Which Christians are you not listening to?
There’s a lot of variety in the body of Christ. Don’t miss it.
The cover of a book on African theologian Byang Kato, authored by Aiah Foday-Khabenje of Sierra Leone, former general secretary of the Association of Evangelicals in Africa. If you don’t want to read the whole book, you can read Simonetta Carr’s review. I am pleased to have both Aiah and Simonetta among this blog’s Substack subscribers.
In my Father’s house there are many rooms. —John 14:2
One of my first surprises during my recent visit to Burundi came when I unloaded my bag of books.
I had promised Edmund Gakiza, head of the Burundi evangelical alliance, that I would bring some of my favorite books with me as gifts. On our first day in the office, I showed him the books, which included C. S. Lewis’s classic The Great Divorce and Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s The Cost of Discipleship.
The surprise? This wonderful young Christian leader had never heard of C. S. Lewis or Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
That’s nothing to be ashamed of (if it were, I wouldn’t embarrass my friend by telling this story). Edmund has developed a solid theology while training in Burundi and South Africa; he doesn’t need to read every Western theologian to do good ministry. After all, how many Westerners have read Kwame Bediako, Byang Kato, John Mbiti, or Lamin Sanneh?
But those of us who have read Lewis and Bonhoeffer would probably say that people can learn a lot from them that they might not get elsewhere. Lewis’s allegorical depiction of heaven and hell in The Great Divorce and Bonhoeffer’s contrast between real discipleship and “cheap grace” will stay with me for life.
After returning home, I was surprised to learn that a young woman currently completing a master’s degree in theology had decided to stop coming to our home Bible study group. Why? Her studies had unveiled the depths of historic Christianity she had never experienced before. Attending a nondenominational church, she never heard about Luther and Calvin, let alone Augustine or Athanasius. Nor did she experience the powerful impact of high-quality liturgical worship.
So she and her husband have been visiting other churches. They started with the Presbyterians and Lutherans. (I told her not to miss the Anglicans. I also told her that they’re welcome at our Bible study regardless of what church they’re attending.)
These two stories share a common lesson: you can be greatly enriched by experiencing parts of the body of Christ you don’t know well.
The gospel is profound, multifaceted, and never fully plumbed. It has intellectual, interpersonal, practical, and contemplative aspects, as well as ethical, social, and political implications. No writer, theologian, or worship service can capture all of them. But if you don’t experience all of them, your spiritual life can fall out of balance.
Break out of your usual pattern by reading literature or attending worship in a stream of Christianity different from your own.