by Pastor Dan Baumgartner

“Behold, I am doing a new thing.” That’s what the Lord said through Isaiah centuries ago. And it’s a good place to begin a short reflection on the vocabulary of faith.

The history of the church of Jesus Christ is a history of new things- of revival. Not just “Billy Graham football stadium”-type revival, but the presence of the Holy Spirit convicting, changing and reforming the faith community over time. It’s a good thing, because we get stuck or badly off track with frightening regularity. One of the hallmarks of Reformed faith has been the Latin phrase “Ecclesia reformata, semper reformanda,” loosely translated “The Church reformed and always being reformed.” Yes, please Lord.

Though we often hear “reform” or “revival” and think of things like the 16 th century Protestant Reformation, we could also think of lesser known movements. Oftentimes these fresh blowings of the Spirit come at times of cultural upheaval.

For example, the 1960’s and 1970’s were an extremely turbulent time in the United States – think Vietnam War, civil rights struggle, campus unrest and riots, sexual freedom, the questioning of authority of all kinds.

At the same time, there was significant upheaval in the church. Young “Jesus People” were bringing their long hair, beards and cutoffs into established faith communities - like Bethany! Small gatherings called “house churches” sprang up in many places.

In the Catholic Church, the Vatican II council initiated lots of reform in worship like the use of English, a new emphasis on the spoken word and more participatory folk masses. And across many lines, the “Charismatic Renewal” opened many to the work of the Spirit in new ways of worship and prayer. New vocabulary flourished.

In the short term, it is hard to judge whether movements like these are “revivals” with substantive changes for the church, or just trendy fads which disappear fairly quickly. Usually it takes a longer perspective to see clearly.

Here in 2008 , we are in the middle of a fascinating time, and the vocabulary is important. The cultural turbulence is obvious- wars, economy, election. The self-proclaimed transition from modernity to postmodernity is in full throttle.

Modernity (17 th-20 th centuries) was marked by a sense of progress, rapid technological change, the establishment of strong institutions, the elevation of rationality, the defining of truth, the quest for power and influence and mass urbanization.In general, the world was seen as open to transformation via human intervention.

Today, Post-modernity is marked by much less certainty, and a strong aversion to coercion or domination. Tolerance, diversity, choice and the meteoric rise of individual truth and opinion are the values of the day. Postmodernity is also a reaction away from modernity, and a thorough disenchantment with its values- where did all of that get us?

Within the Church, things are also changing in ways which are both invigorating and frustrating. Is it part of a revival, a movement of the Holy Spirit? Perhaps. We need to be people open to the “new thing” God may be doing. And to be open, we certainly need to understand it.

At our recent Bethany Session retreat, our leadership team spent some time thinking about these things. New vocabulary has popped up with increasing frequency in the last ten years to describe the church.

The word missional describes an outwardly focused model of the church, a vision of the community of faith spending more energy addressing needs outside the church than inside a building. An emphasis on things like discipleship over conversion, sending over sitting, incarnation over attraction (to something going on in a building), organic over organization and demonstration over explanation might help describe this emphasis.

Emerging is another important word which seems to be everywhere. It describes a renewal movement trying to put the Christian faith in context for a postmodern generation. Changes in worship style, participation in arts and culture and individual experience are embraced in new ways that make many more traditional expressions uneasy.

Mosaic churches which emphasize a rich multiculturalism and multiethnicity are springing up in every urban center.

A New Monastic movement has centered on small faith communities establishing residence in tough urban neighborhoods, living together, sharing resources and often providing a robust critique of current Christian culture and politics.

None of these terms are mutually exclusive. Then add a new desire on the part of many evangelical Christians to distinguish themselves from the very conservative Christian Right. Such “moderate Evangelicals” or “new evangelicals” insist on holding onto the emphasis of personal faith in Jesus Christ while broadening the issues of deep concern to include things like environmental stewardship and economic injustice.

Is all of this a bunch of trendy fads and labels which will soon disappear? Is this just the need of every generation to redefine things? I don’t think so.

Though the vocabulary is changing at a dizzying rate and there is lots of shallow rhetoric, there is no denying that a new generation of people wanting to follow Jesus faithfully is at hand. Younger folks in droves are asking hard questions, trying new things and challenging old presuppositions. I think the Spirit is in this.

And Bethany- where are we in all this? Some people have felt like Bethany has incorporated important elements of these movements for quite a while. That may be true. But what is also true is that we want to be people open to the Spirit of God. We want to be looking for what God is doing.

In order to do that, we’ll need to ask good questions, to read deeply, to listen well and to be with folks who look and sound different than us. And we’ll need to get familiar with some new vocabulary. Missional, emerging, mosaic, new monastic, new evangelical. “Behold I am doing a new thing.”