from “let us bless the poor” to “blessed are the poor”

A personal introduction is in order for this blogpost: I think that the past two years has been a very long conversion experience, and an ongoing one. It was characterized by a journey into a space where I am no longer the answer for the world, but where I begin to notice how I am embedded in the sins of the world. I you scan through the posts from the past two years, Amahoro possibly being the single most important event in this journey, much of this will be found. It is an ongoing journey, one which I find to be struggling with, but one which are pushing me into a world from which I can never return, and I believe pushing be towards the Jesus whom I have learned to call Messiah.

The phrase “blessed are the poor” (Luke 6) has always been one of those strange moments in the journey with the Bible of the congregations and groups where I’ve spent my life. Luckily Matthew (Matthew 5) gave us an easy cop-out when talking about “blessed are the poor in spirit”, that phrase we knew how to interpret. But it is Luke which continue to push our imaginations. What do we do with the blessed poor?

I can quickly think of two common ways we solve this statement. The first is by projecting onto the poor those things we experience as lacing in our own lives: rest, not worrying, community with others. The second is my spiritualizing poverty so that everyone become poor. Some are poor because they lack meaningful family relations, others because they lack money.

But for Jesus some people were categorized as poor, and some as non-poor, as rich. The poor had little room to manege their own lives, they were oppressed by a system of taxes and the rich taking over their land. But I also don’t get the idea that Jesus is romanticizing poverty. He is not the kind of ascetic who call people into poverty, because of some deeper spiritual meaning. Jesus is a prophet challenging the system of injustice which create the poor. Yet Jesus is the one saying that “blessed are the poor”.

However, when we move away from this passage, then the poor are no longer romanticized nor spiritualized. We are aware of the fact that poverty is a very real problem in our country, and I would say that the dominant approach within the church is that the poor are pitied, and that we want to help the poor. We want to bless the poor. Sometimes we would even talk about blessing the poor with our gifts and help. If we were to stand up and do our own sermon on the plain (what we generally call the part in Luke where this phrase is found), we would probably start with: “Let us participate in the coming of the kingdom of God by blessing those who are poor. Let us bless the poor” (even using nice missional language like participation in the kingdom of God). But would we start our sermon with the words: “Blessed are you, the poor, for yours is the kingdom of God”.

What does this imply? If I understand Belhar correctly, then God is in a unique way present with those who are suffering. Belhar states “… that in a world full of injustice and enmity He is in a special way the God of the destitute, the poor, and the wronged and that He calls his Church to follw Him in this”. In his commentary on this text, Piet Naudé writes: “God does not stand by the poor because they are poor or because – as in a class struggle – he is in a particular way the God of the working class. In God, there is no injustice. God stands with the people who suffer in situations of injustice, because of this in justice. God can do no other. This is how God is.”

What does the the poor being blessed imply in Luke? Not that they have access to the lost ideals of the middle class, but that the kingdom of God is their’s. Maybe we could say that the kingdom of God can be found among those who suffer. I usually explain the “kingdom of God” to youth groups with two statements: First, the kingdom of God is how this world would look if God was king and not the rulers of this world. Second, the kingdom of God is God’s dream for the world, how God dream the world to be. Is it to much to say that among those who suffer in situations of injustice, those who we can call the poor (being more than an economic category, but being those who are placed at the bottom of the system), there we will find God’s dream for how the world should look. There we find the dream of what the world might be if God were to be king and not the rulers of this world.

What would happen if those of us in the rich church exorsise our drive to be the ones who are blessing the poor, and start recognizing the poor as those blessed by God. Those who find themselves in the place where God is to be found, and start listening for the dreams of what the kingdom of God might look like. Obviously we do not enter this space in a naive manner, where the voices of the poor suddenly become some kind of direct link towards the voice of God. The poor have no more direct line to the thoughts of God than the spiritual does, and listening to one lone voice is not hearing the voice of God, just as listening to one lone super-spiritual congregant is hearing the voice of God. But if we dare enter into conversation with those who are poor, with the entirety of this category whom of people we call poor, dare listening to what the poor are dreaming the world to be like, might it not be that we will find among those to whom the kingdom of God belong dreams of what this kingdom might look like? And if we then want to participate in the coming of the kingdom of God, then it might not be through our blessing of the poor, but through the discovery of the blessedness of the poor, and the participation in the coming of the world which the poor are dreaming into being.

