Must the Church Pursue a Global Equilibrium?

I always appreciate it when thinkers carefully examine unstated premises.  I always think about an episode of the West Wing in which one main character is repeatedly advised to handle reporters by "rejecting the premise" of their questions. I believe that Singaporean Church leader Patrick Fung's ability to do this -- to put the premise of his paper's title ("Partnering in the Body of Christ toward a New Global Equilibrium") under the microscope-- is what makes his contribution to the Lausanne Congress so valuable.

Fung's self-conscious article presents a very important question. Should a global equilibrium of power, resources, and influence be pursued at all?  Phillip Jenkins and others have done a good job of pointing out to us that the majority of Christians now live in the global south while most of the power and influence remains in Western countries.  But as I read Fung, I must acknowledge that this fact alone mustn't be the sole reason that we pursue a global equilibrium in the Church.  Rather, our goal is world evangelism, not equilibrium.  Writes Fung, "I am glad that LCWE stands for Lausanne Congress for World Evangelization and not Lausanne Congress for World Equilibrium."  This is an important point. We must not be saying "to the extent to which pursuing global equilibrium in the Church is the nice thing to do, we must do it." Rather we must say "to the extent to which pursuing a global equilibrium in the Church contributes to the extension of God's reign and fame among all peoples and nations, we must do it."

To this point, I want to say three things -- things that I think Fung is also saying.

First, we may speak of a geographic, financial, numerical, or intellectual "center of gravity" in the Church, but the only "center of gravity" that has any real meaning is the theological one -- Christ is the one and only "center of gravity" for the Church.

This, of course, isn't a point original to me, but rather comes from something I read in the Lausanne Theology Working Group paper.  Let me provide an extended quote here:

"We rejoice in the phenomenal growth of the church in the majority world of the global south, and for that reason we understand the intention of the statement that the 'centre of gravity' of world Christianity has shifted south.  However, we strongly discourage the further use of this term, for two reasons.  First, Christianity has no centre but Jesus Christ.  We are defined by no geographical centre, but only by our allegiance to the Lordship of Christ, and he is Lord of all the earth.  The 'centre', therefore, is wherever he is worshipped and obeyed. Secondly, any talk of a centre (other than Christ) undermines the fact that Christianity, even since the book of Acts, has always been fundamentally polycentric. Anywhere on earth can be a centre, and any centre can rapidly become peripheral.  The global nature of the church as 'one throughout the whole wide world' subverts the language of a centre--whether geographic, numerical, or missionary. Mission is from everywhere to everywhere."


Second, for the gospel to be the gospel, there is a need for a kind of global equilibrium in the Church.  This is because a full-orbed understanding of the gospel includes the good news that God is creating out of fragmented and broken humanity, one new humanity, the Church.

So there can be no true gospel and no true evangelization unless it includes the presentation of this new reconciled humanity.  And I sense a growing chorus of voices on this point.  It is here in Fung's article, "Christ has destroyed the barrier . . . has brought into being nothing less than a new, united human race . . . the message of reconciliation is to be lived out by God's new community, which the fragmented world needs to see." It is also in the Lausanne Theology Working Group paper, "It is important to see how this 'peace-making' work of the cross -- reconciling Jews and Gentiles, and creating on new humanity -- is not just a by-product of the gospel, but is of the essence of the gospel itself." It there in the words of Antoine Rutayisire who, when speaking of factors contributing to the Rwandan genocide of the 1990s, mourned the fact that conflicts between missionaries from different denominations "created more divisions and animosities among the people who did not see Christianity as a unifying factor but rather another colonial importation." It is, of course, in the Lausanne Covenant itself which states, "our disunity undermines our gospel of reconciliation" and the Manila Manifesto which affirms "the urgent need for churches, mission agencies and other Christian organizations to cooperate in evangelism and social action, repudiating competition and avoiding duplication." And more voices besides these could be cited.  Praise the Holy Spirit as He works to move us more and more to this point of common ground.

Third, for a global equilibrium to be built upon an a priori commitment to God's global mission, it will necessarily look different than conceptions of equilibrium that are based on a rather arbitrary sense of niceness, fairness, or democracy.

