David Bosch and the South African emergence (part 2)

I started blogging a response to Mark Sayers’ important post of last week yesterday. I’m attempting to answer what the South African conversation would look like from the network (look at Brother Maynard’s post to see how I’m using this concept) where I find myself, while using David Bosch as the theologian that I believe is more and more influencing my own thought, and maybe that this network as well.

What about the neo-missiologists? Well, I haven’t seen the house-church movement really taking off in the South African emerging scene. Maybe it’s just me, but House Churches in South Africa seem to be connected with a very conservative theology, and links strongly to the charismatic movement. This might be because of the dominance of mainline churches, and that house churches was a convenient way for the charismatics of couple of decades ago to break away. But OK, I’m no expert on this, so please correct me.

There might however be another way in which the neo-missiologists is surfacing in South Africa: The Partnership for Missional Churches. Alan Hirsch is an important guy for those in this network, and I have a feeling growing in importance. These guys have a great respect for the work of David Bosch. Nelus Niemandt in his book Nuwe Drome vir Nuwe Werklikhede (Chapter 1 – only available in Afrikaans) seem to make a very strong connection between them and the Emerging Church. If Matt Stone is correct that the neo-missiologists have the same thinking on Lausanne than the blenders, then looking at how people think on this document might help us in understanding them. I’ve written on David Bosch’s thoughts on Lausanne here.

Reggie Nel recently wrote quite a harsh critique of the partnership, because of it’s close ties with the denominational and white Dutch Reformed Church, and the way that it’s managed hierarchical, with money that needs to be paid to become part etc. Maybe someone want to write some more on the relationship between our own partnership, the neo-missiologist and David Bosch. At this stage I can’t really see our interpretation of Bosch, or the emerging conversation in South Africa as it plays out on blogs and the internet, going the neo-missiologist direction.

I’ll ignore the Digital Pentacostals and the Blenders. Sayers’ himself consider the first not to be part of what he call the emerging missional conversation (which, might I add, is difficult to know what he mean with this in light of an earlier post he wrote). Our own conversation has not developed far enough to allow a significant number to go back to their former evangelical roots. Neither Kimball nor Mcmanus seem to have much of an influence in South Africa. Furthermore, I’ve already written about the understanding of Bosch on Laussane, and the Blenders have made it clear what they think about this.

OK, so I’m not really sure what to make of the neo-missiologists. And I’d like to see where this fits in with our Dutch Reformed Partnership for Missional Churches. But somehow I have a feeling that working with the theology and missiology of Bosch, will be taking us in a different direction.

David Bosch and the South African emergence (part 1)

Mark Sayers (Australia) has brought some conversation to the table by classfying many different “neo-”movements within the emerging stream. Andrew Jones (UK) consider himself something of a neo-missiologist or a blender and Jonny Baker (UK) simply considered it to be a normal and not problematic if you look at it from a network while Brother Maynard (Canada) can’t seem to place himself. In the South African conversation Steve Hays has already mentioned that Sayers definitions doesn’t really fit our own scene, and that reality might be a bit complex. All over there seems to be a general feeling that people might not really fit exactly into these categories.

I’m not going to say much about the “death of emerging” conversation last year, which in the end concerned mainly the American conversation. I had some links to what I consider to be  important posts here, and Andrew Jones had some here and here. Within Sayers’ division, the two sides to the coin within the American conversation at that stage might have been neo-liberal (a very bad label indeed) and blenders.

Steve Hays asked a bit about the South African conversation. Where are we? Here’s some thoughts from me, a 20-something Dutch Reformed pastor and student of theology. Linked with this conversation for about 2 and a half years, and part of the network that probably got together through emergingafrica.

For I believe a growing group of us, the work of David Bosch is becoming key to the emerging conversation in South Africa. He’s had an important influence on thinkers such as Alan Hirsch and Brian Mclaren, he is South African, he wrote brilliantly, and on the questions that we are currently asking. So in attempting to answer the question I’ll refer to my own and other’s interpretation of Bosch, and show where I believe Bosch is guiding us at the moment.

David Bosch was trained in Europe, in New Testament under Oscar Cullman. Ons of his greatest contributions to the church (in my humble opinion) was that he provided the tools for conversation between the evangelicals and ecumenicals wintin the 70′s and 80′s church scene. He provided very strong critique of anyone who emphasized either evangelism or social justice as having priority over the other.

