To bring this series to a close, I want to reflect briefly on a question posed by Steve McCoy over at Reformissionary. Steve asks:

Do you think the suburbs are so difficult because by their nature they are a salvation from something else, a gospel delivering people from "sin," poverty, homelessness, interruption, filth, etc? In other words, when we try to give them the Gospel they generally won't listen because they already have one in the suburbs?

This is a great question. In fact, it's probably the most important question to ask. My purpose in taking up this series in the first place was to construct a framework in which to think about exactly this, and Steve states the question about as succinctly and accurately as anyone I've seen. Unfortunately, there isn't an easy way to make the answer nearly so succinct. This is a question that cannot be casually dismissed - it's the sort of question that we need to invite to become a part of our rhythms of life, a part of our narratives and practices both personal and communal.

One of the significant challenges that we face in answering this question is simply defining what, exactly, the gospel is. For my part, I see the gospel as an integral part of the biblical narrative - in other words, any framing of the gospel that doesn't make sense in the context of the whole of the Story is at best incomplete. In order to grasp the gospel, we need to begin to inhabit the biblical narrative, allowing it to define the problem to which the gospel is the solution. And we need read no farther than Genesis 3 to discover that any description of the problem that doesn't include our fractured relationships with God, each other, and Creation is woefully inadequate. This narrative grounding is what sets the Christian story in context; sin is tragic at least in part because of its scope. It's not just about me - it encompasses the entire cosmos.

But if we define the problem in a smaller way, so that the problem is my personal contentment and well-being, then a "gospel of the suburbs" becomes an easy remedy. And this gets to the heart of Steve's question. The "gospel of the suburbs" is tenable only when we've defined the problem in a way that fits such a response. But, I must ask, how small is that leap from the gospel as often articulated in twenty-first century American evangelicalism? If the gospel is personal, spiritual, and eternal - as opposed to cosmic, holistic, and present - then, I'd suggest, we've left a lot of room for other answers to the problem. The gospel of personal relationship is really no threat to the gospel of suburban existence - they can coexist peacefully, as should be patently obvious to anyone paying attention. So I can enjoy the pursuit of happiness now, so long as I don't offend God, and get to heaven when I die. It's the perfect suburban life.

I don't know another way to say this - we should be disturbed, profoundly disturbed, that this telling of the Story has such a grip on American Christianity. God's actions through the biblical narrative are always about calling a new people to practice redemptive living - to participate in a new way of being human, in opposition to the ways defined through sin and curse. How we tell this story makes all the difference - I can't emphasize this enough. Part of what we need to be doing as missional people is creating dissonance and dissatisfaction among our friends and neighbors so that we can realize together that the problem is bigger than can be solved by a nice house and an SUV. The gospel of the suburbs is ultimately a hollow one - but that realization is a stretch for many of the folks with whom we live and serve. In truth, it's often a stretch for me. Only through continual retelling and reenacting of the Story can we free our imaginations from the suburban ethos enough so that we can begin to truly live in the ethos of the Kingdom.

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