A map for our time

Out of the Strange Silence: the Challenge of Being Christian in the 21st Century Brad Thiessen, ed. Kindred Productions, 2005. 219 pages.

While at seminary in the early 90s, my family and I enjoyed exploring the beauty of California and made several trips to Yosemite. We played amid the majesty and serenity of Yosemite’s streams and rocks. I remember feeling like a vapour before the uncontested strength and ancient immovability of the world.

So it was with great interest that I read editor Brad Thiessen’s playful introduction to this wonderful anthology of short essays by 13 faculty members of the Mennonite Brethren Biblical Seminary (MBBS), a celebration of the school’s 50th year.

Thiessen chose for the book’s title a metaphor borrowed from the American naturalist John Muir, who in 1872 experienced an earthquake in Yosemite. Muir wrote, “Suddenly, out of the strange silence and strange motion there came a tremendous roar. The Eagle Rock . . . gave way. . . . As soon as those rock avalanches fell, the streams began to sing new songs . . . by [apparent] ruin, the landscapes were enriched. . . .”

With the advent of postmodernism, many churches and pastors find themselves in the changing contours of a world that for a time appeared immovable. Thiessen writes, “Instead of fleeing, Muir ran toward the rock slide and climbed up it to explore.” The import is clear: let’s leap towards God’s new creation.

God is shaking up this world, and in the spiritual stream we call Mennonite Brethren, there are new songs being sung. Our seminary faculty members, entrusted to train tomorrow’s leaders, collectively provide a map to navigate a new age. Readers exploring this map find treasure in four quadrants: the interpretation of Scripture, the empowering nature of biblical discipleship, the contour of spiritual leadership, and the new mission of the church.

In the first section, “Reading Scripture Anew,” Tim Geddert teases us out of traditional patterns of interpretation that may not provide “once-for-all clear and permanent answers to all our questions.”

“But,” Geddert writes, “we are far better off with a Living Word. That is, no doubt, why God gave us that instead of what some people might have preferred.”

A couple of heady essays by Mark Baker and Jon Isaak provide a corrective to the present one-dimensional Euro–American explanation of how Christ’s cross and resurrection provide our salvation. These scholars help us comprehend the meaning of the violence of the cross under the sovereignty of a non-violent God. Can we imagine what the world would look like if all its peoples believed in a non-violent God?

In the second section, “Living the Christian Life,” Jim Holm revisits the simplicity of following Jesus: “Doing what Jesus did might be better than all the workshops and seminars we could attend, or all the books we could read.” Valerie Rempel requests we follow our vocational calling not by answering “Who am I?” but “Whose am I?” Tim Geddert’s life-embracing treatment of Jesus’ teaching on conflict resolution in Matthew 18 suggests a radical departure from historic interpretation and practice in the MB church.

The prophetic voice

In the heart of the book, “Church Leadership in a New Era,” we welcome the new voice of Chris Erdman, pastor of University Presbyterian Church in Fresno and adjunct professor at MBBS. Erdman provides a thoroughly subversive and politically dangerous document in his treatment of Jeremiah. His “Entering the Wreckage: Rescripting the Pastoral Vocation” provokes the church to recover its prophetic voice. Poised on the edge of his own 9/11 political collapse, Erdman admonishes today’s spiritual leaders to imitate Jeremiah who dared to tell the truth and name deadly compromises; to follow Jeremiah as he entered into the nation’s fragile psyche and people’s pain by giving them freedom to grieve what would be lost; to preach counterintuitive sermons unpopular except with the faithful; and lastly, to seek how Jeremiah awakened the exiles’ imagination to the improbability of God’s new beginnings and restoration.

Ray Bystrom follows with “The Emotional Challenges of Pastoral Ministry,” which discloses the inherent dangers connected with both the pastoral role and the pastor’s personality. Bystrom supplies pastors with workable “action plans” to each danger. Rick Bartlett completes the third voice in this area by urging churches to nurture and call young men and women who can listen (hear the people being led), speak (have found their own voice and story), and display a good attitude (a non-negotiable essential).

In the fourth section, “The Church’s Place in the World,” four authors contribute their thoughts towards an enlivened ecclesiology capable of adapting to the rapidly changing environments in which we find ourselves. Jim Westgate re-negotiates God’s purpose for positioning churches in specific neighbourhood communities. Pierre Gilbert teaches that we Christians ought to rejoice we are equipped with a set of universal truths that promotes life in cultures that adopt them.

Bruce Guenther reminds us that a careful reading of our own church history reveals a compromised depiction of Anabaptism; this denies the simple image of a pure past. Coming to grips with a multifaceted past may enable us to appreciate our diversity in the future. Delores Friesen challenges the church to be islands of hope: real agents of healing and compassion to a world laced with pain, most notably in the chronic suffering of the HIV/AIDS pandemic. As if from God, Friesen leaves us with these words: “We must not look away.”

This is a timely book. It calls leaders to reposition themselves as change agents in four ways.

First, our recent Board of Faith and Life study conferences (spiritual warfare, baptism and membership, women in ministry leadership) indicate that Mennonite Brethren must find more effective ways of reading the Bible together. Second, the Spirit beckons us to narrow what seems to be an ever-widening gap between evangelical faith and practice. Third, we are in great need of a new generation of leaders with unprecedented courage and wisdom in a world hostile to the reign of the Prince of Peace. Last, we have set before us our King and his kingdom, who summon us to seek the Christ in places of pain, hopelessness, and despair.

Pastors and conference leadership, whether new or experienced, should digest this book so we might acquire the language needed to converse with each other, sing together, and play in God’s new creation.

Ken Peters is pastor at Killarney Park MB Church, Vancouver, and vice-chair of the Canadian MB Conference’s Board of Faith and Life.