FERMENT CANDYLAND CHARACTERS SERIES

They are not bad, by any means, and come from a long tradition of honest wrestling with scripture and attempts to divine a faithful ethic from scripture, reason, tradition, and experience. We're very much in institutional preservation mode ( as I wrote about recently) and I think some of it comes from an adherence to a safe, albeit outdated, mindset.ДЇor starters, I'll address the notion of propositional and systematic theology - these are constructs built upon logic. I've seen my beloved denomination spinning its wheels quite a bit when it comes to innovation and bravery in facing the future. I know, when I've shared these concerns in other places, the response has been something like, 'at least they're trying' or 'this kind of specific, low-impact document is what the denomination has always done.' Those are both true and valid, but I suspect my patience is running thin (and I'm only 35 years old - Lord, help me). The first, here, is the format itself, and some of the conceptual structures that underlay it.

FERMENT CANDYLAND CHARACTERS SERIES

I'm going to respond to this document in a series of three (maybe four) posts that address specific issues that seem, to me, a bit problematic. Perhaps it works well in different parts of the globe - those places where the Church of the Nazarene are growing strongest have very different theological and cultural contexts, so I don't want to diminish those possibilities - at the same time, speaking from my own context, it feels a bit like answering today's questions with yesterday's answers. However, in our current cultural context, where the vulnerabilities of both propositional and systematic theology have been made plain, it seems a bit short sighted to choose them as the means of communicating theology. This is the kind of thing we really could've benefited from 40 years ago. On the one hand, I find it really cool that we've engaged in this way - something that might've been considered 'too Catholic' several decades ago, and something that's in line with the historical tradition of the Church.ДЄt the same time, I'm a little disappointed as well. It's called One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism. Last week I received an email from the Church of the Nazarene about a new document they've created, essentially a catechism - a series of questions and answers to explain some finer and more specific points of our theology.

Ferment candyland characters