Conversation #3

Clearing the Playing Field... revisited


In response to your thoughts on worship, it seems that Peterson could almost substitute the word "Life" where you have used "worship" in your article. I think that worship is a word that is almost dangerous to use now because the working definition for most people in our churches is so hardened. I think that it is a word that needs to be carefully redefined as we use it because it conjures up so many images throughout the conggregation, and so little imaginative freedom. It seems that we cannot break out of a constrictive box because we spend our time arguing, sometimes debating, and in better scenarios wrestling among different terms, most of which have been petrified and void of life for ages. I think that Rochester is a church that is really open to exploration and is taking some great strides that are the exception to our movement as a whole.

The talk about gnosticism made me think of the critique of the whole "historical Jesus" movement by Bultmann (I think?), where Jesus always ended up looking a lot like the person doing the research on the historicity of Christ. To the existentialist Jesus turned out to be, whoa!, and existentialist, to the monastic Jesus was monastic, and to the moralist, the center of the life of Christ was moralism. We seem to hold on to that tendency as many of us today in the Christian church, which overemphasizes (in my opinion) a confession of belief in doctrinal stance, thus underemphasizing a lived out gospel that may or may not make the verbal confession that the church is seeking. I think that Peteson's
discussion of the Word is brilliant in bringing these together. I think
it is scary, though, because it is so hard to define and impossible to confine.

I love this stuff. Mark and our other teammate, Ben are reading the Clearing the Playing Field section now. I think they are both excited about joining the discussion.

Feel free to use any of this on your blog.

Spencer OUT!