I love half of what Soong-Chan Rah says and I loathe the other half ;) Part of his “brand” is being a prophetic type which is needed in the Church and throughout our world. So I love him as a brother in the Lord but if he’s not careful, I’m going to look into trading him for a different prophet. I think Craigslist lets you do that now and if I understand Dr. Rah right, this is how he knows he’d doing his job.

I first heard Dr. Rah speak at a Youth Specialties Conference a few years ago. I remember nodding my head along to seeing the need for the Church to think more globally, more as the full body of Christ, not just the Western one. Then I read his well celebrated The Next Evangelicalism: Freeing the Church from Western Cultural Captivity.   To brutally summarize, I agreed with the main idea, would debate some of the finer nuances, but I admit I was distracted by the angry rhetoric. That line between passion/righteous anger/ and anger is thin.

BUT I can’t stay away from him – he feels like a needed voice in my life. I was excited to see that he was presenting at The Justice Conference. I liked  his material was new and since I called attention to the use of anger, his demeanor was cool, passionate at times (in the good way) and I’d say, he came across to me as pastoral. But still, I only agreed with half of what he said.

Here are some of the notes I took:

Name of seminar was “Lamenting our Story”

What is it about American Christianity that desires to focus on success that actually diminishes Christianity’s theology of sacrifice?
Story of hearing a mega-church pastor talking like a Christian motivational speaker and saying stuff like this in sermons, “The sky is the limit, reach for the stars!”
Triumph narrative of Christianity instead of the Christian narrative of suffering and sacrifice.
3 Potential Responses
1. Disengage with surrounding culture
2. Idolatry (magic formulas)
3. Lament (Yahweh’s sovereignty)

“Arkitecture” illustration – my iPhone picture didn’t turn out but he showed a picture of a gothic church santuary that was turned upside down.  When seen this way, the domed ceilings resemble the bottom or a boat – an ark, a Biblical symbol of God’s rescue and deliverance. (It was clever – I’ve never saw that before).

Then, Dr. Rah said this:
Something happens when you move all the churches out of the city to the suburbs.
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