Shhh. Don't Tell Anyone.

Shaun Groves, a "Christian" (make your own interpretation of my use of quotes around Christian) musician, has a series of interesting posts recently on the nature of church and the burgeoning community in his front yard. The conversation in the comments, particularly on the first post, is sort of an arduous read. Obviously, there is a ton of conjecture, un-researched opinions, and some out and out meanness. But after you wade through the crap, there are a few gems worth mentioning.

One commenter asks somewhat rhetorically, "I think when we start living in our communities AS the church we decide we no longer need the intentionality and structure that is laid out for us in the [New Testament]. Why do the two have to be mutually exclusive? Why can’t I do all the things that I do in the cult-de-sac AND connect to an intentional body of believers? One may be more flawed than the other but they can both exist." Sigh. I guess this is where I need to let the cat out of the bag. If anyone thought our little group was just an experiment in another form of church or attempt at doing something more relevant for the culture where we live...well, that's not really true. Here's the secret that might not be a good idea making public - we really believe that it has become virtually impossible to live "in our communities AS the church" unless some of the typical church "intentionality and structure" is laid down for a while.

Why do the two have to be mutually exclusive? Because by and large, connecting to an "intentional body of believers" and all that has meant in recent evangelicalism does not automatically lead to whole-life discipleship to Jesus. The much publicized repentance of Willow Creek should give anyone pause who might think otherwise. Attractional models of church and need-based programs simply do not leave time for people to actually be in their communities. There is just too much effort required to pull these things off, and the monster must be continually fed by more money, more volunteers, more staff, and more time.

To pick on Shaun a little, it is a bit absurd to pit "go-to-churchers" against "anti-go-to-churchers" and have them debate the relative merits of each position. That debate misses the point entirely. Most of the conversation in the comment sections of his posts should make that fairly obvious. Instead, the debate should be over how it would be possible to Shaun to have the kinds of interactions and depth of community he currently has with his friends and neighbors and at the same time support the aspirations of a growing religious organization without compromising his discipleship to Jesus. For most Christians in suburban anywhere America, there simply are not enough hours in a day for that to be a sustainable reality. Being a disciple is a singular occupation, or at least it is intended to be so. As a suburban American from birth, I can now be fairly certain that "normal life" presents an adequate volume of distractions that succeed in keeping me from living out the teachings of Jesus. For many of us, the institutional goals of the average church - filling seats, paying the mortgage, keeping the natives happy - became just another distraction that we just could no longer stomach.

But, don't tell anyone I wrote this because it might spoil all the fun debating about church models and what the Bible says and how my church does it and how we've all just gone off our rocker. Instead, keep pushing your agenda on all those church-goers, or visa versa. After all, I'm sure that all that debating is not distracting us any further from being an apprentice of Jesus.

Marshall is Back

One of my bros from Cincinnati, Chris Marshall, is back on the blogging train. Give him some love, won't you?

Grandma Kicks A**...and Pretty Much Rules

Jupiter 's crusading grandma could face charges

"He told me to come on board and get a T-shirt," she remembers disgustedly. "I automatically kicked out my leg but never touched anyone." She says her young antagonist took a boxer's stance, circling her and goading, "Come on." Sosa, a West Palm Beach-based events promoter, says Nixon angrily banged on the bus before attacking him. Plus, he says Nixon told bar hoppers the event had been canceled as they made their way to Jumby Bay."

Here's another article, with a little of the back story:

"Too many people are sheep, and the reality is, if you feel strongly about something, you should do something," she said."

Awesome.

Uncovering an Ethos - Part 4

Last time I mentioned that simplicity has the potential to challenge some of our most deeply held assumptions about what it means to be the church. Over the past five or six years, the most controversial questions that I and others around me have wrestled with typically fall under one of these four subjects: leadership, structure, commitment, and money.

There is a reason I have chosen to wait until now to talk about these subjects in this series of posts on the ethos of our community (I'll deal with the first two in this post). They are the proverbial tail that wags the dog when it comes to people rediscovering what it means to be the church in our day and age. There has been so much ink spilled and breath wasted on these topics that I almost want to cut this discussion short and say, "That's enough for now!" However, I want to reiterate that all of this is written from a local perspective and requires some unpacking for those of us journeying together.

