The only hermeneutic of the gospel...

I haven't read the book. In fact, I don't think I'd even heard of the author until yesterday. But to the extent that I understand what he's saying, I agree whole heartedly. If the world cannot see the gospel embodied in the church, then how can our story speak with authority or effectiveness?

The following is directly copied from Tolle Lege where I found the quote.

“I have come to feel that the primary reality of which we have to take account in seeking for a Christian impact on public life is the Christian congregation. How is it possible that the gospel should be credible, that people should come to believe that the power which has the last word in human affairs is represented by a man hanging on a cross?

I am suggesting that the only answer, the only hermeneutic of the gospel, is a congregation of men and women who believe it and live by it. I am, of course, not denying the importance of the many activities by which we seek to challenge public life with the gospel– evangelistic campaigns, distribution of Bibles and Christian literature, conferences, and even books such as this one.

But I am saying that these are all secondary, and that they have power to accomplish their purpose only as they are rooted in and lead back to a believing community.”

–Lesslie Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1989), 227.

Radical Together: Unleashing the People of God for the Purpose of God

Rating:	★★
Category:	Books
Genre:	Religion & Spirituality
Author:	David Platt

I decided to read the book, Radical Together by David Platt, at the suggestion of our pastor. Upon finishing it, I think I can best summarize my thoughts on the book by saying that Platt had a lot of good things to say, but he not only didn't say them very well (sometimes contradicting himself, many times overstating himself, and almost always showing only one piece of a much larger picture), but I think he overemphasized very extraverted traditional forms of evangelism and what it means to be "radical". I've read other reviews on this book and most readers seem to really, really like it. So obviously Platt is hitting cords with people and is able to motivate them in a way that just doesn't seem to connect with me. Different strokes for different folks and all that. (Could it be that Sensing individuals like the very clear, very physical forms of being "radical"? Both my mom and Pastor Don are S's and both like Platt's books. If you're an iNtuitive and you read this book, I'd love to hear your thoughts.) But this review is going to be about my response and thoughts on this book. So if you liked this book, that's great. But it really rubbed me the wrong way.

I could summarize Platt's six main points, but most other reviews already do that, so I won't spend the time. Rather, I'd like to focus on his underlying foundational premises and presuppositions. For the most part I agree with his stated points. We do need to be congregations who focus resources on more than just ourselves. We should have Bible-based preaching. We should encourage and equip congregants to build relationship with people in the community, helping people physically and spiritually. We should have a great concern for the poor and the orphans and the widow. I'm right on with all that. But Platt rests these "radical" (some might call them Biblical) behaviors on a foundation that I find at times to be shaky and at other times to be very one-sided. Platt clearly has a heart for evangelism and his book is primarily a focus on evangelism. And I don't have a problem with that. But I do have a problem with Platt's understanding of the church and her purpose and I do have a problem with Platt's statements that put evangelism at the pinnacle of all that is radical. It is one thing to focus on evangelism as an important part of what it means to be within a Christian community, it's another thing to make evangelism out to be all and (literally) end all.

Premises and Presuppositions
Platt makes several statements throughout the book that put in no uncertain terms his opinion of the purpose of the church:

"The only possible vision for the church of Jesus Christ is to make known the glory of God in all nations."

"God has called us to lock arms with one another in single-minded, death-defying obedience to one objective: the declaration of his gospel for the demonstration of his glory to all nations."

"If the ultimate goal of the church is to take the gospel to all people groups, then everything we do in the church must be aimed toward that end."

Platt apparently believes that the ultimate and overarching goal of the church of Jesus Christ is evangelism. He doesn't say it's a part of the church's calling, but that it IS the church's calling. Sure, we're supposed to go forth to all nations. God definitely wants to get the word out and he wants us to do some of the footwork on that. But evangelism is only one of several things that glorify God. (Of course, evangelism can also be done in a way that very much does not glorify God and makes him out to be something he's not. But that's a different topic of discussion.) There are other things, according to the scriptures, that also glorify God: our worship (John 4:24), our love for one another (Romans 15:7), our sanctification as we become more like Christ (2 Corinthians 3:18), and our service to others with the gifts God has given us (2 Corinthians 8:19). To imply that one of those things is more important than any other distorts the picture of what the church has been called to be and to do. If Platt had written from a premise that evangelism is one of the actions of the church, I'd feel much more comfortable with that. Writing that it's the "only possible vision for the church" minimizes the importance of other gifts within the church such as discipleship, hospitality, teaching, preaching, encouraging, showing mercy, etc.

I believe Platt also sensationalizes what it means to be "radical." He never defines the term, but the impression you get from reading the book is that in order to be radical, you must do something that can be measured, and when it is measured, it will big. Quitting your job and moving to a third world country to tell people about Jesus is clearly visible to the undiscerning eye. It is big. Going through the church budget and giving more away to overseas missions, or giving substantial amounts to programs that help orphans and widows, is measurable. And big. Platt may not have meant to imply this, but from reading the book it's fairly clear that if you can't see the action from a mile away, it's not radical. The Bible makes clear, though, that sometimes it's the little things that are radical. When there's another person in the congregation who gets on your very last nerve and who almost makes you want to just leave the church altogether, and yet through Christ's love and forgiveness you learn to love and forgive that individual in turn, that is radical. It's not easy to measure. It might not even be visible to those who didn't realize the animosity that was previously in the relationship. But that doesn't mean it's not entirely radical, especially in the midst of our self-protectionist, cut bait and run kind of culture. Or sticking with a congregation through thick and thin because we recognize that God has put us in the family, not to run away from it or to despise it, but to learn, within that context, how to hope, how to forgive, how to be patient, how to be kind, how to forbear and above all how to love well. That is radical. Sure, staying put might not look radical. And to be honest, sometimes it isn't radical. But staying put and learning to faithfully follow Jesus in a day to day setting as an imperfect person surrounded by imperfect people -- that is truly radical. If we're going to talk about being radical, we should be using the Bible's standard (forgiving 70x7 times or turning the other cheek) rather than using an outdated, Americanized view of what the term means.

Maybe it's not a contradiction, but it sure isn't very clear
Platt also seems to contradict himself a few times. The first time I think might actually have been intentional. In fact, the title of the chapter, "The gospel that saves us from work saves us to work" shows the problem. Though I understand what Platt was trying to get at (I think) -- that we are not saved by our works, so we should quit trying. Rather we are saved by Christ and the overflow of that is radical obedience to Jesus (shown in our actions/works) - I don't feel like he made that very clear in the chapter. I finished the section thinking, "OK, so we're supposed to stop working our butts off to the point of exhaustion so we can work our butts off to the point of exhaustion... for Jesus. How are those two things different again?" It simply wasn't clear and the chapter seemed like one big unresolved contradiction. But I also felt like Platt contradicted himself when talking about programs. In chapter one, Platt made very clear that sometimes we're so focused on programs that we're not actually following God's word. I agree to some extent with that. Sometimes a church that is focused on its programs is a church that's lost focus of itself as a body, the body of Christ. So what I got from chapter one was that programs should be demoted or done away with altogether in an effort to better align with the word of God. But then he proceeds in chapter four, in the section entitled "People, Not Programs," to suggest an alternative to big programs that take place in the church building. The alternative? Little programs taking place in people's homes. He doesn't change the what so much as the size and the where. So programs are OK as long as they're broken into little bits? As an introvert, I certainly have nothing against smaller group sizes. But if we're going to talk radical, shouldn't the difference be more than just quantity and location? Shouldn't there be a fundamental difference in how we relate to one another, not as co-participants in a program but as co-participants in the Kingdom?

