Pack up the Polity?

So what did you all think of the conversation today? Alongside seeing a spark in Dr. Wells that I would not have guessed was there, I have a lot to continue to think about. As per our other conversation, we heard a Duke heretic today talk about polity like it was dead weight that just needs to be abandonded. Here's what I continue to wrestle with: how much can I borrow from cultural forms around me before I so change the gospel that it is no longer the gospel? Can I borrow from marketing and the business world? I think that it can be done and that these tools can be sanctified and used for the kingdom without turning church and the gospel into a theraputic deism. This kind of borrowing is already taking place in our biblical studies department. We beg, borrow, and steal from the English school, the philosophy school, the history school. We take their methods and appropriate them for the Bible. How can we do otherwise? The gospel is, I think, always situated contextually. We must run the risk of altering it by situating it firmly in the cultural context, this is, I think an incarnational approach to minsitry.