Three streams in the Christianity
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:date: 2005-11-02T18:01:00
:category: faith
:tags: ecumenism

`Today Dave‘s sermon`_ was mainly about the prophetic stream in the
Christianity, but before that he was talking about *three different
streams of the ministry* —I was quite pleasantly surprised that his three
different streams of Christianity were apparently pretty similar to what
I was thinking on the similar theme (although I had only two streams in
my model).

The original idea comes from my reading of Floyd McClung’s “\ `Father
Makes Us One`_\ ”—he mentions that many clashes in churches is caused by
two different streams in the church: on the one hand there are
missionary groups trying to primarily reach to unsaved and then there is
the body of local Church itself, which is mainly focused on development
of current Christians and the body of Christ. I think that this is very
right, but I tried to extend this theory from just practical advice on
how to avoid conflicts in the Church to more general theory of many
conflicts in the Church as whole. On the one side there are whom I would
call “pastors”—people who are deeply interested in building Church
(particularly specific local congregation), they care for current
Christians, cry with them somewhere in the corner struggling with their
personal issues, they study (often poor) popular books on psychology,
they support diversity a enjoy spritiual (and psychological) depths (in
their best members they could be great mystics). And there are
“missionaries”—they running out to the world catching unbelievers and
dragging them to Christ, they expect everybody to be pagan and object of
their missionary activities (just kidding :-)), they are usually
congregated in different para-denominational organizations, they are
deeply involved in the sprititual warfare, while the pastors may have
tendency to be sometimes too liberal (in the theological meaning of the
world), the biggest temptation for them is legalism and superficiality
(they have usually tendency to be more interested in the business
management and marketing of missionary work then in the mysticism). Of
course, that these are just a caricatures made into the extremes, but I
think that they may well illustrate my point.

I thought that I could go even further and deeper (you can see, that I
have a tendency to be more “pastor” ``:-)``), and that this dichotomy
could be paralleled in the dichotomy between masculinity and feminity
(we all, both men and women, have both qualities and each of has some
combinations of them). Whereas pastor tends to have more developed
feminine qualitites (Church as relationships among people and with God),
missionaries are more on the masculinity side (Church as an army and
organization), and the parallel could go even further. I believe that
both types of Christians are absolutely necessary for healthy life of
the Church, but it is clear to me that their coexistence has to lead to
conflicts, which have to be acknowledged and solved, so that these two
types of Christians could live together (Biblical note: it seems to me
that these two types of personal traits could not be combined without
problems into one person—Jesus could be an exception from this
rule—because even God did not create one universal human man-woman, but
Adam and Eve). Which lead again to the better vision of the need for
unity of Church, and to see how much it is a pitty, that Christians are
talking so little with one another (and yes, the situation is slightly
better in Czechia than here in the States—thanks to Communists for
that). Even worse, not only that we do not talk with one another but we
are pretty busy creating artificial barries make such communication even
more complicated (see my inability to go to the Lord’s supper at the
Catholic conferences).

OK, so this was my idea about the two types of Christians, which Dave
made even more complicated. I do not want to give up on the wonderful
parallels with masculinity/feminity, but it is true that without
including the third type of Christianity and Christians it is hard to
deal with (for example) the Black Church, with the Christian activism;
the pastors I saw in Roxbury are hugely different from the evangelical
crowd I know best, and this different part is certainly a lot about
active participation in turning your own community around (be in your
church or not).

Of course, much more important then this dry theoretical catalogization
of Christians was Dave’s call to the ministry of justice and care for
the poor. There is really no way how to get around the fact, that
substantial part of the Bible (including famous Micheas 6:8) put care
for the poor and disfavored among the most important parts of faith
(much more important then more religious activities). “Religion that is
pure and undefiled before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans
and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the
world.” (James 1:26) Suddenly it seems to be more important then
personal religiosity, prayers, sacraments, and many other things which
are so important.

And yet, I do not know much how to begin this ministry. I know,
I heard many times, that the Lord Jesus did not favor anybody,
but does it mean, that I should give away all my money (or at least some
money) to the random beggars I meet on the street? Probably not. Does
it mean, that I should do something myself? Probably yes, but what? I am
consoling myself, that we care for Andulka and participate in the Living
Waters, but does it mean, that the poor care that much? I do not know.
Should I rise my butt and go to help to some soap kitchen or something
of that sort? I do not know. Probably, I will just keep this on a back
burner (in the same way I deal with evangelization), and if I will meet
an opportunity, then I will participate. However, what is the
opportunity I am waiting for (“You will have always enough poor”)?
I do not know.

.. _`Today Dave‘s sermon`:
    http://sermons.cambridgevineyard.com/051009-sermon.mp3
.. _`Father Makes Us One`:
    http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0961553421/