A personal conclusion is in order as well: I’m not at this place. I struggle with this. I like to find solutions for poverty rather than listen to the world the poor are dreaming into being. I like to be the hero. But most of all, I’m not sure if I’m ready for the radical dreams the poor are dreaming, I fear that I might not like what I’m hearing. But might it be that these dreams are the coming into being of the kingdom of God? I think I need help struggling through this, so your thoughts will be appreciated.

Advertisement

A Generous Orthopraxy?

Yes, that is a play onto McLaren’s well-known book which gave rise to fingers being pointed towards heresy, but this post has little to no reflection on McLaren’s book.

A few years ago conversations on “orthodoxy and orthopraxis” was quite common. The parts of the conversation which I enjoyed basically boiled down to the idea that orthopraxis (“right living”) was more important than orthodoxy (“right doctrine”). Obviously critiques came in stating that orthodoxy shouldn’t be read in such a narrow fashion, not to mention the various critiques from those who believed that the correct doctrine (narrowly defined as the thoughts we have concerning God) was indeed the most important part of being Christian. I generally found myself comfortable with voices arguing that in reading the gospels our lives as followers of Jesus seem to be more important than getting the facts and details right (thus the orthopraxis rather than orthodoxy argument as it was popularly formulated).

In the meantime the conversations has evolved, suddenly everyone went missional, the emerging label died a silent death to a certain extend, we have American’s teaching Africans about postcolonial theology and what have you more. But I experience a certain amount of tension growing with this newly discovered orthopraxis. More and more it would seem like we get a form of Christian boastfulness where some are “more missional” than others. “I feed more poor people than you” seem to be the new scale along which God’s favour for certain groups are to be measured. The idea that “we have found the real radical Jesus while you are still struggling with the old institutional Jesus” end up not very far from the many debated which we’ve seen over the past two centuries where various groups have declared themselves to be the true bearers of the correct faith, only now, the correct faith is equated with the correct way of fixing the world.

Annemie Bosch once shared a story of what David Bosch used to say during Apartheid. She gave permission that I can share it, although she hasn’t read these words, so mistakes in this paragraph are my own, but nonetheless, it goes something like this:

During Apartheid David Bosch would often say that in the struggle against apartheid, and in the work of transforming the mainline church and it’s relation to apartheid, we need to voices of Carel Boshoff, Johan Heyns, David Bosch as well as Beyers Naudé. Those who aren’t able to listen to the one, might listen to the other, and although they are voicing seemingly contradictory opinions, each in his unique way is contributing towards the end of apartheid and a just society.

This is no generous orthodoxy (in the strict popular interpretation of the word), but might rather be described as a generous orthopraxy. Tony Jones wrote a brilliant piece a number of years ago where attempted to describe a broad understanding of a changing orthodoxy where all role-players (I believe in a blogpost on the paper he used the words “from Benny Hinn to the Pope”, although I can’t find it) co-determine the definition of orthodoxy, and we remain open to the possibility that our consensus might change.

Within the complex reality of our world today it might be important to remain skeptical of the person with the “perfect plan for poverty”. Within the broad discussion of those who believe in justice for all we might want to recognize the role played by everyone from American short-term mission teams to Africa right through to Marxist analysts. Working with a fluid orthodoxy assume a robust debate, but it is a debate where we remain generous on who we consider to be a “legitimate voice” within the ongoing discussion. In our quest for justice, for ethics, I’d suggest we remain generous on who we consider to be partners on our quest for “right living”. This will require a robust debate, a clashing of ideas, but it assume that those I differ with are a necessary voice, and more important, a necessary body, in our quest for justice.

Annemie Bosch kindly rewrote the story to better reflect what was actually said, and agreed that I could add it here:

During Apartheid, David Bosch maintained that in order for us to attain justice for all in South Africa, we needed, in the Afrikaans-speaking section of our nation, the voices of Beyers Naudé, David Bosch, Johan Heyns, Carel Boshoff and Andries Treurnicht. Each of them was, in his own way, campaigning for a just society and for true equality and equity. Those who, because of their background and upbringing, could not hear what Beyers said, would perhaps be able to hear what David said – and so on, all along the line, up to the stance which A.P.Treurnicht took. So each one of these people, and others like them, were contributing towards a change in South Africa so that we could have justice and peace for all…. Which, even up to this day, we have not achieved. So once again we need the voices of many people at different levels of “the Stuggle for Justice” in the New South Africa. Let’s not write off those who differ from us in some or other way. Lets rather use our energy to do what our hand finds to do, and do it well. Let’s take hands and stand together against that which is wrong in our society – and especially in THE CHURCH – which is so much bigger than our little part of it!

