What Kind of God?: Reading the Bible with a Missional Church

By Bret Wells and Elaine A. Heath

How does a missional mindset or perspective impact the way we read Scripture?
How does the Bible speak to and through a missional disciple?
And seriously, what kind of God is God?
A missional reading of Scripture is pivotal to helping the church find its way back to its true vocation and to helping newly forming missional communities follow the triune God revealed in Jesus. To the extent that the church is absorbed with itself and its own comfort and agendas, it has forsaken the God revealed in Jesus, whom we claim to follow. The mission of God will lead us to confront the injustices in our society, shed light on the lies we tell ourselves, and name the sickness in our midst.
Reading the Bible with (and as) a missional church means we approach the Bible with the assumption that God is actually up to something in this world, that we are all called to play an active role in that something, and that the Bible is the story of that something.
What kind of God is God? We invite you to read with us, and see for yourself.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Release date: Apr 5, 2018
• ISBN: 9781532614729

Bret Wells

Bret Wells is a Leader and Managing Director of the Missional Wisdom Foundation, which experiments with and teaches about alternative forms of Christian community. He is a certified leadership coach, working with individuals and teams across the country. Bret is also a minister and co-leader of The Gathering, a missional community in Burleson, Texas. He is a contributor to Abide: A Guide to Living in Intentional Community (2014).

Book preview

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What Kind of God?

Reading the Bible with a Missional Church

Bret Wells

With contributions from

Larry Duggins, Heidi A. Miller, and Denise Crane

Foreword by Elaine A. Heath

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WHAT KIND OF GOD?

Reading the Bible with a Missional Church

Missional Wisdom Library: Resources for Christian Community 4

Copyright © 2018 Bret Wells. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.

Cascade Books

An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers

199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3

Eugene, OR 97401

www.wipfandstock.com

paperback isbn: 978-1-5326-1471-2

hardcover isbn: 978-1-5326-1473-6

ebook isbn: 978-1-5326-1472-9

Cataloguing-in-Publication data:

Names: Wells, Bret, author. | Duggins, Larry, contributor. | Miller, Heidi A., contributor. | Crane, Denise, contributor. | Heath, Elaine A., foreowrd.

Title: What kind of God? : reading the bible with a missional church / by Bret Wells ; with contributions from Larry Duggins, Heidi A., Millier, and Denise Crane ; foreword by Elaine A. Heath.

Description: Eugene, OR : Cascade Books, 2018 | Missional Wisdom Library: Resources for Christian Community 4 | Includes bibliographical references.

Identifiers: isbn 978-1-5326-1471-2 (paperback) | isbn 978-1-5326-1473-6 (hardcover) | isbn 978-1-5326-1472-9 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Missions—Biblical teaching. | Missions—Theory—Biblical teaching.

Classification: BV2073 .W43 2018 (print) | BV2073 .W43 (ebook)

Manufactured in the U.S.A. April 9, 2018

Scripture quotations marked (NIV) are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com. The NIV and New International Version are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™

Scripture quotations marked (NRSV) are taken from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

For Rachel, who baffles me with her willingness to read words she’s already listened to and read a million times . . . and for having been willing to listen and read a million times in the first place.

Table of Contents

Title Page

Abbreviations

Foreword

Preface

Chapter 1: What Does It All Mean?

Chapter 2: Genesis 1–2: The Community of Love

Chapter 3: Who Are We?

Chapter 4: Isaiah 56–59: Who Will We Become?

Interludes on Jesus

Jesus and the Bleeding Woman: Transforming the Community Story

John 4: I Am Sent Her

Philippians 2: To Want and to Do

Chapter 5: Philippians 4:4–9: Think about Such Things

Chapter 6: Revelation 21:1—22:5: Now Among the People

Chapter 7: Little Children and One Fat Ox

Bibliography

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Missional Wisdom Library

Resources for Christian Community

The Missional Wisdom Foundation experiments with and teaches about alternative forms of Christian community. The definition of what constitutes a Christian community is shifting as many seek spiritual growth outside of the traditional confines of church. Christians are experimenting with forming communities around gardens, recreational activities, coworking spaces, and hundreds of other focal points, connecting with their neighbors while being aware of the presence of God in their midst. The Missional Wisdom Library series includes resources that address these kinds of communities and their cultural, theological, and organizational implications.

