Today’s Quote 8/12/07

Deliberation is the action of the many; action is the function of one.  Charles de Gaulle

Deep Church

Below is a letter I posted to the congregation at Coastal Church. It is a public meditation, a wondering shared, a longing described. Take a read.

     I’ve been thinking!  Actually, we, the Leadership Team, have been thinking. We’ve been thinking about going back in order to go forward. More specifically, we’ve been focusing on what some would call Deep Church. This is a phrase that has been used to describe churches that choose to be deep in history, rooted in the mindset, beliefs, worship practices and spiritual transformation paradigms that characterized the church of the first five centuries, the Church of the apostles, those who immediately followed from their apprenticeship to the apostles and the church fathers of the first five centuries. This part of church history is often called the Common Era or the era of Classical Christianity, that period of time before the church began to branch out into what was to eventually become the Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox and Protestant families of Christianity.
     In an admirable effort to remain relevant, today’s evangelical church is characterized by constant change to capture the attention of its host culture. But the ease with which the church slips over into faddishness can be a hidden danger. The church can cease to be God-driven and measures itself not by the authenticity of its worship, service and character but by the things that drive all fads – ego, numbers, programs, dollars, etc. What’s even worse is that the church ceases to learn from the centuries of lessons available to it from earlier generations and is unable to resist the pressures of conformity. It seems apparent from reading and research that many evangelicals churches are going back in order to go forward. The classical tradition is sorely needed because so many people have come to the end of their patience with the modern versions of church and with current innovations that have no connection with the past. Every new trick in the book needs to be replaced by resur-recting old treasures that still have meaning and can offer direction into the future.
     The church can still benefit by models of spiritual transforma-tion rooted in the apostolic tradition and the reflection of the early church, such as:  the church year as a means to relate the days of our calendar to the person and work of Christ who gave time a new significance and meaning, the office of the hours – a tool for daily practicing the presence of Christ and offering up to Father, Son and Holy Spirit the praises of the church, fasting, spiritual direction, the meaningful restoration of the Lord’s Supper to worship, and others. The church is finding out that it needs to listen to those who took the baton from the apostles and then passed it on to the next generations. While we know the names of the current trendsetters such as Rick Warren and Bill Hybels, the names of those who nourished the root system of the church go unrecognized and their wisdom unheeded, those such as Irenaeus of Lyons, Tertullian, Gregory the Great, Augustine, Ambrose, Jerome, Clement of Al-exandria, Athanasius, John Chrysostom, Clement of Rome, Igna-tius of Antioch, Polycarp of Smyrna and many others.
     Many associate Deep Church with a flirtation with Roman Ca-tholicism, but this would be a misunderstanding of this new inter-est in Classical Christianity. It’s an attempt to move beyond gim-micks, fads, denominational divisions and theological nitpicking to something that nourishes the church by virtue of its timelessness and nearness to the traditions passed on to us by the apostles. It is not an attempt to return to an earlier time but to be meaningful in our time.
     So let’s have a discussion! Let’s touch it, taste it, feel it, roll it over and look at all sides. The evangelicalism of which we are a part is giving a new look at the root system that has long nourished the church. Maybe it’s time we took a look, too.