Reflections on Week Three: What Can We Learn From History?

This week we enjoyed teaching from our first guest speaker, Peter Bunton, from Britain. He was an excellent teacher and incredibly knowledgeable on the history of the Church. Between Monday and Friday, he gave us an overview of the Church's history from the Ancient world to the current Post-Modern world, with extended teaching on the Celtic Church, cell churches (small groups) throughout history, and post-modernism. I loved every moment of it! It's inspiring to look back and see how God has been working since the beginning of time, and also saddening to see how the Church has often fumbled the message. In essence, we have much to learn from our history: things that worked, like the Celts and their reverence for creation, their creativity in the arts, their emphasis on community and simplicity; and things that went wrong, like the theology of forced conversion that led to the Crusades. It's amazing the perspective that history brings--an idea that is not new to me, but still I feel like my perspective has been widened this week. Particularly exciting was our discussion of post-modernism and its implications for missions and evangelism. Often, post-modernism is only mentioned in the Church as the newest great evil; it was encouraging to hear teaching that emphasized the positive things it has to offer. We are certainly living in an exciting time, in the midst of a cultural shift, the likes of which have only occured twice before in all of history!