In an interview in Australia, Michael Horton had some very interesting things to say.
His call throughout for Christians to get back into the world, relating to unbelievers, doing their jobs well, being involved in cultural activities, etc is well put and surely completely correct. What was intriguing to me was that in his final paragraphs his views of ecclesial practice were shown to be rather myopic. He could only conceive of a modern magisterial reformed view...
Bible teaching and catechesis, and word and sacrament ministry. Then we could stop all this mid-week stuff and let Christians have those six days back that you find in the Ten Commandments...
or a modern evangelical subculture view (which he quite rightly criticises):
But now, we have an alternative culture going on so that a Christian can actually be involved in the Christian ghetto 24 hours a day, listening to Christian radio and Christian music, going to Christian functions, taking the kids to Christians sports to the point where they don't actually know a non-Christian. And no-one at their work would know that they're Christians because they don't have any deep relationships with any of their co-workers. They're so busy with other Christians all the time.
What about the idea that 'church' invades the week, that the subculture is open to non-Christians, that gospel conversation (not corny, but contextualized) saturates everything? Has Dr H not heard of the best of the missional/emerging church?
