A Theology of Who We Are
Photo by Vitaly Gariev on Unsplash
Wonder Anew is a new recurring section of the Church Anew blog, intended for spiritually curious readers who want to explore the Christian faith with honesty, depth, and imagination.
Sometime in 2017, my friend Nora and I decided to start a podcast. We originally gave it the placeholder name of “Not That Kind of Christian.”
Most people know what that means.
They know it means that you believe in God, that you maybe even think this Jesus guy was real, but you’ve got some issues with the ways that other people who say they believe in God speak and act in the world.
We wanted to have a space for people who also felt that way about the version of Christianity that was loudest in the public sphere.
Again, that was in 2017.
It’s so easy to point out the theology of others and say “not that.”
But now it’s 2026. Almost ten years and a global pandemic later, the voice of Christians in culture and in the headlines has not gotten a lot better. Actually, in a lot of ways it’s gotten a lot worse.
Yes there are some sprinkles of hope, and sometimes good theology can break through, but overall, the people with the worst theology keep getting handed megaphones.
It’s so frustrating.
I was asked to speak at a conference breakout session recently, about how we possibly hold onto faith in this particular time and place. It was a packed room. Way more people than we anticipated, which says something. In all the headlines about “the decline of the church,” we are missing that a lot of people still have much they believe in, and they are still deeply faithful. Many of them just don’t see the church as speaking to what they are experiencing every day.
They want preaching and teaching that is relevant. They want to see leaders practicing what they preach, and they want to see all of it in line with what they have read about Jesus’ life and ministry.
What people are tired of, I’m learning – and maybe hypothesizing a little bit here too – is “Not That” Christianity.
It’s so easy to point out the theology of others and say “not that.”
Whatever it is, not that.
We’ve been doing this for a while. In fact, I think most of the deconstruction movement is a “not that” theology. It’s good, and can be helpful as people figure out what they want to keep and what they want to leave behind.
But I think now a lot of people are ready for something else.
They are looking to reconnect and reconstruct and they want to know what it is we are, not what it is we are not.
I think scripture really backs up this shift.
Jesus didn’t often give “not that” theology. He would reference other theology, but he never stopped there. He would say things like “you’ve heard it said” when referencing cultural beliefs or prevailing theology. But he’d follow it up with “but I say.”
He was offering another way.
And – and this is important – he modeled what that looked like over and over and over again. He’d talk about including outsiders and then he’d find the most ragtag group of outsiders to hang out with, bringing them into community in a way that honored their humanity and without shame. He’d talk about love and then love the people who the world said were unloveable. He’d heal people in body but he would not ignore their soul or their restoration into community. He talked about grace and forgiveness and then offered it freely to people who definitely didn’t deserve it.
If we really want to be more than “not that” Christians, it’s time for us to get a little bit louder about who we are. Not just with our words, but with our actions and our money and our time and our attention. It’s time for us to start speaking up against the worst theology by saying, “you’ve heard it said – but I say.” The message of the Gospel, the one that brought so many people to that conference breakout session? It’s needed, and people are just waiting for us to bring it. So let's bring it.
