Star Trek and the Church Today–Rebooting the Church!
SPOILER ALERT! If you have NOT read the new Star Trek and don’t want me to spoil it for you don’t read this until you go right now and watch this incredible movie.
I am a nerd. I love Star Trek. Right now I’m currently watching Star Trek Next Generation and I’m almost through season 2. I am enjoying rewatching these classic shows and hope to go through the whole Star Trek world again. I was inspired after watching the latest movie.
I was nervous about seeing this new movie. Would they ruin it? So many movies reimagine movies I love and ruin them. There is talk of a ‘new’ Footloose and I dread that. How can you beat the original? Why not just rent the original? Anyway this is not a ‘reimagining’ in that sense and it is not a sequel. It is a reboot. Wow.
Diane Butler Bass lectured at the festival I recently attended and talked about how this ‘reboot’ is a great example for the church today. We need to reboot and such and with apologies to her lecture I’m going to give my own take but thank her for the idea and this is where I go with it. Ready? Here we go.
Star Trek is a great series. First we had Kirk and company and after three years the end of the show. But movies came and the rest is movie magic. In the late 80s Star Trek Next Generation came along and was highly successful and also led to movies. Then Deep Space Nine came to TV and later Voyager. Then the well was drying up and they decided to go before the original series and show us the early days before Kirk and call the show Enterprise. That series didn’t last long but I did enjoy it. In fact I enjoyed all series to some extent. Some hate this one or that one but I enjoyed them.
Enter the new movie. A new cast is playing the Kirk company back as they started with Enterprise. If it had just done this it would be a reimagining and the movies would flow with new actors playing old roles and changing things up as if the original shows never happened. That would have been lame. I didn’t want that.
They didn’t do that. What did they do? An aged Spock (played by the real Nimoy) shows up from the future and meets this original crew (including himself) and has in combat with a villian from the future who now messes it all up. The bad guy blows up Vulcan and changes the entire timeline. And so it isn’t a reimaging but an alternate time line. The original Star Trek, NG, DSN, Voyager, and such can go on in the timeline we are used too (and at Netflix or Blockbuster) but now we have this new timeline without Vulcan and now things are going to be different. Kirk’s dad dies in this new timeline while not in the original and so on. And now I suppose a whole new series and whatever the want can happen as they reboot the franchise. Yet it doesn’t change the history we knew but know we are in a whole new world.
Confused?
Let’s move to the church. Throughout our history as we evolved and adapted/changed groups popped up who wanted to go back to the beginning and copy it and I suppose ‘re-imagine’ or copy it. Most reformers in some sense tried that. But it does not work because our context is different.
So let’s not do that.
But we can reboot and start an alternate timeline.
When we try to restore what has happened in a different context it just gets messy again.
But what if we just hit ‘reboot’ and instead not copy the past or the present but be a bold new church for the 21st century.
I’m not a heretic! Hold on!
I say we go back to the New Testament and to those early days and not copy but take what it means to be church in our own context (21st century). We can learn from the past (I wouldn’t ignore it) but we don’t have to repeat the same mistakes in new forms. Let’s be who we are today.
I’m not even sure what that would look like or all the details but it sounds like a conversation piece.
If we reboot we aren’t changing our theology or core but we are saying, “This is what it means to be a Christ follower. So let’s be one today and not try to be what we were in the 50s, 80s, or whatever.”
We don’t dismiss everything that came before us but we aren’t chained by it.
Be honest in the past there are some bad things- slavery, oppression of women, mixing of politics and state, etc. We need to reboot and not keep fighting. Let’s be the church today and tomorrow.
Just thinking out loud but we know denominational loyalty is gone and that most folks believe the church is not relevant today. So what are we going to do about it? We are now like the early church but instead of recreating the mess let’s reboot and be willing to bold. I find this interesting because many are simply going back to a dream period. Case in point is the growing interest among many young adult Christians to reformed theology as done by John Calvin. Calvin bobble heads are sold in one particular SBC seminary. Students are loving it and made ‘rock stars’ out of Calvinists like Piper, etc. They want to be “Reformed Baptists” or whatever their stripe is. And they see a glory days in Geneva. I say forget that. I’m not saying we can’t learn from Calvin but come one. This isn’t Geneva and it isn’t the 1500s. Reboot!
Now some would point to dangers. Does this mean we change our theology? Does this mean we change how we view Jesus, the Bible, etc etc. Yes and no. If we are Christians then that means we are Jesus people and that doesn’t change. We are NT people and that doesn’t change. We are the church and so the basics of the faith remain. But it changes a bit on how we view those doctrines. What do I mean? Much of what people believe has been shaped by events and people long after Jesus. We need to rethink and ponder our beliefs to make sure that we believe them and they are something that makes sense or is it something we’ve been told and never thought about?
This conversation is just that- a conversation. I’m not even sure how it would even play out but it is one I’m thinking about and pondering. I might kick it out the shuttle bay door tomorrow and let it float out into the delta quadrant. Or I might ponder it some more. It is something to think about.
In the words of Picard.
Engage.
Derik
Derik – you’re musing what I’m feeling and wishing I knew what to do about it. I’m also a Presbyterian minister who works for the presbytery – the bureaucracy – and on sabbatical – exploring church and culture. I’m realizing how our of touch our churches are with changing culture. We’re wanting them to join us – have you seen the youtube video of if starbucks marketed like the church – quite telling. Keep up the musings… God’s at work among us.
Not to accuse you of something you’re not doing or compare you to someone you’re not, but this and the last few posts remind me quite a lot of Spong’s “Why Christianity Must Change or Die” and other similar works in theme at least, though obviously much less extreme or combative. So when are you nailing your version of a 99 Thesis to a Church door?
PS, Don’t you agree that it’s high past time that all churches of all theological stripes began to actually put the time, money and effort to physical compassionate work in their local community, that they began to utilize all of the skills of the members they already have to help all those outside their door, not with the intent to convert or sway others but to simply help them for helpings sake? I mean, that’s not to hard to do so why aren’t we all doing it?
To the Spong comment-
Where I would differ greatly is Spong’s theologically rebooting. He has problems with basic orthodox Christianity and the idea of a personal God! I am not advocating heresy but I do agree with the title you used (the wording that is). We do need to change or else. And yet not the orthodox nature of our faith but rather how we might express that faith in our world. We need to not keep repeating the same mistakes of history and be stuck in the past but rather need to be innovative, creative, and responsive to the current context and not a past one. We are now ’starting over’ in a sense and have a chance to be a new kind of church for a new kind of world.
We are really going to have to rethink how we do church in the world.
This is not an argument for a worship style, etc but the very way we connect to our world and the way we are as a church. We can’t copy the CEO mentality or latest fad or hold on to some imagined past.
Also I agree we have to put ‘boots on the ground’ and be the church now and not just stare at the sky. If we do work with our communities and become the presence of Christ…wow. It’s Biblical.
If the current economic situation taught us anything is that we don’t need to be the way we were before the crisis. We were junkies on a fix for material greed. We need to not return to that—spending what isn’t ours…what we don’t have…for stuff we don’t need..while the world starves. I might not have 99 thesis but give me time and I might come up with my own list!!
Read some Bonhoffer (Cost of Discipleship), throw in St. John of the Cross “Dark Night of the Soul”, and mix up a bit of Barth and we might just get there!! Oh and a dash of “the Joshua Tree” playing in the background (u2).
To the first comment-
thanks! I have seen the video!