gracEmail
Edward Fudge

PUTTING THE PUZZLE TOGETHER -- TOGETHER (1)
September 1997 -- We didn't have a time machine or a magic carpet, but we did take a whirlwind tour of 2,000 years of church history during four full hours this past Saturday in a seminar titled "Putting the Puzzle Together -- Together." My hosts were two Advent Christian churches in north-central Florida, where I also spoke three times on Sunday. Their gracious Christian hospitality sent me home Sunday night invigorated in spirit even if exhausted in body. I wish to thank Pastors Joe Currens and Butch Nelson in particular, for their hard work in planning, announcing and facilitating these meetings. It was also wonderful to meet several other gracEmail family-members in person.

The "puzzle" in the seminar title refers to the wholeness God desires for his church universal. The premise of the seminar was that each Christian group (denomination, fellowship, tradition) began by a move of God's Spirit to recover, renew or restore some element of Christian teaching, life or experience which was then dormant, lagging or lacking in the church at large. The point of the four hours was that all of us need all the truth -- and that we should not fail to receive it just because someone else found it first.

We also acknowledged that we must learn to "eat the meat and throw away the bones." (Substitute "wheat" and "chaff" if you prefer a vegetarian analogy.) The danger is that we misuse the truth we do discover, or get it out of balance. We are not naive concerning human beings -- especially those who wish to speak for God. Every part of the Church has abuses and extremes, confusions and errors, which we do well to reject and to avoid. But we also need to avoid the mistake of the blind men who touched different parts of the elephant and separately concluded that the animal resembled both a rope and a wall. Their individual truths were not wrong -- they were simply incomplete.

The point is not who said it first, but where they got it. If it came from God, it's for all his people. I want all the truth anyone else has found -- and I want to share all that I might have found with others.


gracEmail
Edward Fudge

PUTTING THE PUZZLE TOGETHER -- TOGETHER (2)
In the seminar last Saturday, we applauded the undivided church of the first several centuries for giving us the "rule of faith" expressed in the Apostles Creed, as well as the New Testament canon itself. We must struggle, as the early catholic church did, to balance "identity" (how the church is different from the world) alongside "universality" (how to make the church at home in every culture). We can learn from the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox to stand in awe at God's transcendent mystery, the value of spiritual disciplines, and (from the Western side) to appreciate Mary as a model of faith more than most of us Protestants ever have.

All Christians need Luther's four gospel slogans (solely grace, solely faith, solely Christ, solely Scripture), as well as Calvin's persistent emphasis that we give God all the glory for our salvation. The Anabaptists teach us the difference between citizenship in a secular state and the kingdom of God. We must personally choose to follow Jesus as Lord and Master. The Anglicans gave us the English Bible and the treasure-chest of the Book of Common Prayer -- a worship repository with which most Protestants are sadly unfamiliar, yet full of gems waiting to be discovered.

The Methodist movement took the gospel out of the church into the marketplace and fields where the people were, and taught the importance of a "heart-felt religion." The Holiness revival reminded us of God's purpose to transform us into Christ's likeness. The Pentecostals correctly understood that we need heavenly power for earthly service. The charismatic renewal was right that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever, and that the God who is most high is also most nigh.

The Adventist revival changed Christendom by its teaching that Jesus indeed can come at any moment -- and today other Christians are learning its truth of conditional immortality as well. The Campbell-Stone Restoration Movement cast a vision for Christian unity which would enrich the larger Church, and its formal insistence on following Scripture rather than human creeds and traditions still challenges every believer I have known or encountered, both inside the RM and without.

The point is not who said it first, but where they got it. If it came from God, it's for all his people. I want all the truth -- and I want to share all that I might have found.

For more on nature and travels, click here.