“The centrality of the community to the gospel means that the message is never disembodied. The word must always become flesh, embodied in the life of the called community. The gospel cannot be captured adequately in propositions, or creeds, or theological systems, as crucial as all of these exercises are. The gospel dwells in and shapes the people who are called to be its witness. …If there is good news for the world, then it is demonstrably good in the way that it is lived out by the community called into its service… The lived out testimony of the Christian community is to become a witness, visible and audible, given in and to the world, so that the gospel will spread.” — Darrell Guder
Some might say that is what we already do when we "do church." It sure doesn't feel that way to me. What do you think?
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2 comments:
That all sounds good, of course, but when the fundamentalist crowd hears this statement or the dreaded 'narrative theology' label, they hear "throw out the Bible and get all touchy-feely with everything."
Although I don't know if anyone would really argue the point that our lives are supposed to be a witness to the world.
Your statement at the end is just the problem of "doing church" versus "being church." We SAY that we are the church, yet we still DO church. It's so prevalent of a mindset that it's hard to know how to change it. We kind of deceive ourselves in that regard.
I liked this sentence:
"The word must always become flesh, embodied in the life of the called community. The gospel cannot be captured adequately in propositions, or creeds, or theological systems, as crucial as all of these exercises are."
I think people make a distinction between "creedal" and "incarnational" religion along these lines. Does that ring a bell?
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