Edit (3/8/2011)

the danger of rich messiahs going on god’s mission

In the introduction of Jennings’ The Christian Imagination, he recounts the story of two neighbourhood missionaries visiting his God-loving-Jesus-following black mother on an evangelistic mission. In classic hit-them-hard evangelism they entered the yard on a mission, with various possible interpretations of this word fitting for the sentence, and, believing that they were on God’s mission, were entirely focused. So focused were they, that they never stopped to find out whether this women had any connection to the church, not to mention that she was the heart and soul of a local Baptist congregation. At one point his mother interrupted them to share the good news that she indeed was a God-loving-Jesus-following kind of person, but this only temporarily had them loose sight of their mission, before they continued with their pre-recited speech…

It has become customary to create caricatures of these kind of scenes, an exercise which I have participated in in the past. For the moment however, I want to move past this scene. By sharing some version of this scene, and then rejecting it, we might be falsely cleansing our names from being carriers of the white middle-class messiah into a world where messiah of the poor has long been awaiting us. I believe that the danger of middle class Christians carrying a rich messiah into a world, without noticing their own need for salvation has not ended.

Many would call this the “age of mission”. We quote writers who talks about the “missio Dei”, and we even find ourselves in this weird almost middle-ages kind of place where churches are starting to use this Latin phrase in church communication. This is the age in which we are rediscovering the so-called long-lost ideal pre-Constantinian church on a God’s mission. Now, don’t get me wrong, this might be one of the most important developments in the history of the church, although far better descriptions should be given than the previous sentence, but there is a very real danger when the white middle-class church re-position ourselves as the center of this rediscovery.

Note: when I use mission in the next paragraph or two I thinking primarily of mission as development, as Bosch described it. Although Bosch himself rejected this idea, my observation is that this remain dominant in much of what is being called mission within the white middle-class South African church. The coming paragraphs is only relevant as far as this approach remain dominant. The question of whether this is indeed dominant rests on a lived theology, rather than what gets written. The test is not whether you can quote the emerging paradigm of mission, but whether what you are doing has broken with the notion of mission as development.

The problem arise when the very thing which we claim to be the element assisting the white middle-class church in breaking with white middle-class Christianity with colonial Christianity, is that which is keeping it in place. Mission become a kind of fetish keeping the privileged white position in place. In stead of radically challenging the systems which keep the poor poor, the church attempt to contribute by working within this very system and making it “better”. Our mission does not serve to end the oppression of poverty, but rather serve as a vehicle to allow white middle-class Christians not to face the fact that our own privilege is inherently tied in with the oppressed position of others.

In short: I do mission in order to continue my existence in an unjust world. I do mission so that I do not need to face the fact that who I am is tied in with the oppression of others.

Now I come to the “danger” part. The moment we go on “the missio Dei” (see this classic picture from a number of years ago), our mission gets elevated above critique. Similar to the neighbourhood evangelists, we cannot hear when we are told that our very mission is keeping injustice in place, rather than working towards the dismantling of unjust systems. Mission might make us immune to the fact that the most important task of the white middle-class church is listening to how we are embedded within a system of injustice, is our own conversion.

Note: I do not for a moment deny that their is something even worse that mission as development: namely the very injustice which I claim this form of mission might be hiding. Neither do I deny that even worse forms of mission (mission as exclusively the salvation of souls, or mission as charity) exist, and function in the same way as described above, with even less contribution to the very real lives of people. I do however worry about a rising notion of mission which promise a salvation for the world which frowns upon radical transformation of systems which are responsible for injustice, and which are embedded within a theological framework which seems elevated above critique.

three ordinary/radical ideas for being church

What I’m about to write is not radical. But it’s not ordinary either. There is people doing radical stuff in church today, and I like many of them. But there is some pretty ordinary stuff that we argue away which might be some of the most radical actions to take. I don’t want to over-simplify things, I firmly believe that what really change the world lie on the level of the systemic rather than the personal (although I don’t think we ever have systemic change without a large amount of personal changes which developed habits which might make these systemic changes possible). I think this is ordinary since you don’t really have to look very far to see that this has been at the heart of church all along. I think this is radical because I really find it difficult to do just this. So after dozens of emerging books, and years of reflecting on some of the most brilliant theologies written, I want to ask this: what would a local congregation look like is we just did this:

1) Adopt kids

The early church was radical because it had a different view of children. It rejected the patriarchal idea that children could be thrown away, and we also have stories of how Christian actually picked up and cared for the kids who was thrown away (which contributed to the growth of the early church, since these children then tended to grow up as Christians). In South Africa the number of orphans is growing into the millions, and many more live in houses where social workers need to take them away.

