Friday, May 19, 2006
Center Shift To Asia
Center shift #1 the church in Jerusalem is a gathering place for all the followers of Jesus to hang on. Antioch takes the role as the center of the church driven more by laymen in vocations engaging society, thereby bringing transformation.
Center shift #2 in the church took place when the church split from Constantinople, the edge of the Middle East, to Rome, the center of Europe. Transportation drove it. Communication and culture also drove it. You wind up with a theological debate between the East and West over icons--but, it was really about how the cultures in which faith was emerging had different lenses in how they saw life.
Center shift #3 in the church took place during the reformation in Europe. Between Columbus opening a connected global world through ships that led to trade and colonization and the Gutenberg press, travel and communication team up to give a totally different global view and reality. The result--the church splits. The old stays there, but the new paradigms are not just theological they are also the impact of technology upon thought.
Center shift #4 Peter Jenkins has aptly shown us, though we’ve been feeling it, that the West is no longer the base of Christianity. We speak of church planting movements as if we have them in the States. Hello China! We want Eastern results in our Western churches using Western templates--not sure it will work. So, while the West is defining the whole world as postmodern, a tendency we will no longer be able to do, how will the East define the rest of the world? It’s time for new theologians. We need some new Luthers and Calvins and Zwingliis. Their names will probably be Lukito Sumatra, Phuc Dang, Akmed Mohammed, and others. They see the world through a different lense. How will they define theology and the church? What an incredibly exciting thing to think about. But, how will the Western church respond to them? Ignore them? Or, perhaps as in other center shifts, split from them? I want to move into the future with them. I think postmodernism is good for the Western church, because we don’t know what is, yet. God has us in the lurch and our tongues tied, so theirs can be loosed! We’re just too loud--even when we’re wrong.
Center shift #2 in the church took place when the church split from Constantinople, the edge of the Middle East, to Rome, the center of Europe. Transportation drove it. Communication and culture also drove it. You wind up with a theological debate between the East and West over icons--but, it was really about how the cultures in which faith was emerging had different lenses in how they saw life.
Center shift #3 in the church took place during the reformation in Europe. Between Columbus opening a connected global world through ships that led to trade and colonization and the Gutenberg press, travel and communication team up to give a totally different global view and reality. The result--the church splits. The old stays there, but the new paradigms are not just theological they are also the impact of technology upon thought.
Center shift #4 Peter Jenkins has aptly shown us, though we’ve been feeling it, that the West is no longer the base of Christianity. We speak of church planting movements as if we have them in the States. Hello China! We want Eastern results in our Western churches using Western templates--not sure it will work. So, while the West is defining the whole world as postmodern, a tendency we will no longer be able to do, how will the East define the rest of the world? It’s time for new theologians. We need some new Luthers and Calvins and Zwingliis. Their names will probably be Lukito Sumatra, Phuc Dang, Akmed Mohammed, and others. They see the world through a different lense. How will they define theology and the church? What an incredibly exciting thing to think about. But, how will the Western church respond to them? Ignore them? Or, perhaps as in other center shifts, split from them? I want to move into the future with them. I think postmodernism is good for the Western church, because we don’t know what is, yet. God has us in the lurch and our tongues tied, so theirs can be loosed! We’re just too loud--even when we’re wrong.
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