A: For someone with a strongly Christian background, environmental stewardship is a topic that follows quite naturally from an interest in atmospheric science. Climate change, as expected, was the first sub-discipline that caused me to start thinking about how we as humans related to our God-given environment. That of course was something to think about on a global scale, but as my time in college went on, I became increasingly interested in how a thoughtful use of resources should manifest itself at the regional and even local level. I also am very interested because I think this topic is something that can offer a bridge between the seemingly separate ‘religious’ and ‘secular’ worlds. That, in my mind, is something Christianity is currently struggling with.

Q: How do you think your paper is relevant to the Vineyard movement at large?

A: I haven’t been involved with the Vineyard for a very long time, but one observation I’ve made is that the Vineyard always seems to be on the cutting edge of what the Spirit is doing. I think the topics of climate change and environmental stewardship are two streams of thought that will be increasingly merging together over the next decade. As this confluence of thought begins to figure even more prominently in the psyche of our culture, I feel God’s call to us in the Vineyard and the Christian church as a whole is, “How will you respond?” I hope we don’t choose fear, or retreat, or indifference. If the Vineyard can adopt an approach to stewardship with a truly Christ-like, Spirit-led stamp on it, I think the opportunities are endless – for benefit to society, for evangelism, and for Kingdom growth.

Q: What do you think might be the practical implications of what you’re exploring?

A: I’m in the fortunate position of exploring a topic that is almost entirely practical in nature. As with most spiritually-rooted issues, there are some personal choices that have to be made, but at the end of the day it’s about action. Environmental stewardship is about taking responsibility for the way we live our lives. It’s about integrating a worldview into one’s daily life. That worldview is centered on putting others ahead of ourselves, be they our poorer neighbors at home, our brothers overseas, or future generations that will walk in our footsteps. In the best possible sense, it’s about trying to improve the lives of those who have no direct control over their environment. In doing this, we answer the question from Cain about being our brothers’ keeper with an emphatic “yes!” This provides the world with a tangible expression of our faith.

Jonathan will be available for further questions and dialogue in the comments

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Jonathan (Jon) Rutz lives in Salt Lake City, Utah and is a graduate student in the Atmospheric Sciences Department at the University of Utah. He is a member of the Climate Research Group, focusing on changes in global circulation and troposphere-stratosphere interactions. He has been affiliated with the Vineyard for four years, and has been an active participant in both the Creation Care for Pastors initiative, and the Friendship Collaborative.

Technorati Tags: Climate Change, Creation Care, Environmentalism, Global Warming, Science, Society of Vineyard Scholars, SVS