In the first post in this series I said, "We can no longer just sit around and learn about what Jesus said, or debate his words, or just put them into nice worship songs. The Way of Jesus must be attempted or it is not a Way at all." This aspect of our ethos is the hinge point on which all the other aspects I've discussed either succeed or fail. Either we follow Jesus - the intelligent, passionate, holy, loving, alive Jesus, or we follow Jesus the icon, the ideal, or the idol. If we follow the real Jesus, he has a habit of reorganizing our priorities around his, which are not easily managed. If we are to believe C.S. Lewis, Jesus is not safe...but he is good.

The simplicity of following Jesus causes us to reorder what we think is important about church and the Christian life. How important is leadership, structure, commitment, or money? For some, they are what makes church church. "Without vision, my people perish!" is the leadership slogan. What happens during the Sunday morning meeting has probably split more churches and denominations than anyone would care to admit. Defining who is "in" and who is "out" could almost qualify as the national pastime among Christians. And do I even need to say anything about money? Money is, next to theological differences, the most divisive force among Christians around the world today. Truly, nothing new is under the sun.

I can attest to the fact that a healthy, loving, caring, and passionate community of Christians can exist without making these subjects primary concerns. In fact, I will argue (again, not to convince anyone, but rather to simply report on what I have seen and experienced) that if these subjects are of secondary importance, they find their rightful home within the church and among followers of Jesus.

Leadership happens within our community in a myriad of different ways and forms. Attempting to assign "leader" and "follower" labels to people at this point would be absurd. If anything, in the New Testament all the titles we typically think synonymous with leadership are most always associated with sacrificial acts of service. When leadership happens, it is to the end of serving the community, of giving oneself for the betterment of others. The person leading in that instance does not expect anything in return - power, title, status, or even a pat on the back. It's all about the community, stupid.

But, you may ask, what about complex issues such as authority or church discipline? Of course, things are never neat and clean when there are sinners involved, which would include all of us. Again, that is why leadership exists as a service to the community as directed and empowered by the Holy Spirit, not through our own structures or abilities. A while back I wrote something about this and summarized the thought with this quote: "Authority expressed by the Spirit through a community committed to maturity in Christ." Although we are sinners, we are not children, and just as God has commissioned us to lead our families and look for the Spirit's guidance in all our family affairs, so we are to do the same for one another.

Likewise, the structure of church has become way too important in the minds of many Christians, particularly leaders. How one "does church" is supposedly a pathway to understanding the genetic code, the DNA if you will, of a faith community. Judging a church's quality of life within, depth of relationship, or passion for God's kingdom by analyzing how a church organizes their gatherings is a dangerous path to tread.

In our community, we have always attempted to place our gatherings in their proper context. Let me give an example. One of my favorite analogies about our community is that when we gather, it is like attending a family reunion. There are some at the reunion who you see on a regular basis - brothers, sisters, moms and dads. There are others you see less occasionally, but are still your family - great aunts and second cousins. Food is served, stories are told, music is played, the old (great-granddaddy and grandmama) and the weak (the newborns and rambunctous three year olds) are honored. There is laughter, arguments, and serious talks about serious family business. But at the center of this gathering is the fact that you are one family. Imagine if you were to wander uninvited into someone's family reunion and heard an argument or a terse conversation. Or you saw Uncle Billy over in the corner having one too many beers. Does that disqualify a family from being a family? Of course not, because we all live with the realities of sin within our own families...yet we still belong.

This is church-family. This is Peter and Paul having a "sharp disagreement" and parting ways, or Paul opposing Peter "to his face, because he was clearly in the wrong." These were the patriarchs of the first Christian family, not getting along like nice boys should. However, this is the stuff of real family, or - dare I say it - authentic community. Structure is always subject to these raw, organic family interactions.

