All or nothing

So it turns out that this is not the first generation of Christians. In fact there have been Christians for a couple thousand years. Huh. That hasn't stopped many people from reinventing the wheel over and over again. Nor has it stopped us from picking and choosing from groups who have come before us and seeking to emulate them. It seems to me that neither approach makes sense.

It is both redundant and a bit arrogant to assume that we have things figured out that the thousands of years of the church have not until our enlightened day and age. Rejecting things the church has thought about and worked through just because these positions are old and traditional is frankly dumb. So is picking out a particular historical faith tradition and trying to emulate it in every respect, whether that tradition is 50 years old or 500 or 1500.

Most Christian faith traditions have some things "right" and other things "wrong", recognizing that as we grow we might find, as I have, that some things are not a right as we thought and others are not as wrong as we suspected.

I appreciate the Plymouth Brethren for their strong reliance on Scripture and on their participatory meetings. Some of our best times of fellowship were in a small Brethren assembly. The Brethren can tend toward rigidity and being overly focused on the Sunday gathering. Doesn't mean there is nothing of value there but it does mean that there can be ways to improve.

I have long cherished the Reformed tradition for its strong doctrinal stance and copious written works. Some of the real intellectual giants of the faith are found in this group and you can drink deeply from the well of their writings. Alas there are also to be found in this group lots of things that are not so great, holdovers from Roman Catholicism like infant baptism, formalized ritualization of the church gathering and an unhealthy linking of the church and the state.The magisterial Reformers were often great in theology and rotten in practice.

A rapidly increasing number of Christians are pursuing a simple/organic/house church model. This movement, although I hate that term, seeks to carve away the manmade traditions of "church" and get back to a simpler expression of the gathered church with authentic fellowship and open and participatory meetings. Great people and they are shaking up the church (leading to lots of vitriolic backlash). However meeting in a house in not a cure-all and most people understand this. There is also a huge amount of diversity in this movement and some of it is positive and some is quite negative. There are tendencies toward theological excess, theological liberalism (defined as watering down core tenets of the faith), some insularity and even a tendency to do church in a more or less institutional fashion, just in a home rather than a building. Over all it is a positive step but not without cautions. Just meeting in a home is not a panacea and not every simple church fellowship is healthy.

Over the last few years I have really come to see a great deal of value in the Anabaptist tradition. This faith community has traditionally exhibited the simplicity, persecution and community that are absent in much of the church. Perhaps not in form but certainly in function the Anabaptists seem to reflect the early church the best. The may not gather as the church in the most Biblically faithful way but they live as the church more closely than any of the other traditions. Of course there are some issues. Some modern manifestations of Anabaptism are not really modern at all, embracing not just simplicity and humility but also staying locked into a lifestyle hundreds of years old. Some of these groups also have developed an unhealthy isolationism or even a legalism that borders of a works-righteousness. Other modern manifestations, particularly among the Mennonites, have become indistinguishable from the world and have devolved into theological liberalism.

I am sure there are some wonderful traditions in other faith communities that I am not familiar with.There are certainly plenty of wise, pious and wonderful disciple-making Methodists, Lutherans and others that I don't know much about. That is why I am trying to learn from those who came before in the wider tapestry of the faith. It is easy to just dismiss everyone who has come before us and seek to do a new and better thing on our own. But being disenchanted and disgruntled is not necessarily a sign of spiritual maturity. Nor is slavishly attempting to recreate a movement from years gone by.

So what to do? I think it is foolhardy to try to replicate entire movements from the past, even the first century church. Trying to replicate Geneva in your local church or trying to live as a 16th century Anabaptist doesn't make any sense, nor should we start wearing togas and sandals everywhere we go. I have grave concern over those who seek to emulate Calvin and defend his every statement almost as if his writings carry the force of Holy Writ just as I am concerned with those who retreat to bunkers and peer out at the world as it dies around us. Our faith is an ancient faith that goes back to the first century and that is the where the river of church tradition and practice originates, recognizing that we live in a day and age with electricity, air conditioning and the internet. My point is that as we read church history and study those who came before us we are not facing an all or nothing proposition. We can and we should learn from those who came before in order not to become tradition chameleons but to see how our brothers and sisters have applied the teaching of Christ and the apostles to their lives, their families, their church gatherings and their disciple-making. Where the traditions of the past help to enhance our carrying out of the Great Commission and Great Commandment, we should feel free to joyfully and thankfully adapt and adopt them. Where those traditions interfere? We can and we must reject and discard them.

The traditions of the past and the movements of today are merely signposts along the way. They are not The Way. Just as you are not obligated to get off the highway for every rest area or McDonalds, we are not obligated to take the teachings, traditions and movements of the past as an all or nothing proposition. Use what is fruitful, embrace what enhances and reject what does not. Our goal is not to be "Reformed" or to be in a "simple church" or to be this or that. Our calling is simple: we are called as those who have been made into disciples to make other disciples who in turn will...make disciples. We must let nothing detract from that calling.