3 Vows: The Church as an Incarnational Apologetic in the Midst of a Watching (Postmodern) World.

The North American church is in desperate need of a reality check. What I mean by this is that the church has reached a time where we need to deeply reflect on who we are and for what purpose we exist. This will involve nothing less than asking ourselves some very difficult questions, prayer, and biblical reflection together as a community on what it means to be the church. We then need to ask ourselves if our current life as the church in North America does indeed reflect the purpose of the church as seen in the scriptures and as developed out of God’s deep love and work amongst His creation. If we reflect and embody anything less than this then perhaps we have reached a crisis point that requires some difficult decision making (both corporately and individually). However, I would propose that nothing less than this is required if we are indeed to remain faithful to Christ in the midst of a watching world, a world that we are called to embody and witness the good news of Jesus to.

It is my hunch that by and large the North American church is shaped more by the story of Western progress and individualism than we are by the redemptive story of God in the world. This is evident particularly in our praxis together as a Body.1 For example, imagine with me if you will two people. One is your average North American Christian (whatever that means) and the other is your average North American. The question we need to reflect on here is how precisely is the average North American Christian any different than your average North American? Surely they believe differently. Or do they? In a Christianity that is shaped more by Western ideals of progress and individualism what matters is correct cognitive belief. In other words, if we can just get people to a place where they believe the right thing then we’re doing our job. This, however, fails to take into account any real discipleship. The person is only partially converted because they have not been converted from particular cultural values. In other words, “we have not shown the world another way of doing life. Christians pretty much live like everybody else; they just sprinkle a little Jesus in along the way.”2 If the church is indeed an alternative political community then we ought to have different political and economic values. We ought to be able to consider our two friends and see that yes, the average North American Christian is different than the average North American but this will only begin to happen when our belief shapes our praxis. Until this happens then our belief is not real. We need to not only ‘believe rightly’ but to ‘believe in the right way.’

A few years ago I was at the local Sunday morning gathering with the church community that I was a part of and this disconnect struck me in an obvious manner. We had a guest preacher for the morning and he did what he came to do. He preached all right. However, he did not preach the good news of Jesus Christ. Rather, he preached the good news of Bay St. I kid you not the entire gathering was devoted to a talk on investment. Of course he used the scriptures to back up what he was saying (courtesy of a poor interpretation of Luke 19:11-27). However, as I headed home later that afternoon I couldn’t help but ask myself what story this good news was rooted in. This was the gospel of the wealthy barber and it was that if we started young and invested a little bit every month into a compound interest savings account then by the time we retired we would be millionaires! This was good news indeed, at least according to Bay St. What in the world did this have to do with being the church though? This is precisely my point. Sadly, in this gathering of wealthy suburban Christians few stopped to wonder if these economic values found their place in the scriptures. As a community we failed to realize that these sorts of economic values are rooted in worldly North American cultural values and that as Christians we are called to a full conversion that includes new economic values. In other words, “a decision for Christ would be a decision that put the whole of [ones] shared life, [ones] culture, into a new setting.”3 The economic values of the Body are not that of Bay St. However, when this does not happen the North American church is neutered of its power and witness precisely because she, for the most part, shares the same values as the predominant culture in which she finds herself. She is in the world and of the world. This results in much confusion over what it really means to be the Body of which Christ is the head. It is, therefore, critical if we are to remain faithful to our calling to be a ‘city on a hill’ that we repent of our unfaithfulness and hear Christ’s voice calling us back to faithfulness.