Series Editor: Larry Duggins

vol.

1

: Missional. Monastic. Mainline.: A Guide to Starting Missional Micro-Communities in Historically Mainline Traditions, by Elaine A. Heath and Larry Duggins

vol.

2

: Simple Harmony: Thoughts on Holistic Christian Life, by Larry Duggins and Elaine A. Heath

vol.

3

: Together: Community as a Means of Grace, by Larry Duggins

vol.

5

: Credulous: A Journey through Life, Faith, and the Bulletin, by Andrea L. Lingle

forthcoming titles:

The Julian Way: Towards a Theology of Fulness for All of God’s People, by Justin Hancock

Virtuous Friendship: The New Testament, Grego-Roman Friendship Language, and Contemporary Community, by Douglas A. Hume

Author

Bret Wells, Leader and Managing Director of the Missional Wisdom Foundation, Leadership Coach (PCC), and Minister with The Gathering in Burleson, Texas.

Additional Contributors

Denise Crane, Leader and Managing Director of the Missional Wisdom Foundation.

Larry Duggins, Executive Director and Cofounder of the Missional Wisdom Foundation.

Heidi A. Miller, Leader and Managing Director of the Missional Wisdom Foundation, Assistant Professor of Christian Worship at Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University.

Abbreviations

AD Anno Domini

AMW Academy for Missional Wisdom

BCE Before Common Era

COO Chief Operating Officer

1 Cor First Corinthians

CSS Cascading Style Sheets

Deut Deuteronomy

ed. editor

eds. editors

ELCA Evangelical Lutheran Church in America

et al. et alia

Exod Exodus

FBI Federal Bureau of Investigation

Gen Genesis

GPS Global Positioning System

Isa Isaiah

IVP InterVarsity Press

Lev Leviticus

MWF Missional Wisdom Foundation

NIV New International Version

NRSV New Revised Standard Version

Numb Numbers

Phil Philippians

Ps Psalm

Rev Revelation

Rev. Reverend

RV recreational vehicle

1 Sam First Samuel

2 Sam Second Samuel

SMU Southern Methodist University

SoCe South Central (neighborhood of Wichita, Kansas)

UMC United Methodist Church

WYSIWYG What You See Is What You Get

Foreword

What Kind of God Is God?

Elaine A. Heath

We were gathered in a smallish, stuffy classroom, sunlight filtering through dusty windows. Outside, Pittsburgh bustled in its perpetual cacophony of traffic, sirens, and jackhammers. This was the Introduction to the Bible class for undergraduates at Duquesne University. I was a PhD student in my last semester before comps and the dissertation, and teaching this class was part of my preparation for a vocation as a professor. The biggest challenge was addressing the multiple responsible methods of interpretation of Scripture. I wanted students to know that there are several ways to approach the text, but I didn’t want to confuse them.

Looking out across the thirty or so young adults I wondered what they would make of today’s topic, the Sermon on the Mount. Most of the students had grown up in church but few of them—Catholic or mainline Protestant—were seemingly familiar with the Bible.

We had made it through the Old Testament with more than a little controversy. Do the two creation stories in Genesis contradict each other? What kind of God would command ‘cherem, the annihilation of an entire village of people? Why is Jephthah considered a hero in Hebrews for murdering his innocent daughter in Judges? What is a traditional marriage, really, when you have heroes like Jacob marrying two sisters and owning concubines, or David with multiple wives and concubines—and what’s the deal with Levirate marriage?¹ Did God will all of that or did it just happen? Was Jonah an historic figure or the lead character in a satire?

