Sustainability
(an excerpt from the book The Orphan Church)
by Bryan Raile
(an excerpt from the book The Orphan Church)
by Bryan Raile
And
in the morning, It will be foul
weather to day: for the sky is red and lowring. O ye hypocrites, ye can discern the face of the sky; but can ye not discern the signs of
the times? (Matthew 16:3, emphasis
added)
Jesus
denounced those of His generation because they could not discern the “signs of the times.” What did He mean
by “signs of the times?” A sign is a form of communication; it says something
about the brief moment in which we live. It reveals the truth or the reality of
the events we are experiencing. Jesus endorsed the idea of reading signs that
have specific meaning to a particular people or generation. The signs are
speaking. Do you see them?
My
wonderful wife pointed out some interesting facts: she can read the signs of
the times. During the 1990’s, the church we attended was leading a global prayer effort. Some of you may
have heard of it. It was called “Prayer Through the Window.” It referred to a
concerted effort to pray for the nations in Africa and Asia that are in the
10/40 window (the nations between the 10th and 40th
parallels). The movement reached all over the world, stimulating millions of believers
to pray for these nations who— for the most part— exist under the bondage of
Islam. The movement discontinued in the year 2000. During the 1990’s, the buzz
word coming out of the culture was “global.” It was everywhere; everything was
going “global.” Major businesses went “global,” economics went global, currency
went global, the internet went global, and on and on. The message echoing
through American culture during that decade was “globalization.” It seemed
ironic that the culture or the society at large, inadvertently, projected
something of what God was saying to Christianity, particularly our group who
had set out on a mission to pray for the darkest nations on earth to hear and receive
the Gospel.
This
begs the question: what are the signs of
these times right now? Can we read them, or will we be as ignorant as the
people of Jesus day?
Scanning the horizon, we can actually see two signs of the times that may be
speaking through society to God’s people. One sign slaps you in the face every
time you read the newspaper or view the news online, and another is relatively
new and has only been flashing its message for a few short years. The first
message is focused on gender. Everywhere you go the discussion of the day—the
issues being tried in courts, the decisions being made regarding public schools
and universities— are regarding gender. When the culture at large is dealing
with an issue, it is a sure sign that God is pressing His Church to search the
Scripture, get it right (to become of the right perspective), and not be blown
away by the blizzard of public opinions. All through history, the Church
brought forth its best and most brilliant theology during a crisis of ideas,
and now is no different. Will we rise to the occasion and have proper
discernment?
So,
what is the second sign of our times? The buzz word now echoing throughout the
culture is “sustainability.”
If you were to frequent a particular eatery
that served a buffet style on a regular basis, you would notice if something
was removed from the spread of delectable foods, would you not? Believe it or
not some things have already vanished from the smorgasbord of churches because
they were not sustainable, and one particular group resided here in America when the colonies
were organizing; however, it vanished before the signing of the Declaration of
Independence. Who might that be? That
would be none other than the Puritans. They were not sustainable. (We’ll speak
more about them in a later section.)
I
believe God— speaking through societal fads— is posing sustainability as a question, and this particular fad is always
working its way through our society as a question rather than a statement.
Farming practices are being questioned as to their sustainability. It shows up
grocery labels, “From sustainable farming practices,” etc. Labor management and
business methods are being scrutinized for their “sustainability.” This is a
sign of our times. Perhaps God is asking the same thing of the smorgasbord of
churches that grace our cities and towns. Is the smorgasbord sustainable? In
order to answer that question, we must first find out what “sustainable” looks
like. In the church world, what is sustainable and what is not? That is the
question. The obvious answer to that is that which is sustainable is that which has always been here: the thing that is
as it has always been will be what is here when the dust clears. This means
that something that is sustainable has its roots in the past. If the thing that
is sustainable is something ancient and very old, then we must look to the past
to find it.
So, what is the purpose of this book? What is
it that we wish to say? We wish to bring you the news; the “bad news and the
good news.” What is the bad news? The bad news is that some forms of modern
Christianity that appear on the smorgasbord of every community are not
sustainable because they have been cut loose
or orphaned from the
classical Christian root. They are orphaned in their faith because they have no
connection with pre-Reformational Christianity. The good news is that many in
orphaned expressions of Christianity are rediscovering their spiritual family
history and attending to the old ways in order to walk in the well-trod ancient
paths.
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