Exiles , livre ebook

Baker Publishing Group - Michael Frost

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193 pages

English

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Exiles: Living Missionally in a Post-Christian Culture presents a biblical, Christian worldview for the emergent church--people who are not at home in the traditional church or in the secular world. As exiles of both, they must create their own worldview that integrates their Christian beliefs with the contemporary world. Exiles seeks to integrate all aspects of life and decision-making and to develop the characteristics of a Christian life lived intentionally within emerging (postmodern) culture. It presents a plea for a dynamic, life-affirming, robust Christian faith that can be lived successfully in the post-Christian world of twenty-first century Western society. This book will present a Christian lifestyle that can be lived in non-religious categories and be attractive to not-yet Christians.Such a worldview takes ecology and politics seriously. It offers a positive response to the workplace, the arts, feminism, mystery and worship. Exiles seeks to develop a framework that will allow Christians to live boldly and courageously in a world that no longer values the culture of the church, but does greatly value many of the things the Bible speaks positively about. This book suggests that there us more to being a Christian than meets the eye. It explores the secret, unseen nooks and crannies in the life of a Christian and suggests that faith is about more than church attendance and belief in God. Written in a conversational, easy-to-read style, Exiles is aimed at church leaders, pastors and laypersons and seeks to address complex issues in a simple manner. It includes helpful photographs and diagrams.

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Philosophie et théologie

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Publié par	Baker Publishing Group
Date de parution	01 août 2006
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781441232793
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	3 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0605€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

© 2006 by Michael Frost
Published by Baker Books a division of Baker Publishing Group P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287 www.bakerbooks.com
Ebook edition created 2012
Ebook corrections 06.07.2017
Published jointly, 2006, in the United States by Hendrickson Publishers, Inc., P.O. Box 3473, Peabody, Massachusetts 01961-3473, and in Australia by Strand Publishing, Suites 12–13, Fountain Plaza Business Centre, 148 The Entrance Road, Erina NSW 2250.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
ISBN 978-1-4412-3279-3
Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are from the Holy Bible, New International Version®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com
Cover Photo Credit: Photodisc Photography/Getty Images. Used with permission.
To Carolyn Frost in acknowledgement of her compassion for the urban poor, her deep respect for the marginalized, and her partnership with the forgotten.
C ontents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Note to the Reader
Part I: Dangerous Memories
1. Self-Imposed Exiles
The Memory: God Will Rescue the Exiled People
2. Jesus the Exile
The Memory: Jesus Was a Radical and a Subversive
3. Following Jesus into Exile
The Memory: Jesus Is Our Standard and Example
Part II: Dangerous Promises
4. Exiled from a Hyper-Real World
The Promise: We Will Be Authentic
5. The Exile’s Esprit de Corps
The Promise: We Will Serve a Cause Greater Than Ourselves
6. Fashioning Collectives of Exiles
The Promise: We Will Create Missional Community
7. Exiles at the Table
The Promise: We Will Be Generous and Practice Hospitality
8. Working for the Host Empire
The Promise: We Will Work Righteously
Part III: Dangerous Criticism
9. Restless with Injustice
The Critique: You Have Been an Unjust Empire
10. Exiles and the Earth
The Critique: You Have Not Cared for God’s Creation
11. Comforting the Oppressed
The Critique: You Have Not Protected God’s Children
Part IV: Dangerous Songs
12. Exiles at the Altar
The Song: To God Be the Glory
13. The Songs of Revolution
The Song: Jesus Ain’t My Boyfriend
Epilogue
Resources
Back Cover
N ote to the R eader
A s will quickly become obvious, this book contains a good deal of pointed critique. Much of it I have shared in lectures and presentations around the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the UK. Some of my listeners have reviled it as “church bashing,” while others celebrate it as prophetic. I have never claimed to be doing either. I have no stomach for unsophisticated church bashing. Announcing that the church is like an emperor with no clothes is easy enough. Any fool can do it. And besides, the church seems altogether unchanged by such announcements. As Neil Gaiman says, “It has always been the prerogative of children and half-wits to point out that the emperor has no clothes. But the half-wit remains a half-wit, and the emperor remains an emperor.”
Neither have I ever made claim to being a prophet. A hundred years ago, Mark Twain debunked the over-valued place of the modern-day prophet with this scathing assessment: “I have done some indiscreet things in my day, but this thing of playing myself for a prophet was the worst.” Believe me, I don’t wish to be as equally indiscreet in this matter. I claim no greater insight or higher knowledge. Rather, my goal is to make a thoughtful evaluation of many facets of contemporary church and culture, and to offer helpful suggestions for Christians who wish to improve both of them in ways that are biblically sound and pleasing to God. Clearly, I am in sympathy with the multitudes of people who feel exiled outside of or, worse perhaps, within the traditional church, many whose company I have greatly enjoyed on my travels. Nevertheless, it is neither helpful nor truthful for one part of the body of Christ to dismiss the other parts as utterly defective and withdraw into a fortress constructed of self-righteousness. Thus, as a member and lover of the body of Christ, it is my hope that in this book I will engage and edify the entire church and “speak the truth in love” (Eph 4:15). Wherever I fulfill that marvelous directive from Ephesians, I give thanks, and wherever I fail it, I ask forgiveness.
Finally, I wish to thank those who have helped in the development of this book. Morling College generously granted me leave from classroom teaching to complete its writing. The Forge Missions Training Network has been a fertile and supportive community, and in particular its director, Alan Hirsch, my fellow conspirator and dear friend, gave invaluable feedback. I am indebted to Bob Maccini for his editorial comments. He has saved me much embarrassment. And I am especially grateful to Shirley Decker-Lucke from Hendrickson Publishers, who has supported my writing for some years now and who continues to encourage me to put it all down on paper.
P ART I
D angerous M emories
1
S elf -I mposed E xiles
T he M emory: G od W ill R escue the E xiled P eople

