Where is Mordecai? The “You Lost Me” Generation Is Looking for Him

This piece was originally published at The Christian Post on November 12, 2012.

Last week, I was part of a small gathering of leaders whom the Murdock Trust invited to reflect upon David Kinnaman’s work You Lost Me with David (President of the Barna Group) and Steven Garber (Director of the Washington Institute). In You Lost Me, David talks about how many young people no longer sense their connection to the church and about the need for investing in person to person mentoring relationships; such mentoring relationships will entail emphasizing young people’s divine calling and vocation and accounting for the discernment necessary to engage this very diverse culture as faithful witnesses for Christ in our various spheres of service in the public square. In the midst of the discussion, we turned to such biblical books as Esther. I was struck by the character of Mordecai and reflected out loud on his significance in the growth and development of Esther. Where is Mordecai today?

Before answering this question, I need to answer the following question: Who is Mordecai? The Book of Esther reveals Mordecai to us. He was Esther’s cousin, who cared for her growing up after her parents’ death (Esther 2:7-8) and who shepherded her through major rites of passage from becoming queen of the Persian empire (Esther 2:10-11; 19-20) to taking a stand on behalf of her own people, the Jews, as queen when they were threatened with genocide (Esther 3:1-15). Mordecai supported his beautiful young cousin in the beauty pageant that led to her becoming queen; he actually forbade her from making known that she was a Jew (Esther 2:10-11) until the time came for her to take her stand on behalf of her people (Esther 4:1-17; Esther 7:3-4).

Mordecai was a prophetic leader: he had the vision to help young Esther grow and flourish in a pagan culture under a foreign empire; likewise, he also had the discernment and courage necessary to challenge that empire when it would entail dishonoring God by honoring another or when it entailed the ultimate destruction of his and Esther’s people (Esther 3:1-2; Esther 4:1-17). As with Daniel of old, Mordecai was a prophetic leader, who knew well how to mentor a young person like Esther into becoming a great leader as queen of the empire. Like her cousin/adopted father, Esther knew how to flourish in a foreign land in a pagan empire as queen while also taking her stand on behalf of her people at great potential cost to herself—even her life.

Where is Mordecai today? Where are those mentors and shepherds in the mold of Mordecai? They will mentor a new generation of Christian leaders to flourish in a pagan empire with great conviction and courage and a profound sense of God’s calling on their lives to lead in various spheres and careers as reflecting their divine vocation. Like Mordecai, such mentors and shepherds will be people who are themselves flexible, though not fickle. How so? Mordecai had learned how to transition well from his homeland to Babylon to which he was taken in exile. Flexible he was, but not fickle. Mordecai was decisive and did not budge, when the king elevated one of the officials, Haman, and commanded that everyone bow to him. Mordecai did not flinch; he did not bow or prostrate himself (Esther 3:1-2). Esther’s story of flexibility to be queen in a pagan empire and unflinching courage to advocate on behalf of her people in the face of great risk is Mordecai her mentor’s story, too.

So, where is Mordecai? Where are this generation’s Mordecai mentors? You may not see them, but you will know where to find them: they will be standing behind and in support of their spiritual progeny—leaders like Esther. In a church age that is increasingly losing a generation of youth, who feel that they are not wanted or needed to lead in society as agents of the church in their respective spheres of service as bound up with their God-inspired vocation, we need to find mentors like Mordecai. Such leaders will be used by God to infuse these young people with a renewed sense of divine calling to be flexible and unflinching leaders who make up the priesthood of prophetic believers in the various empires of our day.

The Elections, End Times and the Elect

This piece was originally published at The Christian Post on November 8, 2012.