There is some necessary structure to support family. However, it doesn't have to be all that complicated and certainly should be nothing anyone frets about too much. A few years ago, I began to describe this structure as an "upside-down umbrella". Instead of attempting to create an infrastructure capable of "covering" an array of ministries, programs, and initiatives, why not turn the umbrella upside-down so it serves people, rather than people serving it?

Structure and leadership among disciples of Jesus are not tasks to be farmed out to professionals. They are also not to be ignored. Over the years our community has been profoundly influenced by the example of Alcoholics Anonymous as a structure to (in their words) stay focused on a primary purpose. For AA, that purpose is to keep carrying its message to the alcoholic that still suffers. For us, it is carrying the message of God's kingdom and all it entails to both addict and otherwise, to those who "have it all" and those who have nothing. Like AA, only a simple skeleton is necessary to keep redirecting us back to our primary purpose.


Footnote: If you have a few spare moments, go read AA's 12 traditions and consider what a community of faith might look like if it followed them.

Pickin' On...

Why didn' t I know about this 6 years ago when it came out...

Uncovering an Ethos - Part 3

Here's a quote from an article I wrote a few years ago:

"People will come from east and west and north and south, and will take their places at the feast in the kingdom of God.” (Luke 13:29) Jesus often used the party or feast to represent the kingdom of God. His first miracle was performed at a wedding reception, he feasted with his brand new followers Levi and Zacchaeus, and his most famous parable ended with a huge party for a prodigal son. Often, Christians think true spirituality looks more like fasting than it does feasting. But Jesus responds, “Do wedding guests fast while celebrating with the groom?” (Luke 5:34) The Subversive Community knows how to party.

The next aspect of our ethos is what I am beginning to call "A Theology of Fun". For many of us, our formation in church has led us to believe that the Holy Spirit only works during serious times - preaching, sharing, prayer, reading of scripture, singing thoughtful songs, during silence. This reality has created an unhelpful dualism which encourages people to be "spiritual" during "sacred" times and "normal" everywhere else. However, it has been our experience that some of the most powerful, formational moments can happen in the most benign settings - at the dinner table with friends, on the back porch with the guys, even during an innocent game of ping-pong (inside joke there...sorry). This is not to neglect the more serious moments, but rather to fill the times where our guard is down with the same desire for God's kingdom as during an intimate time of praise.

Playing together, eating together, laughing together...this is all serious business in the kingdom of God. We are representing something powerfully countercultural - a group of adults and our children, not just wasting our time or drowning our sorrows, but demonstrating that our productivity is not the most important thing, our financial or social status does not matter, and our relationship to one another is based on something more than we have the same hobby or like the same sports team. We are a forgiven people. We are a loved people. That is truly a sensational thing, and something we should celebrate often.

Along these lines is the recognition that simply engaging in church-related activities does not make someone a disciple. For far too long, churches have used attendance at services or bible studies to be a thermometer of growth or maturity. However, over the years our community has come back again and again to the reality that the only worthwhile measuring stick for discipleship is how we are adhering to the teachings of Jesus and the Scriptures in all of our choices and interactions. In other words, there is more to following Jesus than showing up at church. Instead of being the means to discipleship, our times together serve to help one another interpret how Jesus is discipling us in our day-to-day lives.

For this reason, it is natural to assume that a central part of our ethos would be simplicity in all things. Simplicity means that we will not allow ourselves to be so immersed in church activities or church relationships that we are unable to be present to what God is doing in our neighborhoods, jobs, schools, or even families. This requires some discipline on our part - sometimes we have to say "no" to each other and make difficult decisions about our time. Also, we have to understand that our needs are not always going to be met immediately and not everyone will be able to attend everything that the group plans. But simplicity has some deeper implications that will challenge - if we allow it to - some of our deepest held assumptions about how church is supposed to work in some traditionally controversial areas: leadership, structure, commitment, and money. More on that next time.

A New Perspective

I want to take a detour from my “ethos” series for this post and talk about a controversy that is brewing in North American evangelicalism. Recently there has been a flurry of discussion regarding the “New Perspective on Paul,” which is the name given to a line of historical and literary thought which is asking some interesting questions about the focus of Paul’s theology. In a very brief nutshell, this perspective calls into question that Paul was primarily concerned with doctrines such as justification by faith or themes like the apocalypse and was more preoccupied with calling into being a renewed People of God. Scot McKnight has a very good discussion of the origins of this perspective here.