What also wasn't clear was what Platt meant by certain words. I've already pointed out that he didn't define "radical" except through big, measurable examples. But he also never explained what he meant by "the gospel." He talked about the gospel quite a bit. But if I had never heard the term before, and I only knew about it through Platt, this is what I would discern from this book: 1) The gospel has been chained. (Implied on pages 45-46.) 2) The gospel needs to be unchained so that it will unleash God's people/the church. (Pages 25, 30, 34, and 46. Although on page 41 it's leaders who do the unleashing.) 3) The gospel gets people to do stuff that they wouldn't otherwise do (I didn't get page numbers for this. It was frequently stated, though.) and 4) sometimes the gospel is "of grace" and that gets people to do even more than they would have done. (Not as frequently stated. Seemed like a special case scenario.) I also felt like evangelism was never defined. Again, if I were an outsider looking in, I would assume from this book that evangelism consisted in convincing people (preferably in far away countries) to turn around and start convincing other people to turn around and convince yet other people about... something. ... probably about this "gospel" and Jesus and about how important evangelism is. Remember back in the days before the postmodern area when people could talk about Christianey stuff and assume that everyone else knew exactly what they were talking about? This book would have fit in really well back then. Even if Platt is directing his book toward a wholly Christian audience, I still think that some background, such as what he means when he says things, would help round out his message and make his meanings far more clear. As it is, he could very well mean that we just need to make people pray a prayer. And that's it. It's over. Check that person off and move on to the next one. I find that neither "radical", nor indicative of being "together."

Radical Together
Which brings me to one last pet peeve. When I see the words "radical" and "together" placed side-by-side, my impression is that the topic being covered will have to do with being together, being a community, in a way that is only made possible through God (which would therefore mean that it's radical). So upon reading this book and finding that most of the sections were really about how to organize programs and budgets in a large church setting, I was pretty thrown. Where's the together? If we're doing something simultaneously does that make it a "together" thing?

Walk the Word
I think David Platt is overall trying to make a good point. If you're going to say that you're a follower of Jesus Christ, then you should be reading the word. If you're trying to build your spiritual life only through reading books about the Bible rather than reading the Bible itself, you're going to end up being either a weak or a nominal Christian. If you're going to call yourself a Christian, but you're going to immerse yourself in the wealthy, self-centered American mindset rather than in the self-sacrificing, giving Christian mindset, then is your faith coming through in your actions? Are you a follower of Jesus or a follower of comfort? Are you walking the walking and not just talking the talk? These are certainly things that self-satisfied American Christians should be reflecting on.

But the way that Platt challenges people to think these things through, and the specific examples he gives as answers to the problems he's addressing, can go a long way toward creating guilt and misdirection among the people of God. You don't have to be livin' it loud to be radical. If your gifts are compassion and hospitality, those are things that are sorely needed. If your gifts are discipleship or teaching, the church needs you. If your gifts are preaching or showing mercy, God has a purpose for you. Evangelism is not the only call that God has placed upon his people. If you do not have the gift of evangelism, or if you are an evangelist who perseveres quietly through trial rather than running for greener pastures, that does not make you any less radical in God's eyes. You know what makes Christians truly and completely radical? Jesus. It's only through him that we're anything at all. His gifts are many and plentiful and cover a variety of purposes within the church. And by using those gifts within the context of a congregation, we can bring glory to God through worship, love for one another, sanctification, the use of our God given gifts, and evangelism. Now that's radical together.

If I don’t love Mabel… « BYSTANDERS TO GOD'S GRACE

http://weavingmajor.wordpress.com/2011/06/11/loving-mabel/
Sometimes it's easy to read scripture without hearing it. This is especially true when a passage becomes too familiar, or is so general that if we don't think through exactly how it applies to our life, then it's essentially nothing but platitudes. Kelly's rewrite of 1 Corinthians 13 takes a familiar passage of scripture and contextualizes it in such a way that it becomes immediately relevant.

Pressuring Congress to pass laws --> Civil Religion

I'm on chapter four of Resident Aliens, which hits upon the topic of Christian ethics and therefore also upon the relationship of the church and the government. Hauerwas and Willimon hit the nail on the head when ti comes to Christians trying to legislate morality. It shows a misunderstanding of the nature and purpose of the church as well as a gross misunderstanding of the relationship between church and state. What follows are several quotes from the fourth chapter. (*sheepish grin* OK, so not just several but lots.)

"The way most of us have been conditioned to think about an issue like abortion is to wonder what laws, governmental coercions, and resources would be necessary to support a 'Christian' position on this issue. The first ethical work, from this point of view, is for Christians to devise a position on abortion and then to ask the government to support that position."

"The habit of Constantinian thinking is difficult to break. It leads Christians to judge their ethical positions, not on the basis of what is faithful to our peculiar tradition, but rather on the basis of how much Christian ethics Caesar can be induced to swallow without choking. The tendency therefore is to water down Christian ethics, filtering them through basically secular criteria like 'right to life' or 'freedom of choice,' pushing them on the whole world as universally applicable common sense, and calling them Christian."

"Here is an invitation to a way that strikes hard against what the world already knows, what the world defines as good behavior, what makes sense to everybody. The Sermon [on the Mount], by its announcement and its demands, makes necessary the formation of a colony, not because disciples are those who have a need to be different, but because the Sermon, if believed and lived, makes us different, shows us the world to be alien, an odd place where what makes sense to everybody else is revealed to be opposed to what God is doing among us. Jesus was not crucified for saying or doing what made sense to everyone." 

"Merging one's personal aspirations within the aspirations of the nation, falling into step behind the flag, has long been a popular means of overcoming doubts about the substance of one's own life." 

"Christian community, life in the colony, is not primarily about togetherness. It is about the way of Jesus Christ with those whom he calls to himself. It is about disciplining our wants and needs in congruence with a true story, which gives us the resources to lead truthful lives. In living out the story together, togetherness happens, but only as a by-product of the main project of trying to be faithful to Jesus."

"Yet most modern ethics begin from the Enlightenment presupposition of the isolated, heroic self, the allegedly rational individual who stands alone and decides and chooses. The goal of this ethic is to detach the individual from his or her tradition, parents, stories, community, and history, and thereby allow him or her to stand alone, to decide, to choose, and to act alone.  It is an ethic of great value in our type of society because the corporation needs workers who are suitably detached from communities other than their place of work, people who are willing to move at the beck and call of the corporation."

"The question is, What sort of community would be required to support an ethic of nonviolence, marital fidelity, forgiveness, and hope such as the one sketched by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount?"