You may have come across statements to the effect that the apocalypse is at hand given the election results. You may have heard similar statements from those whose candidates won, if they had lost. It certainly makes me wonder where our ultimate hopes are placed. It also makes me ponder how much we really value our democracy, which is for all the people. Our candidates may win or lose, but hopefully our democracy is bigger than our selections. One thing’s for certain. We may experience a bit of a mini-apocalypse or meltdown, if we cannot find a way in this democracy to work together across the aisle and across the faith spectrum to make sure that Lincoln’s words at Gettysburg endure—that this “government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

To return to my earlier point, I find in some conservative Christian circles the idea that our country is getting progressively worse. I heard a white preacher lament this seemingly apparent reality several years ago. I thought at the time just what I am thinking now—if this is so, why then do many African Americans, Hispanics and women feel our country is getting better? I can’t help but think if our perceptions on whether things are getting better or worse are often bound up with how much we think our special interests are taken to heart and how large or small our own voting bloc is. After all, in a democracy, representation is often configured in terms of percentages.

If America is a chosen nation, as many conservative Christians believe, they should continue working as collaboratively as possible to ensure that our government of, by and for the people is as inclusive as possible. If they are hoping to return it to some mythical, ideal state of Christian nationhood, they will be disappointed. But if they seek to come forth as Christians in pursuit of our country’s democratic ideals along with others, they will find as they work with open-minded people of other traditions that there is a place for them, just as there is for others. Besides, the idea that the conservative Christian movement in America is nothing but a small, insignificant and persecuted minority is also mythical. It is a powerful force in our country, and hopefully by and large for good. Even so, conservative Christians such as me and Christians of other persuasions need to ask ourselves based on the elections where our ultimate hope lies. When Jesus returns to the earth to gather the elect, will he find faith, or simply voting cards?

Beyond Tolerance to Tenacious Love

This piece was originally published at The Huffington Post on November 1, 2012.

The preservation and cultivation of tolerance is vitally important to the well-being of our multi-faith, pluralistic society. President Obama’s recent address to the U.N. General Assembly on the subject of such themes as religious liberty, tolerance and diplomacy in a violent world illustrated well why these ideals are so critically important in our world today and also reflect what makes the United States, though flawed, such a great nation.

As a Protestant evangelical Christian, I celebrate our country’s estimation of tolerance and the creation of space for freedom of religious expression in a multi-faith society, and for a variety of reasons. As the old saying goes, power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Unlike some evangelical Christians who talk of taking back America and making it a Christian nation, I would never want to see one religious group—including my own—have a monopoly given how easily those in power religiously and politically can distort the use of power to unfortunate ends. Moreover, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s particular vision of beloved community inspires me to seek to cultivate relationships with leaders of diverse religious and political backgrounds to collaborate on promoting the common good.

With these points in mind, I have cherished the opportunity to build a friendship and partnership with Rev. Dr. Marilyn Sewell, a leading Unitarian Universalist. My friend Dr. Sewell asked me to write an article on the subject of tolerance and related notions that would also include a response to her thought-provoking piece titled “Saying Goodbye to Tolerance” published in The Huffington Post on October 19th, 2012. In the piece, she refers to me and reflects upon evangelicalism. Further to what she says about our personal connection, I have been grateful for the various opportunities I have had to meet and work with Dr. Sewell on such topics as global climate change and the need to build beloved community in the face of various culture wars. I write this article in the hope that this friendship and partnership can be further nurtured and cultivated based on our shared concerns over the common good in our multi-faith society.

As the title suggests, tolerance is the subject of Dr. Sewell’s article. I encourage the reader of this piece to read carefully “Saying Goodbye to Tolerance.” One of the concerns often raised concerning orthodox Christians is that their belief that Jesus is Lord leads them to be intolerant of other religions. While there are countless heinous incidents throughout history, where adherents of various religions (by no means only Christians) and secular/political ideologies have oppressed people of other traditions because of their strong convictions, the connection is not a logical one. Rather, the grounds for such ungodly acts are unbiblical from the vantage point of Jesus. In fact, for Christians, Jesus calls us to love all people sacrificially, including our enemies. We are called to forgive our enemies, not hate them (Matthew 5:43-48), and to lay down our lives for them, not theirs for us, just as Jesus laid down his life for us when we were his enemies (Romans 5:6-11).

