For today's entry in the Friday Five interview series, we catch up with Jim Belcher.
Jim Belcher is the author of Deep Church and In Search of Deep Faith. He is Professor at Knox Theological Seminary in Fort Lauderdale.
Today we chat with Jim about shallow faith, heroes, and pilgrimages.
Your last book, Deep Church, attempted a “third way” between evangelical emergents and traditionalists. What has changed in that conversation since it's publication?
As a movement, I think, the emerging church has splintered and lost most of its momentum. But the questions they raised and the protests they lodged have not gone away. For a number of years they put their finger on what was wrong in the evangelical church—individualism, weak ecclesiology, and in-grown churches. These questions often became a catalyst for change in the evangelical church, at least in certain sections of the church. For example, there is now a growing awareness that the church has to rediscover the gospel that is more than eternal fire insurance and that God is a God of mission, who has called us to be a people of mission and that the whole world is a realm of this mission, as Chris Wright says so well in The Mission of God. Also, there has been a renewed emphasis on ecclesiology, liturgy, and the Great Tradition, helping the church develop a more robust ecclesiology and worship. These are good things and the emerging church and the questions they asked helped prompt some of this change. I am grateful that in a small way Deep Church has been part of this dialogue and change in the church.
How did that conversation inform, In Search of Deep Faith?
Deep Church always had a double meaning for me. First it was coined by C.S. Lewis to mean a church committed to mere Christianity. But I also liked the title because it was challenging the church to move beyond a shallow faith, which so often characterizes the American church. We took our children to Europe, in part, because we were worried that they would be infected by this shallowness, what Christian Smith calls “Moralistic Therapeutic Deism,” and we wanted to help them develop an “articulate faith” (a phrase coined by Kenda Creasy Dean). By studying the writings and significant places of a dozen heroes of the faith—people like C.S. Lewis, William Wilberforce, Corrie ten boom, and Maria von Trapp, we hoped our family would develop a deeper faith. As the reader takes this journey through history and geography with us, we hope they will be inspired to take a similar pilgrimage of faith right were they live—into the beauty, goodness, and heart of Christianity. Our hope is that the book leads more Christians to understand their faith, know their calling, and live heroically missional lives.
You left your ministry and traveled across England and Europe. Did this trip have the kind of spiritual impact on you and your family that you anticipated?
The pilgrimage had a profound impact on my family and me. When I started the trip I was wiped out—my desire for the kingdom was at a low ebb in my life. I had logged 15 years of church leadership without a break and I was out of gas. But by immersing myself in the lives and adventures of these heroes I got my passion back—I came to a deeper understanding of my calling and I was energized to pursue it. Although my kids are still young and our discipleship of them is not over, the pilgrimage laid a tremendous foundation. They got a taste of how deep, how beautiful, and how good Christianity is in this life. They will never be the same again. That is our hope for our readers and for the churches that study this book together.
You traced the steps of some of the most treasured saints. Do you have a favorite?
That is a tough question. All the heroes we studied have become like family to us, having spent so much time with them. The easy answer would be Lewis or Bonhoeffer since I have travelled with them the longest, since my days in college. But as a pastor and seminary professor, the one that continues to intrigue me is the story of pastor Andre Trocme and the amazing people of the tiny French village of Le Chambon and the surrounding plateau who harbored close to five thousand Jews, mainly children, during World War II. Why were these villages different when the vast majority of towns in France and Europe made no effort to rescue Jews? What was it about the community there, the way it was shaped, its habits, and beliefs, that produced so many rescuers? Are there lessons there for American pastors, who want their congregation to take their faith serious and to live it out missionally? These are the questions that fascinate me and I want my students to grapple with.
If your book has one message for those wrestling with the Christian faith, what would it be?
Come on the pilgrimage with us. Take another look at Christianity. See it through another perspective, not the one the media presents, or the one your past experiences has colored in a bad way. Come along and see and experience it through some of the most amazing true stories and through the lessons of my family, and you just might discover that Christianity is so much bigger, deeper, beautiful, and good than you ever imagined. Through this pilgrimage you will discover that God has called you to himself, to live a life of significance, a life of profound desire, a life of purpose and meaning, and that this life is a great adventure, taking you into a future beyond your wildest dreams.
Daniel Darling is vice-president of communications for the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission. He is the author of several books, including his latest, Activist Faith.
