More than individuals
Once again, David Fitch has written something worth putting up with the blinking page ads at ChristianityToday.com to read:
Our churches are organized to meet the spiritual needs of individuals, and our salvation is incredibly individualistic. Calling Jesus “a personal Savior” sounds like Jesus is in the same category as my personal barber, personal trainer, or personal dental hygenist. . . The danger is making salvation all about me.Amen, amen, and amen.
I know it didn't start out this way in evangelicalism, but it was latent in the structure of our soteriology. And so we have almost romanticized our relationship with God; created a narcissistic experience of it. And churches become all about preserving, maintaining, and nurturing this experience in their parishioners.
But the gospel is not about getting something, it is about participating in something—God's work of reconciling the whole world to Himself. And yes, we do have a relationship with God which becomes personal but it is inseparable from His mission.
posted by Milton Stanley at 9:56 AM
3 Comments:
Yes, and the corrective is to identify and press corporate applications of the Scriptures. Many, and perhaps most, missional applications are corporate in nature, not individual. They require cooperation and pooled resources and differentiation or roles, and when we identify them and press them, Christianity seems less individualized and romanticized than we have made it in our lust for the "felt need."
typo - differentiation OF roles
Amen, Chris. For two many years my default mode in preaching was individual morality. It's taking time for me to move toward the kind of approach you describe here. Thanks for the comment. You, your congregation, and all the saints back home are in my prayers. Peace.
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