When the Most Important Issues are Theological Distinctives Guess Who Has All the Power and All the Passion?

Today I was having coffee with Mike,John and Will and Will blurted out, "It is missional!"

During the first half of twentieth century numerous new Denominations, Non-denominations, Associations, and Restoration Movements were formed on American soil.

For the leaders of these groups being a good church member was linked to “what we believe” and not “who we minister to.”

In a world where right belief in a variety of doctrines is all-important, those who have the education to understand and articulate the nuances of the disputed doctrines have all the power and all the passion. The central message for conservatives was that Christians are saved by faith and not by works. So we had better get what we believe right, because faith in the wrong thing is not saving faith. What we are determines everything, that’s why we are called human beings and not human doings.

Therefore, it is important to be “our kind” of Presbyterian or whatever. As a result lay people were taught that their Christian life is best worked out in developing their brain muscles. How else can we explain the relentless number of church classes on Prophesy, Holy Land Geography, and the Different Names of God in the Old Testament; while, at the same time, there is almost a total absence of classes on Being Poor In America or The Lives of the Physically Disabled?

Theology 101, The Essential Triad: Worship Edification and Mission

Theology is important. The doctrine of the church is called Ecclesiology; one of the basic truths of Ecclesiology is that churches are essentially triads. Everything a church does falls in one of three categories, (1) Worship (our vertical relationship with God), (2) Edification (our horizontal relationship with other Christians), or (3) Mission, (our outreach to those who are not part of the faith).

The above definitions of worship, edification and mission are intended to be simple, (but, hopefully not simplistic). Just as we talk about people being comprised of body and soul, even though body and soul cannot be separated until death, we can also talk about worship, edification and mission, even though separating them is not really possible. So, if someone were to say that, “everything a Christian does should be an expression of worship,” we agree. But for our purposes I am making the vertical and horizontal distinctions above. With that in mind worship and edification have more to do with our “being” while mission has more to do with our “doing.”

Theologically speaking, the clear winners in the Liberal/Fundamentalist Controversies were worship and edification, while the looser was mission. Genuine mission requires people who have a “fire in their belly,” and unfortunately most of the fire during this period of history, (1925-1965) was ignited by “our theological distinctives,” and resided in the bellies of system’s leaders. Mission, in churches became largely writing checks to foreign and local mission agencies. Mission was therefore distant and not personally engaging, whether it was being done on the other side of the globe or the other side of the city.