"The Voice"

A post on Emergent Village's blog this evening announces the publication of a new Bible translation: the Voice. Here's what Thomas Nelson says about it:

The Voice represents a collaboration of historians, poets, storytellers and songwriters which provides a true interpretation of the traditional Bible text while including historical and cultural expansions of the story. With additional background on setting and characters, the project’s screenplay-like format is ideal for group studies and dramatizations, and the inserted devotional commentary will further help readers understand the context of the biblical story.

About 40 different authors are believed to have been inspired by God to write the Scriptures. The Voice retains the perspective of the human writers. Most English translations attempt to even out the styles of the different authors in sentence structure and vocabulary. Instead, The Voice distinguishes the uniqueness of each author. The heart of the project is retelling the story of the Bible in a form as fluid as modern literary works while remaining true to the original manuscripts.

What's especially interesting is the group of authors chosen to "write" the books. Brian McClaren, Chris Seay, and Donald Miller, all of whom have publicly questioned the truth and authority of the Scriptures are involved.

How does that work?

Theology, Methodology, Ecclesiology, Oh my!

As I was preparing to write more about J.D. Payne's article on ecclesiology and church planting, I decided to check out an article he refers to in the first few paragraphs. In the April 1998 edition of Evangelical Missions Quarterly, Tom Julien, of Grace Brethren International Ministries, addressed the question, "what is a local church?" Going further, he distinguished between the essence of the church as revealed in the New Testament and the expression of the church in cultures. The gist of his argument is that church planters must distill the essence of the church in order to plant a culturally appropriate expression of the church. Dr. Payne agrees, saying that ecclesiology, our theology of the church, is the "most critical issue in church planting today."

As I was thinking about all this, I was also involved in an online discussion for one of my doctoral seminars on the emerging church movement. We were talking about whether the "conversation" is more about theology or methodology (maybe I can tell you more about that discussion and its origins in the future). I suggested an article that I found through Joe Thorn's blog: Mark DeVine's discussion of the emerging church movement and Southern Baptists. In that article, DeVine says that leader "Scot McKnight insists that the movement is about ecclesiology, not theology."

But what is ecclesiology if not theology? My classmate Lloyd caught that contradiction immediately. Certainly, our ecclesiology plays itself out in our methodology, and our methodology reveals our theology. Can those be separated? If you add our emphasis on strategy to the mix, things really get interesting. Does our strategy, which includes our methodology, line up with our theology, especially our ecclesiology? Maybe it does, but I'm not sure.

I want to work on these questions, though maybe with fewer words ending in "-gy." We'll see where it goes.

Authenticity

From Emerging Churches, by Gibbs & Bolger:

"Often, congregations and groups that are preoccupied with being relevant lose their authenticity in the attempt." (181)