I’ve just spent the last two days at Youthworks’s’s annual Youth Ministry Conference. I love that thing. Always makes my brain hurt though.
Ed Springer spoke about real hope … to sum up all that he said, basically it’s that we evangelicals have reacted to some who preach/teach based on an over-realised eschatology … that is, they expect all the blessings of heaven now. We’ve reacted by going to the other extreme, an under-realised eschatology, where all we can expect in this life is suffering and our hope is an abstract hope of forgiveness and heaven. Which is an unacceptible hope to our world. I saw a video on the prosperity gospel in Africa that suggested something similar, but that’s for another blog post.
Interesting. He accused us (and himself) of preaching a Christian life that is like waiting at a bus stop for the bus to arrive, and telling ourselves that it’s important to try and get other people to get their ticket and wait for the bus as well. He said that our gospel is the story of the Crucifixion and the Ascension … we skip the resurrection.
So we need to correct ourselves, and get back to holding the tension of the ‘now and the not yet’. We have the blessings of heaven now. But not yet. We live in the kingdom of God now … but the fullness of that is not yet.
So the big question is: what changes? What does a resurrected life look like in 2010?
Ed suggested we get passionate about social justice – hope inspired justice (pointing out that Christians fought against 1st Century class distinctions – the rich opened their homes to the poor and fed them, and that Christians fought against the slave trade), saying that the great social injustice of our time is the unequal distribution of wealth. And it’s our responsibility to fight against that, as Wilberforce and co. fought against slavery. Amen!
He also suggested ‘hope inspired beauty’ … ie getting back to good Christian art. Modern art is full of hopelessness and idolatry, and we Christians need to inject our hope filled/inspired art into that. I’m keen to think more about this.
And lastly he spoke of hope inspired mission; with BOLD and CLEAR preaching – clear on what Jesus is offering people, clear on what Jesus has saved people to be now, and clear in that our message is backed up by our witness. Again, a whole-hearted amen from me!
That said, Ed spoke some hard words that I need to think more about. Things like (and please don’t take this out of context!) ‘The real business of the gospel is not saving souls for heaven. It’s bigger than that, it is bringing God’s rule to earth.’ At some points, it sounded like he was putting up social justice/welfare ‘mission’ at the expense of proclaiming the gospel, but speaking to him afterwards, that’s definately not the case.
I wish I was smarter so I could process all this better! I’ve had a few thoughts on why we’ve been like this, related to the last big fight for truth being the reformation, which was all about souls going to heaven … yeah, need more brains.
p.s. if you came here looking for hope, check out this.


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