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TechnoratiCT: On a global level, how can the whole body of Christ effectively keep up with what you termed the "hurricane of change" in the world today in the face of so many conflicts and divisions?
McLaren: First, I'd say we need to realize that conflicts and divisions are only one dimension of our challenge in the aftermath of profound cultural change. Another great danger is marginalization, where we only understand and speak to a smaller and smaller segment of the population. Another great danger – opposite in some ways to marginalization – is over-accommodation, where we become too embedded with a majority culture or civilization.
To me, the great inspiration in change is to focus on Jesus, who incarnated the Word in a way that was at once culturally relevant and counter-culturally potent. Jesus showed up right on time, and addressed the critical issues of his day in ways that were also historically transcendent and universally applicable.
CT: What do you think the global body of Christ should be making a missional priority?
McLaren: To me, the idea of disciple-making is most central and most holistic and hopeful. If we have been transformed by Jesus' radical good news of the kingdom of God – a message more and more Christians are grappling with, I'm glad to say – then we can seek to be and make disciples of Jesus who live and communicate that message.
When we live and share the gospel of the kingdom of God, we help people be reconciled with God, within themselves, with their neighbors and strangers and enemies, and with God's creation as a whole. That message of the kingdom integrates personal spiritual formation with social transformation. So it produces not just converts or Christians or church-goers, but rather disciples of Jesus, citizens of God's global kingdom – people who both pray and seek to help the poor, people who both worship and work for peace, people who both study the Bible and study ways to care for the planet, people who pursue both personal holiness and social holiness.
CT: You spoke of paradigm shifts. What can the Global North and the Global South learn from each other about effective evangelism in today's world?
McLaren: What a great question. People in the Global North can learn about joy and courage and hope and resilience from the Global South. They can learn about being rich towards God rather than rich in this world's economy. They can learn about living the gospel in conditions of poverty and war and disease and pluralism, rather than simply talking about the gospel in comfortable church buildings and classrooms and websites.
And perhaps people from the Global South can learn from their neighbors to the North some of the dangers, toils, and snares that await them as they "advance" – a term I have mixed feelings about – in terms of economics, education, entertainment, and so on. Because I think history teaches us that it is not easy for faith communities to go from pre-modernity to modernity to whatever comes after ... and that you can have thriving "Christian" societies at one point that are in decline and collapse a century or less later. Continue »
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