{"id":2185,"date":"2010-03-12T10:33:08","date_gmt":"2010-03-12T15:33:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lifeasprayer.wordpress.com\/?p=2185"},"modified":"2010-03-12T10:33:08","modified_gmt":"2010-03-12T15:33:08","slug":"featured-guest-writer-professor-doug-jackson-not-a-futurist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lisadelay.com\/blog\/featured-guest-writer-professor-doug-jackson-not-a-futurist\/","title":{"rendered":"Featured Guest Writer- Professor Doug Jackson (not a futurist)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong> <\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong> <\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong> <\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong> <\/strong><\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_2186\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-2186\" style=\"width: 300px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/lifeasprayer.files.wordpress.com\/2010\/03\/dougjackson.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-2186\" title=\"DougJackson\" src=\"http:\/\/lifeasprayer.files.wordpress.com\/2010\/03\/dougjackson.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/lisadelay.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/dougjackson.jpg 300w, https:\/\/lisadelay.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/dougjackson-200x200.jpg 200w, https:\/\/lisadelay.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/dougjackson-100x100.jpg 100w, https:\/\/lisadelay.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/dougjackson-150x150.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-2186\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Professor Doug Jackson<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p><strong>Today&#8217;s Featured Writer has something to say about the future of the church. But, he has an altogether different perspective, than our previous guest writer, John O&#8217;Keefe, and actually, most people. And this, in a nutshell, is Doug Jackson. But you could ever squeeze him into a nutshell, so never mind. He is a thoughtful and gifted thinker, a searching pilgrim, a devoted Christian, and a baking whiz. And, he&#8217;s topped with more than a modest dollop of wisecrackiness.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Please enjoy and interact with Doug&#8217;s contribution.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Mini-Bio:\u00a0<span style=\"font-weight:normal;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.stscs.org\/html\/column.html\">Doug Jackson<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Director of Logsdon Programs, Instructor of Spiritual Formation at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.stscs.org\">South Texas School of Christian Studies<\/a>, in Corpus Christi, TX.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>D.Min. &#8211; Truett Seminary ( 2006)<\/li>\n<li>M.Div. &#8211; Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary (1985)<\/li>\n<li>B.A. &#8211; English Literature, Grand Canyon College (1982)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"text-align:center;\"><strong>The Church with a Future<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align:center;\"><strong>-Doug Jackson<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>John O\u2019Keefe is a futurist.\u00a0 I find that intimidating as heck.\u00a0 Personally, I\u2019m a traditionalist.\u00a0 I can quantify the difference.\u00a0 Tramping through the jungle, a futurist and a traditionalist happen on some tiger tracks.\u00a0 \u201cYou track him,\u201d suggests the traditionalist, \u201cand find out where he\u2019s going.\u00a0 I\u2019ll backtrack and find out where he\u2019s been.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>There isn\u2019t even a cool name for the preferred direction for my arrow of time.\u00a0 \u201cFuturist\u201d conjures up images of, well, guys with shaven heads and soul patches.\u00a0 \u201cTraditoinalist\u201d calls up images of guys with bald heads (which is SO not the same thing) and no soul at all.\u00a0 This part I can at least work on.\u00a0 I think from now on instead of \u201ctraditionalist,\u201d I\u2019ll call myself a \u201cpast-er.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>So what can a past-er say to the church\u2019s future?\u00a0 If there is, in the words of T. S. Eliot\u2019s J. Alfred Prufrock, \u201ctime for a hundred visions and revisions\u201d of the people of God in community, how much time do we have (and should we allow) for a rear-vision?\u00a0 Not too much, I don\u2019t guess.\u00a0 Accordingly, I want to state a thesis and offer three theories.\u00a0 My thesis is that, whatever the church OF the future looks like, the church WITH a future will be the one with a past.<\/p>\n<p>To speak of the church OF the future is simply to make a chronological observation.\u00a0 It means \u201cthe church that isn\u2019t here yet.\u201d\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t tell us much about what this church will do or how long it will last.\u00a0 By the church WITH a future I mean the local community with staying power.\u00a0 And this church, I believe, has a future precisely because it has a past.\u00a0 Which leaves my three notions of what such a church looks like.<\/p>\n<p>First, I believe that the church with a future cares less about the draft of its craft than the depth of its ocean.\u00a0 In his eightieth sonnet, Shakespeare admits to his chick that other poets can praise her better.\u00a0 So why should he keep scribbling?\u00a0 Then the bard continues:<\/p>\n<p>But since your worth, wide as the ocean is,<\/p>\n<p>The humble as the proudest sail doth bear,<\/p>\n<p>My saucy bark inferior far to his<\/p>\n<p>On your broad main doth willfully appear.<\/p>\n<p>Your shallowest help will hold me up afloat,<\/p>\n<p>Whilst he upon your soundless deep doth ride.<\/p>\n<p>In other words, what matters is that her merit can bear the burden of grand praises and meager ones. I come from a generation of ministers who learned that good meant big so bigger meant better.\u00a0 I think the church with a future looks back on the mighty acts of God in history and realizes that the Queen Mary of the megachurch and the rowboat dinghy of the corner congregation all float on the vast sea of God\u2019s greatness, and that plumbing this depth, not scaling our own impressive rigging, is what counts.<\/p>\n<p>Second, I believe that the church with a future cares more about reading its story than writing its narrative. \u00a0\u201cNarrative\u201d seems to be a big word in church these days.\u00a0 As far as I can tell, it has a lot to do with composing our own future in a compelling way that attaches single acts of worship or service to a greater purpose.\u00a0 I\u2019m all for that, but I think it is important to remember that, at best, we\u2019re writing one chapter in a very long book whose plot is already clearly laid out.\u00a0 This even works at the local church level.