"Whenever Christians think that we can support our ethic by simply pressuring Congress to pass laws or to spend tax money, we fail to do justice to the radically communal quality of Christian ethics. In fact, much of what passes for Christian social concern today, of the left or of the right, is the social concern of a church that seems to have despaired of being the church. Unable through our preaching, baptism, and witness to form a visible community of faith, we content ourselves with ersatz Christian ethical activity--lobbying congress to support progressive strategies, asking the culture at large to be a little less racist, a little less promiscuous, a little less violent. Falwall's Moral Majority is little different from any mainline Protestant church that opposes him. Both groups imply that one can practice Christian ethics without being in the Christian community. Both begin with the Constantian assumption that there is no way for the gospel to be present in our world without asking the world to support our convictions through its own social and political institutionalization. The result is the gospel transformed into civil religion." 

"The Sermon on the Mount cares nothing for the European Enlightenment's infatuation with the individual self as the most significant ethical unit. For Christians, the church is the most significant ethical unit."

"We ask ourselves what sort of church we would need to be to enable an ordinary person like her [a pregnant teenager] to be the sort of disciple Jesus calls her to be. More important, her presence in our community offers the church the wonderful opportunity to be the church.... ...we are graciously given the eyes to see her as a gift of God sent to help ordinary people like us to discover the church as the Body of Christ."

"Our ethics do involve individual transformation, not as a subjective, inner, personal experience, but rather as the work of a transformed people who have adopted us, supported us, disciplined us, and enabled us to be transformed. The most interesting, creative, political solutions we Christians have to offer our troubled society are not new laws, advice to Congress, or increased funding for social programs--although we may find ourselves supporting such national efforts. The most creative social strategy we have to offer is the church. Here we show the world a manner of life the world can never achieve through social coercion or governmental action. We serve the world by showing it something that it is not, namely, a place where God is forming a family out of strangers.

"The Christian faith recognizes that we are violent, fearful, frightened creatures who cannot reason our will our way out of our mortality. So the gospel begins, not with the assertion that we are violent, fearful, frightened creatures, but with the pledge that, if we offer ourselves to a truthful story and the community formed by listening to and enacting that story in the church, we will be transformed into people more significant than we could ever have been on our own.

"As Barth says, '[The Church] exists... to set up in the world a new sign which is radically dissimilar to [the world's] own manner and which contradicts it in a way which is full of promise' (Church Dogmatics, 4.3.2)" [Brackets in this quote are from the authors.]

"Ethically speaking, it should interest us that, in beginning the Sermon on the Mount with the Beatitudes, Jesus does not ask disciplines [sic] to do anything. The Beatitudes are in the indicative, not the imperative, mood. First we are told what God has done before anything is suggested about what we are to do." [emphasis theirs]

The Sermon on the Mount "is morality pushed to the limits, not so much in the immediate service of morality, but rather to help us see something so new, so against what we have always heard said, that we cannot rely on our older images of what is and what is not."

"We are forever getting confused into thinking that scripture is mainly about what we are supposed to do rather than a picture of who God is." [emphasis theirs]

Turning the other cheek "is not a stratagem for getting what we want but the only manner of life available, now that, in Jesus, we have seen what God wants. We seek reconciliation with the neighbor, not because we will feel so much better afterward, but because reconciliation is what God is doing in the world in the Christ."

"Therefore, Christians begin our ethics, not with anxious, self-serving questions of what we ought to do as individuals to make history come out right, because, in Christ, God has already made history come out right. The Sermon is the inauguration manifesto of how the world looks now that God in Christ has taken matters in hand. And essential to the way that God has taken matters in hand is an invitation to all people to become citizens of a new Kingdom, a messianic community where the world God is creating takes visible, practical form."

Whew! I still have a few pages of the chapter to go, but I thought these quotes were all so meaty that I wanted to share them here. 

Part of God's Story - a series of quotes from the book, Resident Aliens

"Too often, we depict salvation as that which provides us with a meaningful existence when we achieve a new self-understanding. here, with our emphasis on the narrative nature of Christian life, we are saying that salvation is baptism into a community that has so truthful a story that we forget ourselves and our anxieties long enough to become part of that story, a story God has told in Scripture and continues to tell in Israel and the church."

"It is our baptismal responsibility to tell this story to our young, to live it before them, to take time to be parents in a world that (though intent on blowing itself to bits) is God's creation (a fact we would not know without this story. We have children as a witness that the future is not left up to us and that life, even in a threatening world, is worth living -- and not because 'Children are the hope of the future,' but because God is the hope of the future." (emphasis theirs)

"The church must be created new, in each generation, not through procreation but through baptism."

"People of God do not let the world determine how they respond to tomorrow."

"To launch out on a journey is to move toward some goal. Of course, in the journey of faith, we have no clear idea of what our end will be except that it shall be, in some form, true and complete friendship with God. For now, our daily experiences of testing and confirmation of that friendship sustain us. Perhaps this explains why Jesus' ethic was so thoroughly eschatological -- an ethic bound up with this proclamation of the end of history. Ethics is a function of the telos, the end. It makes all the difference in the world how one regards the end of the world, "end" not so much in the sense of its final breath, but "end" in the sense of the purpose, the goal, the result."

"Travelers, in the midst of the vicissitudes of the journey, learn to trust one another when the going is rough."

[The apostle] "Peter stands out as a true individual, or better, a true character, not because he had become 'free' or 'his own person,' but because he had become attached to the Messiah and messianic community, which enabled him to lay hold of his life, to make so much more of his life than if he had been left to his own devices."

-- Resident Aliens (Hauerwas and Willimon), chapter three.

What Am I Afraid Of?

I got to thinking yesterday, " What am I afraid of?" It's a long story on how I came to that question. Suffice it to say that the combination of my sister mentioning a life theory of fear vs. love, combined with a bus ride yesterday with a bunch of rather mean 8th graders got me first to wondering what they fear, which led me to wondering what I fear.  I took some time out to think about that question. I think there are specific fears for various situations, but one overriding fear that seems to dominate over all the rest is the fear of failure. What if I mess up? What if I screw up so bad that someone else has to deal with it?

I thought of death or of being in a situation like Joanne, where she had a debilitating stroke several months ago and is taking slow steps down the long road of recovery. But neither of those things scared me. What scared me was that if I died, someone else would have to come in and go through the piles of stuff I haven't gotten through in my office. (It also makes me very sad to think of what my family would go through. But that's because of my love for them, not for any fear of what they'll experience. I know they'll find a way to carry on without me, even if they miss me a great deal.) I fear messing up when I'm talking to someone - of saying the wrong thing or not saying what I want to say in a way that the other person will comprehend in the way I want it to be comprehended. I guess when I boil it all down, I fear that I'll get it wrong. I fear that I'll do or say something that impacts someone else negatively, in a way that they'll be left cleaning up my mess whether it's physical or emotional or maybe even spiritual.

My fear might seem very silly to you, but it's very poignant to me. It's pretty central to how I think about myself. I am a person who orders things. You might not think that from looking at my house or my back yard. But when I write a newsletter, I'm not only organizing words into a coherent and hopefully interesting portrayal of information, but I'm also organizing the blocks of text and images on the page. When I do the book keeping for the church or for CFHL, I'm ordering numbers - moving them in and out and keeping them all lined up in a row as I do so. I organize my kids schedules. I order the morning routine so that the kids can sleep as late as possible and still get to the bus stop on time. I take in and organize information for the kids school and send it out to the PTO and other parents. I take in, I rearrange and organize and then I send out. I wish I had a more ordered house and yard, but that one gets away from me, which I'm sure is why it comes at me in my fears.

