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A 21st Century Reformation: Expand Our Embrace
Leaders from Malaysia, Argentina, Nigeria, and the United States share their dreams for major changes in the global church.
To facilitate a truly global conversation, we ask Christian leaders from around the world to respond to the Global Conversation's lead articles. These points of view do not necessarily represent Christianity Today magazine or the Lausanne Movement. They are designed to stimulate discussion from all points of the compass and from different segments of the Christian community. Please add your perspective by posting a comment so that we can learn and grow together in the unity of the Spirit.
The Reformation of the 16th century was a revolution of mythic proportions. Scholars and pastors with fresh scriptural insights took advantage of revolutionary changes in the arts, science, humanities, politics, travel, and commerce to turn the Western world upside down. It marked both a return to biblical roots and a leap into the future. In the 21st century, what major changes in the church should Christians be hoping and working for? In the final installment of the Global Conversation, four key leaders from four continents reveal their hopes.
During my most recent visit to Ethiopia, I joined students at Addis Ababa University for a meeting of the Evangelical Students' and Graduates' Union of Ethiopia. The students are part of a remarkably courageous Ethiopian church that survived the repressive regime of Mengistu Haile Mariam. Believers had to go underground between 1974 and 1991 while the regime tortured and murdered tens of thousands. But afterward, the church emerged irrepressible and vibrant in witness.
At the meeting I attended, worship alone lasted an hour. Then came a time of prayer followed by biblical preaching, lasting about two-and-a-half hours. I could tell from the students' singing, dancing, and praying that most of them combined elements of their Orthodox Church background with their evangelical identity. Most could recite long portions of Scripture by heart, a habit they had learned under Communist rule. Some 700 students were present, and I was told that another 50 had gone to a village for rural evangelism. Later that night we sat and ate injera, the traditional Ethiopian flatbread, with bare hands from deep bowls.
The Ethiopian students could not have been more different in culture, experience, tradition, and appearance from their counterparts in Oxford and Cambridge who, 64 years ago, pioneered InterVarsity Christian Fellowship (which later became the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students). Yet they are just as much a part of the future identity of global evangelicalism.
There is a deep bowl of evangelical identity and heritage from which we all need to eat. This bowl is filled with diverse gifts contributed from the ends of the earth. Some of the best and most interesting foods on the menu come from newcomers in the evangelical family.
The future of evangelical reform must take our global diversity seriously. We cannot be all that God wants if we are not attending to the global mosaic God is constructing. Beyond clinging to the values of our past Reformation, which was rooted in particular contexts, we must take seriously the values emerging from new centers of Christian expansion.
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ms muse
Come on, guys. This is funny. It's a joke. Don't take yourselves so seriously.
Matt J
At least spell Ingmar Bergman properly. Also, I'm not sure what you guys are going for here. Is this an attempt to draw a parallel between semi-decent taste in cinema and worldliness in the "hipster church"? It seems callous and lacking in grace (not to mention lacking in journalistic integrity, or dialogue with ANYBODY whose church was detailed in the article. perhaps that would have been a useful perspective, but heck, when painting with a wide brush it's good to leave other sizes aside.) I'm sorry, this is just frustrating.
Grenville greenroom2001@hotmail.com
What a silly article. Hipsters DO NOT LIKE being called Hipsters! And what a surprise, at 49 I find I am a Hipster. Except... DON"T CALL ME THAT!
Elisa Melbourne
I find this rather ridiculous. Are christians becoming more relevant to the world that they're irrelevant to God's purpose? And how in the world would you 'research' what so-called "hip christians" are into anyway? The medium may change but the message shouldn't and that should really be the focus for any generation. Honestly, give some of us "hip christians" credit who also happen to have strong moral convictions and are not tossed too and fro by the latest social fad infiltrating the church....
Dale Fincher
I'll comment on what I know... the authors. I cannot believe some of these authors are on the same list... some are considered great literature by liberal arts programs and the Academy of Letters and some are just pop-cultural disposable stuff that found a trendy evangelical readership. If half of the good authors on this list influenced the hipsters, the hipsters would be larger-minded and less hip. Heck, if the church in general could just start with learning C. S. Lewis, a dramatic shift would happen. The evangelical church, which claims to love Lewis so well, still hasn't caught up with him 50 years later.
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