\u00a0 Eugene Peterson warns us in <em>The Contemplative Pastor<\/em> that, \u201cthe cure of souls takes time to read the minutes of the previous meeting, a meeting more likely than not at which I was not present.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>We find those minutes recorded in church history and church hymnals, two documents which have fallen from favor in my own denomination, where we seem to believe that the church poll-vaulted from Pentecost over several regrettable centuries until she landed safely in our own generation.\u00a0 That\u2019s why we jettisoned a songbook that came to us polished by millennia of theological mulling on the part of the worldwide body of Christ and opted instead for toe-tappers and hand-clappers that can give us no idea of who we are.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m not knocking contemporary music, nor do I believe the Spirit quit inspiring songwriters somewhere around the time Fanny Crosby died.\u00a0 But because more recent music has not had the advantage of the filtering years, I would like to apply C. S. Lewis\u2019 dictum about books to the business of congregational singing:\u00a0 \u201cAfter (singing) a new (song), never allow yourself another new one till you have (sung) an old one in between.\u00a0 If that is too much, you should at least (sing) one old one to every three new ones.\u201d\u00a0 (I should admit here that Lewis disliked ALL hymns because he thought the poetry was bad.\u00a0 He\u2019s probably right, but to me it seems that their theology is rather good.)<\/p>\n<p>Finally, I believe that the church with a future cares more about present faithfulness than future viability.\u00a0 Because the church of the future will be a mess.\u00a0 Do what we will (and I hope we will), she will remain a morass of carnality and littleness and arguments over service times and carpet samples for the new fellowship hall.\u00a0 And she will be the Body of Christ, the one institution Jesus ever promised to care about, and one which he said would sit on an unshakable foundation.<\/p>\n<p>So the church with a future doesn\u2019t spend too much time reading the chicken guts of the changing culture and dealing a Tarot deck of trends.\u00a0 She doesn\u2019t cross with sliver the grasping palms of earringed \u201cconsultants\u201d ensconced in dark tents of occult insider info.<\/p>\n<p>Lewis\u2019 Screwtape rightly warns his prot\u00e9g\u00e9 Wormwood that the proper focus of human endeavor is the junction of Right Now and Forever which leads us to ask what we need to do in the former in order to serve the latter.\u00a0 But \u201cthe future is, of all things, the thing <em>least like<\/em> eternity.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The beauty of futurists like John is that they won\u2019t let us rest in Merlin\u2019s tower forever gazing at some ecclesiastical zodiac; they keep demanding that we do something about this stuff.\u00a0 They refuse to let us fall into Screwtape\u2019s trap of forgetting that the future is not (Screwtape again) \u201ca promised land which favoured heroes attain,\u201d but rather \u201csomething which everyone reaches at the rate of sixty minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In short, I should simply say that the Church is the church with a future.\u00a0 For two thousand years we have hijacked her with our high-handedness, betrayed, bureaucratized, bushwhacked and bamboozled her, tarted her up, sold her out, locked her in and dragged her down.\u00a0 We have made her impertinent, irrelevant, irreverent and irritating.\u00a0 We have used her to camouflage our carnality and let the slimming stripes of the martyrs\u2019 scars hide the midriff bulge of our overfed carnality.\u00a0 \u201cAnd for all this,\u201d the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins reminds us (if I may take a large liberty), Christ\u2019s church<\/p>\n<table border=\"1\" cellspacing=\"0\" cellpadding=\"0\">\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td width=\"378\">.   . . is never spent;<\/td>\n<td width=\"378\"><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td width=\"378\">There   lives the dearest freshness deep down things;<\/td>\n<td width=\"378\" valign=\"top\"><em> 10<\/em><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td width=\"378\">And   though the last lights off the black West went<\/td>\n<td width=\"378\"><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td width=\"378\">Oh,   morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs\u2014<\/td>\n<td width=\"378\"><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td width=\"378\">Because   the Holy Ghost over Christ\u2019s bent<\/td>\n<td width=\"378\"><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td width=\"378\">(Bride)   broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.<\/td>\n<td width=\"378\"><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<p style=\"text-align:center;\"><span style=\"color:#008000;\"><strong><em>What feedback do you have for Doug?<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Featured Guest Writer: Doug Jackon, professor of Spiritual Formation. The future of the church built on the past.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[181,290,342,453,497,536,648,15,835,1148,1154,1232,1260,1400,1430,1739,1866,42,2064,2068,2179,2199,51,2294,2308,2492,2520,2995,3051,3096,3145,3154,3178,3195,3339,3371,3389,85,3473,3538,3753],"class_list":["post-2185","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-authors","tag-alfred-prufrock","tag-author","tag-baptist","tag-body-of-christ","tag-bride-of-christ","tag-c-s-lewis","tag-christs-church","tag-church","tag-corpus-christi","tag-eternity","tag-eugene-peterson","tag-fanny-crosby","tag-featured-blogger","tag-future","tag-gerard-manly-hopkins","tag-hymns","tag-john-okeefe","tag-leadership","tag-local-church","tag-logsdon-programs","tag-megachurch","tag-merlin","tag-ministry","tag-mystery","tag-narrative","tag-pastor","tag-pentecost","tag-screwtape","tag-shakespeare","tag-singing","tag-song","tag-south-texas-school-of-christian-studies","tag-spirit","tag-spiritual-formation","tag-t-s-elliot","tag-texas","tag-the-contemplative-pastor","tag-theology","tag-traditionalist","tag-tx","tag-worship-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lisadelay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2185","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lisadelay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lisadelay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lisadelay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lisadelay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2185"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lisadelay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2185\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lisadelay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lisadelay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lisadelay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}