So yesterday, while I was lying on my bed thinking this stuff through, I managed to ironically do what I feared. I messed up. Nathan had a 3:30 doctor's appointment and I entirely forgot about it. I had remembered it yesterday morning. But by afternoon I was exhausted and the appointment wasn't on my radar. When the office called to see what the deal was, I lost it. I broke down. That was it. I'd messed up. My greatest fear came rushing over me to overwhelm me.

It hasn't left me there. I've tried to walk myself through some of the things that I have been encouraging Nathan to do when he hits something that throws him for a loop. I've tried to look at the bigger picture. Sure, this happened and I screwed up, but what will that matter a year from now? Five years from now? It won't. It really wasn't that big of a deal. But it felt like a big deal. I'm still holding on to that feeling of it being a big deal, even if it wasn't.

I'm at Everyday Joe's right now sipping on my new favorite tea, Margaret's Hope Darjeeling, and reading Resident Aliens (Hauerwas and Willimon) and I hit this bit, "True freedom arises, not in our loud assertion of our individual independence, but in our being linked to a true story, which enables us to say yes and no. Our worst sins arise as our response to our innate human fear that we are a nobody." That, combined with several other bits that I'll probably share in another post, helped me to see that looking at the long term regarding my mess up wasn't really looking at the entire big picture. There's more that, if I really want to heal from this, I need to do. I need to allow for grace.

When I missed Nathan's appointment yesterday I was frustrated with Rob because he just didn't seem to get it. He didn't get that this was a major mess up. He wasn't as upset as I thought he should have been about it. He didn't jump in to be my superman, fixing the screw up that I had made. But looking back on it, I see it a different way now. Rob saw the situation with more grace than I did. He knows it's not the end of the world and he treated the situation as it deserves. He didn't get bent out of shape. He shrugged it off and moved on. Granted, it wasn't his mess up. But even though it was mine, that doesn't mean I need to hold on to it.

Jackie, Nathan's doctor, also dealt with me with grace. She talked to me on the phone about how Nathan's doing and she got us set up with an appointment on Wednesday next week. Though I'm sure it was frustrating for her to wait for us and we didn't show, she didn't express any anger with me. She didn't even show her frustration. She dealt with the situation and moved on, according it only what it required and not pouring extra meaning into the event that it didn't have.

And God forgives my screw up. When I stand before him at the end times, he's not going to pull out his notebook and say, "Dang, Meg. What's this about you forgetting that doctor's appointment?" There are much deeper heart issues that he's concerned with, and me messing up isn't a central issue. He knows I'm human. He knows I'm fallen. A central issue is that I let my fear of messing up define me. I let my belief that I can hold it all together, and that if I don't I'm worthless, be a driving force in my life. That's the heart issue. That's what's important. And I can't let go of that belief until I start to see the grace that is being offered to me by those around me and accept that grace from them, most especially God's grace.

God hasn't set me on the planet with some directions and then nudged me out to do it or fail. He has set me on this planet and then he's put himself beside me. We walk together. Even when I forget to let him lead (He's the one that knows the way after all. He should be the one leading.) and I try to take over with my own map and my own agenda, he's still there beside me. He's committed himself to get me through this. Some would say he's covenanted himself. This is one of those footprints in the sand times and I can choose to let it reinforce my fears. Or I can acknowledge that now is when there's only that one set of footprints in the sand and they sure aren't mine. I can't do this on my own, but then again, I don't have to. Thank God.

Bouncing off of some stuff that David Fitch said about mega churches

David Fitch posted recently about issues he sees among the Gospel Coalition (TGC). I'm not even going to begin to try to address who that is or what they're about. So just roll with that bit, OK? Fitch made 5 points that he feels the TGC is comfortable with that he thinks they shouldn't be. One of those is mega-churches. I've never been a mega-church fan, and I wanted to put my own 2 cents in regarding the issues he brought up on mega-churches. So the bits in quotie-boxes is what Fitch has said. The rambling monologue in between is from me.

5.) The Mega Church Still Makes Sense. [ <-- he's saying that's what the TGC believes.] Because of the above mentioned Reformed tendencies (exacerbated by American pragmatic evangelicalism) to individualize the gospel, to individualize the reading of Scripture, to individualize salvation, to separate doctrine from “way of life,” the Neo-Reformed do not see the problem of mega church for the future of church engagement with post-Christendom.

Whew! That right there is fodder for a gorgeous diatribe against the American individualism that reigns supreme in many congregations. *breaks out in a round of singing, "It's all about meeeeeeeeeeeeee... Jesus."* Megachurches certainly aren't the only ones that jump feet first into following "the doctrine of ME" but they're at the top of the list, in my book. With a staff the size of a small church, the congregants in many mega-churches believe that "church" is all about paying people to do what the whole church really should be doing. The role of the congregant is primarily to be "fed." (Sounds like something only a bunch of dumb sheep would believe. bahhhh, bahhhh)

Mega churches have worked well within Christendom’s modernity.

Worked well? What does that mean? They work well within modern day American individualist culture, sure. But do they work well within Christendom? I'd say that's debatable with a capital "D". ... unless "Christendom" means "a bunch of sheep drinking cool-aid." (OK, OK. I'm being a little too hard on MC's. All my snark comes out when I talk about this topic. Feel free to take what I say with a grain of salt. ... or with a Lik-a Stick of Fun Dip.)

Here the individual reigned supreme and the remainder of Christian culture lingered long enough to provide a foundation for masses of individuals to become Christians within large servicing organizations.

I'm not even really sure what he's saying here. But that's OK. I'm not trying to argue with Fitch. I'm just bouncing off what he says. (The more Fun Dip I eat, the more I bounce.) So I'm just going to run with that last bit - "large servicing organizations". That describes MCs well. They do provide services. And they can be really helpful services. MC's are able to provide programs and assistance in a way that little bitty churches just can't. There are serious advantages to being large, just ask the folks at Walmart.

But is "a large servicing organization" the same thing as "church"? I'm talking about church as the Bible describes it, not as we think of it traditionally or conventionally. Can you operate as a body, the body of Christ, when you're mammoth? I don't think so. At least, I've never seen it happen. I've seen it in small pockets within the larger organization, but never in the organization as a whole.  MCs, in my experience, are pastor-centric shows in which the congregation is called to participate, mostly by giving money and attending programs.

Then again, MCs are doing important stuff. Like I said, they've got the money and the resources. They can do stuff. What I don't get is why little churches don't pool their resources to achieve similar purposes? I'm not saying that the little churches should combine to create their own MC. I'm saying they can remain as they are, smaller groups of individuals who can really get to know each other and serve each other, but linked in with other such bodies in a way that they can provide some of that bigger stuff too - training and assistance - both to their own congregations and to others in the community at large.

Now however, with the lingering remainder of Christian culture gone, the gospel must take root in a social communal embodiment.

