Relationship should not be watered down to merely conversing with god in prayer and receiving emotional and/or intellectual stimulation. As you have done to the least of these so you have done to me.

That said I’m just echoing what you’ve described above. Its all about making room for the fullness of Jesus and walking humbly towards one another.

I love Richard Fosters book Streams of Living Water… in it he reminds us of the essential practices and unique grace found in several prominent streams of the christian faith. Its constructive to critically examine all practices and beliefs, but its equally important to discover and celebrate unique expressions of Christ where they may be found.

Ultimately as far as being beyond evangelical or whatever streams I partially identify with goes,,, ultimately any of these labels are a distraction and often divisive. As usual it seems it is not enough to identify as just being a believer or follower of Christ.

As you say its fine to have a particular bent and gifting, even to identify with certain streams and groups of people but we need humility to admit it is just one way.

Unfortunately Christian celebrity culture encourages those who have an audience to speak beyond their sphere and listeners expect guidance on all aspects of life.

Personally I just see beyond evangelical stream as just that, a stream and sub culture not as a culmination of the best of all elements of Christian understanding and practice. The focus on Jesus is fantastic but its just one limited interpretation. I thank God for believers who have taken the teachings of Jesus to heart in ways I have not such that they care for the weak and engage the powers no matter the risk.

Based on our more private communications, I know we both share some of the same struggles and concerns over current trends within certain segments of the “organic” church community. I hope this series begins a larger, questioning dialog on those issues. Don’t be discouraged. God still sits on the throne!

I have been hearing these same concerns from other church planters, who like me are trying to let Jesus be FULLY expressed in us, among us, and through us. But they were timid about going public. Maybe now some of them will also start to speak up. I hope so. We need their voices to be added to this much needed debate.

– Jim

When God sent His objective prophets, how did His subjective followers react?

Shouldn’t we have already learned this lesson? Shouldn’t we be seeing the signs? Shouldn’t we be living like Christ is about to return?

If one is called to something….. like David felt called to take on Goliath……… there will be criticisms levelled at you from people who are different, but who feel they are more right, or have more truth or revelation than you….. (especially if you’re a woman!) People tend to see things not as they really are, but as they themselves are.

I’ve come to see everything, including Christ’s body on earth, in the form of a diamond – and we are each a facet of that diamond – a unique facet. “Every human comparison is necessarily diabolical” because God only makes individuals.

It must be a human trait to want to label and categorise everything in order to make sense of it – but at what a cost! It’s in being willing to give grace to those we may not consider (in our arrogance??) as being “as right” as oneself (and this, we should not lose sight of, ever, is only by God’s grace and redeemptive healing to us by His mercy) that unity in diversity will become reality.

What I find most bizarre by some of these Beyond Evangelical authors is how vocal they are in telling Christians what we can’t do – we can’t be engaged in cultural or civic reform, we can’t be engaged in politics, we can’t ever take a social position that offends.

Some, like Frank Viola (who I respect and have learned from in other contexts), even go so far as to deny or question the validity of the Great Commission – all apparently because they don’t want to have to engage the culture on issues which would require them to take unpopular propositional stands or detract from their “me and Jesus” and “it’s all about relationships” emphasis.

I don’t believe we are all gifted and called to do the same things, and I can accept those who say they may not be inclined towards civic and cultural engagement. My Jesus is big enough to embrace them. But their Jesus does not seem to be big enough to embrace those who are so called.

If you are not called to something, don’t discredit those who are just because they are not like you. That’s narcissism – a key characteristic of post-modernity – at its worst, and it is trying to create Jesus in one’s own image.

What we so often want to ignore is that Jesus in you will be expressed, and look different, than Jesus in me. Same Jesus, but different gifts and expressions.

My plea is that we stop creating these false dichotomies that want to say everything is either/or – and embrace the authentic Jesus who is so much more than our own sensibilities.

If there were not objective Truth to be known — as well as relational Grace — John could have simply skipped the first chapter of his Gospel and most of the letters he wrote under the Inspiration. And, certainly, we’d have to discard that propositional rabbinic Paul. Most pertinently we’d have to discard all the absolutist statements Jesus is recorded as making that leave one in no doubt that He objectively and definitely and propositionally AND relationally knew Himself to be: the Lamb of God; the Son of God; the suffering Servant of God, and One who, when you’d seen Him, was the image of God made visible to you on earth; the Resurrection and the Life.