This is but one of the competing narratives in which we find ourselves. Another entirely related narrative is that of postmodernity (hypermodernity?). I do not have the space here to delve deeply into what this shift from modernity to postmodernity looks like or means so a few comments will have to suffice. Modernism tended to be defined by the autonomous, objective individual. This resulted in a metanarrative of the world that made an idol of “pure” reason which put the power in the hands of those who were able to reason properly. Three French philosophers exposed the lies of modernity and opened up the door for what we now call postmodernity which presents many opportunities for the church to reclaim her faithfulness. Derrida confronted the notion of objectivism by proclaiming that there is “nothing outside the text.” Everyone is rooted in a particular narrative and is shaped by many forces outside of themselves, therefore, there is no view from “no where”. This presents the church with the opportunity to reclaim the centrality of the Scriptures for mediating our understanding of the world and the role of community in the interpretation of Scripture. Lyotard asserted an “incredulity towards metanarratives” that opens the door for the church to recover the narrative and confessional nature of the Christian faith. Finally, Foucault proclaims that “power is knowledge.” Here the church can admit that there is much power in cultural formation and that the church, in fact, is called to enact a counterformation by counterdisciplines.4 Although this presents many opportunities for the church it also serves to shape and form an intensely pluralistic and individualistic society. Therefore, in the shopping mall of available truths and realities that arises out of postmodernity the church stands not as just another option within the culture but as an entirely alternate culture all together (although, granted, part of the challenge is resisting the power of the dominant culture to shape the church).

What is needed in the midst of these competing narratives is nothing less than an embodied, incarnational apologetic and that is precisely what the church is called to be. The defense and witness of the gospel is not primarily an argument or list of propositional truths but rather “the life of the church conformed to Christ by the Spirit in service and suffering.”5 The church is a sent community that participates in the mission of God amongst creation and bears witness to the coming Kingdom that has, in fact, arrived in Jesus. While we are in the world we are not of the world and must, therefore, heed the words of Paul in Romans: “Do not be conformed to the world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds,” (12:2). The very differentness of the church is its witness. As an incarnational witness in the midst of a watching world “the church is a preview of life under the rule of God in the age to come, a forerunner of the new Jerusalem, a foretaste of the heavenly banquet, a sign of the reign of God.”6 It has been said that the primary job of the church is to ‘be the church’ and it is only in this context that the world can know itself as the world. This then requires nothing less than true discipling that involves the conversion of the community so that they not only ‘believe rightly’ but ‘believe in the right way’.

How then do we begin to move in this direction? How are we to respond? What might faithfulness to Christ look like for the church that finds herself in the midst of postmodernity and an individualistic empire of consumer-capitalism? First and foremost this will be nothing less than the work of the Spirit. We have to believe that as we live together as the Body and earnestly seek Christ and the way we should go that he will, in fact, speak to us. This will happen as we pray for ears to hear and gather for worship and hearing the word afresh in the midst of our communities. I would propose that this will inevitably mean action for the church because that is precisely what faith is. As the church we are a community seeking to be shaped by God as we strive to live faithfully in the way of Christ. It is clear that our culture knows nothing of this. To be faithful to Christ in the midst of an idolatrous culture, then, means to embody an alternative way. The idolatrous way of living prescribed by our society is not reflective of the way of Christ. The challenge for the church then is to actually live in a different way. This is difficult of course because our imaginations are so often shaped more by cultural norms than by the cross. And the way of the world is far different from the way of the cross. However, often the task of living a different sort of way is overwhelming. We are generally the sort of people that like plans. We would be much happier if we could map out the way we are to go before we actually begin down that path. This, however, is not necessary. What is necessary is that we begin with a step in that direction. This sort of drastic change (no less than transformation) will not likely happen over night, but, small step after small step in obedience with the Spirit will lead to transformed lives and a transformed society.

During an important time in European history St. Benedict proposed three vows: a vow of poverty, a vow of chastity and a vow of obedience. So then, what are three vows that the church of North America could take today, in the midst of a postmodern consumer-capitalist culture, in order to proclaim and embody our faithfulness to Christ as opposed to our faithfulness to the idolatrous ways of the world? I would propose at least the following three vows: a vow of generosity, a vow of community, and a vow of responsibility.