In addition, it is important to note in a discussion on tolerance that tolerance and intolerance do not function as properties of beliefs but of behaviors. If tolerance were to be framed as a matter of acceptance of another person or tradition’s belief system, then anyone who rejects my belief system as true would be intolerant (I discuss this point in the book to which Dr. Sewell referred in her essay: Connecting Christ: How to Discuss Jesus in a World of Diverse Paths {Thomas Nelson, 2012}, pp. 312-313). My Zen Buddhist friends with whom a small group of evangelicals and I partner reject our Christian worldview but do not reject us personally. Rather they are very tolerant and respectful of us. I believe the same is true of our particular approach to them, and they have confirmed it (You can listen to a recent audio recording of my dialogue with Abbot Kyogen Carlson of Dharma Rain Zen Center at Powell’s Books on our partnership). I know of many adherents of various religious traditions, whether they be Buddhists, Muslims, Mormons, Hindus or Atheists who believe that their views best reflect ultimate reality and that my views are wrong. They are not morally culpable for holding their positions. They are not intolerant of me. To make such a connection would not be tolerance, but intellectual suicide. The result would also be the death of tolerance. Without tolerance, America could not function as a multi-faith society.

I do not have the right or basis to claim that those individuals who reject my beliefs are going to hell, a point raised in Dr. Sewell’s article. I am a sinner in need of God’s grace which I believe Jesus provides. I am to live as the repentant publican or tax collector, not as the self-righteous Pharisee, who claimed not to be in need of God’s grace (Luke 18:9-14). What is more, I do not shove my views on others, but hope to share the good news of Jesus with them in the hope that they, too, might come to experience the grace and mercy of Jesus, while also listening carefully and allowing them to share their faith with me. I am encouraged that there are a growing number of evangelicals who are doing the same, as illustrated in the work of the Evangelical Chapter of the Foundation for Religious Diplomacy. A mutual friend of Dr. Sewell and mine, journalist Tom Krattenmaker, and like Dr. Sewell, a self-professed liberal, is drawing attention in many of his writings to a more redemptive form of evangelical witness that is moving toward the radical middle.

Of course, there are extreme voices in my tradition who condemn those of other beliefs and lifestyles and who are guilty of hate crimes. Conservative Christians have been the recipients of such condemnation and oppression as well. And yet, in a nation where evangelical Protestantism is the largest Christian group in the United States (see the U. S. Religious Landscape Survey: Diverse and Dynamic, February 2008 of the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life), evangelical Protestants must be all the more on guard against using their influence and power not to harm others but to cultivate the common good that will benefit people of all walks of life. I share with Dr. Sewell concern over what these particular Christians might say and do and we need to be vigilant in challenging demeaning speech and safeguard against hate crimes’ occurrences concerning people of various walks of life.

Dr. Sewell’s words provide an important and timely reminder. They also sound an alarm. If my friend and colleague says goodbye to tolerance concerning my evangelical movement, those extreme and un-Christ-like voices within evangelicalism might gain the upper hand. In any conflict, intolerance only breeds more intolerance; hate only breeds more hate. As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. made clear in his Christmas sermon just months before his death, we must match intolerance and hate with love to build the beloved community, where the victory for the oppressed becomes a double victory that includes all people. However, tolerance alone is not sufficient. Tolerance can sometimes be confused with indifference. Tolerance must give way to tenacious love that overwhelms the forces of indifference, intolerance, and hate. Only then can we live into Dr. King’s vision of the beloved community and the common good, which for him was bound up with his faith in Jesus his uncommon Lord.

Editor’s Introduction

The cover of this issue of Cultural Encounters reminds us that, just as in The Matrix, things are not always as they appear in the drama of life. The Matrix film trilogy chronicles a futuristic battle between enlightened humans and sentient machines that have subdued the human race through simulating reality. These machines make life appear as normal, when in actual fact the human race’s bodily energy is being harnessed, channeled, and ravaged for these machines’ ambitionsand well-being. The Messiah figure in the trilogy, Neo, frees his mind so thathe can discern reality from appearance. He joins with other enlightened humanbeings to fight to destroy this simulated holocaust.

