Why Na exists: humble orthodoxy
Aug. 30 2007
It feels like yesterday that a group of friends and I sat around a small table at a Baltimore Barnes & Noble. We’d been spending a couple days praying and studying together and beginning the process of planning New Attitude 2006. The goal for the weekend was to do our best to hear the voice of God through his word and prayer to answer the question, “What should New Attitude be defined by as long as the Lord allows it to exist?”
We talked through I Peter 1. We prayed. We made little Na signs out of jellybeans and whatever we had to fiddle with. (The team is full of fiddlers.) We had great ideas about secondary things, but we still didn’t have the clear reason for Na’s existence.
At one pivotal point in the conversation somebody asked a great question.
“Well what has God been doing in our own lives in our local church?”
It began a great conversation about what the Lord had been doing. It was one of the best times of connecting and fellowshipping with other believers I’ve ever had. What emerged from that time was our shared experience of how “orthodoxy”—or “right teaching”—coupled with an attempt at living this right teaching leads to reality and authenticity. We saw that rediscovering timeless truths revealed from our Father is both incredibly humbling and incredibly exhilarating at the same time.
Things started to click a little more in our minds, especially in light of the time we live in right now. There are many well meaning and godly people in the church today who are questioning and deconstructing everything about church and doctrine and practice in light of the shift to post-modernity. Many of these brothers and sisters have some great descriptions of the issues we face, but the prescriptions and solutions that they give are concerning.
As we prayed and talked more we realized that perhaps God was calling us to get our voice into the conversation. Perhaps God wanted us to speak into that conversation and say that orthodoxy and doctrinal definition aren’t bad things, but good things. That there are certain truths about God, his Son, his plan of redemption, his Word, and his church that do not change. That there are certain things that should not be reinvented but instead should be rediscovered.
In certain books we’d read about the experience some people had encountering arrogance and conflict and strife within certain churches that were “conservative” in their theology. As we read we were grieved that doctrinal definition and orthodoxy were associated with arrogance and self-righteousness.
We all looked at each other and were just awestruck as to why our experience with orthodoxy had been so different. We all felt a sober sense that day that God was perhaps calling us to quietly communicate a different perspective. That he was really calling us to be another voice in the conversation about what Christianity looks like in this postmodern world.
We realized that the experience we shared together in our local church might help other people. We left Baltimore humbled that God would allow us to play a small part in this.
A few weeks later God gave us something to call this: humble orthodoxy.
We knew that New Attitude was about spreading an idea called humble orthodoxy. It was a simple commitment to believe, live, and represent the truth of God’s words with humility. It is a commitment to not just know a doctrinal truth but seek to live it as best we can in our daily life and then go humbly represent this truth to others.
So many believers today want to stand in awe of a Holy God, to be apart of a bigger story than just their own life, to experience authenticity in their walk with Christ, to see their faith have real social impact on their community, to be involved in “real” relationships with other Christians in genuine community. We desire the same things with a passion. And we want to offer to the conversation that humble orthodoxy is the time-tested way to experience all this.
This is our heart. This is our passion. New attitude is about spreading a commitment to embrace a humble orthodoxy.
Just a couple weeks ago our team took its third retreat and I’m glad to report that our message is still the same. New Attitude is about humble orthodoxy. Whether you visit the blog site, listen to an album that Nap produces, or attend our annual gathering in Louisville you will hear the same resounding theme:
Forget reinvention. Embrace a Humble Orthodoxy.
Join us.
So in light of all that there are a few more people joining us in spreading humble orthodoxy. In the next few weeks we are going to introduce you to some great men—theologians and pastors—who are about the same mission. We’ve asked them all to write regularly here on the blog. I’ll let them introduce themselves, but let me just say that I’m so grateful that these guys have committed to being official contributors to the Na blog. These men are the real deal. I can’t wait for you all to benefit from their walks with God.
Folks, the word is getting out about humble orthodoxy and more voices are being added to the conversation. We pray that this move would grow bigger and bigger and that our collective voice would grow louder as we commit to believe, live, and represent the truth of God’s word with humility.