A vow of generosity.
In the midst of a culture that is never satisfied and is always seeking to attain more and more we acknowledge that it is good and healthy, even human, to show restraint. We cannot begin to talk about generosity without first addressing restraint. We live in the midst of and are shaped by a culture where technology and fashion progress at such a rate that it only takes a few months for our gadgets and clothing to be outdated and out of style. Products are made to be redundant after a few months. Coupled with advertising and marketing we feel an insatiable desire to be constantly updating our things to the newest and brightest. Can you count how many different iPods have been released over the period of the last two years? This is the narrative of our culture. Yet in the face of all of this we hear the call of a Messiah who invites us to give up all we have to follow him. In the midst of a postmodern consumer-capitalist culture that invites us to construct our own identities and invites us to be whoever we want to be we recognize that our true identity is found in Christ. As humans we are not primarily consumers but are primarily image bearers. Our self identity is not wrapped up in a particular product that gives our lives meaning (although marketers would beg to differ). As followers of the Way we show restraint when it comes to our consumptive habits realizing that every time we enter the mall we enter the Temples of our culture and we refuse to bow down in worship to their idols. We also recognize that our destructive patterns of consumption only serve to dehumanize us as our relationships with the poor and oppressed are severed. Out of this restraint perhaps we can come to know abundance, after all, abundance comes from the sense of having more than enough.

In the midst of a society that says “it is better to receive than to give” we follow and pledge allegiance to Jesus who proclaims that “it is more blessed to give than to receive,” (Acts 20:35). In over-developed areas of the world such as North America it is not uncommon for Christians to talk about ‘blessing’ or ‘being blessed’. Our bank accounts and our bellies are full and so we consider ourselves blessed by God because as far as we can tell we don’t lack much. Whether we realize it or not we hold to a notion of blessing that is shaped more by our culture than by the scriptures and so we end up proclaiming “it is more blessed to receive.” Yet, Jesus says something about being blessed that stands in stark contrast with what many North Americans believe: “it is more blessed to give than to receive.” Apparently, for Jesus anyways, blessing is about giving away. Perhaps it will be helpful to look to an instance in the Hebrew scriptures where God proclaims a blessing on Abram: “I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing,” (Gen. 12:2; emphasis mine). It is important to note here the words translated “so that you will be a blessing” are actually an imperative in the Hebrew language. When we read those words we should hear, “be a blessing!” The NRSV attempts to portray this by the use of the word “so”. YHWH will bless Abram and make him into a great nation so they will be a blessing to the nations. The very nature of Abram’s blessedness is rooted in it being given away. It’s a blessing that really only comes into effect when it is passed along. We have the benefit of knowing how the story played out. Israel was, in fact, not a blessing to the nations and, therefore, never really knew what it was to be a nation blessed by God as they never knew the promised land of blessing and Shalom.

In the light of this insight the problem with our (wealthy) notion of blessing then becomes painfully clear. When we consider the ways in which we are blessed and believe our bank accounts and families (and churches) to be the final resting place of this blessing we are, in fact, cursed. The wine we are given turns sour. We become so attached to what we have that we no longer own these things. They have more say over our lives than we do over theirs and so they end up owning us. The narrative of our surrounding culture proclaims that we need to work hard in order to gain as much as we can. Our happiness (blessedness) is bound up in what we have. The more we have the more we are blessed and so we cling tightly to our possessions. Yet Christ proclaims that we are more blessed when we give away what we have. So then, if we as the church of North America are to remain faithful to Christ we must confront our culturally-conditioned notion of blessing with the reality of blessedness as Christ himself proclaims it. The church then ought to be marked by generosity. A rich church is no church at all for the head of the church, Jesus, proclaims that we are blessed when we give away what we have. This ought to shape us as a community in that we are always moving towards generosity. There is nothing wrong with wealth as long as we refuse to hold onto it with a tight fist. It should be noted that the sort of generosity we are talking about here is not charity. Charity keeps us at a distance, legitimizes our apathetic lifestyles of good intentions and robs us of the true gift of community. Additionally, charity allows us to remain in our privileged position from which we can exert power and influence over others with the giving of a cheque. In the words of Shane Claiborne, “the world cannot afford the American dream and the good news is that there is another dream.”7 One of the ways this dream comes to fruition is as we the church come to realize that Jesus was correct in saying that we are not only blessed to give but blessed when we give. In other words, blessing is related to generosity. Perhaps this is because generosity is a signpost that points towards the reign of God. As we give we demonstrate that, as opposed to the mantra of North American culture, our blessedness (indeed our Shalom) is bound up in a land where there is enough for all. We look forward in anticipation to the day in which God’s reign will be fully and finally established here on earth and all of creation will know and inhabit Shalom.

