CHRIST IN YOU - Key Persons

Job Titles:

• Founder
• President

Jim Fowler has been a pastor at the Neighborhood Church in Fallbrook, California for the last twenty-three years. His wife, Gracie, and their five children, Philip, Charis, Kirsten, Sarah and Sandi have been very supportive in Jim's teaching, preaching and writing ministries. Jim's educational background includes Manhattan Christian College, Friends University, New College-University of Edinburgh, Bethel Theological Seminary, Palomar College, and Jubilee Theological Institute. In recent years Jim has spent much of his time writing, as can be viewed within the resources of this site. He is currently researching and writing several other articles and books. Jim has travelled extensively in his teaching ministry throughout the United States and in other countries such as India, Indonesia, Japan, New Zealand, England, Canada, Germany, Kenya, and the Philippines. He remains available for teaching ministry. Feel free to contact him at jimfowler@christinyou.net

Ellul's thesis is that the natural man is incapable of seeing the spiritual reality in which he is struggling (cf. I Cor. 2;14). He only sees the surface issues of social, political and economic problems, and he attempts to work and find solutions with the methods of technique, and in accord with moral standards. The world of modern society is not capable of preserving itself or of finding remedies for its spiritual situation. The more so-called "progress" man makes, the more he is aware of the inadequacy of human solutions, which all fail, one after another, and only increase the difficulties in which he lives. The social catastrophes of our age are not due to accident or "bad luck", but they are the inevitable products of the essential necessity of our fallen world and the misguided blunders man makes in attempting to cope with the world. The world situation is hopeless. It is useless to keep trying to discover remedies for our present distress. The ever-increasing activities of man to apply false-remedies only complicates the situation until the collapse of what he calls his "civilization." Ellul's references to the Church seldom pertain to the institutional organizations of ecclesiasticism, which he had, for the most part, determined to be but another representation of the world's expression of technique. When he says, for example, that "it is the responsibility of the church to be the body of Christ incarnated in a sociological reality," he is really referring to the plurality of individual Christians. The collective actions of the world are always set over against the individual freedom of the Christian. Ellul is elusive, though. About the time one thinks he has Ellul figured out, like a slippery eel he will be taking another tack. When asked to write the book, What I Believe, Ellul admitted that he found it extremely difficult to articulate what he believed, and much easier to explain what he did not believe. "What I do not believe is clear and precise; what I do believe is complex, diffuse, and theoretical," he confessed. Could this be a weakness in Ellul's thought that he defines by privation and asserts by negation? Ellul has ardent advocates and adamant detractors. He is too controversial to permit neutrality. What most Western Christians find most maddening is his unwillingness to give precise or positive behavioral prescriptions, to provide any ready-made answers, formulas, procedures (techniques). "I refuse to construct a system of thought, or to offer up some Christian or pre-fabricated socio-political solutions. I want only to provide Christians with the means of thinking for themselves the meaning of their involvement in the modern world." "My purpose is to provoke a reaction of personal reflection, and to thus oblige the reader to choose for himself a course of action." I do not want disciples. I do not want people to follow me. I want to incite people." And without a doubt he accomplished that objective! · Does Ellul's emphasis on individual Christian action diminish the importance of the collective Body of Christ, the Church?