{"id":4099,"date":"2015-03-16T05:30:11","date_gmt":"2015-03-16T11:30:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/paperbacktheology\/?p=4099"},"modified":"2015-03-16T06:32:36","modified_gmt":"2015-03-16T12:32:36","slug":"scot-mcknights-a-fellowship-of-differents-can-change-your-view-of-the-church","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/paperbacktheology\/2015\/03\/scot-mcknights-a-fellowship-of-differents-can-change-your-view-of-the-church.html","title":{"rendered":"Scot McKnight’s A Fellowship of Differents Can Change Your View of the Church"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"AFD\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Scot McKnight and I noticed a point of resonance in our two most recent books, and thought it would be fun to interact with the other\u2019s work. Specifically, we are attempting to find points of reverberation around the topics of faithfulness, and the church. This is\u00a0my engagement with his latest book. For the other side of the story & some words about Shrink, check here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

Can a person be a Christian and not<\/em> be part of the church? Or, is involvement in the church an essential, even constitutive part of what it means to be a Christian?<\/p>\n

This question occupies many a blog post and op-ed these days. An alarming number of them tending toward the first answer, that following Jesus is something one can do apart from any involvement in a local church. I wish I could get McKnight\u2019s newest book into the hands of everyone who has bought that line.<\/p>\n

\u201cEverything I learned about the Christian life I learned from my church\u2026 a local church determines what the Christian life looks like for the people in that church\u2026 we all learn the Christian life from how our local church shapes us.\u201d (15)<\/em><\/p>\n

Hear, hear\u2026<\/p>\n

A Fellowship of Differents: Showing the World God\u2019s Design for Life Together<\/em><\/a> is the title of the book. It is essentially a working ecclesiology<\/em> rooted in a serious study of the writings of Paul.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe earliest Christian churches were made up of folks from all over the social map,\u201d McKnight says. (19) Churches have always been a fellowship of difference and differents. Christian discipleship is not about what I\u2019m doing as an individual; so much as it is about what I am doing in the mix of this community called the church\u2014a community that is necessarily diverse.<\/p>\n

Why, you ask? Because, the love<\/em> of God is diverse; the very life<\/em> of God is diverse. Naturally the people and communities created with the specific purpose of imaging this God will be diverse. God has not created a homogenous creation, so why would God desire a homogenous church? \u201cThe church God wants is one brimming with difference, and that will mean the Christian life is all about loving whoever happens to be with you in this fellowship of differents.\u201d (67)<\/p>\n

McKnight\u2019s book is more than just an argument for diversity; it\u2019s a thorough exploration of the apostle Paul\u2019s vision for the church. It\u2019s an ecclesiology, but one that is accessible to the average church member, and deep enough to keep the attention of theology-nerds. That\u2019s a difficult needle to thread, and it\u2019s McKnight\u2019s specialty.<\/p>\n

McKnight wants us to fall in love with Paul\u2019s view of the church, a view that is capacious in nearly every respect\u2014gender, socioeconomics, race, culture, style, moralities, politics, language, ages, marital status, and so on\u2014but single minded in its devotion to Christ as Lord.<\/p>\n

One of my favorite sections comes late in the book when McKnight talks about Paul\u2019s view of faithfulness. He notes that the English word for faithfulness<\/em> is actually the word faith<\/em> in Greek. One must determine from the context whether the word means faith<\/em> or faithfulness<\/em>. Sometimes we can\u2019t even tell which one it is. What we know for sure is that Paul\u2019s vision for the church was that they would walk faithfully over the course of a lifetime\u2014that they would finish the race.<\/p>\n

It is at this point that I see such deep resonances between McKnight\u2019s work, and the argument I\u2019m making in Shrink<\/em>. We cannot remake the church in the image of the American Dream. The Jesus way is down. McKnight writes:<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat the church most needs is not heroes of the faith, but faithful followers of Jesus. What your local church needs in order to live out the designs of God for a church, that grand social experiment of bringing all sorts of people to the table and into the circle of one another\u2019s lives, is not great Christians, but faithful Christians.\u201d (164)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Ministry greatness is not the goal of the church. Faithfulness is.<\/p>\n

McKnight is careful to guard against any sense that we can accomplish anything useful to God by virtue of our own strength:<\/p>\n

\u201cFaithfulness is not our own strength muscled up by determination and discipline and grit; nor is it our strength combined with God\u2019s strength. Faithfulness happens when God\u2019s strength is unleashed in us as we look to, lean on, and love God.\u201d (165)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Faithfulness is not about what we can accomplish in our own strength, but about what we can embody as God\u2019s strength unleashed in our lives through our own weakness. What do we embody? Look to the subtitle. We embody nothing less than: God\u2019s design for Life Together<\/em>\u2026 The church embodies God\u2019s design for human communities. \u201cEverything I have said up to this point leads to one grand synthesis,\u201d McKnight says. \u201cGod\u2019s mission in this world is to create the church where God\u2019s will is lived out by all of God\u2019s people.\u201d (183)<\/p>\n

If the church will take it seriously, A Fellowship of Differents<\/em> can do for our view of the church what Blue Parakeet<\/em> did for our view of the Bible. McKnight\u2019s vision for the church\u2014or rather Paul\u2019s vision as described and explored by McKnight\u2014is not about a monolithic fellowship of the doctrinally pure and piously holy. It is not a place that self-made men and women to gather with their chosen affinity groups and pat each other on the back. The church is a challenge to the ways in which the brokenness of the world seeks to divide us. The church is God\u2019s vision for human communities.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Scot McKnight and I noticed a point of resonance in our two most recent books, and thought it would be fun to interact with the other\u2019s work. Specifically, we are attempting to find points of reverberation around the topics of faithfulness, and the church. This is\u00a0my engagement with his latest book. For the other side […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1118,"featured_media":4101,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1268,491,462,1132,297,639,5,296,615,6],"class_list":["post-4099","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-a-fellowship-of-differents","tag-church","tag-ecclesiology","tag-faithfulness","tag-jesus-creed","tag-ministry","tag-paperback-theology","tag-scot-mcknight","tag-shrink","tag-tim-suttle"],"yoast_head":"\nScot McKnight's A Fellowship of Differents Can Change Your View of the Church<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Scot McKnight and I noticed a point of resonance in our two most recent books, and thought it would be fun to interact with the other\u2019s work.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, 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