intersections

Bloggin' the 28 - Baptism: Naturalization in a New Community

About two weeks ago I wrote a piece on the doctrine of the church. In that piece I argued that the church is an alternative community – a distinct polis – called together (ekklesia) by Christ and sent to be witnesses to the reign of God.

In thinking about the doctrine of baptism – and in an attempt to turn our attention to the practice of baptism and the question of what baptism is for – I’d like to expand, briefly, on this notion of the church as a new society or a new polis.

In these series of essays on the 28 Fundamental Beliefs we are being asked to examine how our beliefs translate into action. That is, how does the official statement of what we believe lead us toward an understanding of Christian habits and practices? So, the crucial question is not what one believes about the church or about baptism or any other doctrine, but how one practices those beliefs and how those practices shape our life and witness in the world.

The practice of being the church is essentially the practice of being a distinct people (the people of God) with a distinct way of life (worship, Eucharist, hospitality, etc) and a distinct purpose (witness). The Apostle Peter gives one of the best descriptions of this:

But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. Beloved, I urge you as aliens and exiles to abstain from the desires of the flesh that wage war against the soul. Conduct yourselves honorably among the Gentiles, so that, though they malign you as evildoers, they may see your honorable deeds and glorify God when he comes to judge (1 Peter 2:9-12, NRSV).

Notice the repeated emphasis on being “a people” and the idea of aliens and exiles (or strangers). This is Peter’s theology of the church.

Baptism, then, is basically inauguration into this new community. In my Bible studies to prepare people for baptism we use the metaphor of naturalization.

Senate Debating S-CHIP Reauthorization

The Senate is debating S-CHIP reauthorization right now. You can watch it live on C-SPAN 2 here. They are due to vote later today. The polarization on this is really mind boggling.

Using Lies to Give Kids the Shaft

Yesterday, the House voted 265-159 in favor of expanding the incredibly popular S-CHIIP program, thereby opening the reality of health insurance to 4 million currently uninsured kids in America. In spite of ridiculous accomodations to Senate Republicans which, for instance, forbid covering LEGAL immigrant kids until they've been in the US for 5 years, the House still could not manage the necessary 290 votes to veto-proof the bill. I spent the whole day with C-SPAN streaming over the internet while I worked and I listened, first hand, to the debate. The lies continue to be told in spite of the facts, which are well documented - lies like that the program will cover illegal immigrants kids, adults, and families making op to $83,000 per year. The Republican fear-mongers keep telling these tired old lies. Of course, the big "boogie man" is the "slippery slope" argument that this is the first step toward providing health insurance to all Americans. As if health insurance were a human right or something. Pshhaww!

Naturally, Bush wants the money spent on health insurance funneled through private insurers so the rich can keep on getting richer while sick people keep getting denied and left to die from tooth aches and such. Meanwhile he has the audacity to suggest that the Democrats are playing politics with children. When 80+% of the American people wish to see all Children covered by health insurance and there is strong bipartisan support in both houses of Congress to expand this program, then who, Sir, is paying politics with children's health. The accusation just won't stick.

The Senate is due to vote on the bill today. They will likely get 69 or more votes - enough to override a veto. But if Bush keeps his promise and vetoes kids' health, then the Senate will most likely not get to cast that veto override vote, because the veto override will come to the House first. Unless we can flip the remaining 8 Democrats who voted against the bill (likely on grounds that it excludes LEGAL immigrant kids) and 17 Republican's we will not be able to override the President's veto.

For a breakdown of who voted for and against, please click here. If your Representative voted against this, please call them and tell them you're appalled and that you'll remember this come election time.

P.S. What's up with our Representative, Diane Watson? Why did she abstain?

Catching up on Bloggin' the 28

Here are the latest installments from the Bloggin' the 28 project:

The Holy Spirit - written by my friend Tompaul Wheeler.

Experiencing Salvation, Practicing Grace, by  Sharon Fujimoto-Johnson

Town Hall Meeting with Majority Leader Karen Bass

As I mentioned below, LA Voice held a Town Hall Meeting last night with Majority Leader, Karen Bass (pictured, with me, at left), along with staff representatives from the offices of the Governor, Speaker Fabian Nunez, Senator Sheila Kuehl, and Congresswoman Lucille Roybal-Allard.

The attendance was somewhere beween 100 and 200 - a far cry from the 1,100 we estimate attended the Housing Action back in July, but an effective Town Hall meeting, nonetheless.

In spite of all the great statements that were made, I read pretty discouraging news in the LA Times today. Check it out here. We need to keep this Special Legislative Session in our prayers that the interests of our children will win out over some political grudge-match!

