Journal of European Baptist Studies, 2017

onstituted identity’ based on the love of the Father, the likeness of the Son and the enabling of the Spirit. 13 At Scum, we carefully nuance what is meant by a ‘personal relationship with Jesus’, lest the community aspect of the body of Christ be lost. Hymns that emphasise the individual are routinely adjusted from ‘me’ to ‘we’. We teach that salvation is from sin and isolation, to holiness and community. Conversion expresses a new ontological reality of being a child of God. In baptism, we are committing to the family of God, and no one walks alone. While the community cannot be dictatorial, community interests and submission within the community to the shared understanding of Scripture and God’s will allow boundaries that reinforce and keep identity secure. Teressa is one who has embraced dramatically and fully a changed identity. From addressing herself as a ‘drug-crazed, loser-freak’, even after years of sobriety, she now leads worship and stands with arms held high as she proclaims, ‘I’m no longer a slave to fear; I am a child of God’! 14 A major struggle is persuading congregants that they cannot slice and dice Christianity, select only certain agreeable parts of scripture, or give pre¬ eminence to ‘what the text means to me’: It’s not enough that I encounter and make sense of my life in terms of the Christian story. The story of Jesus, of God’s redemptive activity in and for the world, must become the story I find myself in. My story must be located within the greater story of the Christian narrative. 15 12 Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction'. A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984). 13 Anthony C. Thiselton, Interpreting God and the Postmodern Self: On Meaning, Manipulation and Promise (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996), p. 161. 14 Jonathan David and Melissa Hesler, ‘No Longer Slaves,’ on the album We Will Not Be Shaken (Redding, CA: Bethel Music, 2015). 15 Jason Clark, ‘Consumer Liturgies and Their Corrosive Effects on Christian Identity’, Church in the Present Tense: A Candid Look at Wliat's Emerging, ed. by Scot McKnight, Peter Rollins, Kevin Corcoran, and Jason Clark (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2011), pp. 52-53. In a similar vein, Tex Sample, The Spectacle of Worship in a Wired World (Nashville: Abingdon, 1998), p. 106, says, ‘The task is not, then, 44 Journal of European Baptist Studies 17:1 (2017) This re-orientation of putting myself in God’s story rather than asking ‘where does God fit in my life?’ needs ongoing reinforcement in sermons and conversations. Tyler Wigg-Stevenson urges young adults not to consider themselves ‘historically exceptional’; great peace and contentment can come from seeing the continuity of God’s redemptive plan and their part in this meta-drama. 16 Twenty-somethings often need to be re-oriented to seeing the goal of their adulthood not as self-sufficiency, but as the conviction of the sufficiency of God and