Day 106 and Bart Campolo is staying with us and as usual its a theological stirring.
The topic is incarnational Christianity.
Others would place Bart in the new monasticism movement. Bart would avoid any categorization.
He lives with his family in the ghetto of Walnut Hills, Cincinnati (yep, it doesn't sound too ghetto'ish, but it is!).
The conversation revolved around his inability to truly incarnate himself into that culture and context.
Christ did.
But Bart can't.
He remains a privileged white guy in a black urban sprawl.
That forces some interesting incarnational ministry rethinking.
Even more Christological amazement.
Other stirring rethinking to date on this visit is the idea that some people won't ever get fixed.
It wasn't a throw away comment by Bart, Bart works with some majorly broken people. He spoke this carefully and deliberately.
His experience is that some people will never be fixed.
The church language of transformation, of come to Jesus and everything will be fixed ....is not the reality of people attending the Walnut Hills Fellowship.
OUCH!
But really, if you think about it, we see untransformed lives in all our churches. We see untransformed lives by people claiming to have been Christians for 40 years.
Think of people in your church that are angry, short fused, lazy, jealous, selfish ......and have been for all the years of being Christians.
Transformation?
The bad stuff gone and new stuff showing?
Bart's bold comment resonates with every pastor's reflection of some of the people in their churches.
So what does this mean?
Does it mean transformation never happens? No.
Does it mean it rarely happens? I don't think.
Maybe it means that transformation is a miracle. But as miracles go, common and/or always is not vocabulary you can use.
It's got me thinking. Wondering. Disagreeing, but now perhaps agreeing.
Certainly processing.
Thanks Bart for stirring again.
Intentional following needs critical thinking.
Still got a supper, a Sunday preach, a Sunday lunch and a ride to the airport to be stirred even more by the guy always carrying a spoon to stir it with.
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2 comments:
I think it's neat to see you reflect on your guest speaker like this. I love the realness of Redeemer's church. None of this ivory-tower nonsense. We eat and drink with sinners, just like the example Christ set before us.
Thanks for leading, pastor.
(FYI, I'm the violin guy on your worship team)
The ideas about transformation help to remind me that it rarely looks like what I think it would look like. We never really know what is happening in the lives of others. I can sit across from a client for months listening to their life story, helping them wrestle through their pain and still be surprised by what form the transformation takes. I've learned to take any little sign as progress. The fact that Bart's friend stands up when he walks by so the two can share a hug is HUGE. There is no way of knowing what the hug really means for the friend; how much healing it provides for him. And, who knows, maybe he is sharing it in his own way -- maybe he is smiling at people more or being less rude. Maybe that's enough.
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