Health Care Town Hall tonight

Tonight I will be chairing a Town Hall Meeting on Health Care issues in California. While the Governor has called a special legislative session to deal with this particular issue, our focus remains on making sure the children of California get covered by Jan 2008 - that means legislation AND funding.

Tonight we have Assembly Majority Leader, Karen Bass (47th District) join us, as well as representatives from the staffs of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and Speaker Fabian Nunez.

This town hall is part of a series of Town Halls being conducted by the federations in PICO California on the issue of Children's Health.

A lot of these issues are coming to a head all at once. At the federal level we expect legislation on S-CHIP to reach President Bush's desk by early next week.

(Click image to enlarge)

Redbooks: Our search for Ellen White

I've been looking forward to seeing "Red Books" at the Association of Adventist Forums Conference in Santa Rosa on Sept 28. But if you live in Southern California, you have a few chances to see this play. You can visit the website and learn all about the play and see the schedule. In short, it will be at the Eagle Rock Church in Glendale tonight and tomorrow night (Sept 17 & 18), and at La Sierra University in Riverside, Oct. 5 & 6. For more info, click here.

Here's what Hollywood member Lennox Fleary had to say -

Just got back from watching "Redbooks" at the Eagle Rock church. If I didn't have a rehearsal tomorrow night at 8, I would see it again tomorrow night. Not only did I feel proud to be Adventist, I sensed something Ryan has been talking about the past few months: "the Spirit of God is at work in his people" There are conversations happening in Hollywood that are so well represented in this piece that I was actually amused at the similarity of the dialogue to our own discussions. It's not just a piece about Ellen White, although the story begins there. To me, it's about honest, open conversation that begins with questions and commitment (emphasis added).

Very nice, Lennox. I hope more of our members will see it!

Bloggin' the 28 - The Church: Witnessing to the Reign of God

The Seventh-day Adventist Church has historically had a weak ecclesiology. This is due, in part at least, to the church’s eschatology, which made the church virtually irrelevant. Adventism arose as a movement, drawing attention to the nearness of Jesus return and preaching a message of personal preparedness for ‘the day of the Lord.’ The early Millerites had no intention of forming a new denomination.

Even after being expelled from their local Baptist, Methodist and other churches, these Adventists did not expect to organize a church. Questions of what it meant to be the people of God on this earth were far from their minds. Indeed, for nearly two decades after the Great Disappointment, the little band of Adventists resisted organization, claiming that organization was the first step toward becoming Babylon. Eventually, the need to sustain the work into the future made it necessary to organize and so, in 1863, the Seventh-day Adventist Church officially formed.

Still, ecclesiology did not register on the theological radar for over a century! It wasn’t until 1980 in the 3rd version of the Fundamental Beliefs that the church finally articulated it’s ecclesiology. Today our official statement reads as follows:

The church is the community of believers who confess Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour. In continuity with the people of God in Old Testament times, we are called out from the world; and we join together for worship, for fellowship, for instruction in the Word, for the celebration of the Lord’s Supper, for service to all mankind, and for the worldwide proclamation of the gospel. The church is the bride for whom Christ died that He might sanctify and cleanse her. At His return in triumph, He will present her to Himself a glorious church, the faithful of all the ages, the purchase of His blood, not having spot or wrinkle, but holy and without blemish. (Gen. 12:3; Acts 7:38; Eph. 4:11-15; 3:8-11; Matt. 28:19, 20; 16:13-20; 18:18; Eph. 2:19-22; 1:22, 23; 5:23-27; Col. 1:17, 18; Jude 24.)

I share that brief history to say this: the Seventh-day Adventist Church has, in my view, backed reluctantly into its ecclesiology. We hoped we would never need one. Due to this reluctance, we have still not done serious ecclesiological work (one exception being Richard Rice's small volume, Believing, Behaving, Belonging. Yet I believe there are, implicit in the Adventist psyche, the seeds of a robust ecclesiology that can give renewed meaning to a new generation of Seventh-day Adventists who wish to be the people of God, giving tangible witness to the present and arriving reign of God.

An Incarnational Community – Being the Body of Christ
The official Adventist statement of belief begins by saying the church is “the community of believers.” The important word there is community. The Apostle Paul frequently refers to the church as the Body of Christ (ex. Rom 12:5; 1 Cor 12:12,27).

The literal body of Christ became known to human beings through the incarnation – “the word became flesh and blood and moved into the neighborhood” (John 1:14, The Message). When the Father and the Son gave the Spirit to the church after Jesus’ ascension to heaven, the church became the incarnation of God on earth – the body of Christ.

