Webber & Story

I really enjoyed Robert Webber's article in the Spring 2006 Criswell Theological Review: "Narrating the World Once Again: A Case for an Ancient-Future Faith."  If you get a chance and can find a copy of the CTR, read it.  My "tight" evangelical readers may shiver at all the uses of the word "story" or "narrative," but hey, our existence and ministry is rooted in, concerning, and continuing The Story.  So there. :) 

A couple of quotes...

I want to articulate three very specific paths for the Emerging church to follow in order to restore the ancient biblical and historical narrative from which to minister in a post Christian world: 1) deconstruct the current accommodation of ministry to the cultural narrative, 2) recover the story-formed nature of the good news, and 3) re-situate ministry in the divine narrative. (p 16)

Evangelicalism is so thoroughly conditioned by the culture in which it seeks to minister, that it has the appearance of the commonplace.  It has become what people want to hear, not what it is that God wants to say and do.  This indictment of evangelical Christianity--that it is culturally conditioned--is only the surface problem.  The deeper problem is that by allowing itself to become conditioned by the "surface culture," it missed the point of the deeper cultural crisis.  This crisis is that our world has become storyless.  There is no unified story that gives meaning to life and history.  Everything has been reduced to "my" story.  But there is no universal story in which my story is situated. (p 19)

The task of the next generation of leaders is to disassociate themselves from the culturally conditioned practices of the evangelical church, and recover the divine narrative in which all ministry is situated. (p 20)

Comments

[George]

Good stuff, Steve. As you know, there are many voices challenging evangelicals to wake up to this paradigm. I recently came across an interview that Trinity Mag. did with Vanhoozer, "Experience the Drama." I thought it was a great snap shot of this theme. Here's the link:

http://www.tiu.edu/tiu/publications/trinitymagazine/spring2006

[Larry]

I may be one of the "tight evangelical" readers here, but I enjoy much of what you have to say. But it is #1 that caught my eye ... Deconstruct the the current accommodation of ministry to the cultural narrative.

Isn't the emerging church doing precisely the opposite? It seems to me that the whole impetus behind it is to accomodate the church to the contemporary mindset about church. It seems to me that many are guilty of exactly what they claim not to be doing.

I am not commenting on the rightness or wrongness of it, but wondering if there isn't a blindspot.

[Denny Burk]

Alas, here is the one article in the journal I haven't finished reading yet.

Did you see that Scot McKnight is reviewing Russell Moore's book, Kingdom of Christ?

[Steve McCoy]

Larry, if I get your concerns correctly, and if I understood the article correctly, Webber is trying to give the EC a trajectory that it often lacks. He is giving advice to those in the EC as I see it, and I think it's pretty helpful.

[Luke Elk]

Nice blog, although i cannot agree if you are suggesting that today's culture is storyless. This would be a complete mis-judegement to the whole.
all one needs to do is look at the movies that continually getpumped through the cinemas especially at the moment.

they all have the same basic plot of a storyline. if youlooking for a book that outlines this go to reels and rods (sorry i'll have to go and get it off my book shelf). but the main gist is that hollywood follow the same pattern to which makes a good movie all the time.

they outline that there is such a common theme that is so ingrained within the christian story its not funny. go overseas to places like thailand and you can see that stories are so popular its rediculous. i think as a missional community we need to engrose ourselves moreso out of our christian night groups and work within the culture and look at the stories people are reading about in their dolly mag's and start patching things and immersing things that way.

Luke

[Steve McCoy]

Luke, what part of this post suggests that our culture is storyless?