The Complex Christ: Signs of emergence in the urban church
Author: Kester Brewin - Published by SPCK 2004 - UK
Complex Christ is an efficient little book exploring ecclesial change, social change, and the complex nature of change itself. Kester’s writing exhibits what I would call a high “density factor” – a compact yet generous offering of ideas and information presented with few extraneous detours. There’s so much good stuff in here that I’m fighting the urge to simply restate everything Kester has written. Brief reviews will do this book little justice – you need to read it.
A book exploring the dynamics of change opens appropriately with a Taoist saying:
The fish trap exists because of the fish.
Once you’ve got the fish, the trap can be forgotten.
Words exist because of meaning.
Once you’ve got the meaning, the words can be forgotten.
I’ll add one more Taoist saying which I find relevant to this review:
Good order results spontaneously when things are left alone
Hmmm, maybe I should quit here?
Kester starts with a challenge to use the brains God gave us: “the process of Church thinking is a healthy sign that we know that things cannot stay as they are.” A bumper sticker I saw recently echoes a perception of non-thinking spirituality: “if you don’t pray in my school, I won’t think in your church.”
Brewin connects a simplistic, auto-pilot, “easy Jesus” mentality to the fact that Christendom is dying; that people are abandoning Xn community not because of a lack of spiritual longing, but because church is “boring, unchanging, irrelevant… completely unconnected” to their everyday human experience. Thus the tone is set for Complex Christ – that the health of Xn community rests on our ability to change in ways that allow us to “assimilate the complexities” of everyday humanity into the core concept of church.
Throughout the book, Brewin poses challenging ideas for ecclesial change that are less about legislation and centralized control and more about the exercise of individual and conjunctive empowerment – an emerging spiritual community that is “faithful to Truth but disinterested in power” – an ideal perhaps best exemplified by the nomadic life of Christ.
Kester’s theories rely heavily on two recurring ideas, (1) James Fowler’s Psychology of Human Development and (2) the broader notion of “emergence” as exemplified in both natural systems and human organizations (slime molds, ant hills, urban community, the Internet, etc.).
I want to explore for a moment the notion of “hierarchy” in faith. The dynamics of ‘faith vs. work’ is something I’ve wrestled with most of my life. I’ve never enjoyed a satisfactory balance between “being” and “becoming”; between doing versus taking refuge in what has already been done. My faith at times seems highly dualistic – trusting entirely in the life and resurrective grace of the living Christ (“it is finished”), yet ever pursuing greater personal unity with God.
NT imagery depicts both ‘incremental growth’ towards spiritual maturity (Paul’s running the race, James 2, etc) and a ‘sudden, panoptic birth’ into a radically new Christ-centered reality. Both are valid, but I think modern Xnty often over-emphasizes one to the detriment of the other. It’s one of the many theological puzzles that I’ll probably never satisfactorily reconcile (though there’s a third ideal which Paul and Jesus both seem to prioritize over faith and works: that of Love).
poetry time out:
The Avowal
by Denise Levertov
As swimmers dare
to lie face to the sky
and water bears them,
as hawks rest upon air
and air sustains them,
so would I learn to attain
freefall, and float
into Creator Spirit’s deep embrace,
knowing no effort earns
that all-surrounding grace.
Fowler’s spiritual growth scale reminds me of another conceptual human development model: Spiral Dynamics, popularized by Ken Wilber. The pinnacle of SD development is “Level Eight - Holistic” which Wilber holds as the highest level of “spiritual evolution.” The pinnacle of Fowler’s model is “Level Six – Universalizing” with similar attributes, exemplified by people such as Gandhi and MLK. Later in the book Brewin hints that Jesus is a “Level Six” – but I’m probably reading too much into this. We would probably both agree that Christ exists ultimately beyond human scalar.
Here’s a concern. I sense that we need to be careful when categorizing people into evolutionary hierarchies. Such vertical categories can lead to feelings of superiority, exclusion, and unnecessary judgment; “us versus them” instead of just “us”. Developmental models (like Fowler) tend to rely on fairly stark dualities, whereas the human heart is complex, nuanced, and often unpredictable in its capacity for healthy change.
So while I (admittedly) ascribe value to Fowler’s incremental stages of growth, I do so with reticence. Certainly we can find less stratifying, more organically inclusive, indeed more constructively complex models that present strong arguments for healthy socio-ecclesial change.
Brewin goes on to argue convincingly that human systems can tend towards extremes. At one extreme we find rigid centralized control, and at the other extreme anarchy. He presents a well considered case for a naturally emerging/evolving self-organizing middle way. As we’ll see, the popular notion of “emergence” plays a central role in the book’s thesis.
My personal experience has shown the “middle way” approach to life often results in maximum “return on investment” - though I think we need not constrain ourselves to one approach. Cultural formation sometimes requires a dose of anarchy. Take the Internet. Nobody is in control – it is social anarchy, yet it seems to be working with stunning beauty. (please, continue to diligently press your lawmakers to maintain Net Neutrality – giant corporations like AT&T are pushing as hard as they can to destroy neutrality).
Brewin relates structural change to childbirth, “No matter how impatient we get as a society, with processing speeds rising and our whole cultural velocity increasing ever faster, we cannot speed up pregnancy.” Quoting Bruggemann, Brewin points to the dismantling of “props and symbols and old structures which have made up our known world in Stage 3 Church.” He stresses that honest grieving for what we’ve lost is essential to new beginnings.
Brewin continues that there is a “…spectacular lack of grief in our churches today…an enormous blanket of denial…smothering the honest doubts… Hands are raised, but never to ask questions, only in surrender to programs of services… Eyes are shut, less blinded by glory as blind to the facts that numbers are falling, churches are closing, the ‘revival’ didn’t come, society is losing interest and our circle of influence is decreasing.”
In keeping with the theme of evolutionary, incremental growth, Complex Christ cites Jack Miles’ portrayal of a juvenile OT God who grows up into a mature NT God. Yet Brewin fails to reconcile this view with the traditional notion of an unchanging God - the same yesterday, today, and forever. In fairness to Kester, I have no insight which might untangle this unnerving split personality, nor (imo) do dispensation theories provide satisfactory resolution. A vengeful/angry/territorial OT God seems a vastly different entity than the NT Christ. I had this same conversation with Phil Yancey years ago (when we actually wrote letters). We ended the conversation with more questions than answers.
In Part Two of this review, I’ll explore the core theme of this book: emergence.
 John has absolutely no qualifications to be writing on matters of religion. Moreover, Cynthia, his wife, thinks he takes this “blogging thing” way too seriously. A husband, father, musician, farmer, and INTJ entrepreneur, La Grou spends his days looking after a number of technology companies, tending the family Syrah vineyard, and playing music whenever possible.
In 2001, John and Cynthia established the Millennia Foundation which supports non-profit activities in areas of social justice, humanitarian assistance, resource sustainability, and post-foundational media and education. The annual Millennia Scholarship and PPM Awards were established in 2006.
The La Grou’s reside in the Sierra foothill wine country of California, near Lake Tahoe. John blogs at www.microclesia.com and can be reached at: JL (at) JPS (dot) NET.
|
NO COMMENTS HAVE BEEN ADDED TO THIS ARTICLE