Simple Church Journal

Like everyone in blogo-land, I’m reading my way through James Rutz’s "Megashift."  I have already seen enough quotes from it to know that He has some awesome things to say about what God is doing all over the world and how He is working through simple, organic expressions.  Here’s a great summary.

But…

His first chapter deals with the subject of "exciting miracles" as he documents the increase in resurrections from the dead and other phenomenal miracles.  I don’t want to be come across, in any way, with negativity about what God is doing and will continue to do.  It’s awesome.  That’s not it.

There’s just this little gnawing something in me that reacts to the excitement around signs and wonders as though they are the end in themselves.  They are exciting.  It is awesome that God works in our world in incredible ways.  We ought to expect it.  But the signs and wonders themselves are not "it."  HE is.

It just seems like I have been around people lately for whom the pursuit of signs and wonders is the thing–the biggest thing of all.  The "signs and wonders" topic is the hot button that everyone wants to get hyped about.  Again, this is difficult to say because we certainly want to be people that are pressing into all that God has for us– so how can this pursuit to be too big?  If we say that someone is "too excited" about signs and wonders are we throwing cold water?

Signs and wonders are a good thing; they are a God-thing.  But, truly, they are NOT the most important thing.

The best way for me to say this is to quote from Roland Baker.  He is the perfect person to quote from on this subject because he and Heidi, in Mozambique, have created more excitement about signs and wonders than probably any other people.  Understandably so.  God has done wonderful things through their ministry.

But Roland says well what I am trying to say:

Through all the tears and laughter, repentance and joy, worship and celebration, healings and deliverances, we find time to teach the most basic and critical foundations of the Gospel. This movement does not chase health and wealth, or manifestations, or signs and wonders. We preach Jesus and Him crucified, and the power of the Cross. Nothing counts but faith working through love, producing joy! We seek first His Kingdom and His righteousness, and all these other things will chase us! We are learning how to be rich in good deeds, and blessed with godliness and contentment. We are falling in love with Him who is love, until nothing in this world attracts us like He does…

This is my point… "these other things (including signs and wonders) will chase us."  Trust it.  Believe it.  Look for it.  Expect it.  But it’s not what WE chase.  We chase Jesus crucified… to live for, fall in love with, and die for however He chooses to use us.

Roland goes on to say:

We ask our readers, Who will lose their life for Him in order to gain it? Who will suffer hardship as a good soldier of Jesus Christ, and run the race to win? Who will join us in the harvest field, sparing nothing? Who wants to burn with life and passion in pursuit of what is pure, perfect and eternal? Who wants to love as Jesus loves?

When this is our life and passion… and not the signs and wonders themselves… then perhaps "signs and wonders will follow."

The church as missional seems to bring up many, many apparent contradictions in its discussion.

1. Do we build community first that is attractive to others (John 17) or is community to be build around its mission as a core identity of that community?  I’ve never come up with a solid answer to this question… I wonder if it can be a "both / and."

2. Are we to be always "sent ones" (apostolic) in our mission endeavors as in Luke 10, or does most reaching out to others take place within our oikos connections (discussed in Petersen’s book, The Insider– I summarized this book in some earlier blogs that start here).  It seems to me that, again, both are important.  Perhaps each as its season in our life?

3. Are we leaven that works quietly within the context we find ourselves in, or are we light that is set on a hill creating some type of public awareness?  Are we to be mostly about doing and caring for others ("if necessary use words") or is there a time and place for mostly proclaiming good news?

I have been looking at some of these questions in light of different spiritual gift "leanings."  In fact, we have been in the process of identifying our own "gift leanings" using the five-fold ministry of Eph 4– apostle, prophet, evangelist, teacher, and pastor.  The idea is that most people tend to lean toward one of these types of gift-areas more than others.  We are using this simply as a method for dialogue about the different ways that people are gifted– and how the differing gifts may be used missionally in different ways.

For example– those who lean toward the apostolic may be those who are more excited about crossing cultural-group boundaries (whether locally or overseas).  They may think nothing about going out to different types of neighborhoods, taking incarnational ministry into ghettos, meeting new and different people, or joining a mission trip to Timbuktu (a real town in Mali, by the way–I’ve been there).