A vow of community.
In the midst of a culture that lives closed lives we strive to live a life that is open to our neighbour. We are caught up in and find our place in the organic community that is the Body of Christ. In the midst of a culture that tells us the most important person is “me” we strive daily to love others more than ourselves. In the midst of a culture where communion is reduced to text messages and status updates we recognize the truth and beauty in simply living life together in order that our hope may be made incarnate in our lives.

One of the defining characteristics of modernity (and postmodernity) is the notion of the autonomous individual. It is thought that man can make his own way in the world and has no need of religion or authority to act as a guide over him. You would be hard-pressed to find a better example of this than in the way we tend to build our communities (especially in Suburbia). We wake up and get into our cars where we commute to our jobs where we work long hours to make money to pay for the homes we live in and the lives we lead. Then we drive home from work into our garages and step into our homes where we relax in front of the (3D plasma-screen) television with our families only to wake up the next day and do it all over again. Of course this is a generalization but it does not take much to realize just how disconnected we are. Everyone is living their own individual lives and yet many of us are unsatisfied and lonely. As Shane Claiborne notes, “wealthy countries like ours have the highest rates of depression, suicide, and loneliness. We are the richest and most miserable people in the world. I feel sorry that so many of us have settled for a lonely world of independence and riches when we could all experience the fullness of life in community and interdependence.”8 Rarely do we connect these feelings of loneliness with the lack of a real community. Let me share a story to illustrate this.

I have a friend named Frenchy who I met in the summer of 2009. I had seen Frenchy around the neighbourhood a few times but the first time we really met each other was outside a local grocery shop. Every night, without fail, you can find Frenchy sitting outside the shop with his sleeping bag and a cup of change. Over the period of a few months we got to know each other. Every time we saw each other we would spend a little bit more time talking and getting to know one another, however, our conversations rarely ever moved past surface issues. Then, one day in March 2010 Frenchy wanted to talk longer than we normally did. He was unusually reflective this evening as he shared with me some health problems he had just found out about. As he reflected on this news he told me about the death of a friend of his the week before. Bob (name changed) had been living on the streets of Toronto for about fourteen years and he used to spend time with Frenchy and some other guys. Bob was the joker of the group, you know the type, always smiling and laughing and cracking jokes. Then one day Bob died. Frenchy and some other folks attended his funeral where they found out some things they didn’t know about Bob. For example, Frenchy was struck by the fact that Bob had two children that lived in Brampton whom he had not seen for the past fourteen years. Frenchy could not get over this and it is here that he had some deep insight. He came to the conclusion that despite his happy, cheery appearance Bob was torn up and broken on the inside. How could he not be? He had children that he had not seen in ages. Another thing that struck Frenchy was that none of Bob’s friends on the street knew this about him. It was not until the funeral that they found out Bob even had kids. Then Frenchy looked at me and, visibly shaken said, “it’s not right for someone to suffer like that by themselves. None of us knew. It’s not right that we couldn’t support him.” Bob died of a drug overdose. This left Frenchy wondering that if perhaps he had the support of a community that journeyed alongside him during his weakness and mourning that perhaps there could have been a different end result.

I think this provides us with some insight into the sort of culture we live in and the sort of community that the church is called to be in the midst of the world. How many casualties result from autonomous individualistic lifestyles? Even more problematic is the fact that this way of life all-too-often infects and shapes North American Christians. This robs the church of her witness when, in fact, the church is called to be an example of an alternative social order. The autonomous individual is an aspect of modernity that postmodern philosophers failed to adequately address. As a result then, individualism is still highly prevalent in our postmodern societies. If this is part of our cultural narrative then the church can stand in contrast to this ideal as one Body with many parts. The church is first and foremost a community. Faith in Christ entails the believer being taken up into and consumed by the Body. When this begins to happen the church “stands in the wider community of the neighbourhood and the nation not primarily as the promoter of programs for social change (although it will be that) but primarily as itself the foretaste of a different social order.”9 The church is the foretaste of a different social order. In this sense the church ought to provide a watching world with a glimpse of what God’s future reign will look like since, in fact, this reign is already breaking through into the present. There are times when we see this happening and those are some incredibly beautiful moments. After all, community is what all of humanity was created for. Humanity is made in the image of a God who is community. A God who is a “plurality of oneness.” The biblical story then, from beginning to end, is the story of community. Therefore, the individualism that so plagues our North American culture is, in fact, dehumanizing. It strips us of our humanity.