Like that wasn't needed before? OK, so here I am taking issue with Fitch even though I said that wasn't the plan. The gospel is embodied in Christ, and what is the church but Christ embodied on earth? The gospel must take root in a social communal embodiment not just now, in a post-Christian world, but always. That's how it works. That's how it's always worked.

Here is where the gospel can be seen, heard, understood, experienced by those completely foreign to our faith in Christ.

Yes, yes, yes. Exactly.

And it's not just where those completely foreign to our faith experience the gospel. It's where we experience the gospel as well. We are all foreigners to the gospel at heart. We are all continually being reintroduced to it, even when we think we've finally grokked it as deep as we can ever grok anything. No deep, theological, cognitive understanding can stick it to our understanding in the way that living it can.

This kind of communal embodiment is nigh impossible in mega sized organizations (although I think I’ve seen it at least once). Still, I see the Neo-Reformed enamored that good solid preaching and culturally relative apologetics will gather post-non-Christendom into its churches. I fear TGC then becomes a force for coalescing mega size preaching churches that preach to the already initiated. We in essence become a church that preaches to ourselves and in the process retrench from being expedited for Mission into post Christendom. (P.S. I still strongly believe in preaching!! As my writings and “the college of preachers” at our church will attest to).

This gets back to what I was saying about MCs having something of value. They do. That's why people flock to them. They might not be the best place for living in the midst of the working out of the gospel, but they're a great place to hear good speakers, learn through well written programs, and/or be involved in social justice issues as part of a movement rather than as an individual. MCs are a powerhouse of knowledge dispersal and social services. They do have strengths. They just operate more like an institutional organization than an organic organization. They run more like a business than a body. They're a good thing, but calling them a "church"... aye, there's the rub.

Telling our story, reminding ourselves of how we got to where we are

I'm currently rereading Hauerwas and Willimon's book, Resident Aliens. (Which I highly recommend.) I was diving into the third chapter this morning in which they describe a church that had invited a retired pastor to come and speak to the congregation. The man had pastored the church for 5 years in the '60s and had encouraged the congregation to welcome in the newcomers in their neighborhood -- the blacks who were moving into what was previously an all white enclave. His tenure in the church had been tumultuous and his "radical" ideas eventually led to his leaving the position. Yet here they'd asked him back again to speak to them and he took that opportunity to remind them of their own history. He preached to them from Hebrews 11-12, the stories of faith of such people as Noah, Abraham, and Joseph. And he included the church in that parade of the faithful. They had gone through a struggle, but they had trusted God despite their own misgivings. They were faithful and had welcomed in the newcomers. And when the pastor had returned many years later, the congregation was a mix of black and white, a testimony to the faithfulness of God to the congregation and of the congregation's faithfulness to the gospel despite their own apprehension about such a change.

At Cornerstone, the church that Rob and I are a part of, we've been in discussions of what we're about and where we're going. After one meeting I came home and started to list all of the people who have been a part of our congregation over the past decade. I wrote out a teeny bit of the history of our church as described through these people, and I sent it to our pastor who is fairly new to the congregation. (He's been with us for 2 1/2 years now.) I did this because it seemed like we had been talking about the church, during our discussion, as if it had no history, or the only history it had was what could be seen at a glance. (How much history Can you see at a glance?) The pastor's response was to say,

Thanks for sharing about previous people.  These are the kinds of things I need to hear to get a more balanced view about our church. I was totally unaware!   May I suggest you edit your email below and put it in your blog and/or email it to our church folks?

So here's my edited email. This congregation has been around for almost 25 years, and Rob and I have only been a part of it for the last 10, so this really is just skimming the surface of our history. But I do think it is helpful not only to see ourselves aright, but to get a better sense of how God has been working among us as well.

I thought I'd back up what I said this afternoon with some names. [I gave a list of names at the end of this, that I won't include here.] I've gotten a very clear impression from [some folks who have only visited our congregation] that they believe our church is opposed to including people who are different than us. Granted, we don't have any blacks and we've only had one Korean and a couple of Latinos in our congregation in the 10 years we've been here, but I think we've been very open to everyone who's ever come to our church, from the three felons who we welcomed with open arms (one of whom lived with Rob and I for awhile and another of whom we elected as a deacon, which we shouldn't have [for entirely different reasons], but it still shows the extent to which we welcomed him) to the two couples who left our congregation to be missionaries elsewhere through Navigators. We've had quite a few college students, and that's really saying something given that RUF [a college ministry within our denomination] took them all away several years ago. So we're looking at a pretty good number of kids in the less than a decade that we had them before they were Pied Pipered away. And we've had many baby Christians and a few seekers that have come, that we've welcomed in wholeheartedly, and who we were often available to outside of Sunday events for discussions and fellowship.

All of this to say that I don't think it's our stance that's the problem. We are a congregation who has shown over and over again that we're ready to take anyone that God sends our way. We're ready to love them, help to meet their needs, help them find work, help them with their children, help them find housing, etc.

I think it's discouraging when we've had so many people who have come to us and who we've poured ourselves into, and then they leave for whatever reason and now we're being told that we're holding ourselves back. I'm discouraged by people telling me that I'm just not putting myself out there when I feel that we have been. We have had two different people live in our house with us, one was a felon and the other was an international student. (We also had a couple live with us for a month while the wife was doing residency here. They had emailed several congregations in town and we were the only one to respond to their request for a place to stay.) And we invited some neighbors who were just seekers at the time and who the congregation welcomed very warmly and the pastor spent hours discipling. I think the whole congregation has put themselves out there, welcomed people in, and been willing to meet any needs as presented.

Yeah, we don't have a congregation that's full of evangelists, at least not in the traditional sense. Our last pastor brought a lot of people in. He was probably the main evangelist in the congregation this past decade. [Another member] probably was as well, though the people he talked to didn't always end up at our congregation and he wasn't with us for as long (2 or 3 years?). But the bulk of us are introverts who build relationships with people and invite people in slowly. Our few extroverts tend to also be pretty outspoken politically, which may make people shy away from checking out our congregation fearing that we're all like that. But overall I feel like we are a congregation that stands at the ready and is always up to the challenge when a new person or family joins us, even when they come to us with needs.

We've definitely grown slowly. And each set back seems to put us a step and a half back for every step we've moved forward. But we have been moving forward. I'm sure there are more things we can be doing to reach out to the community, and I think people are definitely open to doing that. But I don't think the problem has at all been that we're not willing or we're not accepting. I feel like people in other congregations (especially within our denomination) have regularly and routinely judged Cornerstone not by who we actually are, but by who they would like to perceive us as being. Just because people see us wrong doesn't mean that we need to change to suit them. I think it behooves them to get a better sense of us before making judgments about us.

Our congregation certainly has its weaknesses and its problems. But from what I have seen over the past decade, it is faithful. We have many stories to tell about ourselves and we should be doing exactly that. By remembering who we are and where we come from, we will have a better sense of where we are headed.

Living in Two Kingdoms - Meg's Homework Ramble

Our Sunday school class just finished a John Piper video series in which Piper explained that Jesus is a lamb-like lion and a lion-like lamb. He expounded on that, of course, but I think the phrase pretty aptly summarizes what he had to say.