Those who lean toward the prophetic may have a greater excitement and propensity toward the miraculous and the marketplace.  They want to be part of taking healings, prophetic words, and prayers for people wherever they go.

The pastoral "leaners" may be those who want to take compassion, compassion, compassion.  They might be the ones who say with Francis: "Let all the brothers… preach by their deeds."  They are comfortable bandaging up the broken and caring for widows and orphans as their primary missional endeavors.

The evangelist leaning is the desire to see people make those clear conversion decisions.  It seems to me that there is a time and place for "the closers."  Those who are gifted in this area seem to do this naturally and have an innate sense about the right timing for it without causing people to feel "dumped on" or hammered.

Finally, the teacher leaning is, perhaps, those who have such a passion to see people "grounded" in the story of Scripture.

I realize that this is very simplistic, but my point is to create some dialogue around being missional that allows for differences.  The body of Christ is infinitely varied so, it seems to me, that as we come into our own spiritual identities our missional activities will be as varied as we are.

I’m concerned that almost any missional discussion tends to have that "this is the way it’s done" air about it which creates a narrowness.  Nevetheless if we DON’T have missional discussions and encouragement we seem to have a strong self-centered tendency to lapse into a place of comfortable inertia.  So… we need the dialogue…  Can we make room for differences and variety?

Prodigal Kiwi has posted some "missional questions"  he uses in interacting with Scripture.  Take a look.

I want to update my own thinking on the subject of "community as mission" as we prepare for some gatherings in which we focus on the missional aspect of our own community…  More to come.

Phil Goodacre reports on a Re:source conference in which Andrew Jones was sharing…  Some great basics:

He (Andrew Jones, aka Tallskinikiwi) started off by reflecting on how the Kingdom of God is like yeast (Matthew 13:33). As yeast is worked throughout the dough the yeast cells divide, yet it’s impact is what makes the bread rise and grow. This cell division is so small, microscopic, invisible to the human eye. For us, as members of God’s church, must not our actions also be almost secret and meek rather than proud and showy, just as Jesus warns against in Matthew 16:6 – also talking about yeast.

He also talked about Luke 8, when Jesus was on His way to Jairus’ house. Jesus was stopped by an ‘unclean’ woman on the way there. Yet Jesus stopped, and spent time with this woman, her faith having healed her. Who are we called to work with? The cool, important people, or the inclean, those that nobody else will even touch?

We then moved on to look at Luke 10, from which I noted down a number of things that grabbed me.

We are told to enter other people’s houses, rather than us dragging them into ours. What does this say about the way we do mission, and the way we do church???

God HAS prepared a harvest. The harvest IS out there. We must learn to find where God’s favour is.

The 72 were told to go out, eat, drink, heal etc etc. THEN tell people about the Kingdom of God. Is this the way we do it? Or are we often in a hurry to get all the ‘God stuff’ in right at the beginning. People need to experience the Kingdom of God before we start banging on about it verbally.

We must ask God – the Lord of the Harvest – to send out workers. But these workers might not include us.

In the afternoon we started off by looking at a bit of emergence theory. Now I have to be honest, this is an area about which I knew very little. But it was actually quite interesting (though probably simplified somewhat).

In Proverbs 6:6-6 we are told to go and look at the ants, and it is with ants that this emergence theory was explanined.

Ants don’t have a leader or a queen ant or anything like that, but they still manage to accomplish a whole lot. Some characteristics of both ant colonies, and this whole emergence thing are:
1. low-level chaos leads to high-level sophistication without orders being given.
2. everyone communicates with everyone.
3. simple structures.

Link: philgoodacre.blogspot: reflections on "creating church in the emerging culture".

I have been talking about the need to have the fire alive IN us before we gather to share it with others.

Henri Nouwen has a classic article on this called "Moving From Solitude to Community to Ministry."  Here are a couple of excerpts:

Solitude is being with God and God alone. Is there any space for that in your life?

Why is it so important that you are with God and God alone on the mountain top? It’s important because it’s the place in which you can listen to the voice of the One who calls you the beloved. To pray is to listen to the One who calls you "my beloved daughter," "my beloved son," "my beloved child." To pray is to let that voice speak to the center of your being, to your guts, and let that voice resound in your whole being…

Solitude is where spiritual ministry begins. That’s where Jesus listened to God. That’s where we listen to God.