I want to dare say that the most radical and most significant missional thing a local congregation can do today is to create a culture where children is adopted. I know this is a difficult process, but imagine a congregation where the whole congregation is structured to support people who have adopted and are adopting orphans. In our mostly affluent congregations we might even have a greater responsibility towards this.

2) Share meals

It’s no secret that meals play an important role in the gospels and early church. In one of the most radical ideas in the gospel Jesus suggest that we shouldn’t invite the rich and famous to our parties, but the homeless and poor. Jesus himself crossed some serious boundaries when he ate with certain groups. In our time when many progressive voices are reflecting on the importance of “third spaces”, we might want to rethink the importance of sharing our “first spaces” (our homes) with others.

Don’t get me wrong, this is not easy. As I’m typing I’m thinking of a whole bunch of stories of people who started trying this, and found it to be quite difficult. When we prepare food for others, we share something quite intimate, when we sit around a table, we are forced to speak longer than we might have wanted to, with people we don’t really know what to way to. But imagine a congregation where everyone is sharing meals with each other, with strangers, and with people they generally wouldn’t have spoken to, on a regular basis.

3) Live a simple life

The call towards simplicity has been at the core of Christian ethics throughout history. Simply being able to not do stuff just because everyone is doing it, or because you need to display your wealth. In our time it is becoming of critical importance that we find a way to live more simply, and from this tradition of millenia of practicing simply living, we might contribute.

Imagine a congregation where everyone is just seeking to live more simple. Smaller houses. More shared spaces. Less debt. Driving cars for longer before replacing them. Constantly reminding each other what “enough” imply. As I’ve said before, simplicity might be one of the most complex questions facing us, but just imagine a congregation where this is at heart (and I’m thinking now of congregations which traditionally would award affluent lifestyles, since this is the context I know).

What would happen if we just took one of these and just did it? What would you add as very basic ideas which the local congregation, any local congregation, might engage in which is both ordinary and radical?

what can I do to change the world?

A few blocks from where I live is a church called “to change the world” church (or something in that line). As soon as I finish up at the congregation I’m working at the moment (three weeks from now) I want to visit this church (as well as a few others in the inner-city area where I currently live). But in all honesty I want to visit them because I’m interested in the growing number of black urban prosperity churches in Africa, and I suspect this one to be a prime candidate (you really have to walk past it to understand my suspicion, but the google streetview image point to the space where it is situated, at the time of taking the photo about a year ago it was still “to let”).

I mention this because I have this growing suspicion of the popularity of mission. This is partly what lies behind the obvious attempt at controversy in titling a post “Against Mother Theresa” (I mean, who the hell (pun intended) is against Mother Theresa?), and I hope to unpack this more technically in a coming post. Because it’s not only the fast growing churches in urban Africa that is running with the popular theme that “you can change the world”. Since I’m facing the future of unemployment I’m looking through some church adds at the moment, and as a rule the mainline churches also find it important to remind us that they exist to “make a difference to society”.

This ideal I’ll obviously support, in spite of my growing skepticism concerning whether we actually mean what we say. Two quotes from what I’ve read yesterday point to what I believe we need to focus on if the church do believe that we are called to change the world, to make a difference.

Lester Brown writing in the New Scientist:

The question I get asked most is “What can I do?” People expect me to say change your light bulbs, recycle newspaper, but I say we must restructure the world economy, especially in energy. It’s about becoming politically active. If there’s a coal-fired power station near you, organise to close it down.

And this is the reality which I’m fearing in the church. We all want to do something. But the something should be personal, hands-on. We want to pick up papers. Hand out food. We don’t want to get involved in the messy world of politics where the systemic questions are being addressed.

And then there is South African theologian Klaus Nűrnberger writing in Prosperity, Poverty and Pollution:

Meanwhile, left-wing activism has changed from Marxist macro-economics, which has fallen to pieces, to small scale community development. Ideology has made way for romanticism about the symbolic universe of the marginalised. Others concentrate on isolated environmental issues. This is simply not good enough. While the emphasis on community empowerment at grass roots level is important, and while we do not want elephants and tigers to die out, it is the macro-economic context in which grass roots development and ecological sustainability will either flourish or flounder.