We keep reminding one another to keep looking to Him as faith-starter and life-finisher, encouraged and edified by our interpersonal interactions, affirming the Truth-and-Grace He reveals to each of us, in Scriptures and also as we experience Him in our daily lives, as pertinent in community and a source of hope and faith.

Our assembly is trying to live lightly outside the structures lots of folks (IC or OC or ‘new-Christian-kid-on-the-block’ or ‘beyond’ whatever) keep insisting are necessary; we keep trusting Him to make of us what we ought to be. We are content, for we see the Love of God and the Truth of God spreading beyond us every week, catching the hearts of others we have prayed would turn to Him.

Those He chooses to bring to Himself via our undertakings are not always the ones we set out to find or bring; He has a plan for our good, showing His glory despite our limitations, and for the good of those He is awakening to seek and keep on seeking until they find.

Thanks for writing this, Jim.

Just to be very clear, my blog does not embrace the enlightenment or evangelicalism. There were clear problems with both. Yet the Beyond Evangelicalism and Emergent movements are, out of reaction to those problems, falling into their own traps. I am seeking to avoid all of these either/or dichotomies that proponents in both camps keep trying to push.

The problem with the enlightenment was not propositional truth, but the view that reason alone could arrive at that truth. Jesus, however, through our reason and also through revelation, is able to speak objective truth – both subjectively and propositionally.

I think you are being too charitable with the Beyond Evangelical mentality. As I interact with that crowd, I see lots of unhealthy Christians who tend to be very insular, introspective and anemic. Studies on the “organic” church in the West – of which the Beyond Evangelical movement is closely identified – bear me out.

In the West, this very subjective and non-propopositional reaction to the problems of the enlightenment has borne bad fruit. Again, the data backs me up. See, for example, http://www.simplechurch.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/Review-2011.pdf.

I deeply believe in the main tenants of the “organic” church community – which involve open participatory fellowship meetings, flat leadership, and expressing Jesus in us as we minister one to another. But I am alarmed at the status of that community here in the West, and find it interesting that our “organic” problems don’t seem to exist as much outside the West where post-modernity is not present.

For more on the enlightenment and post-modernity, see my slide presentation http://crossroadjunction.com/2010/11/12/the-great-divide/.

BTW, congratulations on your new book, Viral Jesus (available at http://www.amazon.com/Viral-Jesus-Recovering-contagious-Gospel/dp/1616384859/, if you don’t mind the plug!), and thanks for the complementary copy you sent me. I’m hearing good things about it, hoping to get to it in a week or so, and anxiously look forward to reading what you have to say.

I personally wouldn’t say that Emergent Christians, Beyond Evangelical or post-modern Christians want the subjectively relational Jesus, but seem to discount – if not deny – the objectively propositional Jesus. It is a danger, a very real one, that Christians who view the world through the postmodern worldview are and will continue to be tempted with. But, in my opinion, it would be fairer to say that this is a serious danger that we need to be aware of, combat and renounce if found. But I certainly would begin to imply that all or even the majority have fallen into this trap.

There are plenty of Emergent and Beyond Evangelicals who are clearly aware of these issues and don’t succumb to this “spirit of the age” any more than all Evangelicals succumbed to the non-supernatural materialism that comes with viewing the world through the Enlightenment. I would suggest that most Emergent Christians would say there are absolute truths revealed in the Scriptures. They would just be less prone to announce definitively that they have the whole shebang figured out.

The Enlightenment was the underlying worldview of Evangelicalism just as much as postmodernism is the underlying spirit of the age of Emergent Christians. To succumb to either pagan worldview, Enlightenment or postmodernism, is to make a serious error. I would suggest that we not be too quick to view the current reality too dualistically. Again, in my opinion, it is wiser to talk of trends, tendencies and potentials that clear definitive statements. Humans behavior, either individually and particularly in societies at the level of worldview, does not lend itself to dichotomistic or dualistic definitive statements.

One last statement. Postmodernism, with all its faults, is still closer to the worldview revealed in the Bible than is the Enlightenment. Both are pagan to the core. Both are dangerous, but if I were forced to pick, which I am not, I would strongly choose postmodernism over the Enlightenment, which has almost nothing in common with the worldview revealed in the Bible All this for what it is worth.