Sometimes I think of life as a big wagon wheel with many spokes. In the middle is the hub. Often in ministry, it looks like we are running around the rim trying to reach everybody. But God says, "Start in the hub; live in the hub. Then you will be connected with all the spokes, and you won’t have to run so fast.

Jesus’ entire life and ministry was fueled by His alone times with God.  That is really fairly simply to comprehend, eh?

Mark Van S has an excellent article, over at the new issue of NextWave, that challenges the way the church takes anything and everything (in this case the use of the arts) and turns it into a commodity…

You see, western culture (especially American culture) turns all of the finer things of life into prostitutes…pawning them on street corners for easy consumption. One only has to watch television for about half an hour before one discovers a catfood or burger or car or tampon commercial that utilizes Beethoven or Mozart or Bach or the Beatles in order to sell whatever that product happens to be. Americans have been trained to see almost everything through the lens of commodification (that process by which objects and services are packaged and disconnected from their origins, thus creating a project that holds meaning only for the consumer, instead of having its meaning derived by, from, and for its creator). Through this lens, it is easy to see aesthetics and liturgics as nifty commodities to be used in accordance with our evolving (and often traditionless) religious and spiritual tastes.

Lest we think that crass consumerism only applies to "them," Mark also has a fine post at his blog challenging every single one of us to consider how our personal wealth is used.

Great challenges, Mark!

My "theme of the week" seems to be about "Bringing the Fire With You" when you gather (see previous post)…  which means that we are learning to live the radical Jesus-life every day of our lives in every situation we are in.

This reminds me of John Michael Talbot’s book on Francis of Assisi and this quote:

He Was Radical

For many people, being "Christian is roughly equivalent in time and emotional commitment to being a member of a neighborhood bridge club, having a regular seat at the local Elks lodge, or getting the familly car serviced every three thousand miles.  Unfortunately, this type of Christianity is often viewed as just another civic affiliation, acquired habit, or social ritual.

Not for Francis.  In him, the spark of divine love ignited a bonfire that burned away all his indifference and sparked a radical, uncompromising faith.  His was not Christianity Lite.  He worshiped at the altar of not watered-down deity.

Francis’s minute-by-minute desire was to follow God ever closer…

This theme keeps coming up in more than one church I have been involved in this week: "Bring the fire with you."

In other words, don’t "come to church" in order to experience God and rely on whatever takes place during the time of the gathering to create the fire.  Recognize that when we gather, it’s the bringing together of embers that are already lit and hot that allows the gathering to become something truly mystical, dynamic, and powerful.

Another way to say it is this: Solitude Precedes Community.

In other words, it’s the experience of God in us, individually, that we experience alone with Him, that allows us to gather with others in a way that produces community that is alive and vibrant.  If we come empty, then we are looking to others to bring something of God that will fill us.  If a room full of people gather in this condition then what do we have: one empty, dry gathering.

On the other hand, as was expressed in one church this week, if we will each ask God to fill us during the week, hear from Him, walk with Him, and then gather with others doing the same, we will experience a super-charged synergism.  How powerful it is when several people get together who are living the "with-Jesus" life!

"Bring the fire with you."  The result will be a gathering in which there is more being poured out than anyone can receive.

"Bring the fire with you."  We will stop showing up at gatherings like beggars, hoping that someone else will have the food that will sustain us.  We will begin to learn that each of us has the ability to look to God (not special people or events) for the spiritual life that we need and want.  We discover that each of truly has the Holy Spirit in us and that He is the ONLY ONE who can lead us into the deep intimacy with Christ that we long for.  We go to Him for the fire to be stoked.  We gather with others to encourage what’s already there.

"Bring the fire with you."  The result will be a community bonfire that will prepare us to GO OUT.  We will be equipped like never before to go into a dark and needy world with even greater love and generosity of spirit, greater confidence in our calling and spiritual gifts, and a clearer story to tell.

"Bring the fire with you."  This may be the one key that could transform the church from a hidden way-station that people "go" to, to becoming the fully-alive, go-everywhere, people-filled-with God movement that literally fills the earth with God’s glory and light.

