Practice Resurrection—All of the Time…

Mainstream Christianity is no longer “main stream”. It is fast becoming a peripheral part of the Christian narrative in this country and abroad. Personally I celebrate this change of status for the following reasons.

There has always been something profoundly arrogant to be found in every mainstream movement, often expressed by the self-congratulatory remark that “we must be right because we are the majority” (numerically, that is). Our decline is nothing new and every organization, empire and society undergoes these same changes and adaptations over time.

My positive stance on the decline of mainstream Christianity has to do with the fact that once we become smug and self satisfied, we should always get the hint that it is time to move on.

Mainstream Christianity has been stuck in a rut for way too long and its time to move on.
Where do we find our inspiration and hope when all around us the old structures, familiar and beloved to us, are crumbling?

In the resurrection story!

Personally I have very little interest in the resuscitation of dead bodies, and it is quiet easy, when making the effort to read the most basic of literature regarding the ancient times, how great figures in faith always seemed to be “taken up into the sky”, whether it be Elijah, Jesus or Mohammed. These figures simply could not die as ordinary mortal men for the stories to survive in those times.

But true resurrection is an amazing and spectacular miracle and there are many resurrection stories in all of our lives. The one we treasure as Christians tells of how Jesus died on a cross; humiliated and brutalized by a system that could not bear the kind of resurrection he preached—but it is also the story of the triumph of his message.

His is a message that still inspires us and points us in the direction of hope after all of these centuries.

He truly is RISEN!

The mainstream church too, will be resurrected, but not to the old body we once knew. The church-stories of resurrection are manifold, as Hal Taussig demonstrated in his lectures here in February. The new is emerging from the old and those among us who wish to retreat into the familiar safety of the past will continue to be frustrated and disappointed. We will ultimately become embittered and lonely, even moving back to the “fleshpots of Egypt.”

But true life begins in the desert experience where everything is at risk and the stakes are high. Its a place of discomfort and even hunger and thirst from time to time. But it is only in courageous renewal that we will find new life—resurrected life.

For our communal life together, as the remnants of the so-called mainstream church movement, I see hope in our uneasiness and unsettledness. For it is in times such as these that we can truly begin to grow again—if not in numbers, then in maturity and relevance.

Let us open our hearts and our minds as we remember that discipleship in Christ is a life of giving ourselves away, not preserving and protecting the past. I am filled with hope for the liberating love of Christ is beginning to bloom again as the new butterfly emerges from the cocoon of past trappings. Yes, metaphorically seen… “God is still speaking…”

Anton DeWet