A Front Porch of What House?
The Wholeness of Campus Christian Life

UCSB Front PORCH
February 18, 2005
Telford Work, Westmont College

Stanley Hauerwas, "Worship, Evangelism, Ethics: On Eliminating the 'And'", in Stanley Hauerwas, A Better Hope (Brazos, 2002); Telford Work, "Reordering Salvation: The Church as the Proper Context for the Ordo Salutis," in David Cunningham, Ralph Del Colle, and Lucas Lamadrid, eds., Ecumenical Theology in Worship, Doctrine, and Life: Essays in Honor of Geoffrey Wainwright (Oxford, 1999); Carl E. Braaten and Robert W. Jenson, eds., In One Body through the Cross: The Princeton Proposal for Church Unity (Eerdmans, 2003); Vincent J. Donovan, Christianity Rediscovered (Orbis, 2003).

From Church to Mission

Is UCSB a community (begging the definition of 'community')?
Aren't communities the proper settings for churches?
Why does UCSB have missions, outreaches, campus ministries, porches, fellowships, etc. but not churches?
Donovan (following Roland Allen): Christians forsook Paul's paradigm of mission

From Mission to Parachurch
Work: Against Catholics, Protestants put salvation before Church
This made the process of salvation prior to the community of salvation
The institutional form of this split is the 'parachurch' versus the 'church'
Hauerwas: revivalists separated evangelism from worship
This worsened the separation of worship and evangelism from ethics
Proposals to connect the two ('evangelism and ethics') still respect the dichotomy

 

From Parachurch to Unchurch
Many Westmont students think of their college (or youth group) as their church
However, these alternative organizations are defined over against 'churches'
'Churches' then become little more than (often resented) patrons
Christian life is dislocated by context, age range, liturgical structure, and goal

From Unchurch to Church
Ephesians 4: One Lord means one, whole, body
Salvation ends the incoherence of prechristian life (and prechristian community)
Free church ecclesiology:

a local church is a whole church
a church is 'the gathering' in a place, not 'a gathering place'

The WCC in New Delhi (following Lesslie Newbigin):

God calls Christians to a unity "being made visible as all in each place who are baptized into Jesus Christ ... are brought by the Holy Spirit into one fully committeed fellowship, holding the one apostolic faith, preaching the one Gospel, breaking the one bread, joining in common prayer, and having a corporate life reaching out in witness and service to all and who at the same time are united with the whole Christian fellowship in all places and all ages, in such wise that ministry and members are accepted by all, and that all can act and speak together as occasion requires for the tasks to which God calls his people."

Do the Christians at UCSB

celebrate (worship),
signify (evangelism), and
embody (ethics)
the wholeness of Christian life?

How might they?