We had also made it through the deuterocanonical texts—the books of the Bible that are not in the Protestant canon. More than a few students were stunned to realize that there are different canons of Scripture depending upon one’s Christian tradition. Is it possible to reconcile the doctrine of the inspiration of Scripture with multiple canons? What about inerrancy and infallibility? There was also the matter of Jesus being a Jew and the Hebrew Bible being the only Bible of Jesus and the apostles. All this Jewishness was a surprise to most of the Christians.

Now we were into the gospels. What new disturbance would find us today?

Hello, everyone, I said cheerily. "Today we are talking about the Sermon on the Mount. I trust that all of you made it through Matthew 5–7. But let’s not start with content, authorship, or any of that. Let’s begin with the raw experience of the text. What did you feel when you read the Sermon on the Mount? What did you wonder?" Silence. A few people stared at the floor, usually a dead giveaway that they hadn’t done their homework. A student who normally kept quiet thrust her hand into the air. She looked upset. Urgent.

Yes, Sarah? I asked.²

"I can’t believe this! she shouted, jolting the drowsy football player to attention. Yahweh³ was bad enough, but Jesus is impossible!! No one can live this way. He’s telling you to turn the other cheek, forgive people when they do terrible things to you. What the hell?!"

What indeed?

Sarah’s visceral encounter with the gospel is one that most church people never have because of domesticated readings of Scripture that have shaped their Christian formation. Sarah had been used to thinking of Jesus the way most five-year-olds do—baby Jesus meek and mild, or nice Jesus with the baby sheep. Coming face to face with the shocking rigor of Jesus’ commands and her own inability to follow them infuriated her, just as it did so many of Jesus’ contemporaries.

Every student leaned forward, listening, and we dove into the central question of the Bible: What kind of God is God? If, as the Apostle Paul claims in Colossians 1:15, Jesus is the exact image of the unseen God, then what is that God like? And how might the revelation of God in Jesus—God’s will, God’s nature, God’s action, God’s plan revealed fully in Jesus—change how followers of Jesus read the Bible?

That is the question behind this book. For the God we meet in Jesus is missional—sent out and on the move—to bring salvation to the world. That God turns all our carefully constructed systems of power and authority upside down by redefining lordship as self-emptying, sacrificial love. That God hopes for the salvation of all people and intends to redeem the cosmos. The God revealed in Jesus is above all else a hospitable God, reaching out to religious insiders and outsiders alike with love, forgiveness, and newness of life.

A missional reading of Scripture is pivotal to helping the church find its way back to its true vocation, and to helping newly forming missional communities follow the triune God revealed in Jesus. To the extent that the church is absorbed with itself and its own comfort and agendas it has forsaken the God revealed in Jesus, whom we claim to follow.

Recently a construction worker asked me, This might sound weird, but do you think maybe the New Testament is God’s way of apologizing for the Old Testament? Noting my puzzled expression, he went on to say, What I mean is, I think the Old Testament is more of a record of how people thought God was, but most of the time they got it wrong. They thought God was angry and violent, because they were angry and violent. They blamed God for their own shit, interpreted God as if he was just like them. Then Jesus came and he wasn’t like that at all. The New Testament was God’s way of saying, ‘Hey, people! Listen up! You got it all wrong! I’m not like that! I’m like Jesus.’

As the construction worker intuited, and Brian McLaren has written in A New Kind of Christianity, the Bible is, among other things, a library of the way people have thought about God over many thousands of years. What is wondrous to me is that despite all the ways we have gotten it wrong about God in our interpretations, from Genesis to Revelation there are stories of a God who is just like Jesus. These alternative readings of God are there for us if we have eyes to see and ears to hear. These texts and ways of reading are exactly what we need today.

