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Sunday, January 31, 1999
GOING SEVEN DEGREES BEYOND KEVIN
BACON!
The parlor game known as SIX DEGREES FROM KEVIN BACON
and also known as SIX STEPS OF SEPARATION FROM KEVIN
BACON, is a fun game which tests your knowledge of
Hollywood trivia. There are 95,000 living actors who are
members of the Screen Actors Guild and another 400,000 or
more actors, many now dead, identified in other
movie/theatre sources. The designers of this game, using
computer technology, have listed about 5,000 better known
actors and actresses, most from Hollywood present and
past, and catalogued every other actor who has appeared
in the screen credits of the total of films of each of
the identified actors.
The surprising finding is that some lesser known
actors like Kevin Bacon have thousands of collegial
actors with whom they have worked where as much better
known actors like John Wayne have only a few hundred
actors with whom they have worked in much longer careers.
The reason is that many actors, especially the more
famous, appear in genre films - most of John Wayne's l30
films were westerns or war stories, and the same sets of
fellow actors were drawn to these genre films. Much
younger Bacon has appeared in more diverse films and so
varying groups of actors have worked with him.
Kevin Bacon is a symbol of other actors who can be
substituted as the target of search and connection. The
way the game is played is someone knows that O.J. Simpson
was in NAKED GUN with Priscilla Presley, who was in THE
ADVENTURES OF FORD FAIRLANE with Gilbert Gottfriend, who
was in BEVERY HILLS COP TWO with Paul Reiser, who was in
DINER with Kevin Bacon. That's four steps to Kevin Bacon.
The idea is to develop a network leading to the principal
actor in less than six steps but more than one.
Everyone is looking for something: someone or
something and a principle derived from this game is that
the greater anyone's circle of friends and diversity of
contacts the greater the likelihood that you will find
what or whom you are seeking. When we replace an actor
with Jesus of Nazareth, we who are believers become
participants in the links which lead seekers to Jesus.
That is why everyone in the modern church is an
evangelist, a minister, and key player in making the
introductions which result in seekers getting introduced
to Jesus.
The typical way of introducing someone to Jesus is to
introduce the person to the church of Jesus. And this is
sound and orthodox networking because as the great
Reformation thinker John Calvin said: WHEREVER WE SEE THE
WORD OF GOD PURELY PREACHED AND HEARD, AND THE SACRAMENTS
ADMINISTERED ACCORDING TO CHRIST'S INSTITUTION, THERE, IT
IS NOT TO BE DOUBTED, A CHURCH OF GOD EXISTS. FOR HIS
PROMISE CANNOT FAIL. WHEREVER TWO OR THREE ARE GATHERED
IN MY NAME, THERE I AM IN THE MIDST OF THEM.
The downside of John Calvin's idea of the church is
that, as Paul found at Corinth, where two or three or
more are gathered together to be the church there can be
disunity as readily as unity; there can be squabbling and
bickering as quickly as enthusiasm and cooperation. The
further downside is that when we finally get skeptics and
seekers to a church, they may experience only boredom and
indifference.
The coming Millennium, as a date, does nothing for me
but as a symbol I agree with those who believe it marks
our transition, from the Modern Era which has governed us
for the last 300 years to a future which is called the
Post-Modern Era. I do believe that what has served the
church well during the Modern Era will not serve it well
during the Post-Modern Millennium just as what served the
Church well for the l700 years or so of the pre-Modern
Era had to be abandoned once the Enlightenment and
Rationalism became the context for the church.
The Church embraced the rationalism and scientism of
the Modern Era about l700, and most of the Church then
abandoned the cult of relics, going on pilgrimages, daily
devotion at the Mass, and fear of hell and damnation, as
the main crutches and incentives for faithfulness to
Christ and even to his church. In the Modern era the
church became rationalistic with the Bible being argued
and defended with tenacious logic and reasonable
appeals.
The post-modern age began probably 40 years ago with
the collapse of belief in rationalism as the saving form
of society. Rationale government gave us Fascism and
Communism; rationale science gave us the atomic bomb.