Community is not easy for us in North America: “Everything in this world tries to pull us away from community, pushes us to choose ourselves over others, to choose independence over interdependence, to choose great things over small things, to choose going fast alone over going far together.”10 The church then is called to be a strikingly different sort of culture. In fact, the church is forming a new culture which is born out of the reign of God and the indwelling of the Spirit. In the words of the Catholic Workers we are “building a new society in the shell of the old.” I recently heard a young woman who was new to the Christian faith say that the people she gathered with on Sunday and throughout the week were people that she would normally never have relationships with. I thought this was incredibly beautiful and hopeful. If we ever end up surrounded by people who look and think like us and respond to the gospel the very same way we do then we are missing something and this “would rob us of the gift of community and of what it means to be a body with many different parts.”11 The church is a messy community made up of all sorts of folks from different backgrounds and walks of life and “once you get here, your past doesn’t matter.”12 The incarnation of this new society is vital to our witness as the church because the church truly is a unique community. When the church is living out her calling to be the “light of the world” then we can truly invite people to “come and see”. After all, the point of Christian discipleship is not to get people to sign a doctrinal statement but rather to come to know love, grace and peace in the person of Christ Jesus and now in the incarnation of the Body. When the church is this sort of incarnational community then “there is the kind of conversion that happens to people not because of how we talk but because of how we live.”13

One of the guys that is part of our church community is a banker here in Toronto. His boss knew that he was a Christian and one Friday evening asked him what he was doing that night. My friend Peter replied that he was going to help one of the families in our community move (their family was in the midst of some difficult circumstances that forced them to move). To his surprise Peter’s boss asked if he could come with him to which Peter of course agreed. Peter’s boss and his wife are now active and valuable members of our community because that Friday night they saw love with flesh on. They witnessed a community gather together around a family that was in a time of need and that was what drew Don to Jesus. He wasn’t convinced by some disconnected argument for the existence of God (although those may be fruitful at times). Rather, he was convinced when he witnessed a community in which love was made incarnate. He tasted and saw that this community made up of lovers of Jesus was indeed good. May we the church hear the call to be radically interdependent.

A vow of responsibility.
The church ought to be a community that lives responsibly (read: lovingly) in relation to the environment and to others. In the midst of a culture of over-development and over-consumption we proclaim that enough is enough and we repent for the ways in which we daily wrong one another and the earth. In the midst of a culture that lives as if the earth is full of unlimited resources we recognize the sinfulness of our over-consumptive lifestyles. In the midst of a culture that views people and the earth as disutilities to be overcome on the road of progress we proclaim the inherent goodness and beauty of creation.

This vow addresses our relationships, with other folks and with the earth. It’s about stewardship of creation and the love of our neighbour (heck, maybe even enemy). In a world where the divide between the rich and poor is ever growing, a world in which people live closed lives independent of one another, a world where people take advantage of others for their own gain and a world where we plunder the earth of its resources to feed our insatiable desire for more we recognize that the church is called to embody a different way. We recognize that the way we consume is not neutral but deeply effects our relationships with the poor and the earth. Here then, as a community of folks being shaped by the Spirit we must seek to rethink the ways in which we consume and live our lives.

