Theology in the Raw - #630 - What is Church? - Part 6 - Being Theologically Orthodox and Generous

Episode Date: January 19, 2018

What is church? What should church be? What should church look like? What should church pursue?  In this series, Preston is looking at 8 different values that the church should work to keep forefront as they continue and grow.  Value 8 -  Being Theologically Orthodox and Theologically Generous

Thank you. Hello, Theology Narrow listeners. My name is Preston Sprinkle, and this is part five of the What is Church series. What is church? What we're doing here in this series. I haven't done one of these in a while, but what I've been doing is going through various values that me and some friends have been trying to hammer out with regard to our very fresh and interesting and messy and kind of different church plant that we're doing here in Boise. I tell people, you know, they ask me, are you planning a church? I said, well, it's more of a church experiment than a church plant. For many years, I've sort of been thinking about what church should be, what church can be, and just collecting my thoughts, researching, writing, talking to people, visiting different churches. And I would say this church experiment, in many ways, is a byproduct of 15 plus years of reflection, of thinking,

of wondering in the back of my mind, is this just some idealistic thing that I'm envisioning or can it actually work on the ground? And so having waited 15 years to see which one of those conclusions is correct, whether it's just an idea that doesn't work on the ground or no, this could actually work on the ground, after 15 years of reflecting on that, we are actually doing it. We're about three months into it, although I've spent the last month in Australia.

I'm recording this from my final days in Australia, although by the time you listen to this, I'll probably be back in the States if my plane didn't crash or if we didn't get lost on an island on the way from Sydney to LAX. And so I think the church is still in existence. I think they're doing okay. They are. I get the emails. I've been talking to people. So yes, church is still going strong, three months strong. But it is very different. And if you're listening for the first time, I'm not going to review really much of anything here. I just encourage you to go back and listen to parts one through

four of the What is Church series, because this is just going to assume you have some idea of what we've been doing through those other podcasts. So let me jump into really the last value that we articulated early on, something we're striving to be, and that is we want to be theologically generous and theologically orthodox. Theologically generous and theologically orthodox. And this is the only value that we expressed in our value statement that has to do explicitly with theology. I mean, all the other things were kind of like mission and relationships and structure

and or lack of structure and money and all that stuff. This is the only value that gets to the heart of who are we going to be? Who do we want to be? Who are we theologically? Are we going to be a Reformed church? Are we going to be an Armenian church? Are we going to be an egalitarian church? Are we going to be a charismatic church?

What are we going to be? And the answer to all those questions is really yes and no to all of them. We don't want – the big thing, the big passion on my heart and my co-pastor, Rock Brown, the big passion on both of our hearts is we don't want to become some theological tribe. theological tribe, some church that capitalizes on certain theological things that aren't essential to the gospel. We want to be theologically orthodox. We're a Christian church. We want to be not a heretical church. We don't want to be a cult. We want to believe in the essentials of the Christian faith, but we also want to be a cult. We want to believe in the essentials of the Christian faith, but we also want to be very theologically generous so that people of different theological persuasions and backgrounds can feel very comfortable at the church, even if they hear

things from the teaching from the leaders, like me and Rock, that might be different from them. That's fine. We want to cultivate an environment where differences can be worked out in the context of mission and relationships. We don't want differences, theological differences, to define who we are, define who is in and who's out up front. We want people to feel the freedom because they are theologically orthodox. They are wanting to reach out in the name of Christ. They are wanting to live lives holy and blameless before God. And in that context, in that context of the common mission, common pursuit of Christ and the gospel, they can voice various theological questions or doubts or persuasions out loud. And even if people don't agree with them or each other, they feel like they still belong. I don't want secondary theological agreement to be a criteria,

a criterion of belonging. So we want to be theologically orthodox. What is theological orthodoxy? This honestly is a bit messier than people might realize. I mean, how do we determine what is theologically orthodox? And I've been working through that for a while, and I don't know if I've come down on a clear black and white answer. For me, a big part of it, of theological orthodoxy, and some people would say just this is the definition of theological orthodoxy, is that we affirm the basic content in the early church creeds, specifically the Apostles' Creed, the Nicene Creed, and the Chalcedonian Creed. Apostles' Creed, you might be familiar with. You can just Google it. You can see it talks about resurrection and Jesus came to save us from our sins and all the basic stuff that pretty much any

Christian globally can sign off on. The Nicene Creed hammers out stuff with regard to the Trinity and other things. And the Chalcedonian Creed talks about the big thing there that people often highlight is the divinity and humanity, the full divinity and full humanity of Jesus Christ. Now, here's the thing. I affirm – last time I read the creeds, those creeds, I'm like, yeah, OK, I think these are biblical. I think that they're not just creeds. They're not just traditions. They're actually come from scripture, come from people hammering these things out through scripture in response to various heretical teachings going on in the church at that time.