Now we’ve made all kinds of arguments when confronted with the systemic questions. We regularly tell each other that people will change when busying themselves with the random acts of kindness, and then become more inclined to participate in the broad systemic changes. We also divide the solutions, and say that some should busy themselves with “community empowerment at grass roots level” while others address the broad political questions. And while I think both these arguments have some merit, I also believe that both can potentially be just another way of sustaining the status quo, just as the middle-class church which focus on changing the world, but refuse to address the macro-economic questions, is most probably more keeping the status quo in place than changing the world.

So what can I do to change the world? Probably nothing. And this is the reality which our hyper-modern, hyper-individual personalities does not want to face. I cannot change the world (in spite of all the examples we like to hold up as heroes, Mandela, Theresa, Ghandi), to change the world we will have to give it a shot. Because changing the world will require us to organize ourselves, to lobby, protest, analyze, construct alternative solutions, implement alternative solutions, create a new world. We will have to address the macro-economic world in which we live. And we will have to do it, we cannot out-source it to either the Americans or the politicians.

What could academics do in response to #17Feb

Dedicating a whole blogpost to the question of the role of professional academics in response to Libia might say more about my personal process of discernment than anything else at the moment. It might also just be because of the article by Rebecca Chopp* that I’ve been reading over the weekend. The argument doesn’t concern me, but the statement which the American Academy of Religion made in response to 9/11 does concern me in light of the recent events in North-Africa, as well as the question whether it might spark similar events in Zimbabwe.

We grieve with out members, their colleagues, and students who have lost loved ones in this tragedy. As the major professional association of scholars and teachers in the field of religion, we feel a special responsibility in this time of crisis. We therefore urge our members to find appropriate educational responses to these events and their aftermath in our classes, our colleges and universities, and our communities, and to serve as resources in the national conversation on a range of issues that have been foregrounded by this tragedy: suffering and evil, human rights and religious liberties, international order and justice, democracy and the common good. The AAR Board especially wishes to urge members to encourage conversation on campuses and in communities about the dangers of religious and ethnic harassment and discrimination. Such educational engagements are appropriate to the Academy’s mission to foster reflection upon and understanding of religious traditions, issues, questions, and values by bringing the teaching and scholarship of our members to bear on the public understanding of religion and religions.

(AAR Board Statement 2002)

I do not wish to go into the typical African slant (and I can do this if needs be) of how the whole world was reacting when CNN kept on repeating the 9/11 footage, while Gaddafi (to use the example which is on our table today) just kept on doing what he does best. I do not wish to go into a comparison of which is the worse atrocity. Suffice to say that 9/11 was wrong, Gaddafi was wrong. 9/11 is in our past, Gaddafi has been our present for 42 years, and he is our present at the moment, and the questions on how we react has to be responded to today.

Our academic environments is the place where we are supposed to challenge our underlying ideologies. We might say that academics has the task to critically engage the reigning ideologies with the complex tools which is not available to the broader public. They do this not for the sake of the academy alone, but for the sake of society.

My critique is quite simple. If our academic environment has produced the business, technology, politics and intellectual leaders of our day, and these formative voices are able to continue this week as if Libya is not happening, then we have to face some serious questions about either the analytical skills of the academy (academics has not been able to notice the injustice under the various dictators), the critical capacity of the academy (academics has not been able to criticize ex-liberators like Gaddafi), or the formative effect of the academy (students are not really changed morally by their participation in the unversity environment).

So what is bugging me as theologian at this stage is the following: I wonder how many ethics classes and missiology classes are going to pass this week without mentioning Libya to students. I wonder whether the universities will find ways of forming students which will be able to voice critique and fight for change in the world. And I wonder whether the universities as a whole will contribute to a better understanding of what is currently happening in the world, or whether various oil interests and the fact that the events is happening in Africa will be enough reason that also the universities, even the theologians, will somehow just never respond.