Things might not appear as dramatic on the stage of real life as on screen in The Matrix. Still, our creations and use of the creation can get the better of us for lessthan ideal ends. Our view and use of space in relation to Christian witness, our approach to theology and writing, our use of technology and our senses in worship (all subjects in this issue) can impact life, worship, and witness for good or for ill. Through our fitting use of God’s good gifts and our creaturely capabilities, we can be fitting participants in God’s drama, which takes place on the stage of history, and to which movie scripts played out in movie theaters witness in varying degrees.

The church enacts this divine drama on the stage of world history. How then do we engage our audience—the unbelieving world? How do we view the space between us? How we view and approach the space between us matters a great deal to our witness, as Wesley Vander Lugt makes clear in the opening essay. Do we erecta wall between our audience (the unbelieving world) and us, thereby failing to address the world in a manner that truly engages and impacts our audience? Do we eradicate the wall, thus failing to maintain the distinction between the church and world and undermining its mission to serve as a light of illumination so that the world might come to share in the truth of Christ and be free in mind, soul, and body? Or do we incorporate the audience as a guest, performing God’s drama among these people and engaging them in the drama through hospitable means?

Jesus breaks through boundaries between the church and world as the central character in God’s masterful play or drama directed by the Holy Spirit, who enlivens the church’s performance on the stage of human history. The triune Godcommunicates to us how we should approach the space between the church and world. As the Word of God enfleshed, Jesus speaks the truth into our lives as helives among us. Jesus breaks down the wall that divides God’s people from the surrounding culture, as he exhorts the church to move beyond its zones of comfortand cryptic, private language games to interact hospitably with an unbelievingworld. Rather than conceiving mission to an audience, whereby the church is set apart from the unbelieving world, or eradicating the appropriate distinction between the community of faith and the unbelieving world, the Lord of the church engages in mission by living among the unbelieving audience in gracious truth, and calls us to do the same.

Whether we are engaging an unbelieving audience or others in the church, it is important that we move beyond mere reflection as professional and lay theologians. As Matt Farlow makes clear in his essay, theologians must do more than narrate. The drama of God requires dramatic theology that involves the dramatic performance of life and faith. Otherwise, our theology and those entrusted to our care will suffer. Dead orthodoxy kills, or at the very least, makes us slumber.

“Dramatic” engagement or participation in the script on the stage of life is necessary, since revelation is more than communication of propositional facts about God. Illumination entails more than keen understanding and description. Revelation involves incorporation of the entirety of our being in Jesus’s life story. Jesus participates in our lives and calls on us to perform in the divine drama. Such reenactment involves the transformation of our entire being, as we come to terms with God coming to us, sharing space with us, and living in our shoes. As those called to witness to the living Word, theologians must do theology withthose we teach. We are called to act it out in the drama of life, teaching peoplewith experiential authority. We cannot remain innocent bystanders, but must see ourselves as participants in the theodrama and model for our students andparishioners how the text of Scripture lives today as we participate in the joys andtragedies of life in our world.

Jon Horne discusses ‘artistic’ works that deny the bad (kitsch) or that deny the good (grotesque); the former moves us toward escapism, and the latter toward nihilism. Horne refers to Paul Young’s The Shack as an example of the former (and even refers to recently deceased artist Thomas Kinkade in this context) and cites the Chapman Brothers’ artwork as an example of the latter. Against the backdrop of these two extremes, he refers to Flannery O’Connor’s work, which he believes holds the two extremes together. Perhaps this is the result of O’Connor’s desire to repeat the incarnation in her writing. Among other things, the incarnation requires indirect communication and involves the imagination. We cannot repeat the incarnation if we seek to resolve all tensions, if we reduce the tensions either toward the good or the bad and eradicate the need for the imagination where God alone can operate and redeem.

O’Connor spoke of the need to judge literary works based on whether or not they portray reality truthfully. Regardless of the motives (even the aim to bring people into the church or to teach them truth about God), if they do not portray reality involving its various tensions accurately, they are doing a disservice to people and to God. Horne moves from this discussion of O’Connor to distinguish between the genres of Christian Living and Christian Literature, placing Young’s work in the former category and O’Connor’s work in the latter. Horne challenges all of us to acquire and cultivate a more nourishing literary diet than what is often availableto the Christian subculture. After all, we are what we eat.

