On Monday, the (Re)Imagining Christianity blog series will start here on Pomomusings and run for about two months. I’m very excited about all of the folks who are going to be participating in this series…including you! I really do hope that you might also take a few moments to respond to the prompts and share a link to your blog post here on the original introductory post.
As I reflect on the beginning of this series, here are a few hopes I have:
Creative Theological Work: Too often I think we look backwards, to the past, to the theology that’s already been written, and there is a sense that the work has been done for us, and it’s up to us, now, to just argue about what currently exists and to decide what’s best. I think we can do better than that. In fact, Landon Whitsitt said this very thing last week when he wrote: “If I wake up in 30 years and all theology has amounted to is a continued argument about whether [insert favorite theologian] was right and whether or not you’re living up to the legacy of [insert favorite theologian], I’m giving up my ordination” [source].
New Life out of Death: The first prompt asks “What is one belief, practice or element of Christianity that must die so that Christianity can move forward and truly impact the world in the next 100 years?” I think there may be some things that need to die in order for us to move forward. We need to have some death, before we can have some resurrection…that’s biblical, I think. I get the image of the phoenix, rising up from its ashes, more powerful & beautiful than before. Let’s shoot for that.
Beautiful Things from the Past: The second prompt asks, “What is one belief, practice or element of Christianity that we must hold onto and live out more fully so that Christianity can move forward and truly impact the world in the next 100 years?” I actually don’t think we’re all screwed up, and there are some wonderful, beautiful things from our past that we might need to live into even more. While I think we must be constantly moving forward, progressing and living into the context into which God has called us…I still think there are aspects of historic Christian faith that we obviously should hold onto.
Finally, I hope that this series inspires you to look at your own faith and see which aspects of what you believe might be hindering or helping you move forward in your own spiritual journey. I hope you’ll join me, and many others, on this blog series on (Re)Imagining Christianity. And if you’re on Twitter, be sure to use the hashtag #ReImagineXnity.