So why should anyone I know bother continuing to read this post? (Most of the people I know do their theology a majority of the time rather than argue about it). Primarily because I think the new perspective has some interesting – and I think very valuable – pastoral (verb) concerns. Naturally, hard-core Calvinists have their knickers twisted over this, and there are loads and loads of books, articles, and blogs flooding the evangelical landscape. The main argument against the new perspective is that it diminishes the importance of the doctrine of justification by faith alone, and to some renders what has been typically thought of the Gospel in protestant circles unintelligible. From what I’ve read and studied so far, I actually think the complete opposite is true, from a Gospel and pastoral point of view.

Naturally, one of favorite writers / scholars / elder statesman of the kingdom, N.T. Wright, is in the middle of the fray. I’ve been reading his little book, Paul, In Fresh Perspective, and as usual come away refreshed by his ability to communicate and his thorough scholarship. Wright has a way of making these arguments come alive that you typically envision happening between seminarians with their heads stuck in the sand. On page 121 of the book, he has a great summary quote regarding justification, and how the new perspective encapsulates some of Paul’s most familiar passages from Romans:

“The point of justification by faith is that, as he insists in [Romans] 3:26, it takes place in the present time as opposed to on the last day. It has to do with the questions, ‘Who now belongs to God’s people?’, and ‘How can you tell?’ The answer is: all who believe in the gospel belong, and that is the only way you can tell – not by who their parents were, or how well they have obeyed the Torah (or any other moral code), or whether they have been circumcised. Justification, for Paul, is a subset of election, that is, it belongs as part of his doctrine of the people of God.

And of course this does not mean, despite many efforts to push the conclusion this way, that it has nothing to do with sinners being saved from sin and death by the love and grace of God. The point of election always was that humans were sinful, that the world was lapsing back into chaos, and that God was going to mount a rescue operation. That is what the covenant was designed to do, and that is why ‘belonging to the covenant’ means, among other things, ‘forgiven sinner’. The point is that the word ‘justification’ does not itself denote the process whereby, or the event in which, a person is brought by grace from unbelief, idolatry and sin into faith, true worship and renewal of life. Paul, clearly and unambiguously, uses a different word for that, the word ‘call’. The word ‘justification’, despite centuries of Christian misuse, is used by Paul to denote that which happens immediately after the ‘call’: ‘those God called, he also justified.’ (Romans 8:30) In other words, those who hear the gospel and respond to it in faith are then declared by God to be his people, his elect, ‘the circumcision’, ‘the Jews’, ‘the Israel of God’. They are give the status dikaios, ‘righteous’, ‘within the covenant’.”

The pastoral implications might not be obvious at first glance. However, if your preaching and ministry are structured around getting people to assent to doctrine, declare a profession of faith, be baptized, and then become a member in good standing of your religious organization awaiting your heavenly reward…then yeah, there’s some implications to all this. In my upbringing as a Christian, the “New Covenant” was basically “All that law and earning favor with God garbage is gone. Now you believe in Jesus, be forgiven for your sins so you can go to heaven.” It was, as some have likened, a cosmic transaction – Jesus’ blood for my sins, end of story.

But for Paul, that wasn’t end of the story. Again, contrary to what is becoming popular opinion, I don’t think this in any way diminishes the cross, the blood of Jesus, the atonement, or however you want to describe what Jesus did for us on Calvary. It simply roots it within a larger story which began with Adam - the minute human beings first decided that they might try to be their own gods. This perhaps is an overused metaphor, but we do not come to the cross as consumers, looking for blood, but as children who have been called by their Father to partake in the new world he is making possible through his Son by the Holy Spirit. That new world consists of forgiven people to be sure, but it also means that we are a People – a renewed, kingdom People – right now.

