Bonhoeffer in a concentration camp

For anyone who knows me even just a little bit. Then you know how much I love reading Dietrich Bonhoeffer. I think he was one of the greatest theological minds to have ever lived, and yet he died at such an early age (hung at 39), that he left much work to be finished.

But I have recently been re-reading his book, Life Together which he wrote from 1935 and following, when he moved into Finkenwalde. For those who don’t know Bonhoeffer’s life that well, here is a short excerpt about him from a biography about him.

After the Confessing Church was organized in May 1934 at Barmen, Germany, Bonhoeffer returned from England in the spring of 1935 to assume leadership of the Confessing Church’s seminary at Zingst by the Baltic Sea–a school relocated later that year to Finkenwalde in Pomerania. Out of the experiences at Finkenwalde emerged his two well-known books, The Cost of Discipleship and Life Together, as well as his lesser known writings on pastoral ministry such as Spiritual Care.

This is the context out of which Life Together came. And it is this book that has helped me understand, and more influentially shape my views on community.

As I began reading yesterday, I came across this statement on the opening page. Bonhoeffer says,

It is not simply to be taken for granted that the Christian has the privilege of living among other Christians. Jesus Christ lived in the midst of his enemies. At the end all his disciples deserted him. On the Cross he was utterly alone, surrounded by evildoers and mockers. For this cause he had come, to bring peace to the enemies of God. So the Christian, too, belongs not in the seclusion of a cloistered life but in the thick of foes. There is his commission, his work……..

The measure with which God bestows the gift of a visible community is varied……..

This is something that I need to reflect on a for a little while, and that I need others to reflect on as well. Especially those that I am in community with, and those that are in community with one another at The Quest.

Because in our scramble and attempt to create community, I think we take it for granted that community is our right. That living among other Christians is always granted us. In our attempts at creating community, we forget that a visible sign of community is always an outpouring of God’s grace upon us. Maybe that is why Paul begins so many letters with grace and peace to you. It was a reminder to the churches then, and it is a reminder to us, that our visible gathering is because of God’s grace. It is not anything that we have manufactured, or can manufacture for that matter.

In fact, I will reflect on later the idea as Bonhoeffer puts it, that community is really a divine reality, not an ideal reality. Community exists because of God’s divine grace, rather than our wishful thinking, or attempts to create it.

Tod Bolsinger, who is a great author, and the pastor down at San Clemente Presbyterian Church, has been doing a great series on missions, and looking at what he considers to be the three R’s: Relationship, Reflection, Reintegration. This is an important series, and I have been thinking about these things a lot as I have done many mission trips myself, and as I currently have about 20 students overseas on mission trips. What can I do as their pastor to make these trips more fulfilling? Where can I lead them, or point them to? What is my role?

Tod has done a great job at looking at these things.

The above was a quote taken from Cameron Jorgenson, over at Summa Aesthetica. Cameron, in his piece, On Chafer and having something to say, responds to my piece Theological Education: Is it important? And Barth vs. Chafer.

Cameron’s piece has really got me thinking about speaking too quickly. It reminds me of the quote by Silvan Engel, It is better to be silent, and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt. I’m afraid I’ve probably removed a lot a doubt from people’s minds at times. When you have a profession that is based upon speaking, there is some danger in that, because you don’t always have the most time to think about things, or become experts in things. I speak for a living. That is not all I do, and I do have preparation time, but between preaching every week, doing bible studies, counseling, etc., there is a lot of speaking going on, and sometimes not a lot of listening. I will have to become better at this as I’m going to enter a master’s program in marital and family therapy in the Fall.

Cameron is right, sometimes there are a lot of people entering into the conversation, when they have no understanding of the topic, or have not spent the proper time researching it. He uses the Emergent Church conversation as one example of something he would like to talk more about, but feels inadequate to do so at this point. Wow! If Cameron is inadequate, than I definitely am.

Maybe the Emergent Church has been trying to keep it a conversation, so that there would be a lot more dialogue, a lot more listening, instead of constant talking and criticism.

I can probably speak average on a lot of topics, and really well on a few. Maybe it is time that I do some more listening.

Evangelical Outpost has an interesting blog entry today, referring to another series of blog entries by Phil Johnson.

There seems to be a discussion going on over what they consider to be fads and trends in evangelicalism, or I would say the Church as a whole. They both come up with interesting lists, but I’m not sure what I think about the whole thing. I agree that there are many fads and trends within the Church, and especially within evangelicalism.

I tend to think that evangelicalism for the most part, at least how it is carried out in American suburbia life, has been hijacked by a consumer mentality that is not healthy at all. It is something that I struggle against in my own spiritual life, and it is something that I struggle against in the ministry that I have been placed in. Because bottom line, I like to consume. I have resonated with the article in Christianity Today from 2003, titled Suburban Spirituality.

But for me to say that the American Church has been hijacked by consumerism is a broad generalization. It may have some truth in it, or a lot of truth in it, but it doesn’t paint, explain, or diagnose the real issue, or what is the issues that truly undergird the overarching problems within evangelicalism. I can point my fingers at a lot of things, or a lot of people. That’s easy to do, and doing it in the blogosphere is like a drive by shooting, where we pull up, point our fingers at someone, and take off without so much of a discussion most of the time. And we all do it. I did it earlier this week when I used Karl Barth in comparison to Lewis Sperry Chafer. But I’m thinking, that doesn’t help out much of anything.

So after looking at the two above bloggers, I can probably agree with some of their lists, and some of their thoughts. But there are a lot of things I disagree with. And I’m not exactly sure if those fads, trends, or people they mention are the problems. Maybe the problems lie within us. Maybe we are the problem, and we need to look at ourselves, and not point our fingers at everyone else.

I too was pretty disappointed with this list as well, and I thought a lot of really, really important people were left off of it. But maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe the really important things that are happening in the Church, or evangelicalism, are being done by people we don’t even know, or have never even heard of. Not that great things aren’t happening with the people on those list, but maybe celebrity status doesn’t equal certain things.

I’m pretty judgemental myself at times, but I have to believe and think that God is using all kinds of people, and all kinds of movements, fads, and trends to bring people closer to Him. And maybe what we consider a trend or fad is really our own perception of things. I mean, Evangelical Outpost, Phil Johnson, and myself could probably not be more different when it comes to our education, theological beliefs, and the church we attend. So we are all coming at these things with our own skewed vision. The one thing that we can probably all agree on though, is that sometime we don’t always present, or live out Christianity in the proper way. But we will keep moving forward, making mistakes, and hopefully try to head in the right direction.

I agree with one of my professor in that he says it is not the church of the past, or even the present that we are hoping for, or wanting, but it is really the church that is coming out of the future. It is the church at the end of time, not the church in the 1st century that we are aiming for. So I have hope that the Church, the Church that will be there when God returns is continuing to emerge and take shape.

Feel free to comment, because I would like to hear your feeback on these articles. I’m afraid myself, that I have been inconsisent, and one who likes to point fingers as well. I wouldn’t be surprised if I come up with my own list of fads and trends. Hmmmmm. In a predicament.