This video is from a Q&A session at Oklahoma Christian University, which is affiliated with the Churches of Christ and historically has been fairly conservative. It’s truly fascinating viewing.
Among other topics, Wright discusses predestination, the organic church vs. the institutional church, justification by faith, social justice and politics, women in ministry, the “new creation,” the distinctiveness of Christian love, the Lord’s Prayer, the prosperity gospel, and non-Western versions of Christianity.
Enjoy.
Institutionalism is killing the average American church. It is important to make the distinction that biblical leadership and structure and institutionalism are not one and the same. The episkopos or elder function is clearly one of spiritual shepherding as in the diakonos or deacon a designated servant. First of all institutionalists put religious academics and keeping up appearances as the premium to such a high degree in church culture that one may sit through sermons and bible classes their entire lives and never be transformed, and only put into practice, character and incarnational faith a small fraction of what they “learn”. Institutionalist put a premium on having the right knowledge and arguing the right positions. Doctrinal and ecclesiastical perfection are the main things. The emerging Christianity in America is starving for the leadership listed above to lead them into a radical “incarnational” faith not just an academic one. To put it in easier terms it like a person who studies football and learns all about it citing facts and stats and watches every game providing prompt analysis but hardly ever plays the sport. This holy discontent with a faith that is mostly academic is what is breeding the organic churches today. If you look at what they do together besides an assembly in a smaller non formal setting; they serve their communities in such an aggressive way that is scary to an institutionalized Christian. To the institutionalist Christianity is 80% – 90% academic and 10-20% incarnational. To the emerging “organic” Christian it is the exact opposite Christianity is 10-20% academic and 80-90% incarnational. An example would be if we read a scripture about inviting strangers to our house or going out and gathering the poor and those who can’t have us back over and feeding them in our homes. The institutionalist would say we need to study that scripture more and then maybe we will form a committee to do a study and then maybe we will have some folks to building so it can be done in a secure environment. The “Organic” Christian will read the passage and then go out and do it! If you look at the Apostles and Jesus they were all about the transformation that leads to doing and living it out with a sense of urgency; not studying the idea a bunch of times before we even think about doing anything about it.
I listened to the whole thing. It was very good. Those questions were not asked by fundamentalists but future leaders of churches. For those who don’t go to the Episcopal church most Sundays, the examples of Jesus and “go and do” comes from the pulpit on 3 Sundays out of 4. His idea to sit down and discuss disagreements to see just how much agreement and disagreement there really is would do many churches and the whole of Christianity a great amount of good.
Mark,
I agree. Wright has an impressive command of a wide range of issues — and there is very little there that would be offensive to a thoughtful member of the Churches of Christ. We don’t agree on everything, but Wright is a conservative interpreter who takes the Word of God with the utmost seriousness. There’s no wonder that so many in the Churches of Christ find insight in his work.
And OCU’s students were very impressive. I’m not sure my class at Lipscomb back in 1972-75 would have compared well with the OCU student body of today. Someone is doing a great job of preparing young people for ministry.