People grew disillusioned with relying upon the
reasonableness of men and their institutions. The last 50
years of technological advances in travel and
communications opened the cultural floodgates to
individual self-determinism and self-expression. One mark
of the emerging Post Modern era is that people are much
more in touch with their emotions and feelings and
personal needs and increasingly intolerant and
indifferent to anybody, including the Church, which
defines the meaning of their lives through a series of
propositions about an abstract Truth.
Surprising though it is, increased spirituality is a
hallmark of the non-conformist Post Modern era. And
spiritual seekers are now networking with an intensity
and a breadth unique in human history. Search, find, hit
via the Internet is a new thing. The post-modern search
for degrees of meaning and steps to conviction is
underway and this church, like all churches that are
awake on the threshold of the Millennium, is searching
its collective soul to learn how we can be relevant
within this emerging global spirituality. It's a new day
coming, brothers and sisters, and the church is given the
chance to play a new game of networking for Christ and
toward Christ with others.
Those churches which insist on playing the old games
of the dying modern era by declaring the revealed truth
of our faith, on a take it or leave basis for humanity,
will become irrelevant, revealed like the Emperor who had
no clothes on, as posturing in a role of authority which
is no longer respected. Post-modern people will simply
not pay attention to the appeals of a Christian ministry
still living out the dying Modern era.
Let's look at some of the new, post-modern steps which
a survival church will be taking to be relevant in the
coming Millennium:
The new Church shall invite people to embrace the
stories of the Scriptures instead of the texts of the
bible. In the modern period, these past 3 centuries or
so, the Church said to the world: If you believe, you
will be saved. The Church at least in the West still had
a playing field which favored its' unilateral claims. The
only real threat to Christian Orthodoxy was Science and
the religion of Scientism; and the Church accommodated to
Science by embracing the principles of rationalism and
declaring that biblical truth claims were wholly
rationale, logical, demonstrable and compatible with
modern methods of research, discovery and publication.
While making Christianity intellectually nice, it tended
to drain all mystery, passion, feeling and radicalism
from the underlying Gospel.
But in the post modern period Christianity is not
favored anywhere. Global common education and the global
internet make every faith claim of equal validity with
Christianity. The era has ended when sermons and vast
missionary energy will be expended to convince people
that every verse and chapter of the bible is
self-validating truth which only must be understood and
then believed.
Rather the Church will invite people to consider the
stories of the bible and how those stories link-up with
their life stories. Church teaching will aim to illumine
and offer the stories of the Bible to non-believers as
real and relevant spiritual happenings which relate God
to us. Some of those stories that run deeply under the
thousands of proof texts are: God's constant search for a
faithful people and God's graciousness to such peoples
even when they fail; God's commitment to the fallen,
poor, despised among every society; God's inclusive
creation which embraces every group within his love and
his purposes; and the greatest story of them all: God's
love shown in Jesus. The main form of teaching will be
much more like Nury Vittachi's story telling on Sundays
with our children, linking a scriptural story with the
lives of kids, than the modern era's reliance on three
point teaching sermons and canned Q&A plans for
evangelism and conversion.
In the post-modern era we live in an imaginative and
story-conscious world in which one's faith perspective is
dictated by life-transforming stories. And we have become
nearly entirely visual in our imaging of reality. I
believe even in the year 2525 there will be a use for
verbal preaching, but church and Christian education will
be much more like a "discovery" channel with which we
interact than a radio before whose sounds we sit
passively.
Divine moments happen all the time to us; sometimes,
though not often enough, in the context of church; often
in the context of reading a story, seeing a movie or
play, or reading or hearing of a news event, we
experience the sighs or tears or reproaches or other
movements of the Divine; we feel we are on a network of
meaning and sharing that meaning with others and with
God.
A news event which touched many of us this past week
was to learn of the murder of the Australian missionary
Staines and his two young boys in India by Hindu
fanatics. I cannot believe the Staines lost their lives
because they were defending a propositional faith! Surely
they did not die for a series of rationalistic and
fundamentalist claims on behalf of Jesus and his God
against the Hindu religion. They died because they were
living their faith; they were helping the Christian story
become the life affirming story of villagers in India.
Mr. Staines had lived in India for 24 years. His three
children were born there. The Gospel is not an affront to
the world because of its verbal claims. It becomes a
scandal and an offense when real Christians, like the
Staines family, live out the biblical stories of
sacrifice, service and suffering for Christ and for the
poor.
