I am reading Gary V. Nelson's book entitled "Borderland Churches." This notion of "borderland churches" has captured my imagination. This image of the church has stimulated my imagination, partly because of the content of the book, but also because for most of my professional ministry, I've been thinking that the church I remember as a boy has moved from the center of community life to the edge of somewhere else. This somewhere else has not been clearly defined, but what I do know is that church today is different. This is not to say that this is a good thing or a bad thing, but rather I want to say it is different and like many of us who claim Christianity as our particular religious persuasion, I am trying to understand this strange and mysterious time for the Church of Jesus Christ.
I remember in the mid-eighties while I was attending Eden Theological Seminary, both Dr. Walter Brueggeman and Dr. Douglas Meeks talked about the church as the church in exile. Dr. Brueggeman compared the church of the eighties (and likely long before this decade) and subsequently the church of the early 21st Century to the Babylonian exile of the Hebrew people. All that was, is no longer and what is to come will not be the same. We know that the future image of the church is still unfolding and we probably won't know the new look until generations later when what we experience as religious and spiritual is a part of what we've always known.
Now, how is that for ambiguity? It is this ambiguity that intrigues me about "borderland churches." We are on the edge of something new and different. What this image of something new looks and feels like may depend upon how we choose to embrace or not to embrace this "new thing" that is happening as we "live and move and have our being." What's more is that those who claim this Christian faith are intricately entwined in this new image of the "new church," pushing us into the future even as we cling to the image of the church of yesterday.
Experiencing the borderlands is living on the edge, believing that the transformational power of the the living God will reveal, in due time, the New Jerusalem and in the meantime, those of us who are aliens to this new creation, we must use our borderland time to grow a deeper, more abiding faith that will strengthen us and carry us through this in-between time, this time where the church as we have known it, is experiencing the birth pangs of tomorrow's new life. With authority and with the power of resurrection hope, we must claim this time in history as we co-create and shape tomorrow's faith. I believe that this is our challenge and how thrilling and exciting it could be to be midwives to this new way of living and being the Church of Jesus Christ.
"Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old. I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?" (Isaiah 43:18-19) Or from the gospel of John, "Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me...I will come again and will take you to myself so that where I am, there you may be also." (John 14:1, 3)
My Seminary professors may say that the church is exile. Nelson believes that we must live as borderland churches, and I believe that we are strangers, aliens to the church today and our strength in these times must come from the prophets of old who spoke about a future place where God would meet God's people and a promise that we will not be left alone as we midwife this new church that is crowning, still waiting to be embraced, but nonetheless pulling us along into a new reality where God is our center and justice is our way of life. "Behold, I am doing a new thing. Do you not perceive it?"
And so I babble on with God's Spirit before me, the church as my constant companion, and the mission to be the church in unlikely places calls me into the future, into something that I may know only in part, but one day shall fully embrace. So, I remain in the borderland waiting for God's new thing to be born. Perhaps the borderlands is just a new way or a new place to experience God's all encompassing life. As you experience the borderlands, what do you think?
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