So, for these People on the Way, all of this means that we can’t just sit on our justified laurels and become fat, happy consumers of truth. We are, by our nature, a People on the move, and Jesus and the apostles are leading the way. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve read through Romans in the past with the point trying to “get it right”. But the “Romans Road” doesn’t just lead to some talking points for an evangelistic message – it is a road we are traveling on right now. We are living that story, day in and day out, moving from our pagan roots to a new humanity, bathed in grace and light. That truly is good news. As we get familiar with this story – living as justified people – new possibilities open up for how we should continue to press forward as communities of faith. Wright later concludes the chapter after the quote above with this thought:

“Paul’s whole ministry is shaped by this reworking: he is constantly laboring to produce and maintain cells of Jews and Gentiles loyal to Jesus as Messiah and Lord, living in the power of the Spirit, under the nose of Caesar and in some of the key cities of the empire. That might lead us to wonder what sort of agendas, not only in ecclesiology [the nature of church] but also in politics, Paul would want to urge on us today.”

This is where the pastoral implications get really interesting. The “ecclesiological” implications are obvious, again, if you assume a faith community such as ours. But when Wright wonders about what sort of “political” agenda Paul would urge on us, he is not speaking about reviving the religious right (or left) or something of that sort. He means, how would Paul urge us as followers of Jesus, as God’s people, to live as God’s kingdom ambassadors to the world? An interesting, and forever relevant, question indeed.

Uncovering an Ethos - Part 2

A few years ago, it was inferred by an older Christian that I had a "chip on my shoulder" regarding church. Although this criticism stung a little, I spent some time really trying to determine if it was true. The comment came in the midst of a very difficult conversation, one I was quite sure there was little hope that I would be able to adequately explain myself. Eventually, I realized that I did have a "chip" after all, but it wasn't in regards to church. It was because I felt on several occasions misunderstood, not listened to, and not respected.

What if a group of people decided that instead of defending their boundaries of who is "in" or "out", "right" or "wrong", "leader" or "follower", that they instead determined to engage each other as human beings, sinners, and children of God? At that starting place, there are several things that happen in that group of people all at once. First of all, it leaves little room for ego to rear its ugly head. Second, judgmentalism in all of its forms takes a back seat to hospitality, freedom, and compassion. Finally, an environment is fostered where "fitting in" has nothing to do with how well you measure up to what the group determines is cool or what might classify you as a misfit.

I am learning to let go of that "chip" that I described above. However, that process is not something natural or even encouraged in most Christian contexts. If you are "in", you are taught to root out error, expose heresy, keep the boundaries safe and secure. If you are "out", you are encouraged to embrace the attitude of an innovator and reject your critics as fundamentalists. The problem in both cases is that it is very easy to lose your soul in the process of figuring out what side of the fence you're on.

When we read the New Testament with our American, melting-pot eyes, we hear stories about Christians from places like Corinth, Ephesus, Rome, Jerusalem, and Thessalonica. To us these were just random ancient cities the apostles were ministering in and writing to, yet their differences were stark. Boundary-marks were everything to people in the first century, particularly if you were a Jew. The fact that Christianity spread throughout the Mediterranean as fast as it did among a radically diverse population is more than miraculous. We miss how powerfully subversive following Jesus was to first century ears, and why it was so compelling to so many different people. The Way, the Little-Christs, were a sect where women actually got to sit in with the men during their meetings! A field worker and his boss might actually eat at the same table! If someone committed a wrong against his friend, instead of exacting revenge, the friend would actually forgive him! No wonder they were accused of "turning the world upside down."

Living this out in our culture is a whole lot more complicated than what people typically define as "New Testament Church". However, an aspect of our ethos has been to wander into the fray of this complexity and figure out how to love people as they are, listen to their stories, and attempt to see how the Holy Spirit is drawing them more into his Kingdom. Interestingly enough, in the process of attempting to do this, good, healthy boundaries are created. If someone is not interested in engaging relationally, or actively pursuing God's kingdom, or just wants their church fix for the week, we're not really offended if they don't stick around. On the other hand, we must learn to develop what the Scriptures define as "long-suffering" with each other who are sticking with the process. That is not fun or exciting from a cultural perspective, but the community that is created as a by-product is pretty earth-shattering on its own.