In a shocking revelation Jesus is quoted by the Apostle John as saying that all men will know who His disciples are by their love for one another. The apostle Paul takes a little further stating that we must speak the truth in love. Even the Apostle Peter (who is lovingly quoted and used as justification for a lack of honest reporting and brotherly love at some places) says we should have brotherly kindness and love. Oi Vay! Indeed!

Hey Ken, we don’t care if you call out false prophets just have a little integrity (a concept you’ll find in Scripture, too) when you do it. Don’t misquote, leave out quotes and out right lie, please! It’s wrong. It doesn’t honor God. If you really believe the Bible you say you read, you would realize that doing damage to the body of Christ through out-right deciet is the very thing the Apostle Peter is talking about in the passage you quoted.

Ken recently wrote this in his article entitled Does it Really Matter What I Believe

In this postmodern culture we live in, people will often need to be reminded that God is truly beyond our comprehension, as He transcends knowledge, time, and space by infinity. We must help people to understand that God is an all-powerful, disembodied, ultra-dimensional Spirit–Who exists outside any continuum that we can access. In other words, the Creator of the entire universe is way bigger, smarter, and more powerful than we can ever be. You may have heard the old saying: “You ain’t from around here are ya?” Well, not only is God not from around here, the fact is He’s not even anything like us at all!

This sounds alot like contemplative mysticism Ken! Have you joined the dark cult of the ECoD? As long as God “transcends knowledge, time, and space by infinity” we must at least acknowledge that He is “truly beyond our comprehension”. For a man who believes this, you certainly make alot of definitive decisions about what God thinks.

In part one I outlined the need for new missions strategies to bridge the gulf between the churches in North America and the new landscape of the unchurched culture.  Part one also briefly introduced how some are trying to do just that — as well as those on the wall who oppose the translation of Christianity into a new culture.

Dan Kimball is one such translator – he describes the translation process:

“In our church setting, we began bringing back ancient religious symbols and some rituals used throughout church history. We began using some forms of liturgy and responsive readings. Instead of ‘hiding’ the fact that we were gathered to worship, we began praying more, having times of quiet, and teaching more deeply.”

 

As they became more aware of their culture – like any good missionary – Kimball and his team

“…started to add other expressions of teaching – using art and visuals, for example – as well as creating more participatory ways for people to express worship. We still preach, sometimes even 35 or 40 minutes using large sections of Scripture or going through books of the Bible. But we’ve provided more ways for people to worship, to reflect the different ways that individuals express worship and learn. We’ve added some interactive prayer stations and ways for people who may not like to sing to express praise and prayer in art.” There stated goal is to be biblical in doctrine and focus on Jesus… according to Kimball: “In our setting, there is an empty cross front and center in our worship space. The focal point is the risen Jesus, not the worship leader or preacher. When I speak, it is from off to the side or down among the congregation. The music leader and band are off to the side as well. The cross is the main thing people see and focus on during worship.”

 

Who could oppose this?  Someone for who form is more important than function. It’s easy to oppose such translation of Christianity, if your goal is to preserve how things are done and you ignore what things are believed.

In his opposition to this method, Ken Silva writes,

“…those of us who truly love Christ and His Church should educate worshippers concerning this Roman bondage of religious idolatry and these heretical practices of contemplative mysticism which originated in pagan religions and then flowered through the antibiblical monastic traditions of the apostate Church of Rome.”

 

Notice Silva gives no biblical reasons why this is “antibiblical.” He offers no reasons why these practices are “mystical,” “heretical,” or “idolatry.” What he does offer is a litany of emotionally charged terms – and the origin of the practice and its association with Rome, both logical straw men.

It’s time to deconstruct the straw men of Ken Silva. So far I showed the need for new methods of reaching a new culture, an example of these new methods, and a couple straw men thrown together by those more interested in defending the walls of their traditions than they are in rejoicing over the translation of the Gospel into yet another generation. Supposedly, the methods of Dan Kimball and his team are to be rejected on grounds of ancient historical origin and guilt by association.

Regarding the first charge, that the use of ancient symbols and some rituals is to be rejected because they “originated in pagan religions.” Silva’s case is completely lacking. Absent from Silva’s reasoning is 1) What symbols and rituals are pagan?, 2) What pagans used them and when?, 3) What connection is there between those used then and those used now?, and 4) What difference does origin make, what makes them pagan?

This silly argument raises its head several times every year in neo-fundamentalist circles; whether it’s the pagan origins of Christmas trees, the word “Easter,” or even certain styles of crosses – the argument is always the same… and usually as shallow. Because someone at some time used some thing to worship some other god (which is no god really) Christians for all time are prohibited from redeeming said things for God’s glory. The neo-fundamentalists are giving paganism (and Satan by default) much more realm and power than it/he deserves. To assign some eternal ontological meaning to symbols and rituals is to give an authority to demons, Satan, and paganism that they just do not possess. No shape is ontologically pagan – shapes and symbols have exactly the meaning to which a culture gives them. Some symbols, such as the pentagram are pretty much fixed in western culture, but this is due to our assigning them such meaning – it is not ontological. Even if a connection had been made by Silva, the fact that believers 1,500 years ago shed their paganism and redeemed some of their symbols and rituals and dedicated them to the worship of the true God negates the very premise of his objection. Let’s be sure to give Satan his due respect, as it were, this warning we heed from he Scriptures – but let’s not give him more than his due!