The voices saying that South Africa has to be a a voice of critique within Africa is growing. But we need solid analysis of the implications of our choices, and then make the choice for justice whatever the cost might be. The responsibility towards society for those at universities (currently or at any position in the past) is to contribute to this solid analysis. I hope that universities in South Africa, as well as the many who have had the privilege of obtaining degrees will contribute to our public conversation in South Africa by stating clearly who all the stakeholders in this mess is, including the various power bases outside of Libya. Our critique need to address the full complexity of the problem, deeper than simply getting rid of Gaddafi (a bare minimum), but uncovering the ways in which many outside of Libya has allowed, or even contributed to, his being kept in positions of power. But mere analysis and critique is not enough. We need the moral conviction to go to the streets and contribute to the growing pressure on both African dictators and their many friends (including those running politically correct democracies).

In South Africa we need this also as an exercise, because Zimbabwe need a date. Because in South Africa we will have to move beyond the Mbeki scapegoat and address the broader system which is making it possible that Zimbabwe is continuing along this route.

We need more than nice quotes about justice today. We need to listen to those who provide the analysis which might make us uncomfortable. Because let’s face it, if change in Libya wouldn’t have cost anyone else anything, then at least some self-righteous liberal would have made a lot more noise long ago. Dictators do not exist in isolation. They are dictators in relation to many positions of power in this world. Let’s use every ounce of our critical capacities to uncover these, and do more then retweet #Libya and #Gaddafi (important as these tweets are).

*Beyond the Founding Fratricidal Conflict: A Tale of Three Cities

becoming a Christian materialist

The idea that has been working in me for the past year or two could be explained as the conviction that ideas which is not unpacked in all its complexity in the actual material (I’m starting to sound like those literalists who put 4 descriptives before the word “resurrection” just to make sure that you definitely agree with in the minutest detail with them) reality of our existence, then we should be very skeptical as to what the real intent of that idea is. I know that many in philosophy and theology has unpacked this much better than I have, but nonetheless, I need to write to get my head around this.

Even on ‘n popular level we have always claimed that the idea and its application should exist together. When it doesn’t, we make statements such as “practice what you preach”, and we talk about the hypocritical nature of the church. We especially love to talk about the church, although I believe the same should apply to most of modern liberal society. Because who will ever claim that what we should do is exploit the poor? Yet those in power participate in exactly this on a constant basis, whether Christian or not.

But rarely do we measure on what we actually do. In reality we have all this guards which we’ve employed so that no one could ever really know what I’m doing. So if you’d dare to make blatant racist comments, or claim that the plight of the poor should be of no concern, or that the destruction of the earth is not something which we should put energy into stopping, you will find yourself with a lot of harsh criticism. But if you choose to move out of a suburb which is attracting more and more black residents, spend your money in a way which will never be accessible to the majority, or consume products in a way which is not environmentally sustainable, little will be heard, except from a few radicals which we’ve worked out of mainstream conversations. So long as you make the right noises about all the good things you intend, and keep from braking these rules in the most blatant ways, you’ll be left alone, even considered a moral citizen whom are contributing to the social well-being of society.

And then we get those who follow Jesus, or those who follow Marx, that sit at a coffee-shop and discuss this new world where the first will be last, and where we should not wait to be served, but serve others, or where we dream of a world where the workers will not do work which they can’t afford to buy (and how many waiters can afford to sit at coffee-shops and be waited upon?). (and yes, I was sitting with Christian friends with Marxist inclinations at a coffee-shop in the past week)

And while the simple non-participation in the coffee-shops of our day might not lead to any kind of revolution creating a new world, we simply fail to notice that when ordering a Latté we are participating in keeping this system of unequal distribution in place. We have these nice ideas, but the true conversation towards our own ideas, that conversation which actually change our material reality in much more dramatic ways than by challenging our participation in coffee-shops (which can really be said to be an arguable example), that is what it is about.

However, it’s about more than hypocrisy. The skeptical view which we need to engage in the church, is that not only are our good ideas not reflected in how we construct our lives in this world, but our good ideas might actually be what keep us from constructing our concrete lives in a way which reflect the vision we claim to have of society. It is exactly because we can sit in church on Sunday mornings and dream about a society where all are equal that we can go out during the week and participate in a society where equality is a continually fading dream, always knowing that on Sunday morning a preacher will believe on our behalf that this dream is actually true, and thanks to this rhetoric we will be able to continue one more week.

So, since I have to go now for a meeting with fellow pastors at a local coffee-shop, and to prove that I’m don’t have in mind the typical examples of those who preach a heaven one day or something blatantly non-material as that, I’ll conclude with what I’m thinking about but still has to unpack more: is all this talk about mission actually changing the church, or is it exactly because of all this talk about mission that the so-called postmodern church is able to continue without actually changing.