We're now beginning a new series entitled "Living in Two Kingdoms." I'm not sure if this is another tape series of someone speaking or if this is something Don has put together himself. But he sent out some homework questions for us to answer before we show up tomorrow. I thought I'd "think out loud" here with my answers.

1. What is the Kingdom of God?
The obvious first part of that answer is that the kingdom is the domain of God. And God wouldn't be god unless everything was in his domain -- from atoms to the universe, if it weren't all God's to rule then he really would be more of a demi-god or a sub-god than an almighty god.

But I think there's more to this answer than just the easy bit. The Kingdom of God encompasses all of this substantial world, but it also refers to a realm that overlaps with ours but that is distinct from the earthly/human world.

The book group that I'm in recently finished a book called The City & The City (by China Miéville) in which two distinct nations overlapped each other geographically, but were entirely distinct otherwise to the point that people in one nation learned to "unsee" people in the other nation. In order to "see" the people in the other nation you actually had to go through customs  to socially and politically enter the other nation, at which point you'd have to "unsee" the people that you had seen all the time back in your old nation. In other words, you could live right next to people in another nation and never interact with them, or even acknowledge them, because they technically lived somewhere different from where you did. It was a trippy book, but an interesting concept.

I think the Kingdom of God is similar to Miéville's story in that we live in an overlapped situation. But it differs in terms of interaction. We daily walk in both nations, as opposed to only in one or the other. But I think many people who call themselves Christians live only in one nation and believe that the other nation, the heavenly nation, is a subset or part of that one nation. They spout "God and country" in a way that clearly subjects God to the designs of the country. I think they miss "the Kingdom of God" in its entirety - or else severely misunderstand it.

I still don't think I've answered the question, though. The Kingdom of God is a political entity that defies all other polities. It is an eternal kingdom ruled by God, with characteristics unlike any other nation, and yeah, I'll cop to it, it's a utopia. It is the glorified, unified,

2. What are the characteristics of God's kingdom?
The Kingdom of God is characterized by love. In fact, love is the characteristic that governs every other characteristic in this kingdom: forgiveness, unity, kindness, faithfulness, caring, gentleness, mutual submission (looking out for each other's best interests), compassion, meekness, humility, self-control, selflessness, trust, patience, contentment, peace, equality of worth, hopefulness, truthfulness, generosity, perseverance, righteousness, readiness, holiness, prayerfulness,....

3. What features of U.S. culture are explicitly biblical-Christian?
I think this is the hardest question of the bunch. Maybe that's because I'm reading into it. I expect this question to be, "What features of U.S. culture are explicitly inline with features of the Kingdom of God. But I suppose that's not necessarily what it's asking.

I suppose the first part of this question is "What are the features of U.S. culture?" Individuality, selfishness, strength, craving entertainment, ingenuity, entrepreneurial spirit, risk-taking, creativity, consumerism, untested trust, arguing, hatred (that Westboro Baptist Church comes to mind), insensitivity, callousness, overload, brilliance, diversity, acceptance, .... This is a really hard list to come up with. There is obviously kindness in America, but is kindness a feature of U.S. culture? It doesn't strike me as being integral to our culture. Then again, if I were looking just at our neighborhood, or more likely, in a rural American neighborhood, then perhaps kindness would strike me more as being a feature of the culture. Maybe the first part of the question isn't "What are the features of U.S. culture?" but "What is the U.S.?"

OK, so to take a stab at answering the original question here, I'd say that diversity and creativity are explicitly biblical-Christian. There's probably other things. But I'm still caught up in "What is the U.S.?" and "What are the features of her culture?" to see them.

I'll be really eager to hear Sonia's thoughts on this question. She probably sees American culture with different eyes than we do.

4. How do we live in God's kingdom and earth's world?
Fully.

What? Is that cheating? I can't just answer with one word? *sigh* I'd say it's very easy to live in the earthly world. And those who like to point out the most loudly that they aren't living according to the culture or values of this world are often the very ones who hold more tightly to nationalism and cultural values of anger, hatred, and individualism more tightly than most. I think it's important that we're aware of how we're embedded in this world. What values have we taken on that are distinctly worldly? (Not just American, since not all Christians are Americans (*gasp* I know. For some I'm speaking heresy here.) but of any human culture.)

We are humans and therefore we cannot not live within human culture. It's impossible. Even when we try to steep ourselves in godly culture, we build within it so much human culture of our own making that we are no longer in godly culture. (The Pharisees and Westboro church are poster children here.) We do best to be aware of that in which we reside, to use well that which is good of our own culture and to disengage from that which is bad.

And we need to steep ourselves in the culture of heaven. Church should be our proving grounds where we test forgiveness and unity and kindness and.... It should be a safe place where we learn to put on heavenly culture and where we can safely mess up and try again. It should be a place where we experience godly culture, where we are helped to grow in it, where we have partners who grow with us. And it should be a launching point for carrying God's culture with us out to the world, loving the world and all her people, enabling those not of God's kingdom to experience the culture of God's kingdom and inviting them to join in it with us.

Church Growth

Our church is pretty small. It's grown and shrunk numerically several times since it started in the early 80s, but at the moment we're at 27 official members and we average between 35-45 people (including kids) in attendance at a Sunday morning service. The topic of numerical church growth has come up now and again within the congregation and just recently the pastor sent out a pdf-ed copy of a publication on church growth (which I've attached at the end of this post in case you'd like to read it). I do think that our church would be healthier if it grow numerically by another 10 or 20 people (at the least). But the publication, though it had some good things to say, still struck me as a bit fishy. So this is my response to it.

Location, Location, Location
I think this section and the accompanying graph say a lot more about the American population and real estate trends than anything else. I suppose the take away here is, "if you want to grow numerically, locate your congregation where people are moving to." That said, it's this exact mindset that has traditionally left the poor and impoverished (those who can't move as easily as the rest of the population) with anemic churches. Central Alliance, the church that I was a member of back in Detroit, is a perfect example of this. The congregation carried on and had important ministries within the city, but it was a shell of what it had been. And once the white folks left town, they didn't really look back and help support the church they'd abandoned. Out of sight, out of mind. As Keith Green said, "Jesus commands us to go." But at the same time, Jesus said we'll be his witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria to the ends of the earth. (Acts 1:8) So it seems to me that we start where we are before we move out. If all the Christians were to leave Jerusalem, where does that leave Jerusalem? (CFHL) So location is important, but I don't think following the masses is always the answer.

The "fact" that "Congregations grow in locations where they find like-minded people" tells me that the gospel does more in regards to numerical growth when it's ignored. What about Galatians 3:26-28?

So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

If the gospel breaks down superficial barriers of race and class, why would we seek to rebuild them by searching out and collecting people that think and act just like us? Is the gospel so weak that we need to ignore it in order to spread it?

A Combination of Factors
The article then explains that there are several factors that lead to numerical church growth: denominational loyalty, congregational vitality, confidence in the future, and serving as a moral beacon to the community. It then does a great job of not explaining those areas very well.

Denominational Loyalty: The article doesn't mention this again. I also don't see how denominational loyalty fits anywhere into the gospel, so I'll likewise jump right past it.

