Richard Bauckham in Bible and Mission argues that the biblical narrative always embodies a kind of movement from the particular to the universal—that God, God’s people and God’s world are related to each other primarily in a narrative that mediates constantly the particular and the universal. (pg 13)
Now, why is this important?
Well, it’s critical to see our movements in light of this constant dialectic between the particular and universal aspect of God’s overarching story. God is always moving from the particular to the universal—a movement that according to Bauckham has three aspects: the temporal, the spatial and the social.
In the first aspect, God’s story is always moving from the past toward the ever-new future. While our identity as the people of God is rooted in the past, the long journey from Abraham to Jesus and then to the community of Christ-followers, we are always being turned by the biblical narrative toward the coming of God’s kingdom in the future. We—and our movements—are oriented temporally toward God’s future. The story arc runs from Genesis 12 to Revelation 22—all history is moving to the future coming of Jesus and his final in-breaking of the kingdom into all creation. Our movements reflect this biblical movement across time.
In the second aspect, the biblical narrative runs spatially or geographically from one place to every place. Spiritual movements follow this biblical direction toward ever-new horizons. As Steve Douglass reminded the staff of CCC, “we build movements everywhere, until everyone knows….”
The coming kingdom will ultimately cover the whole earth, “as the waters cover the sea.” When we build movements, we must keep this “world-wide focus” before us. When we restrict, even for tactical purposes, the scope of our movement to less than every place, we disconnect it from God’s story and rob it of its compelling call.
I find the NT captured by all creation. As Ephesians 1 says, God is summing up all things—all things in heaven and earth, in Christ. Our movements are then in some ways not just global, but indeed cosmic. They have a universal horizon to them and we do well to cast the vision for our movements in terms of this geography movement from our particular location to the universal rule and reign of God over “every inch.”
In the social aspect, Bauckham argues that the biblical narrative is a movement of people, a movement from person to person, from people to people. The social or numerical movement of the biblical narrative is from the one to the many, from Abraham to the nations, from Jesus to every creature in heaven, on earth and under the earth. Our movements reflect this expansive social movement in which people come together to reach ever-new people.
The NT expresses so forcefully God’s “boundary-crossing” recklessness—from Jew to Greek, to barbarians and Scythian, from to male to female, master to slave. Whenever a boundary arises, the NT writers call it out and work to overcome it. Our movements again must be rooted in a loving community constantly striving to extend itself to its neighbors, crossing whatever boundaries it must.
As we embrace God’s larger story, our particular movements are thus framed by the biblical progression “temporally, spatially, and socially” from the particular toward the universal. Along this line, Greg Ganssle of the Rivendell Institue argues that all movements are multi-dimensional….that they extend both globally and locally and along time (see draft article below). As movements are built, the gospel goes in all directions – to the next place enroute to the world, in a deeper way locally bringing culture change to a local campus or community, and then historically in impact to the future.
We should keep thinking of our movements in terms of this God’s larger story. We keep the definitional bar high when we see movements in light of God’s storied movement from the particular to the universal—to an ever-new future, to an ever-new horizon and always to an ever-new people.
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