"Bring the fire with you."  Thanks, Meghan, for challenging us last night to come with the fire already in our hearts.

"Between the traditional and the new, or between order and adventure, there is no real opposition; and what we call tradition today is a knit work of centuries of adventure." – Jorge Luis Borges quoted at ProdigalKiwi.

Interesting quote.  It helps put some things into perspective.  If you are reading this blog you are probably on a wonderful, current-day adventure in your spiritual and ministry life.  You are an adventurer.

It’s an interesting perspective to consider that so many who have gone before us whom we describe as "traditional" were also adventurers in their day.  Not all, mind you.  The masses tend to follow the adventurers and, within time, that which was new becomes a routine, a liturgy, a program, or just something to do that was once exciting.  Taking an adventurous experience and reducing it to something repeatable for others turns it into a tradition.  The experience of adventure gets lost.

However, this quote reminds us to reflect on the many adventurers that are sprinkled throughout our traditional heritage.  Remembering that our "traditional" heritage is also made up of extreme-sports type rock climbers can remind us to honor them for the courage they had and encourage us to press on in the adventure we are having in our day.

Why waste time worrying about those who don’t understand adventure and look for the safety by turning all-out-life-with-God into something routine, predictable, and un-relationship-like.  Instead, let’s keep our eyes on the top of Everest– where we are headed– and enjoy the company of the Adventurers– past and present.

From time to time I have been known to blurt out this statement: "I don’t like Christians."

Don’t get me wrong.  I am one.  There are, truthfully, many, many Christians that I really like.  I am willing to be patient with most.  I recognize that we are all in process, and I am totally excited about who we can be as we live in Christ, rest in His love, and share His compassion with others.  We, truly, can be awesome people.

But we can also be miserably religious, ridiculously petty, unbelievably shaming of others, and embarrassingly judgmental.  My passion for "counter-cultural" church is not just a desire to "do church different" nor even an attempt to "do it better."  It’s really just a passion, in any way I can, to stand up as a contrary voice to the spirit of religion that destroys true spiritual life, leaves wounded people wherever it goes, and yet is so often tauted as Christianity despite the un-Christlike nature of it.  Religous Christians can be the absolute worst of the worst.

These rantings are inspired by a true story recounted by Brennan Manning in his book, "Abba’s Child:"

A while back Roslyn and I took a day off and decided to play in the French Quarter here in New Orleans.  We roamed around Jackson Square sampling gumbo, inhaling jambalaya, and finally stopping at the Haagen-Dazs shrine for the piece de resistance– a praline-pecan Creole hot-fudge sundae that induced a short-lived seizure of pleasure.

As we turned the corner on Bourbon Street, a girl with a radiant smile, about twenty-one years old, approached us, pinned a flower on our jackets, and asked if we would like to make a donation to support her mission.  When I inquired what her mission was, she replied, "The Unification Church."

"Your founder is Doctor Sun Myung Moon, so I guess that means you’re a Moonie?"

"Yes," she answered.

Obviously she had two strikes against her.  First, she was a pagan who did not acknowledge Jesus Christ as her Lord and Savior.  Second, she was a mindless, witless, naive, and vulnerable kid who had been brainwashed by a guru and mesmerized by a cult.

"You know something, Susan?" I said.  "I deeply admire your integrity and your fidelity to your conscience.  You’re out here tramping the streets doing what you really believe in.  You are a challenge to anyone who claims the name ‘Christian.’"

Roslyn reached out and embraced her, and I embraced the two of them.

"Are you Christians?" she asked.

Roslyn said, "Yes."

She lowered her head and we saw tears falling on the sidewalk.  A minute later she said, "I’ve been on my mission here in the Quarter for eight days now.  You’re the first Christians who have ever been nice to me.  The others have either looked at me with contempt or screamed and told me that I was possessed by a demon.  One woman hit me with her Bible."

I hope, before God, that we don’t take any issue, including the type of church we believe in or prefer, and make it a religious one.  Religion makes us ugly in the worst possible way.  There are NO issues, in the most primary sense, other than LOVE God and LOVE others.  Whatever it takes, can we Christians just get on with THAT!