Mr. Bosch, I hope you are right…
I am aware that in choosing to link my blog posts to facebook, when I write something it drops the first few lines to my fb posts. Consequently, I should really come up with something much more compelling to get you to keep reading than this: A couple of thoughts from my reading of Transforming Mission by David Bosch – chapter 6: The Missionary Paradigm in the Eastern Church [patristic era] 
First, I should begin by saying that I am part of an awesome reading group – all practitioners and thinkers who are really wrestling with the challenging ideas Bosch presents. Every time we meet, our discussions are always personal and meaningful, never purely philosophical. Yes! As such, no need to give abook report of the chapter. Rather, just want to offer a few thoughts on two quotes/idea from this particular chapter on the Church’s thoughts on mission in the Greek Patristic era. They aren’t necessarily even major points of the section, but ones that jumped out at me. Can’t wait to hear what Tom has to say on this chpater, as this era is where he has been studying.
“In the final analysis, it was not the miracles of the itinerant evangelists and wandering monks that impressed the populace – miracle workers were a familiar phenomenon in the ancient world – but the exemplary lives of ordinary Christians” (p. 191, referencing Kretschmar).
Is this true, or do I just want it to be? I DO believe that the greatest witness is a transformed life. But where we live, miracle workers sure do get a lot of press, and there are plenty to go around. I suppose part of the argument is that miracles draw crowds, but changed lives keep them coming. But what about revolutions? Isn’t there always some spark – generally a person or a few people – who exemplify, demonstrate, and propagate something new? To be fair Bosch continues to spell out what these changed lives looked like and how this was so counter cultural at the time that people couldn’t help but notice.
Maybe that’s the better measure – lives transformed not just to “good” – but to radically different from and prophetic to – the culture around us. I can get behind that. Sadly, when we envision a life changed by Jesus, it is generally so pedestrian that I don’t think many people notice at all. I don’t mean that we all have to become John the Baptist types, but I do think we have exceptionally low understanding and expectation for the life God would hope for us… that He has made possible for us…. that could indeed transform our world.
Are you with me people?
Second quote:
“…For a while, the church had to forfeit its opportunity for rapid growth ; it devoted its time and energy to finding clarity on crucial theological issues and to consolidating internally” (p. 200).
Hmmmm. Can it be that all those eras of Church history that I look on with disdain, the ones where we spent more time arguing with ourselves than extending God’s love to anyone else, might have actually been necessary? Granted, Bosch is not justifying all the crapola in Church history. But he does give me reason to pause and drop some of my judgmental attitude. I do believe in seasons of rest, rhythms of life – maybe that applies [and should/must apply] to the Church itself?
Case in point – the Church today. Are we still seriously arguing about the rapture, emerging church, and original sin? Yes we are. And I have so little time for it. BUT, maybe we’re in one of those times of regrouping. Makes sense. We’ve come off a long run of being the big influence in culture and are now faced with our loss of voice. I don’t think anyone still tries to argue that we are in the middle of massive paradigm shift. Everything is changing. So, maybe we do need to get our act together. I still don’t think that means endless arguments over trivia to the neglect of partnering with God’s Kingdom, but maybe it’s not that either/or. And MAYBE we actually do need to get it together to address whatever our world will look like tomorrow. Not the message, but certainly how it is presented lived.
That’s a beauty of Bosch’s work. He makes such a good case that the Church has indeed approached mission (and it’s own self-understanding) quite differently over the ages. No need to fear change, or think we are being unfaithful to the Church of the ages. Rather, this is how God has always worked, and presumably will continue.
How will we respond?
May your life be transformed today, even if it means resting a bit. I find that sometimes, this is when God does the most work in us.
Comments(1)
I think that particular chapter is the weakest in Bosch’s book. He jumps from the 4th century to the 20th, skipping out everything in between. And in the early part he gets it wrong, focusing on Origen, who contributed little to any Eastern Orthodox paradigm of mission.
And part of Bosch’s problem was that he got just about all his knowledge on that from books, in Western style. But the Orthodox Church has no systematic theology in the Western sense. And if one wants to get an inkling of Orthodoxy, with its enacted theology, one needs to actually experience Orthodox worship — something I suggested to Bosch on a few occasions, but he saw no need to do so — he thought he could get all the information he needed from books, and for the most part books written by non-Orthodox, and the Orthodox authors he did cite were non-missiologists. Where he had practical experience (in the Dutch Reformed mission field) he was far more accurate, because his book learning was complementary to his hand-on experience.
He was a tremendously well-read and erudite man, and accomplished things that few of us can even dream of, but that, sadly, was one of the holes in his knowledge. In that respect he seemed to subsctribe to what the late Ralph Winter called the BO-BO theory of church history – that everything “blinked off” at the end of the apostolic age, and “blinked on” again at the Reformation. That theory (for which the Mormons are famous) is that there are early saints and latter-day saints, but no saints in the middle.
I hoped I might see you at Amahoro, but didn’t.