Churches challenged to recapture ‘apostolic ethos’_20705

Posted: 2/04/05

Churches challenged to recapture 'apostolic ethos'

By Ferrell Foster

Texas Baptist Communications

IRVING–Christians are not to be curators of antiquities; they are to be God's witnesses, a Princeton Theological Seminary professor told a Texas Baptist conference.

Christianity has lost its sense of mission, said Darrell Guder, professor of missional and ecumenical theology at the New Jersey seminary.

It can be recaptured only through a “process of biblical formation,” whereby Scrip-ture reshapes a person's understanding of what it means to be a Christian.

“God has given us all we need to be faithful witnesses,” Guder said during Epicenter, a forum on global Christianity sponsored by the Baptist General Conven-tion of Texas.

“We are today in a difficult mission field, … but God has placed us in this mission field.”

Guder said an “apostolic ethos” must be recaptured.

“Apostolic defines the very nature of the true church,” he said. “To be apostolic is to be missional, is to be called out.”

The mission given by Jesus to the apostles “was not simply the conversion of souls,” Guder said. It involved founding communities of faith.

“Ethos” refers to “what God's calling produces,” the professor said.

By living in community, Christians provide a “concrete demonstration before the world” of what it means to follow Christ

“Witness defines who we are,” Guder said, and it's more than simply giving testimonies. In a court setting, witnesses do not pass judgment; they give evidence.

“Apostolic ethos is about the entire way of life,” he added.

This ethos must be recaptured, “because it's been lost,” Guder said.

“Some very profound reductions” have entered into the practice of theology, he said.

Christians often focus only on the vertical relationship with God and forget the world. It is a reduction to the individual relationship that ignores the community.

Each person has his or her own story, Guder said. But individual stories must be “woven together into God's mission.”

This mission can be recaptured through an emphasis on biblical formation. “We identify ourselves biblically as God's called and sent people.”

Through the centuries, that sense of calling has been lost or distorted, but the “biblical process will unfold our need for conversion,” Guder said.

Today's frantic lifestyle provides one of the greatest challenges to recapturing an apostolic ethos, he said.

Believers desperately need to create time for biblical formation in their lives.

Christians need to be open to what it means to be a disciple, to “what it means to think in an entirely different way,” Guder said.