One of the reasons I like graduate theological studies is you get to make words up......
The above phrase (community textology) is the best way I can describe what I am turning over in my head right now. A friend and I were having a discussion last night on the elements of revival. Prayer kept coming up and up, but as the conversation was also about those with a very pragmatic view of worship and interaction with God, I kept thinking that a balance should be set. The reading of scripture is and should be a place of key important of any faith community and should be a marker for true revival.
Not just the bland, rote reading that is checked off in a reading plan, but a full sense of the senseless use of scripture in daily life. By that, I mean that scripture is read, meditated, and applied so much (and so deep...thats key) that it seems senseless. Not like when people pray and expect God to tell them Coke or Dr. Pepper, but when scripture takes as abiding role within the fabric of the people.
At Asbury, part of our attempt at this is our CommonText project, identified the most with AsburyReader.com. Through two major movements of the Christian year, we are reading scripture together.
Scripture read in this manner has the power to re-write the social order. When groups of a significant size (applied to their social space) commit to kingdom values, as founded by scripture, they are able to break the secular social order. This doesn't come through heated confrontation, or Koran burning. It comes through a lived vision of the Sermon on the Mount. It comes through a sense of intertextuality, where the Bible ceases to be a collection of books, but instead is the writings Gods people-living out a spirit filled and inspired vision of life...just as the scriptures are the filled and inspired word of God.
Scripture quits becoming an ammo can to resupply our armaments directed against those who disagree with us. It takes a new role of informing a Spirit filled life that confounds those in oppostion to it. Scripture recrafts a community distinct from the world around it. Our time in the word is no longer a sentimental grasp at pretty phrases, but a shaking experience with the creator of the world.
The last time I checked, this is the reading of scripture that I have seen evident in revival history.
I think that if we allowed scripture to take this role, we would be able to see past pragmatic approaches of worship in which we falsely believe our "good" actions will insist upon a fuller visitation and manifestation of the Holy Spirit...because we will know that He is always outpouring to us in the fullest extent we can manage.
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