The Southgate Fellowship: Theological Distancing and the Problem of Tribalism

This is the last of my series of posts on The Southgate Fellowship. You can use the label at the bottom to find the others. Here I pick up on yesterday's thread...

Harvie Conn (1933-99) taught at Westminster Theological Seminary after a significant period of ministry in South Korea. In his seminal and still important book, Eternal Word and Changing Worlds: Theology, Anthropology, and Mission in Trialogue, Conn argued that it is precisely because the faith “has travelled to Asia in confessional carts and wagons made in the West for a Western context” it has never taken root in Asian soil as it should have done (p. 246). As so few have taken heed of Conn’s warning, it is no surprise that it is still seen as ‘foreign religion’ to the vast majority of Asia’s people.

Sadly, Conn’s august institution no longer even has a resident missiologist. As I have argued before, since Conn went to be with the Lord, there has been a retrenchment of Reformed thinking on mission. I can only hope that, with the publication of the TSF statement, this slide has reached its nadir. But I am not confident of a change any time soon for the following reason.

I have already noted that the TSF statement is endorsed by a panoply of the great and the good of the Reformed world, many of whose works have greatly blessed this writer and some of whom I have had the privilege to meet. These leaders had the opportunity to read the statement before its publication. It is worrying enough that they were happy to endorse it.

What is more worrying, however, is that a number of additional endorsements have been made astonishingly quickly since its publication. Did these signatories read and digest the entire document and give it the thought that it demands before endorsing it?

I make no judgment, but it strikes me that, who would want to jeopardise their ministry by being accused of ‘error’ for not signing up? Sometimes leaders get in touch to give me some encouragement for writing material like this. And they tell me they can't speak out publicly. In at least one case, they have been subject to a barrage of unrighteous emails for stating views like those that I have stated.

I don’t know the hearts of those who drew up the TSF statement, so I don’t pass judgment. However, I am concerned that some who endorse the statement will do so purely out of an evangelical tribalist motivation.

I am concerned that many are far too quick to make judgments about ministries and their statements on the basis of the endorsements of celebrity leaders than on hard, prayerful listening and thinking. Aping the polarized politics that has characterized both the UK and USA recently, we retreat into our favourite conferences and, like the Pharisee, pride ourselves on who we are not. 

While we are busy nailing our theses of theological precision on the front door, the devil sneaks in the back door and infiltrates our attitudes. Our worldviews are nicely sanitized, but the virus of evangelical identity politics catches us unawares. 

Paul had some strong words to say about such posturing: “What, after all, is Apollos? And what is Paul” (1 Cor 3:5)?

The men of the TSF council (there are inexplicably no women) may have had no intention to exacerbate this problem. But the law of unintended consequences may well kick in.

So, I plead with my brothers to avoid such tribalism with the same effort we are giving to saving lives in the current pandemic. Let us learn to listen not only to each other across the North Atlantic, but also to those who are in Asia, Africa and Latin America; not only to those with whom we get along but also to those with whom we do not. And may the Lord use such brothers and sisters to sharpen our thinking and make us more faithful and fruitful.

The Southgate Fellowship: Fighting Old Battles

The third in a series of reflections. Part one is here and part two here.

Sometimes the Southgate Fellowship statement seems to belong to another era.

What exactly are is TSF arguing with here? 

79c) We deny that a younger church has no theological, financial or moral obligation to the sending church.

Can we really frame relationships between churches in terms of ‘sending’ and ‘younger’? That may have been the reality of church and mission in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries when many churches in the traditional ‘fields’ began with some sort of relationship to a missionary or mission society. The agency brokered the relationship of the new churches with their supporting churches back home. Control of those new churches was assumed to belong to the missionaries, who were themselves accountable to the mission board back home.

It took a great deal of heart searching and argument to free many churches in the global South from foreign control. In fact, it was only with the end of the colonial era that many churches became autonomous. Sadly, this process was often slow, begrudging and acrimonious, so that indigenous alternatives were sought outside of all relationship with brothers and sisters in other countries. 

In recent decades the vast majority of church planting in the global South has been carried out by local evangelists. Everything is about relationships. Formal transactional partnerships are alien. The idea that churches that have shared resources might have no obligations to one another would be considered bizarre.

So why the denial?

It comes over as naïve and anachronistic.

Furthermore, one wonders whether the implications of some sections of the statement have really been thought through.

There is a proper recognition that the primary locus for mission is the local church. Parachurch agencies have their place but must not usurp the authority of the local church. I have argued for this myself. 

So primary oversight of cross-cultural ministry must not be in the hands of denominational agencies or parachurch organizations:

75a) We affirm that visible churches bear the primary responsibility for the theological, moral, and ministry-method oversight of missionaries.
75b) We affirm that the visible church has the primary responsibility to recruit, mobilise, and send individual church members into mission.
75c) We deny that denominational agencies and parachurch organisations should have the primary theological, moral, and ministry-method oversight of missionaries.

Strangely, however, considering the majority of the council teach in theological colleges, no specific mention is made of them. Does the visible church have primary oversight over their work in these parachurch organizations or is that oversight exercised by others? How does primary oversight work out at Westminster or Oak Hill? Perhaps a measure of autonomy for parachurch agencies is allowable after all.

The lack of any acknowledgement that there might be an issue here causes one to pause and ask whether the ground reality is rather more messy than the formal statement. In the interest of candour, this should be more transparent.