Exiles- Living Missionally in a Post-Christian Culture

This is a book by Michael Frost who is Professor of Evangelism and Missions at Morling College in Sydney (a Baptist Theological College). He is the guiding force behind a church called smallboatbigsea at Manly.

Since this book has really grabbed my heart about where our church is heading, I thought it would be good to write some reflections about it. I hope that I am able to communicate some of the excitement I feel at reading in words the unnamed desires in my heart for our congregation, the Church and our nation. ...

Frost starts his book with these words

"This book is written for those Christians who find themselves falling into the cracks between contemporary secular Western culture and a quaint old-fashioned church culture of respectability and conservatism. This book is for the many people who wish to be faithful followers of the radical Jesus but no longer find themselves able to fit into the bland, limp, unsavoury straitjacket of a Church that seems to be yearning to return to the days when "everyone" used to attend church and "Christian family values" reigned. This book is for those who can't remain in the safe modes of church and who wish to live expansive, confident Christian lives in this world without having to abandon themselves to the values of contemporary society."

So what does all that mean? Frost points out that historically much of European culture was essentially Christian. Church and State joined together with an agreed set of values to establish a force often described as "Christendom." So Christianity becomes an official part of the established culture of the Empire. The Queen is the head of the Church of England. It's a very comfortable, static situation.

Christendom has essentially been in decline for over 250 years. The so-called "culture wars" in the U.S. are just one symptom of the decline. If current trends continue in the United Kingdom, the Methodist Church will have zero membership by 2037, the Church of Scotland will close its last congregation by 2033 and the Church in Wales will be unsustainable by 2020.

Far from being an essential structure of the dominant culture, Christians are now increasingly more like the people of Israel in Exile in Babylon. Just like the Jewish exiles, the church today is grieving its loss and struggling with humiliation. Victimised by nostalgia and buffeted by fear, the church is focussed too much on merely holding the small plot of ground it currently occupies to confidently imagine a robust future.

Frost says this: "I, for one, am happy to see the end of Christendom. I'm glad that we can no longer rely on temporal, cultural supports to reinforce our message or the validity of our presence. I suspect that the inceeasing marginalisation of the Christian movement in the West is the very thing that will wake us up to the marvellously exciting, dangerous and confronting message of Jesus. If we are exiles on foreign soil-- post-Christendom, postmodern, post-literate and so on-- then maybe at last it's time to start living like exiles, as a pesky, fringe-dwelling alternative to the dominant forces of our times."

As I was reading this again some dangerous thoughts came into my mind!

If the church is increasingly seen as a bunch of fringe-dwelling exiles then we are in the same position as the Lebanese and other Muslim immigrants in Australia. At the moment they are seen as a dangerous bunch of people as a whole because they clearly do not share "Australian values". They live proudly as a distinct sub-group in our culture and make no attempt to integrate or hide. In some ways people should say the same thing about Christians!

The other day, Elton John was quoted as saying that religion should be banned because it lacks compassion and attacks homosexuals. He was clearly talking about christianity when he said that. This is how the church is increasingly being portrayed in our culture... the lunatic fringe, intolerant and weird.

We can fight back with our own defencive rhetoric.

Or we can regroup, and transform into a missional church that engages, redeems and eventually transforms the culture.

I'll talk about chapter 2, "Jesus the Exile" next time.