Introduction
I sat across from a friend and asked him how we got here. After all these years we’d spent in ministry (almost 80 years combined), after all the books and seminars, after all the churches and seminaries, after the flood of sermons and summer camps and seminars, whole TV and radio networks, all the mission trips and marches, all the prayer rallies and parachurch organizations, all the billions and billions of dollars, the sacrifices and testimonies, after all this, how did we end up… here?
To say the Protestant Church in the West is at an inflection point is a gross understatement. I agree with a vast number of theologians, historians and philosophers who assert that we are in an era of monumental change. This change is on the order of the Constinian Compromise, the East-West Schism of 1054 and the Protestant Reformation. Since each of these happened on a roughly 500 years time frame, we due for one of our own.
Each of these history shaking epochs involved a radical reassessment of the Scriptural story. A re-evaluation of the essential elements of what it means to be a Christian. This always involves going back and looking at the text and then making decisions on how to live faithfully in the current moment.
This is a necessary and unavoidable task, but one that almost always creates conflict – sometimes violent – with the way things have and currently are practiced. I doubt it will be any different for us.
So buckle up, cowpokes, as we jump on the bucking bronco of contemporary exegesis and application in the arena of history shaking 21st century America – kicking off a study called “Letters for Change: An American church’s reading of Paul’s letters”.
Grace and peace y’all,
John and the teaching team
