opening statements

When faith crashes into culture there is that silent, sickening anticipation of the violent reaction to come from those who are watching this collision. This would correctly describe the experience I have just completed. I now have the long journey of making sense of what I have seen, heard, and felt during this intense time together. We began this journey from a place where everyone could come together in agreement. I believe that we agree that mission is more than a department in the church but as soon as we began down the road of what mission “is” we were plagued with conflict for the rest of the journey.

How could it be different things to different people if our Jesus is the same as their Jesus? If God is bigger than culture than how can culture affect what we see and why we see it? And the biggest question of them all; has the church, as an institution, co-opted people into a twisted theology of power? These questions are very hard questions to deal with. They are also questions that require a multi-layered approach. I understand there is a hesitancy to approach the issues in a multi-layered manner because of fear of what the end result will be to our “personal” relationship with God.
And yes, this is yet another shot at the oppressive thought process of Western Evangelicalism, but I also believe there is an inability of some sort to address such issues in a health manner that won’t send us off into tangents

The frustration and tension I felt during the intensive and in the time spent afterward was not with those who can’t see the multiplicity of the coded power theology language, but rather with those who defend the oppressive language of the institution because of fear; the fear of what is behind the veil of the wizard. The flipside of this journey is the calling of authentic community while still honestly differing in viewpoints. I must resist the inclination to either convert or walk away. Falling into that trap will make me an alternate reality version of the same institutional perversion that has created the tension I am now walking through. I so desperately want out of this matrix, knowing that the reality that awaits me is not Utopian, but grim and humiliating.

I willingly trade away any rights of passage into Power Theology for the painful, conflicting, and somewhat lonely journey of Street Theology (or what I like to call the Theology of the Oppressed) because I believe in a counter-culture, left of center, God of the oppressed more than I could ever believe in the four spiritual laws and ‘pray until something happens’ way of life.