I know that men in exile feed on hopes.
—A ttributed to A eschylus (525–456 B.C.E.)
T his book is written for those Christians who find themselves falling into the cracks between contemporary secular Western culture and a quaint, old-fashioned church culture of respectability and conservatism. This book is for the many people who wish to be faithful followers of the radical Jesus but no longer find themselves able to fit into the bland, limp, unsavory straitjacket of a church that seems to be yearning to return to the days when “everyone” used to attend church and “Christian family values” reigned. This book is for those who can’t remain in the safe modes of church and who wish to live expansive, confident Christian lives in this world without having to abandon themselves to the values of contemporary society. This book is for those Christians who feel themselves ready (or yearning) to jump ship but don’t want to be left adrift in a world where greed, consumerism, laziness, and materialism toss them about endlessly and pointlessly. Such Christians live with the nagging tension of being at home neither in the world nor in the church as they’ve known it. Is there some way of embracing a Christ-centered faith and lifestyle that are lived tenaciously and confidently right out in the open where such a faith is not normally valued? I think so, but it will require a dangerous departure from standard church practice. It seems that the church is still hoping and praying that the ground will shift back and our society will embrace once again the values that it once shared with the Christian community. But for many of us, and for those to whom this book is written, this hoping and praying is a lost cause. We acknowledge that the epoch of history that shaped the contemporary church has crashed like a wave on a shore and left the church high and dry. That epoch is known as the era of Christendom. Christendom has molded our churches into their current form and abandoned them to a world that is completely over it all. I’m not the only voice, and certainly not even the most original voice, declaring that Christendom is over and that we too need to get over it.
“Christendom” is the name given to the religious culture that has dominated Western society since the fourth century. Awakened by the Roman emperor Constantine, it was the cultural phenomenon that resulted when Christianity was established as the official imperial religion, moving it from being a marginalized, subversive, and persecuted movement to being the only official religion in the empire. Whereas followers of Jesus at one time had met secretly in homes and underground in catacombs, now they were given some of the greatest temples and meeting spaces in the empire. They were, in a quite literal sense, handed the keys of the Roman kingdom. As G. K. Chesterton is noted to have said, “The coziness between church and state is good for the state and bad for the church.”
By the Middle Ages, church and state had become the pillars of the sacral culture, each supporting the other. Even where there existed conflicts between church and state, it was always a conflict within the overarching configuration of Christendom itself. Christendom had by this stage developed its own distinct identity, one that provided the matrix for the understanding of both church and state. It had effectively become the metanarrative for an entire epoch. A metanarrative is an overarching story that claims to contain truth applicable to all people at all times in all cultures. And although the Christendom story no longer defines Western culture in general, it remains the primary definer of the church’s self-understanding in almost every Western nation, including, and perhaps especially, the United States.

The Pillars of Christendom
This metanarrative defined not only church and state, but also all the individuals and social structures in its orbit of influence. Members of this society were assumed to be Christian by birth rather than by choice. Christianity became an official part of the established culture of the empire. In some countries, the king or queen became the head of the church. In Germany, the church actually became a function of the state. The net effect over the entire Christendom epoch was that Christianity moved from being a dynamic, revolutionary, social, and spiritual movement to being a static religious institution with its attendant structures, priesthood, and sacraments.
Taken as a sociopolitical reality, Christendom has been in declin