For me one of the most important keys to understanding where Bosch found himself comfortable is the 1982 article in the Journal of Theology for Southern Africa, titled: How my mind has changed: Mission and the Alternative Community. In the article Bosch find himself comfortable in combining the ecclesiology of the Anabaptists and the Reformed tradition in their understanding of the relationship between the church and the world. “The more identifiably seperate and unique the church is as a community of believers (Anabaptism) the greater significance it has for the world (Calvinism)“. This would allign most closely with Sayers’ neo-anabaptism. His neo-calvinism is however something totally different, Bosch didn’t think that an emphasis on mission would be contrary to Calvinism, he rather understood Calvinism to be inherently missional, although drawing to direct a line between church and world (the Charismatic and American Evangelical influence on neo-Calvinism might be responsible for proponents of this network to not see this traditional Calvinist ecclesiology as being missional).

Steve Hays has pointed to the fact that many in the South African conversation seem to be reacting against Calvinism. Tom Smith has maybe pointed to some of the discomfort South Africans experience with Calvinism, in that we see Calvinism as undervaluing orthopraxis. Bosch didn’t undervalue Orthopraxis however (see the posts appearing from our recent discussion on chapter 2 of Transforming Mission for this). In a country where the Afrikaans community (which make up the majority of the white population) has historically been 99% Reformed, we’d have to see how our relationship to this historical faith plays out in the emerging conversation.

OK, this post is becoming long. Let’s summarize by simply saying that neo-anabaptism rather than neo-calvinism seem to be the stronger emphasis from where I’m coming from, and in how I read Bosch up to now. More tomorrow.

Transforming Mission – Chapter 2

The second round of conversation on Transforming Mission happened yesterday, and I’m getting more and more impressed (or maybe uncomfortable) with level of conversation happening. Not because it’s intellectually the most challenging conversation imaginable, although it’s definitely inttlectually challenging, not because you have around the table the most knowledge on the theology of David Bosch, or even on Missiology… but because a group of people are being deadly honest about their own journey’s of being Christian in South Africa today, are working with an brilliant and challenging text (Transforming Mission, as well the the books of the Bible being discussed), and are applying it to their own lives first and foremost, before anything else.

Chapter 2 was under discussion, on the Matthean sub-paradigm of early Christian mission. Matthew is known as the discipleship book, known for the sermon on the mount, and the Great Commision. All of this was discussed. I made some comments on Matthew 28 two days ago, and wrote about Bosch’s interpretation of this passage in my dissertation last year:

“In this article Bosch expounds his exegesis of The Gospel According to Matthew, especially chapter 28:18-20, to counter an interpretation which says that this text talks about leading non-Christians to a first commitment to Christ (make disciples), which only then must be followed by a stage of “perfecting” (teaching them to observe) (Bosch 1984:19). As Bosch explains, the teaching is not something which follows making disciples, but qualifies the main verb “make disciples” (Bosch 1984:24). The content of the teaching Bosch summarizes using two words: justice and love (Bosch 1984:26). “In summary then: Jesus has commanded the fulfilling of the Law which is the practice of justice-love. To love the other person means to have compassion for him or her to see that justice is done. Love of neighbour and enemy manifests itself in justice” (Bosch 1984:27). He endorses the words of Waldron Scott who wrote: “One must understand discipleship in order to make disciples, and discipleship is not fully biblical apart from a commitment to social justice…. To be a disciple is to be committed to the King and his Kingdom of just relationships” (Scott in Bosch 1984:28). Of the narrow evangelistic interpretation against which Bosch is writing in this article he then says: “They falsely teach that if individuals have a personal experience of Christ in traditional pietistic terms they will automatically become involved in the changing of society” (Bosch 1984:29).”

From Chapter 4 of David Bosch as Public Theologian

In conclusion: The way we live was of absolute importance to Bosch. We don’t evangelize people into heaven, and then disciple them into a way of life. We live the way of Jesus, the way of love, and make disciples, others who join us in living this way of love.

Others who blogged on chapter 2 of Transforming Mission:

Tom Smith

Joe Reed

Arnau van Wyngaard

Chris Kamalski

Tom Smith 2

Feel free to blog your own thoughts on this chapter, and send me the link. Even if you’re not joining us in conversation.

where evangelism would fit into missional

I must say that I haven’t followed the new quest for the missional church as closely as I maybe should have over the past few months. But I have wondered how long it’s going to be till the old evangelism vs. social justice thing flares up within the new missional conversation as well. That tension would probably still remain for quite some time. It’s been with us in the form of evangelicals vs ecumenicals in the past, I believe it it was partly responsible for the rift to form in the emerging conversation last year, and it might be visible in the missional conversation as well.

Dan Kimball talked about missional a few months ago, but seemed to identify this with evangelism. iMonk talked about missional just now, but seem to contrast it with evangelism,

Kimball:

As I think of the future, I want to focus on the reason I got into the whole emerging church world. It was about evangelism – as in seeing “lost” people (using that word in a healthy way) come to a saving knowledge of Jesus…

I am using “missional” more these days, although that term has different meanings too and knowing human tendencies that will prpbably go through definition changes.

iMonk:

If I ever get fired and I have the opportunity to go somewhere that there actually are some church choices, my first interest will not be liturgy or the Christian yearc. It will be “Is the church evangelistic?” My second will be “Is it missional?”…

Yes, I know about context, so go read the posts yourself.