The key implication for the question we are addressing in this series is that the church is the church only as a community. Individually I am not the church. As people enter the church through baptism, they die to self. They are joining themselves to a social reality that places togetherness and community above individualism.

This is especially important because of the radical individualism that characterizes Western culture. The church becomes a place where my individualism gets challenged. This is why churches that make their whole ministry about catering to people’s “felt needs” are in many ways not the church at all. This is a serious challenge to our ways of worship, theory of church growth, our reasons for meeting in “small groups,” and so much more.

An Alternative Community - the Church as Embodied Witness
The Seventh-day Adventist Church is not historically a mainstream movement. Deep in the Adventist psyche is a sense that we are different. Some have even observed a sort of inferiority or martyr complex. We’re not like other churches. We’re not Catholic. We’re not like those “liberal churches.” We’re also not Pentecostal and many are uncomfortable with being labeled Evangelical. We worship on a different day, we eat different food. We have been patently sectarian in almost every way.

While many of us (myself included) have attempted to throw off the stricture of sectarian identity in recent years, I have come to realize that this “differentness” is a resource.

One theological imagination about the church is that, in the words of Peter, we are a “peculiar people.”

But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light” (1 Peter 2:9, KJV).

The central task of the church is “witness” – or in the Greek, marturia. Part of being witnesses is to demonstrate, in our communal life, what the kingdom is like. The body of Christ is called to be a demonstration – an embodied witness – of the loving reign of God. This leads many theologians, like Stanley Hauerwas, to assert that the number one thing the church can do to give witness to the gospel of the kingdom is to be the church. When the church is focused on being the church – and not trying to be a corporation or an amusement park or something else – the world is able to see what God has in mind of the whole world. In this way, the church is a foretaste of the coming kingdom.

What kind of embodied witness does scripture call for? The New Testament is loaded with these narratives and mandates. The church witnesses to the forgiveness of God by being a reconciling community; a community that knows how to receive and extend God’s forgiveness. The church witnesses to the grace and hospitality of God by receiving strangers and extending God’s hospitality to ‘the other.’ The church embodies God’s future reign of peace and justice by being agents of peace and justice in the world today. The church gives demonstrable witness to God’s intention to heal all creation by being agents of healing and wholeness in our communities, caring for the environment and bringing God’s healing to the point of the world’s greatest pain.

We are also called to give witness in ways that are even more “alternative” and counter to the prevailing culture. It is not enough for the church to witness to God’s kingdom by the things it embraces. We are also called to the more difficult task of bearing witness through resistance.

There are some things that are just inconsistent with the gospel of the kingdom. For example – and here again, Adventists are uniquely positioned to be this embodied witness – followers of the Way of Jesus cannot embrace our world’s way of violence. Jesus was a person of uncompromising peace. He was a pacifist. Our Adventist forebears understood this. And so we are called to give witness to God’s reign of peace by resisting war and other forms of violence and exploitation.

The calling of the church is always unique to time and place. Our time is a time of globalization and the near deification of free markets. This has led, culturally, to a moment in time when virtually everything, including human relationships, have been turned into objects and commodities. It is my feeling that the gospel requires the church to be imaginative about the way it lives its life in the midst of this kind of global capitalistic empire. Too many Christians, and churches, drink far too uncritically from the cultural well of capitalism without asking some basic questions about what it means to be God’s peculiar people.

I don’t know all the ways that this plays out but I’m pretty sure it means that churches that are serious about witness must question the unrestrained consumption that characterizes our society. We have to question our energy consumption. We need to question our living patterns that have placed us in gated-communities, far from our places of work and worship, which require long commutes which fragment our lives and destroy the environment.

So, being an alternative community is about both embrace of certain ways of being in the world and well as resistance to the ways the world attempts to “force us into its mold.” Sabbath can help us learn to resist and “unplug” from these destructive patterns of life.

In all these ways – and many more – the church is designed to be an embodied witness to the reign of God. This is about more than simply being social activists. It is also about more than proclaiming a reduced gospel of “saving souls.” No one but the church can do this work. Only by taking seriously the question of what it means to be the people of God in a place can the church move past narrow and reduced forms of witness, to a fully rounded demonstration of God’s future.

An Eschatological Community – Witnessing to the Telos of God
And speaking of God's future, an Adventist theology of the church must include an understanding of what it means to be an eschatological community. From our initial days as a people, Adventists have had their eyes on God’s horizon. We are a people oriented toward the future of God and how God’s future is approaching us in the present.

