Scott Freeman

Being Missional

I am hard at work on this series of classes that I will begin next Wednesday night. I’m still having a difficult time coming up with an adequate title.

I’ve rejected this one: “Constantine Invaded My Church and All I Got Was This Lousy Enlightenment”
My objective is to posit the 21st Century church within its context while moving beyond foundationalism at the same time it maintains its loyalty to the Word.
Part of that includes tracing the trajectory of humanity from antiquity to postmodernity.
Under that rubric is the moving beyond what Stanley Grenz calls “epistemological foundationalism.”
He wrote:

In the modern era, the pursuit of knowledge was deeply influenced by the thought forms of the Enlightenment, with foundationalism lying at its heart. The goal of the foundationalist agenda is the discovery of an approach to knowledge that will provide rational human beings with absolute, incontestable certainty regarding the truthfulness of their beliefs. According to foundationalists, the acquisition of knowledge ought to proceed in a manner somewhat similar to the construction of a building. Knowledge must be built on a sure foundation. The Enlightenment epistemological foundation consists of a set of incontestable beliefs or unassailable first principles on the basis of which the pursuit of knowledge can proceed. These basic beliefs or first principles must be universal, objective, and discernible to any rational person.

Ministry in a world in which is no longer the case can be quite difficult.
We will proceed from placing ourselves within the story to taking a three pronged approach to ministry:
1. Understanding the Culture–This is where we look at the patterns, trends, and other facets of our contemporary American culture
2. Engaging the Culture–It’s not enough to understand we must then proceed to be in our culture. That’s an entirely different undertaking with a divergent set of skills over above those of understanding.
3. Anticipating the Culture–I use anticipating as a term for how we organize our ecclesial organization. Much talk in the emerging language is about the decentralization of church. Yet, there must be some level of preparing and providing avenues of community, instruction and communion. Assemblage will continue to be a part of who we are.

Hopefully the class will be informative, interesting and engaging. More importantly I hope that it will prepare us to understand the shifts in culture and how we, as the church, can more adequately engage it.
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