Both work with Matthew 28. I was sitting reading chapter 2 of Transforming Mission just a few minutes ago, in preparation for a discussion on Thursday, which discuss the gospel according to Matthew. Bosch has unpacked this in a lot of places, but we need to get over the emphasizing evangelism over against other parts of mission, and vice versa! I still want to see whether missional can really become a conversation that use this broader vision of mission that Bosch unpacked in Transforming Mission, or whether some would again want to in nostalgic fashion grab onto the evangelical visions of the mid-20th century (see an earlier post on the Lausanne Covenent) and earlier and let this fill the meaning of what missional is about (obviously the same can be said about grabbing back to the ecumenical visions).

So, we met again, but are we emerging?

So, the Pretoria Emerging Cohort met again. But I must start by saying, I have no idea who the emerging cohort is! Tonights conversation were attended by a majority that probably won’t label themselves as emerging, and don’t link to any of the traditional “emerging leaders”, but we had a great conversation.

I started it by reading some of David Bosch’s thoughts from Believing in the Future on contextualization; from the last chapter of the book. It’s difficult to understand his thoughts on this if you don’t know the broader work of Bosch (I’ve written about that problem here), and I knew that, but still thought it was a great discussion starter. And I think it was. Maybe Bosch would have thought we totally misunderstand him, at least at first, but still…

From the conversation I think we again discovered our own biases, lots of talk on deconstruction, of how we see the context of South Africa differently depending on where we come from. Again the Orthodox connection came out, that we have a lot to learn about liturgy and worship from the Orthodox churches. The need for a theology of creation featured, although we still need to find what this will mean for our day and age, and our sexual biases featured somewhat, and we need to discuss the marginalized more.

We intended to discuss “a Theology of Tshwane“, and this seems to be very difficult. Recognizing this is a good thing. What exactly is this context? Seems like we can’t just discuss our own small subculture or suburban area where we live, we need to recognize the bigger picture, cause all seem to be connected.

I think that the best part of these discussions is the networking that happen. That’s really great. Are we emerging? From the content of the conversation I’d say yes we are. And I like a lot of what I heard. But we had no reference to any “emerging writer” at all tonight…

speaking at TGIF

I’ll be speaking at TGIF on Friday morning at 6:30. Still got to get the presentation ready, but the title and blurb has already been sent, so I guess I’ll now have to go with it:-) They get together at Seattle Coffee Company in Brooklyn. So catch us there if you’d like.

Info on the talk:

The future of church and world?

The relationship church/world has aways been at the heart of the Judeo-Christian tradition but has become of particular concern in the past decades, and it would seem like a our understanding of this is being transformed in this time. As the realization grows that the the church, Christian theology and the Christian faith should be active in the world, the question of how this should happen is also growing.

Drawing from the recently emerging field of Public Theology and the work of eminent South African theologian David Bosch, Cobus van Wyngaard will attempt to point to some of the changes that is happening concerning the above, some of the challenges that need to be faced, and some thoughts on how this might look today and in the future.

I’ve blogged about past TGIF experiences at the following posts:

Christian-Atheist conversation at TGIF

a narrative to bridge the theological canyon

neo-monasticism – my thoughts

burning bibles/wasting nature

I come from a Reformed background. OK, so I’ve opened myself up to many other church traditions, and learn from them, but I find depth in my own tradition as well. It’s a more dinamic relationship with tradition I guess, where tradition is challenged, and sometimes it humbles us with the wisdom that we find in response to the our challenge. Anyhow, not the point, the point is rather that some parts of our tradition is gaining meaning which I want to point to.

We reformed folks talk about two books in which we learn about God: The book of nature and the Bible. Yeah, we obviously link back to Paul (Romans 1) when saying this. Paul said that we learn about God in nature.

But what then if we mess up nature? Is that like burning Bibles? Maybe worse, cause Bibles we just print again. Is it like  somehow getting rid of all copies of the gospel according to Mark… forever?

I’m not totally insane am I?

I remember a conversation where we once played around with what prophets would do in our day. Remember the symbolic things prophets did in the Old Testament? Marrying a prostetute. Walking around naked. Carrying around joke. What would prophets have done today?

Well, maybe they would have took a heap of Bibles to church and burned them on a Sunday morning, as a symbol for how we are burning the book of nature, God’s revelation…

Maybe I’m just insane or losing it. What do you think?