Award-winning author Gina Ochsner also speaks of the need for those writing on faith and in faith, to present reality truthfully, rather than give it a false appearance. Is it any wonder that Ochsner also makes use of O’Connor’s work in her article? Ochsner calls for subtlety in communication and speaks of the need to elevate ourscript involving its various components out of the sphere of easy categorization. All too often, Christian writers seek to provide quick answers, pat answers; drawing from Anton Chekhov, Ochsner maintains that more necessary than anything is learning how to “state the question properly.”

All this comes at a cost. I dare say that many in the church would rather live in a Kinkadian universe that seemingly resolves all tension and removes all pain and provides pat answers. But this is not reality. Ochsner warns the Christian writer who is moved to write with an open eye and heart that such work will come with a price. Such writing is a prophetic enterprise. Writers must be willing to risk for the sake of truth. Like Neo—better than Neo—John the Baptist, we must be willing to play the holy fool for the sake of truth so that people can be liberated. Wheneveryone around us is saying one thing, we must be willing to say it is not like that at all. Literary artists like C. S. Lewis were willing to play the holy fool by writing children’s stories for children of all ages so that they might come to realize that God participates in the lives of his creatures, and that what the world takes for wisdom is what will often make us miss out on the divine drama. Lewis received criticism and disapproval from many of his academic peers for these works, not their applause. But those of us who have read these stories are better for it. The same is true for those of us who read Ochsner’s work. This isn’t Christian living or kitsch; this is literature that is Christian in the best sense of the term—she aims to repeat the incarnation, filled with spirited tension in service to Christ’s redemptive address to humanity.

Joseph Kim and Robin Parry, followed by Robert Redman, Quentin Schultze and DJ Chuang engage in spirited discussions on the role of modern forms of technology in the church. No tool is neutral. If we are not careful, our tools of technology can gain the upper hand and distort Christian community and worship. Good intentions are not sufficient to guard against misapplication. As Quentin Schultze notes, we must ask the question: what is fitting? We must be concerned for how our community is affected by the technologies we employ, and how the forms of technology form us. What happens to our worship experience and witness to the world? If we do not ask such questions, we will inhibit our worship and witness by misapplying various technological forms or by not employing fitting technologies that foster effective communication. As Kim rightly notes, we must guard against worshipping the idol of technique in a culture fixated with it and so easily captivated by the rhetoric of the technological sublime. Such safeguarding does not answer the question as to what must be done when considering this orthat form of technology. Rather, what must be done is the kind of spiritual exercise of rigorous theological and cultural reflection modeled by these exchanges.

In her cultural reflection piece, Barbara Schultze speaks of the need to employ all the senses in worship. Her meditations on pastoral care and the worship experience of her congregation of saints suffering from dementia teach us about our own need to guard against reducing ministry to technique and to cultivate verbal and non-verbal dynamics of communication to worship God in spirit and truth. Moreover, we can hopefully see that even though these saints often suffer from disorientation, they still may perceive at times more clearly than we do the depths of God’s grace and love and experience deeper forms of communion and worship. Our contemporary Christian culture that prizes stimulating technique, youthfulness, and efficiency could learn a great deal from Schultze and her parish. God has a mysterious way of bringing equity to a situation and promoting justice, by reserving the secrets of the kingdom for the little children and those who the majority culture considers poor, foolish, and best forgotten. Things are not always as they appear in the drama of life. Hopefully, the musings contained in this issue will help you see more clearly, as you seek to repeat the incarnate Word and perform well in God’s drama of life.

We are dedicating this issue of Cultural Encounters to the editorial board’s dear friend and colleague, Charles Schreiner. While he himself is a master of various forms of technology for use in effective communication in teaching and worship, he is also very sensitive to make certain that such technologies are not used to reduce communication to technique and enslave people to their technological devices. Moreover, Chuck guards against reducing the Christian faith to kitsch-like categories. He is a model subject for an O’Connor or Ochsner work, in that he participates in the drama of salvation as a performer who lives out the tensions of the faith—the joys and sorrows—in ways that bear witness to the world that the church’s hope in Christ is not hype or mere appearance, but is reality.