The book you are currently holding is the product of several years of collaboration, field-testing, and careful revision by a community of people dedicated to just this sort of reading. My colleague in the Missional Wisdom Foundation, Dr. Bret Wells, and I began this project in 2013 as a practical solution to a specific need. We had been having a difficult time finding an appropriate text for a course in our two-year program, The Academy for Missional Wisdom (now called Launch & Lead). That course, Reading the Bible with a Missional Church, needed more than just an academic discussion of missional theology or scriptural interpretation. It needed something that modeled a robust theology in an accessible style, and presented in a manner that could help our students envision new possibilities. After several unsuccessful attempts to find just the right book, we decided instead to write a series of essays ourselves.

Those initial essays, and their various revisions, were used in the course for several years. Eventually, however, it became apparent that this project needed to be expanded into a published resource and shared more broadly. I am very pleased that Bret has taken his essays, expanded them, added a few others, and invited contribution from the rest of the MWF Lead Team.

This book demonstrates, and invites us to participate in, reading and meditating on representative texts of the Bible from Genesis to Revelation with Jesus looking over our shoulder, so to speak. I believe that by practicing with these few texts we will get better at reading the Bible in light of the missional God revealed in Jesus. When we come to a text that casts God as a bloodthirsty tyrant, we will ask Jesus to show us what it means. When it seems that the men count and the women do not, we will invite Jesus to help us read the text.

This is not a book about critical exegesis or inductive Bible study, nor is it an academic study of the Bible riddled with footnotes from professional scholars. Lord knows, we already have plenty of books like that. Rather it is a meditative reading of several passages of Scripture, informed by missional understandings of God and the church. For rigorous texts about reading the Bible with a missional lens and the relationship of missional hermeneutics to ecclesiology, I recommend the work of Christopher Wright and Ched Myers.⁴

Despite the church’s long history of biblical interpretations of God that have been too often violent, patriarchal, racist and exclusive, we are convinced that the real God is hospitable, present, loving, good willed toward humanity, wondrously creative, and determined to heal the cosmos. We believe this about God because of Jesus in the gospels. We believe Jesus is the interpretive key to the rest of the Christian Bible.⁵

With Jesus in the gospels looking over our shoulders, in the following pages you will be invited to consider reading several familiar (and not so familiar) stories of the Bible with missional eyes. I pray that this volume will help all of us grow closer to Jesus, who always compels us to join in with God’s mission in the world, empowered by the Holy Spirit.

—Elaine A. Heath

1. Levirate marriage was the ancient middle-eastern practice of a widow’s brother-in-law being required to marry her to continue the dead brother’s family line. In the story of Ruth, Boaz must tend to Levirate requirements before he can marry Ruth.

2. I have changed the student’s name for the sake of privacy.

3. Yahweh is the transliteration of the Hebrew name for God that was translated Jehovah in the King James translation of the Bible. In Hebrew this name is YHWH, meaning I Am.

4. Wright, Mission of God and Mission of God’s People. For Ched Myers’ biography, books, and other resources, see http://www.chedmyers.org.

5. For more on this topic, see Flood, Disarming Scripture.

Preface

The question seems simple enough. In fact, that is precisely why it is so popular—it is simple and safe, an obvious conversation starter: What do you do?

And yet . . .

Sitting here in what has been one of my favorite office spaces for nearly ten years—a booth at the Denny’s in Burleson, Texas—I can recall many times when that innocuous little question has proven quite difficult to answer.

Of course, it wasn’t always this way. The response was relatively straightforward during my years as a minister in more traditional congregations.

What do you do?

I’m a preacher.

Oh . . . Sorry, if I’d known, I would have watched my language.

I have several prepared responses to that statement. Which one would you prefer?

Things became slightly more complex in 2008 when my family stepped into the world of church planting. Other than the occasional need for a definition, church planter isn’t necessarily a complicated concept.

What do you do?

I’m a church planter.

A what now?

A church planter. It’s like a missionary without a passport.

However, our desire to pursue