The new paradigm that must be embraced—or rather, an old paradigm embraced anew—is that of incarnation. The incarnation paradigm suggests that the calling of the church is to go into the fullness of the culture, bearing the fullness of the gospel, for the purposes of redemption (Jn. 1).

The task of renewing the church toward faithfulness in our time is highly complex. It will require the cooperation of multiple ecclesial traditions, multiple generations, and multiple vocational spheres—each animated by the living and active presence of God in our midst. No one person, tradition, or initiative is sufficient to map—much less to walk—the way before us.

And yet it remains the case that any effort toward renewing the church in her calling for our time will inevitably require us to give sustained attention to three fundamental tasks. The first of these is reconsidering operative paradigms. We must take stock of the current ineffective working models for understanding the church’s relationship to the world, and embrace a more faithful alternative. The second of these is recovering theological foundations. In this, we must ask what neglected theological convictions must be recovered and held in common in order for the church to sustain faithfulness in our time. The third of these is refocusing pastoral priorities. To this end, we must ask what practical priorities pastors must embrace if the church’s calling is to be faithfully sustained.

1. Reconsidering Operative Paradigms

Because of the complexity of being the church in and for our time Christians of good faith have conceived of this task in distinctive and often competing ways. Generally speaking, in the North American church there are three different paradigms for understanding the church’s calling. In some cases, these paradigms exist as fully articulated visions of the church’s life. In other cases, they exist simply as unselfconscious patterns of thought and action that shape individual believers and their congregations. Only in very few cases do they map specifically or exhaustively onto the whole life of a given congregation. But, because they play a defining role in both the church’s understanding and embodiment of her calling, any attempt to renew that calling must attend to them.

i. Fortification

The fortification paradigm suggests that the fundamental calling of the church is to guard the integrity of its divinely wrought life against the assaults of the world. In this view, the basic task of the church is vigilant preservation and the basic threat to the church is the destructive character of the larger culture. This paradigm may be expressed in any number of ways and with varying degrees of intensity, but in virtually every case the net result is the same: the church actively cultivates a separate existence, removed from the corrupting travails of the world.

The strength of this model, and one reason that it is so broadly embraced, is that it takes seriously both the Bible’s call to be God’s peculiar people and its warning about the destructive and idolatrous nature of so much of life in the world. And yet its weaknesses are very serious indeed. First, this paradigm tends to portray God’s relationship to the world almost exclusively in terms of opposition. And secondly, it conceives of the church’s relationship to the world in precisely the same way, often expressing this understanding through an ethos of anxiety, anger, or fear.

While it is true that God is opposed to sin and will in the end bring judgment against it (Rev. 20), and while it is true that the church—because it seeks to follow God’s own heart—also opposes sin and longs for it to be judged (Ps. 2), two things must be remembered. First, God’s heart toward the world is not one of opposition but of love (Jn. 3). His just and righteous judgment is not against the world in general but against the sin that deforms the world (Gen. 6). Secondly, God’s way with the world is not to move away from it in disgusted hostility, but to move toward it in redemptive love (Jn. 1). The fortification paradigm fails as a model for the church’s calling because in adopting a hostile posture toward the world and a separatist manner within it, it belies these two truths about God and creates congregations that are, in the end, neither in nor for the world.

ii. Accommodation

Contrary to fortification, the accommodation paradigm suggests that the fundamental calling of the church is collaboration with the world in the service of the larger good. From this perspective the basic task of the church is active partnership with its neighbors in the interest of social renewal, and the basic threat to the church is its own separatist tendencies.

The strength of this model, and one reason it persists, is that it takes seriously the Bible’s call to “go into all the world” (Matt. 28). And many churches that operate out of this paradigm do so with admirable compassion and attentiveness to the culture around them. And yet in spite of these good intentions, the end result in many cases is clear: the church, in prioritizing collaboration with culture becomes indistinct from it—embracing not only its aims, but also its ideologies and methods. This is because the accommodation paradigm fails to seriously reckon with the fact that the work of the church is not only to partner with its neighbors collaboratively, but also to bear witness to its neighbors prophetically. That is, the work of the church is not simply to participate in the world that is, but also must bear witness to the world that ought to be. This is the way of God—participating in the life of the world, and yet calling the world beyond itself and into His life—and it is also to be the way of His people.

iii. Domination

The domination paradigm suggests that the fundamental calling of the church is to triumph over her cultural enemies. In this view the basic task of the church is to extend its own values into the world while the basic threat to the church is those whose values differ from its own.

The strengths of this paradigm are that, unlike fortification churches, these churches rightly believe that God has called His people into the world and as a result tend to move intentionally into the culture. And unlike accommodation churches, they believe that God has called them to retain their “peculiar” identity (1 Peter 2), and thus tend to labor intentionally to preserve the integrity of their communities. But its weaknesses are profound. Like fortification, this paradigm tends to view the world in fundamentally oppositional terms. And yet it expresses this opposition not in withdrawal, but in aggression. Inherent in this aggression—which most frequently takes a political form—is a sort of aspiration to triumph, a perspective in which neighbors with whom one differs are viewed not as people to be loved, but as people to be defeated. In this respect and with bitter irony, it is now widely beheld that churches governed by the dominance paradigm come tragically to embody the Nietzschean character of the very culture they seek to subvert. But such a character is not reflective of the call of the God who lays down His life for the good of His enemies, and who calls His church to do the same (Matt. 5).

iv. In Sum

While it is true that each of these paradigms seeks to do justice to a particular aspect of God’s word, and while it is undeniable that individual congregations influenced by these paradigms bring real good to their communities, it must nonetheless be said that because of the sustained and manifold failures of these paradigms to faithfully embody God’s call on the church, the church must conceive of her life in a different way. It is time, in other words, for a new paradigm.

v. Incarnation

The new paradigm that must be embraced—or rather, an old paradigm embraced anew—is that of incarnation. The incarnation paradigm suggests that the calling of the church is to go into the fullness of the culture, bearing the fullness of the gospel, for the purposes of redemption (Jn. 1).

Unlike fortification, the incarnational church seeks to follow Jesus into every sphere of creation. Unlike accommodation, the incarnational church not only moves fully into the world but also retains the integrity of its God-given character and proclamation as it does so. And unlike domination, the incarnational church sees its movement into the world not as an angry movement of conquest but as a hopeful movement of redemptive love; seeking not to triumph over its neighbors, but to work for their flourishing.

This vision of the church’s calling as a movement into the fullness of culture, bearing the fullness of the gospel, and yet doing so for the purposes of redeeming love is what James Davison Hunter has referred to as faithful presence. And it is this paradigm that must be embraced if the church is truly to be the church in and for our time.

Greg Thompson, a graduate of Covenant Seminary and a PhD candidate at the University of Virginia, is a Teaching Elder in the PCA and serves as Lead Pastor at Trinity Presbyterian Church in Charlottesville, VA. This is the second in a series of  articles that appeared on the blog of Reformed Communion and is used with permission.

Part 1

[Editor’s note: the original URL (link) referenced in this article is no longer valid, so the link has been removed.]