Missional Transformation, 3

I've spent a lot of time and energy getting congregations and students to understand evangelism differently. Specifically, I've tried to get them to think of evangelism in relation to the gospel of the Kingdom of God, rather than a particular view of the atonement. It's my theory that our practices of evangelism are tied to our understanding of the gospel, and that most church members define the gospel almost exclusively as penal substitutionary atonement (psa).

The problems with psa are numerous, but suffice it to say at this point that its not the only way to understand the meaning of the death and resurrection of Jesus. Changing evangelistic imagination related to psa, however, I have found to be a very difficult thing.

My earliest efforts were aimed at giving people more information. I taught them other theories of atonement, used the concept of theological worlds, explored various metaphors for salvation, all to little effect. New information was simply not potent enough to change a very entrenched imagination.

So, I began inviting people into experiments related to the Kingdom of God. In my graduate courses, I asked students in small groups to pick a pattern of repentance related to the Kingdom. Some chose to keep sabbath, others to avoid violent speech, still others to practice hospitality. Now we were getting somewhere. They had real experiences to talk about, amazing experiences. But when they turned to say something meaningful about these experiences, they talked about them in their old categories.

So, I added intentional practices of reflection and articulation to their experiments in repentance. Wow, what a difference. The stories were poignant and full of the language of salvation. They could connect sabbath, for instance, to living in the death and resurrection of Jesus. They could speak about how this required a Spirit filled community. They could talk in concrete terms precisely the shape their salvation was taking.

All that to say, we tend to think of transformation in terms of information and application. But people have great capacity to absorb new information into existing imaginative constructs leaving us far short of transformation.

Transformation requires new experiences, intentional reflection, and articulation. My friend Pat Keifert often reminds congregations that people don't learn much from experience in and of itself. They learn from articulated reflection on experience. My students are evidence that this is indeed the case.

Experience-->reflection-->articulation allows for a new narrative to emerge. We get transformation when we learn to tell a new story about ourselves. This is deep structure change and won't come simply by adding programs or tinkering with our worship.

My sense in many churches is that we expect very little from our members in terms of experience. We expect them primarily to experience Sunday morning worship. Anything else is kind of like the options we could add to an automobile. They're nice, but not essential. But even less do we ask church members to reflect in any kind of deliberate way on their experience. And we provide few venues for articulation for all but a few of our members. We are poorly equipped in terms of practices related to transformation.