—Paul Louis Metzger, Editor

New Doctor of Ministry Degree in Cultural Engagement

What follows is the description for the Doctor of Ministry degree in Cultural Engagement at Multnomah Biblical Seminary. This program emphasizing cultural engagement reflects New Wine, New Wineskins’ approach to theology of culture and particular approaches to ministry arising from it. We are excited about how this program reflecting New Wine’s values will serve a new generation of Christian leaders in their various spheres of kingdom impact in and for Christ.


The Institute for the Theology of Culture: New Wine, New Wineskins is about a theology of cultural engagement, not disengagement. This Doctor of Ministry track reflects New Wine’s commitment to bearing witness to Christ in contemporary culture.

The Cultural Engagement track is designed to hone the skill set of ministry outreach leaders in such spheres as the local church (community outreach and missions pastors, for example), church planting, chaplaincy, campus, relief work, and neighborhood and community development domains. These locales are increasingly multicultural in their contexts here and abroad. Like the Apostle Paul, such ministry outreach leaders are ambassadors for Christ and his church. 2 Corinthians 5:20 says, “We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God.”

Ambassadors are guests or even prisoners at times in other lands, just like Paul, who was often an ambassador in chains! (Ephesians 6:20). Even so, these ambassadors function as diplomats and as advocates for Christ and his kingdom wherever they go. They are concerned for building “vertical” bridges between God in Christ and the surrounding cultures as well as “horizontal” bridges between Christ’s church and the communities in which they serve.

The image of ambassadorship involves many associations. As noted already, ambassadors for Christ are diplomats and advocates. They must also be concerned for cultural literacy and the people of their host country. For example, those who are culturally literate in a given culture understand the underlying values, verbal and non-verbal forms of communication, cultural taboos and forms of civility, rites of passage, power dynamics, pecking orders, and how best to call for Christ-honoring confrontation, affirmation, and transformation. Paul was culturally literate in a variety of cultures, as reflected in the various accounts in the Book of Acts. His fundamental aim and relational flexibility are conveyed in his claim that he becomes all things to all people so as to be an effective bridge builder to reconciled life with Christ (1 Corinthians 9:19-23).

Further to the reference above, Paul speaks of ambassadorship in 2 Corinthians 5:20. As an ambassador, Paul had a ministry of reconciliation. Of course, he was committed to people being reconciled to God. Still, he was committed to reconciliation betweenpeoples, too—first and foremost through the church, including Jew and Gentile, male and female, and slave and free (Galatians 3:28). Given that we live in the 21st century, and not the first century when the church was in many contexts largely unknown, Christian ambassadors sometimes have reconciling work before them in righting wrongs that the church—whose people are called to be God’s “holy nation” (1 Peter 2:9)—has committed in the past and present.

Ambassadors of countries are often ministers of good-will who seek to make and keep peace. Christ-honoring ambassadors serve Christ and the church by being truly diplomatic. They are truthful and noble in character; there is no hidden agenda as they engage transparently and graciously those to whom they seek to promote reconciliation and build lasting bridges for Christ’s sake.

Ambassadors are also advocates for justice. Christian ambassadors advocate on behalf of Christ’s kingdom values and policies in “other lands”—whether across the street, the other side of town, or across the globe, where there is an abuse of God’s standards and human rights.

Such ambassadors need to be culturally literate in terms of how to mediate conflict, as well as to understand how people of other cultures think, what they value, and how theyresolve conflict and build community. Effective ambassadors that are truly literate are sensitive to power dynamics and how to present themselves in an appropriate posture for the sake of sound, just, and peaceful relations. Paul was so culturally literate and alert to power dynamics that he recognized that the overwhelming power of the gospel was best communicated through his weaknesses, even to the point of ministering God’s amazing power while in chains. Such a display of power is so disarming, so winsome, so humble, and so anointed. Ambassadors for Christ will present themselves like Paul did. They will also be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry, as James said (James 1:19).