Congregational Vitality: The article doesn't explain what it means by this term. However, it does say that congregations that report having high vitality also promote themselves through radio advertising, evangelistic campaigns, personal witness, revivals and big events. In other words, with the exception of personal witness, the "vitality" of a congregation depends upon how well the church markets itself - how big and grand the congregation is portrayed through advertising and events. In other words, vitality has very little to do with the spiritual maturity or growth of the congregation or individuals within her and has quite a bit to do with how the congregation is perceived by people at large, whether or not the perception in any way matches the reality of who the congregation is.

Confidence in the Future: Apparently having confidence in the future means having "a clear sense of mission and a crisp organizational style." In other words, a congregation that has confidence that the path they have set before themselves is right is the congregation that will grow. They don't have to have confidence that God holds their future as long as they have a clear sense of what they hold for their own future.

Moral Beacon to the Community: Why be a spiritual beacon to the community when you can direct their morals instead? Why call people to God when you can call them to good works? I'm all for outreach ministries and committing to social justice issues. But God didn't call us to be a church in order to affect the morals of those around us. He called us to be a church to, as a group of believers, incarnate him. (Romans 12) Sure, that will lead us to commit to social justice issues and to reach out to others, but the forming of the body (Romans 12:5) comes before the actions of the body. We should be calling people to join us in the body, to join us in following Jesus. If we're growing because we have a social agenda, then what are we calling people to after all?

Uplifting Joyful Worship and Spiritual Nurture: Worship and nurture weren't listed in the combination of factors, but they were mentioned in a small paragraph in the midst of the articles elaboration on the other points. Again, it doesn't define these phrases and, in fact, it doesn't mention spiritual nurture again in the paragraph, focusing instead upon how churches with contemporary forms of worship grow more than churches with traditional worship. (What counts as contemporary or traditional is anybody's guess, but we'll assume they're referring to praise songs over hymns and the "sing then preach" format of service over a more traditional or liturgical style.)

Everything Else
The article then briefly mentions several other factors that lead to larger congregations: more worship services, a plan for growth, a website related to growth, a young congregation, and a newer congregation are all positive inputs towards having a numerically growing church. In other words, to grow you should increase your number of services, write a plan, make a website, kick out your old people, and if you're already an older congregation, you should just give up now.

The Gospel and the Church
In Matthew 28, Jesus told his disciples to go and make disciples of all nations. That certainly implies growth. It also implies disciples. I find it striking that this article doesn't really talk much about discipleship. In fact, the closest it seems to come to that comes on page 5 where it says,

Another critical interplay to consider is that between numerical growth in membership and participation, and growth in other critical dimensions of congregational vitality such as spirituality, commitment, discipleship, service, and financial giving. All are important!

All are important, but the article isn't going to waste more than one sentence on those topics. And I think that's telling.

What is more important, that 1000 people come to Sunday services and feel more positive about themselves and the world around them when they leave? Or that one person comes and learns how to be a disciple of the Christ? Sure, 1000 disciples would be better than 1. I get that. But 1000 non-disciples? If growing means abandoning the gospel, or circumventing it with Evangel-babble, then I'm not down with that.

Cornerstone, a mature little church
Like I said at the beginning, our church is pretty small. It fails on most of these areas that the article says we should be strong in. We've been around since the 80s, which makes us an old congregation. We sing hymns and follow an order of service, so we miss out on the contemporary boat. We don't have any radio advertising, no evangelistic campaigns, no revivals, and the last big event the church had led to a church split. In other words, when it comes to following the facts laid out in this article, we suck. It's no wonder we're so small.

But if we look at that one little sentence in the article, the one that mentioned stuff that was so important that it got an exclamation point, then I think we're doing alright. In terms of spirituality, commitment, discipleship, service, and financial giving I think we have a mature and well grown congregation. We've been put through the furnace on a number of occasions and a whole lotta dross has been burned off. Just in the decade that our family has been members in this church, I've seen people grow in ways that I haven't seen in most other congregations I've been a part of. Sure, there's still more dross to be burned off. We still have a long way to grow. But I am confident that what Cornerstone is growing is disciples, not attenders.

Some Good Things to Say
When I first mentioned the article I did admit that it had some good things to say. There are some areas that we need to grow and I think that having a sense of ourselves and our purpose is one of those. When we were looking for a new pastor a few years back, the search committee spent quite a bit of time talking about who we were as a congregation. I thought it was really helpful to be part of those conversations and to get a sense not just of what I thought of us, but what others of us thought of us as well. There was a lot of agreement on our strengths and weaknesses -- our congregation definitely has its own personality. But we've never had those talks as a congregation.

There's something about getting together with other people and talking things out that helps build ownership. When I was in InterVarsity in college we spent a week at the end of each school year talking about where we'd come and where we were heading. It gave the leaders a better sense of where they should be leading and it gave the rest of us a better sense of what to expect and how we would fit in over the coming year. It built community, it gave us direction and it built cohesion of purpose and activity. In the ten years we've been at Cornerstone we have yet to have a church retreat (where discussions like this often take place). We've had many congregational meetings, but they're often a matter of covering specific issues rather than brainstorming about who we are and where we're headed. I think Cornerstone would benefit from something like this. It might not make us grow numerically. But it would help us to acknowledge where we're mature and where we're still lacking. And it would give Cornerstone another chance to do what we already do pretty well -- BE the church rather than just go to church.

Attachment: FACT_Cong_Growth.pdf

"What if Church Felt More Like Home?"

[I wrote this a couple of weeks ago, so references to recent events aren't so recent any more.]

This past Sunday, as I sat at the back of the sanctuary getting ready to press the "record" button when Don started his sermon, I noted to myself that I knew everyone in the room by name. This wasn't any huge revelation, of course. It was just one of those thoughts that pops into your head and you know you've known it, but your brain has just articulated it for you again. And of course, there was the corresponding thought that, there are some congregations where not even the pastor knows everyone by name.

My mom sent me a link a few days ago to a social network that is being used by a church we used to attend when I was growing up. It's the largest church, west of the Mississippi, in the denomination that we're a part of. So I'm talking about a church where probably even the pastor doesn't know everyone in the congregation by name. (When I was a member there, the youth group alone was about 100 kids. We were sort of a sub-congregation within the larger congregation.)

The social network is called The Table Project and is introduced by a pretty nifty video. I agree that church should be intimate. It should feel like family. That is, after all, how the Bible itself refers to the church. (Galatians 6:10 "Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers.") But what I find ironic is that it's the churches that are so large that they really don't feel like a family that this Table Project is reaching out to. They're saying, we have the answer that will bring your congregation together. It's like taking a rather large problem and saying, "We have bandages that will cover that."

Instead, it seems like there needs to be a solution that deals with the heart of the problem, rather than just bandaging it up. I love being online and meeting with people socially via the internet. So I have no problem with social networking, even within a church. And I think that what they say is true about feeling more connected to people when you've connected with them throughout the week online. So I'm not trying to bash their product. It sounds cool. Given that the congregation uses it, it could even be helpful. But it still feels like it's glancing off a larger problem - and perhaps church size isn't the issue so much as church attitude.

