Doctrine or Story?
In a postmodern, relativistic culture, the church faces the temptation to communicate truth through doctrine instead of story.
“The pull is to go straight to propositional truths,” says Dave Ferguson, lead pastor of COMMUNITY, an innovative multisite, missional community. “But propositional truths do not convey truth in the same way God expresses Himself in Jesus.”
Ferguson insists on teaching theology only in the context of the biblical story. He believes if the narrative is lost, truth often fragments in categories of pragmatism, principles, agendas, self-help, therapy, prosperity and you-choose-any-number of step programs.
Rodriguez shares his concern. “The church,” he says, “has become almost totally horizontal and has nearly lost the vertical. We are so committed to being relevant or being liked, we face the danger of losing our objectives and mission.”
The story of Jesus, Rodriquez believes, teaches the difference between relating to people and loving them. The hero of the biblical narrative sacrifices Himself for the sake of others, and calls His followers to explore the paradox of losing your life to find it.
The kingdom call to act justly, love mercy and walk humbly with your God runs directly against the grain of a culture bent on self-fulfillment. The horizontal mission of the church, Rodriquez says, remains impossible without the vertical reality—loving and transformative relationships with the author of the story. In relationship with Jesus, we begin to love others as we experience how much God first loves us.
A Reason to Be Alive
In 1991, Emmanuel Kampouris had just been named chairman of a Fortune 500 Company when his wife of 30 years died of breast cancer.
“My life was devastated at the same time I had come to the top of my game,” he says. “All of a sudden, I found myself searching for a reason to be alive.
After a colleague shared the Gospel story, Kampouris eventually became a follower of Jesus. “I wondered why I had never heard the Gospel story before,” he says. In the business world he occupied, he says, the church’s message was largely dismissed as archaic information.
Following his retirement in 2000, Kampouris began BibleMesh, a Web-based tool designed to help people learn how the narrative of the Bible coheres in the person, story and mission of Jesus.
“We want people to understand the entirety of the Old and New Testaments form a compelling narrative of lordship of Christ,” says Gregory Thornbury, theology editor for BibleMesh.
Thornbury believes story uniquely engages. “If you want to reach people for Christ,” he says, “you have to re-enchant their imagination, and you do that by communicating the Bible first and foremost as story. The story brings people to a point where they can begin to imagine the Gospel as really true.