And I'm not meaning to be cute here, but Fung has raised a critical specific point that alludes to this larger one.  His specific point is this, "although a better state of equilibrium will avoid the tendency of dependency, the biblical concept of partnering in the body of Christ should be interdependence". Now, I can't tell you how tempted I am to chase that rabbit trail, but I will try to exercise a bit of self-control and simply suggest, in agreement with Fung, that it is unbiblical to hold up independence and autonomy as signs of spiritual maturity either for individuals, local churches, or national/regional churches.  The three (to four) self formula is fundamentally flawed if it cannot allow for the kind of permanent interdependence that the Bible calls for.

Now it is this Biblical interdependence that must become what we mean by equilibrium.  It is not that the Holy Spirit distributes the same gifts, history, resources, experiences, and knowledge to every person, church, and region in precisely the same ways so as to facilitate our human conception of fairness.  Rather, it is that the Holy Spirit distributes gifts as He wills for the common good (1 Cor. 12).  We are all supposed to be strong in some ways and weak in others.  For in this, we cannot but come together.  The real problem may not be that Western churches "have all the power, influence, scholarship and resources", but rather that we in the West have failed to recognize the richness in majority world Churches that we desperately need.  Likewise we fail to recognize value that lies outside our normal categories of assessing value.  So that if we continue to only think of equilibrium in terms of balancing money, influence, information, and the like then we will never achieve Biblical interdependence (i.e. equilibrium) that also calls us to value a whole range of other categories such as prayer, worship, persecutions, powerlessness, poverty, joy, and more.

A Non-Contextualized Gospel is No Gospel At all: Rwanda Reflections

Today, I read Antoine Rutayisire's compelling article "Rediscovering the Gospel of Reconciliation" which has been submitted in anticipation of his plenary presentation at the 3rd Lausanne Congress in Cape Town.  Let me begin by simply commending Brother Antoine's paper to you. I believe it provides (an all too brief) important recounting of factors leading and contributing to the Rwanda massacre of the 1990s which resulted in the deaths of more than 1 million Tutsis.

Now, understand that I've spent most of my time the past couple days thinking about contextualization in my own setting as a worker among South Asians.  I've been having face-to-face conversations, replying to emails, producing resources, etc.  So I am immersed in certain kind of thinking that predisposes me to read Antoine's article a certain way.  That's my disclaimer.  But, I really do believe that one of the things our brother was saying as a significant factor leading to the Rwandan Church's failure (note: that Rutayisire understands the genocide as a Church failure since Rwanda was 90% Christian at the time). was the failure of the Church to contextualize the message of Christ.

Writes Antoine, "It was very clear that the message that was presented was not contextualized to respond to the needs and problems of the nation." Indeed three of four of the factors mentioned in this paper point to a deficiency of contextualization in Rwanda. Here's my paraphrasing of Antoine's points:

1. The message was partial and didn't speak to the needs of the context.  

Well, this, frankly speaking, is no gospel at all. The gospel is supposed to be the good news, after all.  And for the gospel to be understood as truly good news, it must speak to what the audience already understands to be the bad news.  A non-contextualized gospel doesn't take this into consideration.  It is a non-gospel.

2. The means of presenting the gospel was totally foreign and essentially incomprehensible.

Antoine speaks in Paul Hiebertian echos as he refers to issues of "excluded midde" and "split-level Christianity." The non-contextualized gospel had no power to penetrate hearts.  No power to disciple.  No power to transform.  Since a significant component of the good news is that we can be changed, here again we see that a non-contextualized gospel was no gospel at all.

3. The messengers modeled division rather than unification.

Here Antoine points out that fighting between missionaries of different denominations modeled the kind of Christian against Christian hatred that contributed to the ethnic tensions.  As a result, even more and deeper divisions were created and "people did not see Christianity as a unifying factor but rather another colonial importation." I am fascinated by Antoine's linking together of the concept of divisiveness and the foreignness of the gospel.  Again we see that the failure to incarnate, to contextualize is connected to the presentation of a non-gospel -- since it is the case that the good news included the creation of one reconciled humanity -- the Church.

So, I know it is partly because of my vantage point, but I here in this paper from Brother Antoine Rutayisire, a call to contextualize and a sobering warning for the Church of what happens when we don't.