God's People Then and Now

My Sunday School class is looking at some research done in the Mennonite Church over the last 35 years and its implications on the health and direction of the Church today as analyzed by sociologist, Conrad Kanagy, in his book, Road Signs for the Journey. In his analysis Kanagy compares the state of the church today with that of God's people in the time of the OT prophet, Jeremiah, sixth century B.C.

In his description of Jeremiah, Kanagy describes the roles of prophets in society. First, they were futurists. Jeremiah was able to step out of the past to imagine what God was going to do next. While prophets were often seen as pessimists and preaching doom and gloom to people, actually, prophetic messages were usually ones of hope. The hope was in the very fact that God was speaking to them and giving them another chance to listen and obey, thus saving themselves from a future of gloom. The prophetic message was an offer of joyful reunion with God and His purposes, a future of hope!

Jeremiah was also a social analyst and time-keeper. He was observant of trends in society and signs of the times. So when God spoke, he was able to understand what God was getting at. Prophets would have been labeled as activists as well. Their messages were not only spiritual ones, but rather addressed social issues, promoting social reform. Finally, Jeremiah, along with many of the other prophets were often considered blasphemers. The very fact that Jeremiah claimed that God was going to destroy the temple and Jerusalem and send His chosen people into exile was unbelievable! Who did Jeremiah think he was??? So it could be today, this word that Kanagy brings to the church could be considered blasphemous, attacking our very existence. Yet, the Spirit affirms and confirms prophetic words in the hearts of those who long to hear God speak. I look forward to hearing how the Spirit affirms and/or confirms this word in our class.

Our class looked at 3 assumptions around which we had some interesting discussion.
1. We are living in a post-Christendom society. Christianity no longer has the kind of influence it once had to shape the broader culture and society (p. 30).

2. The church in the West is in Crisis. Kanagy along with many others throughout the Church claim that this decline can be measured both in numbers and other qualitative spiritual indicators. The Church in North America is uniquely poised between the declining post-modern church of Europe and the rapidly growing church of the global South. Kanagy claims that we are most like the church of Leodicea, described in Revelation 3: wealthy, healthy and well dressed, but in Jesus' own words, 'wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked' (p. 25)

3. Mennonites have moved from the margins (history makers) to the middle (history stoppers) of society, and thus, have lost their prophetic voice. Kanagy looks at how the White middle class Mennonites today used to be the immigrants, farmers and common laborers 50 to 100 years ago. We have now assimilated, moving from those margins to the more comfortable middle where we have encountered affluence, security, and better education. Natural human tendency is to protect the comforts of living in the middle. But the longer we live in the middle, the less we are able to identify with the life experiences of poverty and injustices of those we are called to serve in cross-cultural contexts. Kanagy believes we need to acknowledge the invaluable role of our Racial/Ethnic congregations in helping us to see the perspective of the world that God has, and from which we should be open to hear and learn (p. 28-29).

From all of this, some interesting questions came from our group:
1. What kind of influence did the Mennonite Church have 100 years ago (aside from dress)?
2. What is our focus of influence? Sometimes we seem more global than local. (though we do now have TATH) Can we do both?
3. In what ways do we exert our influence now?

We didn't come up with a lot of answers yet. But I'm very much looking forward to more discussion and ideas!