Which brings us to another emerging trait of the
churches which will survive and grow in the Millennium:
In the post modern world it will not be what Christians
say but who they are which will convince spiritual
seekers of the truth of our faith. Spirituality is
flowing through post modern people; people want to
network toward a higher truth and belief. Angels and
mysteries and conversions are returning with powerful
claims upon post modern spirits. By contrast, few are
interested in arguments and prooftexting the claims of
Christianity. I really believe what brings some post
modern people into the Mormon fold is not the
prooftexting approach which is as highly developed among
Mormon missionaries as any religious groups; but isn't it
the powerful impression made by tens of thousands young
men and women are living out their faith for two years in
strange places.
This means we should stop insisting, as, alas, do the
Mormons and every fundamentalist group, at least in the
beginning of our dialogue with non-Christians, that our
story about Jesus is the only story. This approach is no
longer effective in the post-modern world. Instead let's
say that our story is based upon our view of reality, and
that, yes, there are many stories out there that people
are free to believe. This does not mean that we
compromise the gospel story in any way. It still is the
single true Story for us. We believe it, and we encourage
others to see it with us. We live life by this story and
share it freely and joyfully with others who, thank God,
are in the post-modern world open to honest life sharing.
Post modern people really are into spirituality and faith
and lifechanging experiences. We live life by the story
of Jesus and we quite naturally want others to experience
it. But the only prooftext which will convince anyone is
to see the joy and love and energy of God in our lives,
and not in our arguments.
That brings me to a third observation of the emerging
post modern church: when people do take us up on our
invitation to meet Jesus by coming to our church we will
want to offer joyful worship. A bit of advice: We should
start inviting people to Christ and not to Church.
There's a difference, but sooner or later the Church is,
or is supposed to be, the most probable place to meet
Christ. When that normal link up occurs, people will
expect to find an experience that makes a difference for
them and not be bored to death! Did you see those
joy-filled nuns in St. Louis doing their jumping dances
and cheer routines for the Pope? Post modern religion
will speak to and call upon the emotions, feelings,
bodily expression, and spontaneity of worshipers and
believers. Of course, there will still be a desirable
order and mental discipline to Christian worship but not
of the kind that has produced so many arid and lifeless
congregations falling to sleep during the sermon and
shuffling through tired liturgies.
Communion, for one example, is coming to life again as
a joyful, affirming celebration within the body of Christ
and putting to rest the three century of Calvinist
restraint and rationalism that viewed and feared
Communion as a sober experience to be undertaken only
once a year.
I believe God is calling our church and many others to
venture with Him across the threshold to the next
millennium. We are given the opportunity to seek out
degrees and steps beyond the Jesus whom we have clung to.
In the venture we shall discover that the networks which
flow from and lead back to Jesus are vast and found in
places and among people we have not dreamed of. We shall
find that Jesus has never been content to stay put on the
cross where institutional piety safely has kept him nor
assigned to a vague, shadowy place off the cross where
modernist attitudes needed him to get lost.
Fortunately, as a new church founded on the eve of the
post modern period we do not have a great deal of
institutional baggage from which to unburden ourselves. .
But like every congregation we are still tempted to play
at "doing church" instead of to live at being the church.
The embracing of change, which is so troubling to
established churches, looks to me to not be our problem.
We are not threatened and destabilized by the popular and
secular renewal of spirituality, nor do we tremble at the
ideas that the Holy Spirit might be real, that angels
might really exist and visit us, that the renewal of the
ministry of healing through prayers and gestures has an
authentic place in modern worship, that the affirmation
of integrity of the whole person in worship comes when
all five senses combine with mind, body, emotions,
feelings, and spirit; and the need for a discipling
experience through committed fellowship and study groups.
These, I believe, will be strong traits of churches that
advance in the post modern age.
Community Church Hong Kong will be in the forefront of
that great adventure which part of the Church of Jesus
Christ is now undertaking. Aren't you glad you are given
the opportunity to be among those who respond to the
millennium which God is giving us. We are privileged to
consider doing some new things in a new age. God calls us
to be a new spiritual people and to work with Him.
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