So I do agree with them. I think they have become foundational for the church. I guess my one pushback to myself or pushback to somebody who just thinks we can easily punt to the creeds is even the creeds were worked out in a historical cultural context. Even the creeds, they were not done, you know, they were not hammered out in a vacuum. They were hammered out in the context of, you know, responses to various challenges to these doctrines or different heretical groups like the Marcionites or the Gnostics that were, you know, infiltrating the church. And so there still is a cultural moment that governed both the content and expression of the creeds. They are not ah historical. That's the one thing that I'm like, well, okay, I think creeds are a good barometer of the basic essentials of the Christian faith,

but I still want to hold that a little bit with an open hand. I mean, maybe I'm still gripping it, but I have a couple fingers that are kind of loose a little bit on that. It's not a kung fu grip that you can't unlock. There's a little bit of play there, a little bit of, okay, I'm willing to hear some challenges to this because I do know that the people who authored the creeds were not inspired themselves and they did have a specific context in which they're thinking through these things. But having said all that, I do think that these are a good starting point, something we can sign off on. These have been kind of the taken for granted, if you will, for historic Christianity. I also think that being theologically orthodox, I guess that also implies ethical orthodoxy as well.

orthodox, I guess that also implies ethical orthodoxy as well. Because sometimes things like helping the poor or being sexually pure or just believing in the authority of scripture for your moral guidance, these aren't things that were necessarily stated in the creeds. They were sort of taken for granted as practices that just belong to the Christian faith. And so, yeah, we're not holding with an open hand areas of, say, sexual immorality. And, you know, the fact that this is a major area in my life right now, I mean, I think that, you know, this is particularly concerning. And so we do want to be very precise with what we mean by that. And we'll work that out in the context of the church. But most churches, most denominations are formed, I think, on what I would consider non-essentials. Doesn't mean they're not important. Doesn't mean they're not significant doctrines. It

just means they're not essential to being a Christian. We want anybody who is a Christian globally to feel like they are comfortable at our church. Maybe we won't practice all the liturgy that they're used to, or maybe we won't practice all the liturgy that they're used to, or maybe we won't have certain policies they're used to, but theologically, you can be a Christian in South Africa, or Nepal, or South Korea, or China, and you can come visit our church, and we hope that you would feel theologically at least at home,

if not free, to be who you are as long as you are a Christian. So theologically orthodox, we want to be very eager to celebrate the core essentials of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the primacy of Jesus Christ, salvation by grace through faith, the necessity of obedience, without getting wrapped up in the different nuances of faith and obedience and grace and works and all that. We want to allow people to wrestle with the differences there out loud. And that kind of leads us to the second part of this value. We want to be theologically generous. We want to allow for diverse theological backgrounds to thrive in this church. And already, I'm not going to call anybody out, but I mean, we have people that are, you know, come from very charismatic backgrounds, people

who come from, say, you know, we have several people who come from like a messianic Jewish background where they were, you know, were part of environments, church environments, where the Jewishness of Christianity was highlighted beyond most other churches. We have people coming from Baptist roots and Pentecostal roots and Presbyterian roots and even other non-denominational denominations like Calvary Chapel and Church of Christ and others like that. So we have a good deal of diversity, I think, and theological background. And I want to foster an environment not where I'm going to agree with it all. Look, I'm going to have, as you know, my listeners, I'm going to have some pretty strong opinions about certain things and other

looser opinions about certain things, but opinions nonetheless. And I'm going to have some pretty strong opinions about certain things and other looser opinions about certain things, but opinions nonetheless. And I'm going to teach from that. I'm going to talk about that from the – we don't have a pulpit. We have a chair that I sit on. But I mean I'm going to be very clear with where I'm at, but I'm going to be also very generous towards people who may not even agree with me or be coming from a different background where that hasn't been what they've been taught. I want to give people space to work through their questions and have the freedom and comfort to wrestle out loud publicly to say, I'm not Reformed or I am Reformed and I'm Anglican, I'm not Anglican, I'm charismatic, I'm anti-charismatic and feel the freedom to sit next to somebody