Silva also fails to make his case regarding the second objection, that certain symbols and ritual should be rejected because they are antibiblical monastic traditions of the apostate Church of Rome. Again Silva, as is his method, employs emotional terms with no substantive argument. That some rituals and symbols were used by Rome is no more relevant than that some were once used by pagans. And here Silva must pick and choose because neo-fundamentalists use element in their worship that were, and are still, employed by Rome. That is, of course, unless the watchers do not sing hymns of worship, recite Scripture publicly, observe various holidays, etc.

So while they see themselves as watchers on the wall, the wall they defend is not between truth and error, it is an artificially constructed cultural wall – a wall between the Good News of Jesus Christ and a new generation that desperately needs to hear.

Modernity in all its forms held out the utopian promise of indefinite progress for the human race. Science Fiction throughout the 50’s promised a future free of disease, war, poverty, and even religion. Star Trek epitomized this with its stellar character whose driving force was rational logic. Liberal and Marxist ideologies were based on the same dreams of a progressive society where religion would be replaced by more enlightend pursuits. Modernity, of course has failed to deliver.

With this failure, a new generation is reacting against the intellectual optimism of their parents and embracing a much more questioning attitude. Under modernism our faith faced the challenge of rationalism – and it endured, of course. But now we need to rethink our methods of communicating and defending the Gospel because it is being questioned from a whole new perspective… from those who are not born into modernity, but post-modernity.

Samuel Escobar delineates the challenge when he writes; “We must accept as valid the search for a missionary approach that will take seriously the cultural context of that mission field.” “That field” is postmodern Europe and North America. Missiologist George Hunter III sets the bar high when he writes that “the cultural barrier between the churches and the unchurched people is the largest single cause of the decline of European Christianity and a bigger problem for mainline American Christianity. He asks: “The U.S.A. is a vast secular mission field with many cultures and subcultures. Are we imaginative enough to sponsor and unleash many forms of indigenous Christianity in this land?”

To those “contributors from various discernment ministries” the answer is “NO!” We dare not attempt to translate the Gospel into the cultural context of a new mission field lest we allow corruption of the Gospel – or more accurately – their cultural praxis of it.

Hunter points out how some churches in North and Latin America are addressing this gulf;

“In their liturgy, their style of preaching, their way of organizing of people through small groups, and their comfortable atmosphere in terms of dress and lifestyle, these churches have removed the cultural barriers that have kept people away from the traditional churches.”

 

Who could oppose this? Those “contributors [to] various discernment ministries.” – that’s who. We all know who I’m referring to, and we all know what they oppose – any who dare make changes to their culturally bound version of Christianity. True enough, evangelicals in general have always emphasized the need for true doctrine and in this the watch bloggers (to their credit) are no different. Good for them – seriously! But these neo-fundamentalists (great blog here – but don’t get side-tracked and forget to read the rest of mine!) have a “misplaced zeal to preserve cultural forms of previous generations with no regard for cultural change.” While correctly pursuing adherence to biblical doctrine, they institute a modern inquisition on any who want to implement new methods. For example, one such overly-zealous crusade is against those trying to recapture the historical understanding and use of ritual and symbol. And when a supposed misuse is found they wail from their wall.

Every once in a while one of them makes a valid point, but the majority of their wailing from the wall is against form, not beliefs… against methods that they oppose as different from how things should remain… in other words to them “cloneliness is next to godliness” and the way they do it is the sample from which we derive what it means to be truly Christian.

For example, Ken Silva’s Apprising Ministries pages are full of warnings against methodologies that are unbiblical. A quick perusal will show that most of his posts oppose new methods, not new theologies – though he himself often assumes that the former is tantamount to the latter. In a post against Dan Kimball, Silva attacks Kimball for the practice of “contemplative mysticism commonly known as Lectio Divina.”  Silva inserted “mysticism” into the title – with no defense or explanation of his rationale.

This is, of course, the Modus Operandi, of the watchers – Silva is but one. There is a veritable cottage-industry of watchers, most see themselves as Ezekiel-esque… men and women staffing the wall that separates Christianity from apostasy. Yet the wall they sit on does not surround true Christianity – opposing error from within or without – the wall upon which they sit protects their own traditions, their particular cultural expression of the faith, and the warnings they wail are not in defense of true Christianity… but a defense of their own ethnocentricity, how it’s always been done — rarely do they wail against any real dangers to the true faith.

Part two will illustrate this ethnocentric wailing.