When we are born anew into the Body we enter not into a particular social club but into a particular family. This naturally raises the question of order. We cannot here escape the language of economy. Our English word economy comes from the Greek word oikonomia which is literally translated as “house management” or “stewardship”. How then do we order our life as a family? It has been said that redistribution naturally springs forth from rebirth. After all, John the Baptizer not only proclaimed the need for repentance but also the need for providing for the poor (Luke 3:11). Being born anew into the Body that is the church then includes the radical redistribution of what’s “ours”. Before being accused of being a Socialist it should be noted that this has nothing to do with Marxism. In the words of Will O’Brien of the Alternative Seminary in Philadelphia, “When we truly discover love, capitalism will not be possible and Marxism will not be necessary.” If you grew up in a relatively healthy family then it would be hard to ever imagine allowing ones brother or sister to go without so that we could have more. Nothing less is expected when it comes to the church. However, like noted above this is not a call to charity at least not the sort of charity that allows us to maintain our distance. This calls for nothing less than solidarity with the poor. Unfortunately the North American church is predominantly wealthy and this creates all sorts of layers of insulation between the rich and the poor and prohibits us from truly encountering one another: “Tithes, tax-exempt donations, and short-term mission trips, while they accomplish some good, can also function as outlets that allow us to appease our consciences and still remain a safe distance from the poor.”14 As far as I can tell this is a part of the scandal of the North American church. We are good and fat and hold on to our possessions while many of our brothers and sisters starve to death and suffer under oppression and poverty. We must then consider what it means to be “born again” into a family where this sort of thing is tolerated.

I am reminded of a church community in the greater Toronto area that I spent a lot of time in when I was younger. Now this church is fairly large and recently raised millions of dollars for a building expansion that would include a second sanctuary for evening services and additional classrooms for ‘Christian education’. Even more recently the same church spent hundreds of thousands of dollars upgrading their in-house technology including very expensive lighting rigs, sound equipment and flat-screen TV’s in the lobby to display announcements. While this church building is located within a fairly wealthy suburban community it sits directly across the street from a neighbourhood geared towards lower-income families. I could not help but ask myself (and some members of the church) what exactly this was proclaiming to their neighbours across the road. Certainly this sort of extravagant spending on buildings and technology needs to be seriously questioned in light of our brothers and sisters who struggle to feed their families (and in light of the fact that such self-centredness seems to fly in the face of the fact that the church exists as a sent community). Poverty exists in the world not because God created it but because we fail to truly love our neighbours as ourselves. It becomes obvious that this way of “ordering our house” is rooted in the dominant narrative of our culture rather than the narrative of the people of God. The North American church would do well to learn from our brothers and sisters in Latin America that the church is a community that exists for the good of the nations, specifically the poor. In order to be faithful to this we need to consider the ways in which our methods of consumption and our closed lives serve to keep our brothers and sisters (locally and around the world) in oppression and poverty. It seems to me that folks had to give up their hold on possessions in order to follow Christ. Zacchaeus gave half of all he had to the poor after encountering Jesus. The disciples left all they had to follow him and the rich young man in the gospels was unable to follow Christ precisely because he could not part with his riches for the sake of the poor. In fact, it is interesting to note that two prominent passages where Jesus is talking about judgement and the afterlife have to do with our relationship with the poor (the sheep and the goats, Mt. 25; the rich man and Lazarus, Lk. 16).

In addition to entering into right relationship with the poor we cannot escape our relationship with the earth and the ways in which our lifestyles often poorly reflect the vocation of humanity to be stewards of creation. The lifestyles of North Americans, dictated as they are by the dominant culture, are lives of material overconsumption and this is harmful. As a society we in the North have made ourselves out to be pillars of economic progress. Indeed it is in progress that we place our faith. We trust in an ever expanding and ever growing economy that is fueled by our insatiable desire for more. As a result of our overdevelopment other nations are left with crumbs and remain underdeveloped. The statistics are familiar to most: 20% of the worlds population (Northern nations) consume 80% of the earths resources while the remaining 80% of the population are left with 20% of the earths resources. It is our lifestyle of overconsumption that keeps others oppressed. This way of life is nothing short of idolatry because we place our faith in the doctrine of progress and indeed we confess this faith by the ways in which we choose to live and consume. The resources that we use to sustain our way of life are limited and to take more than our fair share is unjust. As Gandhi famously said, “there is enough for everyone’s need, but there is not enough for everyone’s greed.” However, in North America we are guilty of blatantly ignoring the needs of others so that we can fulfill our own wants and desires. The resources of the earth have not just been given to wealthy developed countries. Rather, God has given the riches and resources of his earth to all of humanity and these gifts must serve the community of all people. As Bob Goudzwaard so nicely put it, “man may not use the earth’s resources as if he were the ultimate possessor and sole owner. Every private possession has a social mortgage which you have to pay off before you may use it for yourself.”15

