the occasional blogger

I tweeted this yesterday. "It seems that certain Christian groups are more willing to tolerate theological weakness than any methodological flexibility."

I felt I should follow it up with some brief explanation and expansion here on the blog I believe this mentality is dangerous to the cause of the gospel because it robs churches of a willingness to contextualize and use effective methodology. It happens most often when we elevate methods to the level of theology. When that happens it weakens our theology at it's core. When we say non-absolutes are as important or authoritative as absolutes - we are shooting ourselves in the proverbial foot.

When we make statements like "God never changes so we should not" we are saying "let's park right here methodologically" never mind how we got here or whether we plan to stay in the business of spreading the gospel to the next generation who are not in the same place spiritually as previous generations were. The implication for the next generation of Christians is usually as follows... when this type of stagnation is signaled by an older generation it prompts younger generations to look elsewhere for gospel centered, contextualized partnerships. I will not name any particular group or denomination because it happens all across the board in seminaries, churches and denominations.

In my brief experience - often times those who say that methods do not change would rather be friendly and in partnership with those who are stylistically and methodologically similar, even if the second party has weird theological quirks or strange interpretations of scripture in some instances. It doesn't make sense to me and doesn't jive with a large part of my generation and the next.

My hope is to be part of cooperation that finds it's theological center in Scripture and derives it's methodological diversity from the context in which we minister. We expect no less of international missionaries. But what about us? Aren't we all missionaries... put here by our missionary God to share the gospel! I hope to base my gospel partnerships on something much deeper and scriptural than ministry style or whether a dude wears the same pants as me. That's what I think! But what do you think?