courageous trust

Dennis McFadden is my friend but we disagree on some pretty significant issues when it comes to church. In his blog Dennis sees the current battles in the American Baptist churches as one of world views, between an "Enlightenment emphasis upon Christian experience (aka 'soul competency' or 'congregational autonomy') vs. the Reformation tradition of 'sola scriptura' ('biblical authority')." I think he is probably correct... but if he is, it is a battle between dinosaurs, both headed towards extinction.
Both mindsets are based in a modern paradigm of how the world works and neither fits in a post-modern context. Just as those structures of reality differ markedly from the pre-modern view of the world, so they will differ completely from the now emerging paradigm. The categories of theology and the core understandings of the Church will not be the same, cannot be the same. As I said in an earlier blog, I believe we are facing a new reformation.
There is another place where we divide that I believe is much more important. Let me pose another question: Did the Church emerge fullblown and mature out of God's head like Athena or was it birthed as a newborn, slowly maturing and adjusting to new contexts? If it was all there at the beginning then the Church is doomed... indeed it has already disappeared because our modern institutions are nothing like those early churches (in spite of what many Christians say, all across the theological and cultural spectrum). If it is contextual, then God still has much to do and much to say and the trajectory of God's salvation history continues to take us into a future we have not seen.
I'm excited by it all... and more than a little anxious (hey, one of those institutions pays my salary)... but a little courageous trust goes a long way.