As such, our sense of what it means to be the church cannot be short-sighted. This is where our embodiment of God’s kingdom goes beyond mere social activism. Our witness is pointed forward to God’s ultimate future, which is now only seen “through a glass darkly.” As one theologian friend of mine is fond of saying, “Jesus said the kingdom of God is at hand, not in hand.” Some churches have acted as though the kingdom of God was in hand – that is, they were bringing the kingdom of God into being. Other churches have behaved as though the kingdom were not even at hand, but something far in the future and unrelated to life today. Jesus teaches us that the kingdom, while not yet in hand, is certainly at hand.  This is what makes our Christian witness unique and important.

Adventists are perfectly positioned to speak of the church as an eschatological community, oriented toward the telos – the purposes – of God. The church is always doing many things at once: forming people in the narrative of God through worship and other practices, so that they can witness to what God is up to in the world now and ultimately what God has in mind for the whole world in the future.

Being a Missional Church
What I have shared is just the tip of the iceberg about the church. While I have not used the language of “missional church” in this essay until now, all that I have said is about what it means to be a missional church.

I will get one more stab at some of these themes in a few days when I write on the doctrine of Baptism. More could also be said about the church as politics, the church as a community of practice, the importance of Eucharist and what it means to be a Eucharistic community, and so much more.

For now, my argument is that the church is essential. We cannot carry out God mission in the world without the church! After all, it is "His intent was that now, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms, according to his eternal purpose which he accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Eph 3:9-11).

Broadening and deepening the conversation

I have had an incredible week, so far! I'm now back home after spending three days in Washington, D.C. lobbying on behalf of uninsured children in our community. In the next two weeks we expect Congress to present a unified SCHIP bill to President Bush for his signature. Bush has promised to veto the bill, but the compromise bill (what's called a Conference Report) may be more palatable for him - we hope! Please join me in praying for our Congressional leaders and President Bush, that they will do what is right by the roughly 8.6 million uninsured children in our nation.

For more on what you can do, please visit our Cover All Children website. If you are clergy, please sign on to our letter we are delivering to members of Congress and President Bush.

While I was in Washington I also had the privilege of meeting several other wonderful people.

About a month ago I contacted Charles Sandefur, President of ADRA, to see if I could meet him. Back in March Elder Sandefur - or Chuck, as he is now known to me :) - spoke at the Christian Peace Witness for Iraq event at the National Cathedral. I was so impressed by this and the good work that ADRA does under his leadership that I knew I wanted to meet him and get to know him personally. In addition, ever since I learned about the ONE Campaign I have felt that ADRA should join the movement. I wrote to tell Elder Sandefur in March or April, but I wanted to ask him about it directly.

I can testify that Chuck Sandefur is the most intelligent Church administrator I have ever met. With a Ph.D. from Princeton, the man literally talked circles around me on subjects ranging from politics to theology and philosophy, to (of course) the fine intricacies of development work vs. advocacy vs. protesting. Wow! The dinner we ate was good, but the real meal was the conversation! He is one amazing man that I hope to stay in touch with.

Plus, I heard from the man himself that ADRA has just joined ONE! Yeah!

Then, I had a chance to meet with my two church members Kori Galvan and Teri Gamble who now live in Silver Spring while Kori finishes her B.A. in Theology at Columbia Union College. It was SO GREAT to see them and we all talked as fast as we possibly could because I only had 30 minutes, because...

Then, I caught the Metro back up to Union Station where I had the joy of meeting with Brian Swarts (who I've written about here and here). I had never met Brian in person, though we've talked on the phone several times and passed emails back and forth. Brian is a very bright, passionate young man who is making a huge difference in the world through is work in Jubilee USA.

It was a long day! But so rewarding to be able to broaden and deepen the conversation in Adventism toward a promising future.

Camp Meeting 2.0 - Bloggin' the 28

Once again, I've fallen behind in posting the articles in our series, Bloggin' the 28. There are the most recent two installments.

From Nathan Brown, in Australia, comes an essay entitled, Escape or Energiser, regarding the Adventist doctrine of the Second Coming.

Rather than being tempted to self-centred escapism, the promise of the Second Coming and a recreated world must be a call to a different way of living, serving and relating to those around us. One Australian Christian leader put it this way—Jesus’ promises “fill the present with hope and this with energy. Because the future fills the present with meaning and purpose, we give ourselves to the needs of others, even to the reshaping of society. The Christian hope has vast social consequences. . . . We look back to see what the promises were; we look forward to see them fulfilled; we act now in the light of what is yet to be” (Dr Peter Jensen, The Future of Jesus).

Read the whole thing here and join in the conversation.

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Then, Trevan Osborn weighs in on our newest Fundamental Belief with a post entitled, Growing in Christ. He begins...

Admit it, you have no idea what the newest fundamental belief really teaches.

Read the whole thing here and leave a comment!