who is on the other side of that question. And maybe I'm on the other side of that question, but they feel like I belong to this community because I belong to Jesus. I'm excited about the mission and I'm excited to learn and grow and maybe even change my mind if that's something I feel that the evidence is leading me to do. We want to give people space to work out their questions, their doubts, their pushbacks, to have the freedom to wrestle out loud. We want the mission of the church. We're a very missionally minded church. We want the mission of the church and the centrality of the gospel to be the thing that unites us, not some tribal

identity or church brand or style of worship or, you worship or unwritten cool factor. We want the non-cool kids to thrive at our church. The overweight, the underweight, the people who may not be the unathletic, the person who doesn't fit the gender stereotype and so on and so forth. You can fill in the blank there. I just got back from the movie The Greatest Showman. I love the spirit of that film. Just gathering all types of humans together and giving them a platform and giving them space to be a family. Gosh, the ecclesiology in that film, the unintentional ecclesiology of that film is really remarkable.

Some of you may be thinking, can this work? And my answer to that is, I don't know. I really don't know. I don't know. But all I do know is that I get enough emails from you people, many of you listening to this almost every day saying, thank you for letting me ask questions. I can't ask these questions in church. That is a problem. Many of you listen to this podcast, you feel ostracized or alone, or you're like, man, you know, if I were, you know, please don't mention my name on the air because if people knew that I was even asking this question, I would be looked upon funny. That is crazy. That is crazy. Church should be the first place that anybody can stand up and say, I am doubting God. Can my family help me with that? I am wrestling with this theological doctrine. I don't like reading the Bible. It's hard to understand and age, and maybe that's how Christians have always felt. They just haven't felt the freedom to ask it. I want to cultivate a church environment where their church family is the first place that will go to raise these questions or wrestle

out loud. And yet, it's not going to be a theologically wishy-washy church. The leaders in particular of the church are going to be, I think, on very similar pages on a lot of things. It just so happens that Rock Brown and I, Rock, again, the co-pastor, we agree on, gosh.

In fact, I don't even know a conversation we've had where we've been at odds with each other theologically. I think we just so happen to be kind of on very, very similar pages. Even if we don't line up exactly, I think he really appreciates my perspective. And he's such a humble guy, even though he's way more experienced and knowledgeable and mature than I am. He's very eager to learn from me as I'm very eager to learn from him. So we do have a lot of similar theological commitments. We're sort of kind of reformed with a lowercase r. We are charismatic on paper, but see problems with other kind of the, some extreme versions of the charismatic movement in, in, in, well globally and in America where really wrestling with the place of women in

leadership. We, God, I mean, yeah, you keep going down the road. There's this, you know, he appreciates my nonviolent perspective. And I'm not sure if he's quite there, but he's, he's, he's very much appreciated and appreciates it has been challenged by it. We agree on sexuality, gender, and, and,

um, yeah, there's, there's other things. So, so people coming to our church, they're going to hear that from us. I'm not going to shrink,

but if I'm teaching on Romans nine, Romans nine is, is one of the reasons why I would lean reformed, uh, along with actually Ezekiel 36 and 37 and, and the rest of the Bible. Not just kidding. That was underhanded.

But when I get to Hebrews 6, I'm going to say, man, I would love to hear from you, especially if you come from an Armenian background because our teaching is dialogical. I want to learn from the congregation as well, the people there. Because, look, if you're human, you have wisdom. You have certain things you're really smart and well-versed in. And I don't want to think that just because I'm the teacher, I'm the leader, that I know everything. There are many passages in the Bible, even though I've been teaching the Bible for 20 years, there's passages that I haven't really wrestled with this as thoroughly as I should.

And I want to have a dialogue, not a top-down monologue, with the people that are coming to this church experiment. So I want to leave you with just a few summary points. Number one, this approach is incredibly messy, and I don't know if it's going to work. Everything I've said in the last 16, almost 17 minutes, I don't say because I have worked this out, ironed out the kinks, and this is the way to be church. I really don't know. I've been thinking about this.

