God in the World
In his little book, Trinitarian Doctrine for Today's Mission, Lesslie Newbigin states emphatically that:
"...this recovery of a practical faith in the power of the Holy Spirit will lead us astray if it is not held firmly with an equally practical Trinitarian faith, a faith which discerns God's fatherly rule in the events of secular history, and which leads into full commitment to the life of that fellowship which is the Body of Christ in the midst of the world.
"Similarly it is rightly urged that missions cannot deal with the realities of the life of men if they cannot help men to understand what God is doing in the revolutionary changes which are everywhere taking place in the life of the world."
Could this last statement hold a key to the ineffectiveness of the Church's missional activity? The inability of the Church to help people understand what God is doing in the revolutionary changes occurring in the life of the world makes it irrelevant in the mindset of the people.
If the Church is unable to help people understand what God is doing, I think it's because the Church doesn't understand what God is doing. We can't give something we don't have. So why don't we understand? There are a whole host of explanations, of which I will suggest one.
The overwhelming emphasis on the church has made it a world unto itself, creating the mistaken impression that the church is the unique place where God's activity happens. Thus, the world is the arena of the powers of darkness exercising dominion in the absence of God.
Newbigin questions this kind of erroneous thinking:
"It is common to hear theologians speak of the Gospel as God's 'intervention' in human history. But is God absent from human history apart from this intervention? Is the world outside the Church, 'an atheistical patch in the universe'? Is God not at work in the affairs of the world outside the bounds of the body that confesses Christ as Saviour? The Bible does not allow us to doubt that he is. But how? In what terms shall we affirm the uniqueness, sufficiency and finality of Christ without either denying the reality of his working in the world or blunting the sharpness of the challenge which he puts to every man to choose?"
"...this recovery of a practical faith in the power of the Holy Spirit will lead us astray if it is not held firmly with an equally practical Trinitarian faith, a faith which discerns God's fatherly rule in the events of secular history, and which leads into full commitment to the life of that fellowship which is the Body of Christ in the midst of the world.
"Similarly it is rightly urged that missions cannot deal with the realities of the life of men if they cannot help men to understand what God is doing in the revolutionary changes which are everywhere taking place in the life of the world."
Could this last statement hold a key to the ineffectiveness of the Church's missional activity? The inability of the Church to help people understand what God is doing in the revolutionary changes occurring in the life of the world makes it irrelevant in the mindset of the people.
If the Church is unable to help people understand what God is doing, I think it's because the Church doesn't understand what God is doing. We can't give something we don't have. So why don't we understand? There are a whole host of explanations, of which I will suggest one.
The overwhelming emphasis on the church has made it a world unto itself, creating the mistaken impression that the church is the unique place where God's activity happens. Thus, the world is the arena of the powers of darkness exercising dominion in the absence of God.
Newbigin questions this kind of erroneous thinking:
"It is common to hear theologians speak of the Gospel as God's 'intervention' in human history. But is God absent from human history apart from this intervention? Is the world outside the Church, 'an atheistical patch in the universe'? Is God not at work in the affairs of the world outside the bounds of the body that confesses Christ as Saviour? The Bible does not allow us to doubt that he is. But how? In what terms shall we affirm the uniqueness, sufficiency and finality of Christ without either denying the reality of his working in the world or blunting the sharpness of the challenge which he puts to every man to choose?"
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