About every 500 years, the church undergoes a radical paradigm shift. Almost 500 years ago, Martin Luther sparked the Reformation in reaction to the Roman Catholic Church. This spawned numerous denominations, and split the church asunder. We are now near the end of that era, and God is beginning to do something new. The church, which has been split in order to preserve the truth, is now being re-united in order to restore universality. What was gained in the Reformation is now being taken up into a larger covenant renewal. It appears that the means whereby God is recreating His church is as a METROPOLITIAN CHURCH as opposed to a DENOMINATIONAL church. This is closer to original New Testament picture. In the New Testament, the church is referred to as "the church at Ephesus," or "the church at Rome," or "the church at Corinth," even though it may have been comprised of many individual congregations. Likewise, the church is once again moving toward becoming a metropolitan church. We must begin to view the church as "the true city within the city" and the leadership of the church are the true bishops of the whole city.

A thousand years ago, St. Patrick, and many other missionaries entered demon infested lands populated by pagans who animistically worshipped the gods of the forest. The missionaries offered protection against the fierce and terrible gods that enslaved the people. Today, the bishops of each city must offer protection against the new gods. The background is no longer the dark forest or jungle, but the jungle of modern city. Demons no longer inhabit rocks and trees, but the "works of our own hands," our modern technology and our rational constructs. Modern people, both the man on the street and the leader of the city, need new spiritual protection, orientation and direction, and the church and its leaders are those who offer all of this now, just as the early missionaries did in their own context. We do not believe that denominations are going to disappear, but that they are going to become less significant as God does a new thing in the city with the metropolitan church.

The difference between the constitutive and corrective views underlies the pronounced disagreements among Lutheran theologians in America today. The evangelical catholic movement is clearly on the corrective side of the debate. The Reformers were not Protestants and did not, in any way, resemble modern Protestantism. Modern Protestantism is largely the outcome of the various reducing diets administered by four hundred years of scholasticism, pietism, rationalism, revivalism, romanticism, idealism, and historicism. Barth called modern Protestantism a heresy. It is not the legitimate heir of the Reformation. Ecclesiologically it has become the illegitimate offspring that, by almost every criterion of church doctrine and practice, exists in betrayal of the founding confessions and catechisms of the Reformation.

The term evangelical catholic is itself not new. I do not know with whom it originated. Söderblom used it when he recommended that the three main blocs of world Christianity be called Greek Catholic, Roman Catholic, and Evangelical Catholic. The word catholic, he argued, should not be reserved for any one church. After all, the word appears for a reason in the Apostles' Creed and the Nicene Creed that all orthodox Christians and churches confess. (Mother Church, pp 86-7)

This week, the House of Bishops of the Episcopal Church in the United States of America (ECUSA) confirmed Gene Robinson, an openly homosexual priest, as New Hampshire's bishop. In a separate measure, the bishops also affirmed that ceremonies blessing homosexual and lesbian unions were "an acceptable practice within the church."

The magnitude of these events for the Anglican churches is incalculable. From all over the world, Anglican archbishops, bishops, priests, and theologians condemned the action as unbiblical, contrary to the historic teaching of the church, and even contrary to recent decisions of the Anglican churches. Even within the US, many of the bishops refused to return to the meeting of the house of bishops after the vote was taken. Though some are diplomatically talking about "realignment," the reality is that schism threatens the Anglican churches.

It is easy for us to dismiss these events from our concerns. It's not our problem, we think. We are not Episcopalians, and we are in a church and in a denomination that would never countenance sodomy. Some of us left liberal denominations, and think that in doing so we left these problems behind. That is not a Christian response, that is a sectarian response. It is our problem. Many congregations of ECUSA may be synagogues of Satan, and many may be rapidly becoming so. But the churches of the Anglican communions are churches of Jesus Christ, the members wear the same baptism as you do, they are brothers and sisters, members of the same visible body of Christ. We can't pretend to have nothing to do with them, for when one member of the body suffers, we all suffer.

The Bishops' decision, and similar events in other churches, show us just how desperate the church's situation is in our day. Large segments of the church in America and in other parts of the world are ruled by men who lack the most elementary moral discernment, who refuse to submit to the clear teaching of Scripture, and who have deliberately placed themselves at odds with the catholic witness of the church throughout the centuries. A large segment of the church is ruled by people who hearing cannot hear, who seeing cannot see.

What can we do? One obvious thing is to join in prayer with faithful brothers and sisters in the Anglican churches - and there are millions around the world. And Mary's song in Luke 1 gives us some hints about what to pray for. Mary lived in a time when Israel was ruled by Romans, and, even worse, by the Idumean King Herod and wicked priests. When she heard that the Lord was giving her a son who would take David's throne, she rejoiced not only for her good fortune, but for the good fortune of Israel. She rejoiced because the Lord was beginning to scatter the proud, to put down the mighty from their thrones, to send the rich empty away. We can make that our prayer for the whole church, that the Lord would throw down the proud from their high places and exalt the humble poor. We should pray for God to act, and to judge.

On the other hand, the fact that such men rule a portion of Christ's church is itself a judgment of God. God often judges His people by giving them wicked rulers. And it is a judgment on the whole body of Christ, not merely on ECUSA. So, our prayers should not only be prayers that God would act and judge, but prayers of confession and penitence. When we model our prayers on Mary's song, we must do so in sackcloth and ashes.

I find it interesting that the Bible does not use the word "church" singular to refer to regional or national bodies. (Of course, there is the bride of Christ, the church throughout the world and throughout history that will be spotless at the last day, but she transcends regions and nations.) Throughout the NT, the usage is consistent: there is one church per city (e.g. the church at Corinth, at Ephesus, etc), which is made up of smaller churches, "from house to house." Any geographical unit larger than a city is spoken of in terms of "churches" plural (e.g. the churches in Galatia, in Asia Minor, etc).

So, when denominations or church bodies refer to themselves with the word "church" singular, they miss the biblical pattern. Based on this, I maintain that the ECUSA, despite its name, is not a church, but an association of churches - i.e. a sort of club. And for that reason I would judge churches/dioceses in the ECUSA, even now, on a case by case basis.

The Holy Spirit is the personal presence in the church of God's eschatological future in Christ. He is the Paraclete, the promised comforter. Can we deny that Christians have often appropriated the Paraclete to keep themselves comfortable in the establishment - as long as it favors them? The Spirit has often been invoked as a nonrevolutionary principle in the church, keeping it quiet and submissive. The church must be on guard lest the appeal to the Spirit becomes a way to keep Christians warm inside their ecclesiastical huddles.

The Spirit, rightly understood, is not a principle of comfort for those who have it made. He is the fire of the spiritual movement that is spreading around the world in the name of Christ and the chief source of inspiration in the advocacy of a world-transforming truth. Literally, parakaleo means "called to the side of." This suggests that we can think of the Spirit as the principle of one-sidedness, not the presider over the lukewarm middle. The Spirit calls people to one side, to take a side; this call can very well spell offense to the trustees of the establishment. In the history of the church, the Spirit has not only been the comfort of the conservatives but also the fire of the radicals. In retaliation, the ruling classes always erect a cross for those who threaten their positions of power and prestige. The Spirit is the defender of those who take up the cause of the Man who died on the cross outside the gate. Thus he became an outsider so that all those outside may be given a place inside the kingdom of God. (pp 57-8)

You're Spain!

You like rain on the plain, as well as interesting architecture and a diverse number of races and religions. You like to explore a lot [...].