Our Adaptive God, Dogma, and Faithful Adaptation

Adaptive Ecclesiology - Part Five

“It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us not to burden you with anything beyond the following requirements.” Acts 15:28

Today, Gardens in the Desert: How the Adaptive Church Can Lead to a Whole New Life has been unleashed into the world! (Grab a copy for yourself, or gift it to a friend, right here).

We open the book by suggesting faithful adaptation requires three prayerful movements:

1. Preserve the essential DNA.

2. Discard the harmful DNA.  

3. Create DNA arrangements that enable us to flourish in new ways and in new environments.

This requires the kind of balcony and dance discernment mentioned in the previous post. What do we keep? What do Scripture, tradition, reason, and experience indicate we must preserve in our DNA? What do we lay aside? What do we need to discard? What is weighing on us, as leaders, as communities? What can we live more freely and joyfully without? How do we create new DNA arrangements that enable us to flourish in new ways and in new environments?

This is in fact what the early church was up to in Acts 15 at the Council of Jerusalem. The emerging church in Antioch presented an adaptive challenge. Is circumcision something that is essential to the DNA for gentile believers? Or can it be laid aside for the sake of the mission? Is strict adherence to the 613 Levitical restrictions something that should be upheld among these communities? Or can the Great Commission to “go make disciples” (Matthew 28:18-20) be reframed in terms of the Great Commandment to “love God, love neighbor” for “all the law and prophets hang on these two” (Matthew 22:37-42).

Can the emerging church follow the Holy Spirit to live more freely and joyfully in a different way? Interestingly, it was in Antioch where the disciples were first called “Christians” (Acts 11:26). Jürgen Moltmann notes it was also in this critical moment of adaptation that the word church was first used to describe something distinct, an expansion beyond a majority-Jewish group housed within synagogues which contained both “an element that is critical of the law, and a rejection of the temple cult in Jerusalem.”^[1]

The Jerusalem leaders had the humility to acknowledge dependence on the Spirit into a new situation and an explored future. In so doing, they would offer a profound model of adaptation, unleashing an ever-expanding circle of inclusion that would wrap the world in God’s love for the next 2000 years.

In essence, they were merely continuing the compassionate ministry of Jesus, who ate with sinners (Lk 15:2), and healed gentiles (Lk 7:5, Mt 8:5-13, Mk 7:27). Jesus, who shared with Samaritans, considered racially impure and religiously heretical, that an age of the Spirit was coming when these points of contention would become irrelevant. True worshipers would worship in “spirit and truth” (John 4:23).

How could we describe the prayerful discernment process of the adaptivity of the early church? This is the surprising origin of the first Biblical case study of “dogma.”  

Dogma is a word originating from the Koine Greek, δοκέω (dokeō) which means “to seem good” or “to think.” It was translated into Latin, then at the turn of the 17th century dogma entered English meaning “philosophical tenet.” The Biblical source of its use occurs right here in Acts 15:28, where it is translated, “it seemed good.” So, “It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us not to burden you with anything beyond the following requirements” (15:28 italics mine).

Dogma is an adaptive word, not a rigid and confining one. It describes the prayerful process of the early church preserving, discarding, and creating new arrangements of the DNA.

Could it be that any dogma that’s become merely a “philosophical tenet” not freshly evaluated through discerning the Holy Spirit’s ongoing activity which extends the compassion of Jesus is something foreign to its Biblical origins? 

It’s interesting how the church has collapsed into a “dogmatic” way of thinking about mission that disconnects it from Biblical origins. Many understand this as the transmission of a set of precepts to which one must intellectually assent—in return we receive a kind of golden ticket to a post-mortem destiny in heaven. This is all a very European, enlightenment, propositional, and colonial way to understand Christianity.

Faithful adaptation is not simply about transmitting a doctrine or a set of beliefs, but rather extending and inviting others into a relationship with a living person, a person already present prior to our arrival. This is a compelling witness to the prevenient grace of God, the grace that “goes before us.”

The heart of Christian faith is a living relationship with Jesus Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit, in loving union with the Father. A prominent Methodist evangelist and missionary, E. Stanley Jones described Christianity as not being a religion of word become word… “this would make it indistinguishable from every other religion or philosophical system.” At the heart of the Christian faith is a living being, Jesus of Nazareth, born of a virgin, who died, was resurrected, and is utterly alive and accessible now. Jones believed Christianity was a religion of “Word become flesh.”^[2]

All faithful adaptations are about relationships. A relationship with this wound-bearing Lord, a relationship that transforms our life incrementally each day, enabling us to grow in the likeness of God, empowering us to embody his own compassion. A relationship between Jerusalem and Antioch, Jew and Gentile. An expanding circle of relationships with others. Jesus did not come to establish a religion of precepts, doctrines, and dogmas. He came to give us life, life abundantly (John 10:10).

Jones also wrote, “Is the Way a principle or a Person? It is both! Jesus put them together in this statement, ‘I am the way’ (John 14:6). Here the Word became flesh, the Path became a Person.”^[3] Thus a relationship with this Jesus, shapes us a particular kind of people, a people who live a peculiar kind of way, a people of compassion.

In Jesus we encounter our adaptive God—a God of incarnation, mission, and resurrection. A God who adapts to enfold us with unfailing love. A God who is stirred to the guts with compassion.

God is love (1 John 4:8).

Love adapts (John 1:14… “The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood”).

God calls us to become an adaptive church. A church that is flourishing in a changed mission reality. A church that is humble, generative, willing to experiment, and passionate about the wellbeing of the people and the places where we live. A church that springs up like Gardens in the Desert.

We believe that local congregations and fresh expressions can become outward and visible signs of healing and new creation in a landscape marked by trauma and disorientation. We hope this book will be a tool to support your team in the work of faithful adaptation.

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Today is release day for Gardens in the Desert!

Bishop Ken Carter.

Michael Beck

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^[1] Moltmann, The Church, 142.

^[2] Jones, Word Became Flesh.

^[3] Jones, The Way, 108.