It is important for effective ambassadorship that Christ’s nation, which Christ’s ambassadors are called to represent, is truly holy. Otherwise, it is very difficult to advocate on behalf of Christ’s values and policies in other lands here and abroad. So, Christ’s ambassadors must show concern for how the church—their country of origin—is responding to God’s love and living out Christ’s word. If Christ’s people are not just, it impacts negatively their witness to other peoples. Moreover, how people are treated in Christ’s holy nation in one way or another affects how people are treated elsewhere. As the saying goes, we live in a global village. Injustices toward women in the church impact how women are treated elsewhere. The same goes for people of diverse ethnicities outside the “dominant” culture, children in need, and the poor.

Our multicultural context in this global village extends beyond categories of ethnicity and the like to include the vast spectrum of religions and spiritual traditions co-existing locally, regionally, nationally and overseas. We need to learn how to deal with various forms of Buddhism and Islam, as well as other paths here and elsewhere in multi-faith societies, as Christian ambassadors concerned for effective diplomacy and advocacy for Christ’s sake. Truthful and gracious diplomacy will emphasize hospitableness, as we share meals and storied life with people. As one can see, ambassadorship as an image is wide-ranging and involves various components, especially in our multi-faith, multicultural context here and abroad.

Here is how we will likely frame the six classes for this D. Min. track:First class: Introductory Overview—an introduction and overview where the biblical, theological and cultural foundational values are put in place for effective ambassadorship toward a watching world.

Second class: Cultural Literacy—an analysis and development of themes related to key qualities of spiritual formation pertaining to Christian ambassadorship (vulnerability and humility as well as charity and discernment are required, among other qualities, for one who serves as a guest in “another land” here and abroad), skills in conflict resolution that account for structural as well as individual-relational dynamics, and hermeneutical sensitivities of appropriate suspicion regarding power dynamics and how to side strategically and redemptively with those who are oppressed in service to Christ’s kingdom values and policies. Effective ambassadors are aware of these various dynamics and seek to embody the appropriate qualities and necessary skill sets in service to their mission.

Third class: Unity—here the focus is on Christian unity. If we are not reconciled people within the local church context and within Christendom as a whole in our regions and beyond, we cannot serve as effective ambassadors to the watching world here and abroad. Here we will deal with such matters as race, class and gender unity in the body as well as ecumenical unity. Ambassadors can only serve effectively, if their own country’s or church’s house is in order. We must be Christ’s “holy nation” as the church.

Fourth class: Diplomacy—here the emphasis is on how we become effective diplomats in engaging various religious traditions beyond Christendom as well as civil authorities. As it pertains to engaging other religions, we need to develop global witness that is sensitive to matters of the common good. This will have a bearing on the church’s own engagement with the state. We will need to be sensitive as to how to be good evangelistic, missional witnesses who are viewed as hospitable and agents of shalom in “other lands” here and abroad.

Fifth class: Advocacy—here the aim is to attend to matters of justice and injustice, including such matters as the treatment of women and children, the poor, and others who are vulnerable. Hopefully, one can see a progression from the first class to this point. As we put in place the appropriate foundations, as we put our own house in order as the church, as we become culturally literate, as we are viewed as agents of shalom and the common good who speak prophetically on behalf of justice for the city and state in a global context, our work as ambassadors will make an increasing impact for good in service to Christ and his kingdom.

Sixth class: Capstone—here the emphasis will be on bringing all of the learning and skills acquired to bear on how it enhances the students/ministry leaders’ work in their own context here and abroad. Here all the members of the cohort will work together to sharpen one another and help one another on a collective ministry project or individual ministry projects that will bear on their lifetime calling to service in their particular vocations as ambassadors of Christ and his church, God’s kingdom community.

©2012, Paul Louis Metzger, Ph.D.
D. Min. Track Supervisor
Multnomah Biblical Seminary/Multnomah University