For the church then what is required is repentance. We need to begin by repenting of bowing down to the idolatrous ways of Bay St. and bearing the image of these false gods as opposed to bearing the image of him who made us. We need to recognize and be aware of the spiritual nature of our economic choices. Here then the church can begin to move towards an embodied witness of the good news of the coming reign of God for our economic life in relation to the poor and the earth. In the words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “we are not to simply bandage the wounds of victims beneath the wheels of injustice, but we are to drive a spoke into the wheel itself.” Again, this must begin with repentance for the church cannot demonstrate with integrity an alternate way by imitating the service of the gods of this age with expensive church buildings and lifestyles: “The vocation of the church is to demonstrate in its own style of living that the redemption of Christ is also changing all our socioeconomic relations. In the Christian community something has to become visible of the holiness and the harmony of the economics of the Kingdom of God.”16 As we seek to embody the good news and live as a different sort of society we must then organize our house in a different way. The church cannot selfishly consume as the world does for this robs us of communion with the poor and with creation. In fact, if we buy into the lie of the North American dream, that our happiness is wrapped up in what we consume, then we sin against our neighbour and the earth. As the church what is required is nothing less than a new way of economic life. One in which we refuse to get fat off our riches while our brothers and sisters starve. One in which we refuse to let bedrooms sit empty in our homes while our brothers and sisters sleep on the streets. One in which we refuse to mindlessly consume just because advertisers tell us we need to when our brothers and sisters don’t have the same access to the earths resources that have been given to us by God. The economics of the church ought to be shaped by our vocation as stewards of the good creation. For all of us this will mean re-understanding our careers. Perhaps some of us will have to leave our jobs to follow Christ. Others of us will have to imagine new ways of practicing our careers, ways that come under the authority and grace of Christ and are responsible in light of our relationship with the poor and the earth. We must live responsibly in relation to the poor and the earth in the midst of an irresponsible culture if we are to be a community that truly embodies an alternate way of living that is defined by the inbreaking of God’s future reign into our present age.

The North American church finds herself in the midst of an important time and place. Our postmodern culture is defined by things like pluralism, individualism and consumer-capitalism (all of which are related, to be sure). What is truly problematic is that the church is shaped by these things. We began by noting the similarities between the church and the world. I am convinced that before the church lies an incredible opportunity to repent of our unfaithfulness and to reclaim our calling to be a community that is inhabiting and representing the reign of God in the midst of a watching world. To be nothing less than a “city on a hill” that cannot be hidden. The church is not called to be a particular option among many options of what is true and good that concerns only the private and domestic aspects of life. What the church claims to be true we claim to be true for the whole of creation. We proclaim and embody a kingdom that is over all things and all people. The Christian life effects not just private spirituality but public life, in fact, the Gospel serves to challenge the public life of our society. The church must then claim the high ground of public truth.17 In order for this to happen though the church must first embody this as an alternate way of life. The church needs to be a community that viably and visibly demonstrates what a renewed society might look like, one in which the reign of God is present. We must, therefore, repent of the ways in which we, the North American church, have allowed the ways of the world to creep in and shape our life together. We have allowed the narrative of the dominant culture to shape us as opposed to the narrative of the scriptures and the God in whose image we are made. What we are in need of is nothing less than converts in the best sense of the word, “people who are marked by the renewing of their minds and imaginations, who no longer conform to the pattern that is destroying our world. Otherwise, we have only believers…what the world needs is people who believe so much in another world that they cannot help but begin enacting it now.”18 Perhaps the three vows outlined above can help serve as small steps in that direction.