Could we have a messy, theologically diverse environment still with theological integrity? Can that tension exist? For the last 10 years in my mind, I'm like, yeah, I think it can exist, but I'm just now testing that idea. So it's messy. I'm not sure if it's going to work. I'll let you know on the other side or maybe down the road how this specific aspect is going. Number two, I do believe, and I've seen this through my own experience, that diversity in theological thought is a good thing. Diversity in theological thought is a good thing. Working out your theology in an echo chamber where everybody agrees with you isn't very helpful. Actually, let me modify the first statement

again. I need to add something here. Diversity and theological thought is a good thing when people are humble. If people are not humble, then it's just going to be a, I think it's going to be a riot's going to break out, you know, and I've seen fights break out, maybe not physical fights, but near physical fights break out when there's diversity and theological thought without humility and people are just angry and screaming and demonizing and dehumanizing and so on. So yeah, diversity in theological thought is a good thing when there's humility involved. And so I'm excited. I truly am. It's not that I'm like tolerating the theological diversity that's coming our way. I'm excited about it. I love that there's these really different kind of

backgrounds coming to the church. I'm like, man, can you help us with that love that there's these really different kind of backgrounds coming to the church. I'm like, man, can you help us with that? Like there's one guy who, man, he's so passionate about the Eucharist. And right now, you know, I've got thoughts about the Eucharist and the communion. I think, yeah, I have a lot of thoughts about it, but I've just been focused on other things. And we've just been kind of doing the traditional, you know, cracker and, you know, wine being passed around, and sometimes, I mean, there's been times, to my own shame, that we've kind of forgot or had to be reminded, oh yeah, hey, let's take communion, and this guy, I won't name him because he doesn't give me permission to name him, but he's like really passionate about communion. And so when he told me that, I'm like, man, can you help us with it?

Can you be like, can you like take the lead on making sure we do communion and do it right? Can you challenge us? Can you kind of, you know, run with that since that's your passion? Like what we want to do as a church is take the passions that God has already instilled in the hearts of the people coming and empower them rather than coming with pre-packaged passions of our own that everybody else must fit into. We want to be a place where there is strong leadership, but the goal of leadership is to empower and give guidance to the passions and drives and gifts that God is bringing us. And so this individual is very passionate about the Eucharist. And I kind

of am too. I want to be, but I need help. And can you help me? Can you help us run with this? And there's other people that are passionate about the poor, passionate about racial reconciliation and other things. And I want to help empower people to run with those. But you only get that when you value diversity and theological thought. And when there's humility involved in theological diversity, you tend to learn from each other. Goodness, I've learned more from people who think differently than I than from people who think similarly to me. And so I'm super excited about the diversity God's brought our way, and we'll see how it goes. Email me in a couple years. Number three, forced beliefs aren't genuine beliefs. Forced beliefs aren't genuine beliefs. If we have a

10-page doctrinal statement that everyone must sign on to or that we really want to kind of cram down people's throat from the top down and say, well, if you're not here yet, that's okay, but you need to get here in six months or until you become a member. Those aren't really genuine beliefs. Forcing people to believe something isn't true belief by definition. Belief by definition comes from the heart. It comes from within, not being forced upon from without. Yes, outside influences can shape beliefs, but you can't just force somebody to believe something when they haven't got there on their own. So I do want to influence and shape and enable somebody's beliefs and empower beliefs. I want to guide them in beliefs that I think are correct and shy them away from ones that are incorrect. And the ones that I think can go either way or a little bit ambiguous or gray.

I want to help raise the right questions I think they should be asking and giving guidance and principles to addressing those questions. But I never want to say, here's what I believe and here's what you must believe in the next six weeks at least. I'll give you some space to get there, but you must get there in six weeks, or you must get there in 12 weeks on things, again, on things that aren't essential to the Christian faith. So even though I lean Reformed, I want full-on Armenians to feel very comfortable in our church. And at the same time, if they're so stuck in their ways that they can't stand to hear a more reformed perspective on Romans 9, and they'll

leave the church because of that, then that's their problem, not mine. I'm giving them space to have the freedom to wrestle out loud. I'm not going to judge them, not to make them feel alienated. I want to cultivate an environment where they're going to feel like they belong and can thrive and can have influence. But I am still who I am, and I'm not going to shrink back from my beliefs just because we're trying to cultivate an environment where people can feel accepted. Acceptance goes both ways. So we want to give space for people to wrestle out loud with various doctrines and issues and not feel like they have to believe in order to belong. doctrines and issues and not feel like they have to believe in order to belong. Again, when we're,

you know, talking about issues that aren't primary or essential to the Christian faith. This concludes, I guess, the first part of the What is Church series. I've walked through the main values that we have laid down in the sort of first draft form of our church plant, or maybe church experiment is a better term. But I want to keep going on the series. I don't know how often I'll do this, but from time to time, I want to drop back in and talk about different things going on in our church, different things I'm thinking about as we move forward in this very raw, this very raw theological church experiment. My name is Preston Sprinkle.

Thanks for listening to the What is Church series on Theology in the Raw. Thank you.