{"id":17942,"date":"2018-06-06T11:39:42","date_gmt":"2018-06-06T18:39:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dminlgp\/?p=17942"},"modified":"2018-06-06T11:39:42","modified_gmt":"2018-06-06T18:39:42","slug":"family-spirit-developing-an-asian-ecclesiology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/family-spirit-developing-an-asian-ecclesiology\/","title":{"rendered":"Family & Spirit: Developing an Asian Ecclesiology"},"content":{"rendered":"

Focus on the (true) Family<\/strong><\/h2>\n

I have distinct memories growing up of my home being a Focus on the Family<\/em> home. That is, my parents read James Dobson\u2019s books on parenting, we went through Preparing for Adolescence<\/em> together, listened \"\"<\/a>to cassette tapes of Adventures in Odyssey<\/em>, and newsletters from Dobson regularly arrived in our mail. This is etched into my memory.[1]<\/a> Jump ahead to undergrad when I read Rodney Clapp\u2019s Families at the Crossroads<\/em>. There (and elsewhere) Clapp makes the significant claim, \u201cThe family is not the primary vehicle of God\u2019s grace and salvation for a waiting, desperate world.\u201d Instead, \u201cthe church is God\u2019s most important institution on earth. The Church is the social agent that most significantly shapes and forms the character of Christians.\u201d[2]<\/a> This was a huge paradigm shift for me, to recognize that God desired the church\u2014not the family\u2014 to be the instrument of shalom and salvation.<\/p>\n

Reading Simon Chan\u2019s Grassroots Asian Theology<\/em>, many things crossed my mind\u2014among them, recognition that what he develops in this text can be formative for Christians and the church in places beyond Asia; it\u2019s relevant for us in the West as well. For instance, Chan challenges the institutional church to more humility, recognizing we have yet to attain fullness: \u201cthe present institutional church does not exhaust the meaning of the church as the body of Christ since it is still in via<\/em>.\u201d[3]<\/a> A primary theme, though, is the concept of the Trinity as family, with the church, therefore, mirroring it as family.<\/p>\n

This has potential to be somewhat risky in contexts where the family is highly valued. On one hand, \u201ca religion that radically disrupts the existing family structure will inevitably be viewed as a serious threat to society.\u201d[4]<\/a> But on the other hand, it is the church\u2014not the family\u2014that \u201cprovides the antidote to structural evil.\u201d[5]<\/a> Quoting Sri Lankan D.T. Niles, \u201cThe answer to the problems of the world is the answer that Jesus Christ provided, which is the Church.\u201d[6]<\/a> The church must function both as priest (ritually extending the values and meanings which give life in a particular context\u2014continuity) and as prophet (convicting and challenging the status quo\u2014contrast).[7]<\/a><\/p>\n

The concept of church as family has the potential to welcome the stranger and alien to the kitchen table, the orphan into adoption. The concept of church as family recognizes the communion of saints, the connection between past and present (and future) and is able to honor, remember, and celebrate those of us who are already dwelling in God\u2019s presence; thus providing a venue for contexts where ancestors are venerated (and for contexts like the West to do a better job of remembering those who have gone on).<\/p>\n

God-breath Revelations<\/strong><\/h2>\n

I generally resonate with Chan\u2019s development of common Asian theology, with his high and intertwined ecclesiology and pneumatology. Like the thesis posited in Adrian Thatcher\u2019s God, Sex and Gender<\/em>, Chan looks beyond sola scriptura <\/em>to both church (present) and tradition (past) for development of local theologies.[8]<\/a> If we embrace the revelation of the Holy Spirit beyond scripture and permeating the people of God, then it is essential to do a better of job \u201clisten[ing] to what God by his Spirit is saying through the laity.\u201d Wisely, though, this does not occur in an individualistic vacuum, says Chan, but \u201cfrom within the church, as fellow worshipers with the whole people of God.\u201d\"\"<\/a> [9]<\/a><\/p>\n

In Chan\u2019s theology, which recognizes the dwelling of the Spirit in each member of the family of God, we give and receive each other\u2019s gifts and burdens. It is a corporate identity, which resists individualism. However, individual autonomy is excessively valued in the West, so for us to embrace this Asian expression of corporate spirituality is challenging; such that \u201cbearing the cross in the body requires one to be limited by the weaknesses of another member.\u201d[10]<\/a> We resist anything that holds us back from our \u201ctrue potential.\u201d But as Western followers of Jesus figuring out how to value our membership as the body of Christ, are we willing to listen to the prophetic challenge of our Asian siblings and allow the revelation of the Holy Spirit in them to shape us and enlarge our own understanding of God?<\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> My favorite memory of FotF<\/em> is seeing\u00a0The Strong-Willed Child<\/em> book on my mom\u2019s beside table. I figured she was reading it because of my sister.<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> Rodney Clapp, Families at the Crossroads: Beyond Traditional and Modern Options<\/em> (Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity, 1993), 67-68.<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> Simon Chan, Grassroots Asian Theology: Thinking the Faith from the Ground Up<\/em> (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2014), 170.<\/p>\n

[4]<\/a> Ibid., 164.<\/p>\n

[5]<\/a> Ibid., 179.<\/p>\n

[6]<\/a> Ibid., 179, quoting D.T. Niles, The Message and Its Messengers<\/em> (Nashville: Abingdon, 1966) 50.<\/p>\n

[7]<\/a> Ibid., 170.<\/p>\n

[8]<\/a> Ibid., 12.<\/p>\n

[9]<\/a> Ibid., 18.<\/p>\n

[10]<\/a> Ibid., 181.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Focus on the (true) Family I have distinct memories growing up of my home being a Focus on the Family home. That is, my parents read James Dobson\u2019s books on parenting, we went through Preparing for Adolescence together, listened to cassette tapes of Adventures in Odyssey, and newsletters from Dobson regularly arrived in our mail. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":85,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[633,634,1289,100,1110],"class_list":["post-17942","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-asian-theology","tag-chan","tag-clapp","tag-family","tag-spirit","cohort-lgp7"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17942","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/85"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17942"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17942\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17943,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17942\/revisions\/17943"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17942"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17942"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17942"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}