CM: What is metaphor for?

The four month hiatus is over; enough of the practical ! Let’s get back to theory… about church morphing based upon immutable principles in the midst of a fluctuating culture.

This is not theoretical fantasizing about “church” (ekklesia) in order to define the bride ever more precisely (see October 2008 entries “Borg or bride?” and “The reluctant bride”). Rather, as followers of Jesus in a an increasingly capricious culture, we seek understanding in order to live church more fully.

So to comprehend better the essence of true church, let’s play a game! I give you a word-picture, and you guess its meaning (see answers below*):

Rug rat =
The lawyer grilled the witness on the stand. =
Tolerance is the window to peace. =
Road hog =
He was hitting his head against a wall. =
It was a half-baked idea. =
A fat snake of black smoke =

Obviously the above are examples of the linguistic tool called metaphor.

Metaphor: a thing regarded as representative… especially of something abstract (NOAD), a direct comparison between two or more seemingly unrelated subjects. (Wikipedia)

In GENERATION X: tales for an accelerated culture (164), Douglas Coupland describes the modernist malady, “METAPHASIA: An inability to perceive metaphor.”

The OT is replete with metaphor, e.g. anthropomorphism. Isaiah wrote, “Surely the arm of the Lord is not to short to save.” (Is. 59:1)

Jesus frequently used metaphor, e.g. “Do not be afraid, little flock.” (Lk 12:32)

One might retort, “Why didn’t Isaiah and Jesus just say what they meant?!” Well, Jesus’ disciples were pretty annoyed with him on that very point. “Why do you speak to the people in parables?” (Matt. 13:10). So to make things clear for them he quotes an enigma from Isaiah! “You will hear my words, but you will not understand…” Why?

Swiss anabaptist theologian, Alfred Kuen writes, “When Jesus wanted to reveal truths to his disciples when they were still incapable of understanding, he frequently utilized images and parables.”

One might retort, “But the church is not abstract! You see, here’s the church, here’s the steeple, open the door and see all the…” Oops, where are all the postmodern people?!

As Emil Brunner observed, “What is Church? This question, protestantism has not resolved.” If it is questionable whether protestants ever truly grasped ekklesia during modernity (when Brunner wrote), and most evangelicals are tacitly if not explicitly associated with the Protestant Reformation, then in light of the postmodern drift it behooves us to reconsider the question, “What is church?”

And how much more so if a local church has been based upon a business model (surely not all, but some are unabashedly so)? Could those churches run the risk of experiencing crises similar to those that corporate America is now facing? And regardless of the model, what if operating income is reduced due to the financial crisis? And what if the church has profited from political influence that, in the States, may be eroding? Hmmm, maybe an evaluation would be prudent after all.
“That’s okay, we’ll just change models!” Fine, what model will you change to?

Just like models today, Tom Julien observes, “the New Testament reveals the visible church through its practices and development. This revelation is descriptive and not prescriptive. The functions, or essential elements of the visible church, must grow out of her essence.” Concerning the essence of ekklesia Tom says, “The New Testament reveals the ideal church through images. These images are metaphors; they are normative and universal.”

A metaphor is fuzzy.
A metaphor stimulates the imagination.
A metaphor has a well defined subject.
Like an impressionist painting, a metaphor stimulates the imagination; it is fuzzy in detail in order to more clearly understand its essence.

So some church practitioners, rather than consulting extant models in popular books, are going to the Book of books to unearth immutable essentials of ekklesia, embedded in metaphors, in order to move toward fresh forms of sustainable, edifying, missional church in an ever shifting culture.


ANSWERS !
Rug rat = An infant crawls on all fours and chews on everything it can.
The lawyer grilled the witness on the stand. = Tough questions create a damaging level of psychological heat that can have physical consequences.
Tolerance is the window to peace. = A window is a portal that links spaces
Road hog = The territorially aggressive driver takes up far more space than they need.
He was hitting his head against a wall. = Stuck, can’t break through to something.
It was a half-baked idea. = Cake must be fully baked to be of value.
« Un gros serpent de fumée noire » (Guy de Maupassant) = The black smoke wiggled through the sky.

What is Good News to these people?

What do these people have in common?

Dale, a professional voice coach for television actors and musiciens
Lurdes, a poet
Tiago, a traditional baptist church pastor who plays bass in an up-and-coming punk band in Lisbon
Jordan, an American entrepreneur who refurbishes homes and rents them out?

Dale & Lurdes

Tiago and Alfredo

Jordan

They seek to share Good News with Portuguese people who would never otherwise cross the threshold of a church building. They attempt to discern “what aspects of the full-orbed Gospel would be truly Good News to these people, in this place at this time?”

Their stories revealed that they had tried lots of traditional approaches, but generally only reached church people. (Joshua Project estimates that 3% of the Portuguese are evangelical compared to 35% of the N. American people group.)

Their desire for people to know Jesus sent them on a quest to connect with the majority of the population that is not at all interested in church.

Alfredo led us in lectio divina

He uses this contemplative bible reading to sow the Word in the lives of business people who do not know Christ.

See Tiago’s youtube video “You kiss like a nun”

Interestingly, Tiago has decided to keep the local church very traditional in order to discover what true spirituality is. He does not want to draw people to the “punk church” or cater to the fad of the month in worship. He connects with people outside of the church but wants them to come to church because of Jesus only.

On the way home from dinner, Jordan took some workshop members out to meet some of the homeless to whom he distributes food.

Not all who attended the workshop were gifted as evangelists, so we explored what might have gone through Timothy’s mind when he read Paul’s letter saying, “Do the work of an evangelist”. Evidently Timothy knew what Paul wanted him to do, but we did not want to assume that we do 2000 years later.

So Roy led us in a biblical theology jaunt through Scripture to discover the meaning of “evangelist” (euangelistes: Acts 6:1-7; 8:3-40; 21:1-8; Ephesians 4:4-16; 2 Timothy 4:1-5). And we took an especially close look at Philip the evangelist.
We distilled from the life of Philip that an evangelist is a person who:

• is a servant
• is recognized as being filled with the Spirit, wisdom and faith
• is on the go, yet wherever s/he is always remains focused on sharing the Good News of Jesus
• demonstrates and articulates Good News in a way that people see, hear and respond to it

We recognized that the Ephesians 4:11 "evangelist" — a person who is a gift incarnate given to the Church by Christ — may be or should be on the go more than someone doing the work of an evangelist.

And while "Timothys" should “work at bringing others to Christ” (NLT 2 Timothy 4:5), an indicator of the evangelist’s giftedness is that people actually receive Christ when s/he talks with them.
Stories were shared of how the gospel was shared faithfully over a period of time, but it was when the evangelist shared the exact same message that the person gave their life to Christ.

“Cindy” attended a Christian campus group bible study week in and week out. But in God’s plan it was when she attended church where there was a visiting speaker (who happened to be an evangelist but was not preaching a particularly evangelistic message) that she surrendered her life to Christ.

We recognized, therefore, that evangelism is a team effort (1 Corinthians 3:5-9).
We recognized that as we plant ourselves and the Good News, that as others water that seed through testimony and teaching, that if God does not give the growth our farming will be barren; “he is the one who makes the seed grow.”

So we prayed for people with whom we are currently sharing Christ, that they too might have the joy of knowing him.