There were a couple of churches in San Francisco that we were involved with in one way or another that took "church" seriously. I don't mean they had particularly fancy services or were staunchly legalistic or anything like that. What I mean is that they talked about what "church" means. They had training events and discussion times and read books together on the nature and purpose of the church. They didn't just assume that everyone was on the same page. And their conclusions were often along the lines that church is a family, a building with each of us fitted together with Jesus as the cornerstone, a colony of people whose first and foremost allegiance was to a heavenly kingdom, not an earthly one. With a view like that, walking into a gathering of believers isn't a time to expect great music (though there may be some) or hear a great message (though that may also happen) or even to end up feeling better inside once it's all said and done. The expectation was that you were meeting with family for a shared purpose, to worship and serve God.

One of the lines in the Table Project video is: "Imagine the church feeling intimate. All those faces in the hallway becoming recognizable." Yeah, imagine that. Only, it can really happen in real life, not just online. But that needs to be the expectation. When the attitude is that attending church is equivalent to punching a spiritual time card, then all the social networks in the world aren't going to make a difference.

The Table Project - Introduction from The Table Project on Vimeo.

Free to Love

In the movie Happy Feet, there were stern leader penguins who fit the stereotype of  sanctimonious church leaders to a T. In fact, their Scottish accents and the fact that they were referred to as "elders" makes me wonder if the screenwriter hadn't grown up in a stiff Scottish Presbyterian church. The media, even the Christian media, has painted a very clear picture of the problems of arrogant, inflexible leadership. But one of the religious opposites to that uptight, old time religion is the radical, hip young leader. With a shaved head and a soul patch, these cutting edge preachers show that it's not all just about rules. Grace is important, too. In fact, it's so important, that if you don't do grace the way they do grace, then they're going to treat you pretty much just like a sanctimonious church leader would and shun you. I've seen it happen in various denominations, in various locations and among various ages. The theme is the same: I get it and you don't.

John Alexander writes,

"I've been in many places where people were committed to radical discipleship..., and my observation is that in those places we were not lovers of God or of each other. That's what failure is--failure to love God and each other. My conclusion is that confronting people with law, even Jesus' 'law,' doesn't free them to love. Instead, it sets up a dynamic of condemnation and tension and anger and superiority. An understanding of the law (or better, a misunderstanding of law) sets people up to try to straighten others out. to fix each other, whether anyone wants to be fixed or not. When that happens (which is often) live-in churches [which is the type of church Alexander was a part of] explode in fiery holocaust. All in the name of Jesus. ... Oddly enough, none of that frees people to love."

Jesus said that others would see that we are his disciples by our love for one another. He never said people would make the connection due to our understanding of the creeds, or our cool music during services, or by how authentic we are, or how polished, or how well we create a spiritual ambiance. All of those things can be helpful to people depending on their personality types, but they're not the crux of the matter. What shines out of us and lets the world know that we are followers of the Christ is our love for one another. At least, that's what Jesus said. You don't have to be cool to love people better. But you do have to be humble, and caring, and kind. And you do have to practice. And you do have to take time to love others well.

And as we become conduits of God's love, loving those that are different from us as well as those that we "click" with or agree with or feel comfortable around, that in turn frees others to love. That is the gospel in action.

Homogeneity in the Church, A Bad Thing

The following is an extensive quote from James M. Harrison's article, Church Complex: on the Value of Being Uncomfortable with Others. (From Touchstone Magazine, July/August 2007)

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But what makes the gospel unique is the way in which Jesus is not like us. I don’t need someone who is just like me. I’m sinful. I need someone holy. I’m human. I need someone divine. I cannot stand under the wrath of God. I need someone who has stood there in my place. I cannot raise myself from death to life. I need someone who can raise me up because he himself has been raised.

The Incarnation is not a reason to associate only with those who are like us. It is actually a reason to associate with all those who share the life he came to bring us, because he made no such distinctions. The Paul who became all things to all people constantly spoke of the unity of the churches he founded and fought any kind of division.

A Bad Thing

From the very beginning, the gurus of the Church Growth Movement have contended that to grow a church we need to focus upon a specific demographic, and seek to make our churches reflect it.

The idea is that people will be more receptive to the gospel when it is presented to them in their own environment, within their own comfort zone. This has affected the way in which we “do church.” Church must be made to be a comfortable place, and since people are most comfortable around their own kind, their own kind should be encouraged to come (which means that other kinds will be effectively discouraged from coming).

The result has been a church-planting strategy focused upon specific groups: Baby-boomer churches, Baby-buster churches, Gen-X churches, GenNext churches, and on and on and on. And they are successful, defining success by church-growth standards.

Some would ask, “Isn’t that a good thing?” And I would answer, “No. It is not.”

I have no doubt that individuals have come to know Christ through these ministries. But that is not evidence of a correct, and by “correct” I mean a biblical, church-planting or church-growth strategy. It is evidence of the extreme graciousness of God in accomplishing his purposes even in the face of our errors. Moses was not only in error, but positively disobedient, when he struck the rock. In spite of this, God graciously provided water for his people.

Nonetheless, it must be said that this emphasis on similarity is not a good thing for the church. It runs counter to the biblical ideal of what the church is to be, and also counter to the biblical example of what the church is to accomplish before a watching world.

In the New Testament, whenever a problem of cultural or racial division arose within the church, the solution to the problem was not separation into compatible social or racial groups. The solution was to foster ever-increasing union around the gospel and its implications.

The church of Christ is to be a witness to the power of the gospel to change lives and minds and hearts, as Peter’s was changed when he saw the sheet descend from heaven. The church is to be a witness to the power of the gospel to break down walls of division between races and ages and cultures, between generations and social classes.

The church is to be an earthly representative, imperfect though it is, of the heavenly glory, in which men from every tongue and tribe and nation are gathered together, worshipping the One who sits on the throne, and the Lamb.

Talking honestly about a full range of issues

The church is the people of God. As such, within the church there should be open and honest dialogue about tough issues. And the dialogue, though it might still be hard, should still be safe because there's an underlying sense that we are family, forgiven in God's sight, and though still fallible, we're still working toward a common goal of glorifying God -- in part by being able to have really hard discussions and still loving each other through it.

That's the ideal, at least. Instead the discussions within the church are often either surface-level or hit only upon the hard issues with the understood undertone that everyone should agree about the issue and we know it's the heathen who are against us on this. (Any suspicion that someone within our own membership stands with the heathen on a particular issue is so unsettling that the conversation is often quickly changed.) 

On the one hand, it's very hard to have tough conversations together. Very few people look forward to something like that. But on the other hand, having a tough discussion and having it turn out well, where you learn something that you didn't know, or come away with more understanding for a fellow member of the church, is a wonderful thing. If we knew that every hard discussion would come out with such a positive ending, perhaps we'd jump into them much more readily.

John Alexander said that he believes that eating together is a sign of a healthy church. (By the way, I should add that within the church that John was a part of, the entire congregation eats together every Sunday evening. They also eat together in smaller groups several times during the week.) Along the same lines of eating together was being together in general. Not only do many congregations not do much together throughout the week, but within some congregations there is so much turn-over that it's very hard to form a cohesive sense of community within the group. 

Rob and I were members of a church in San Francisco that had about 400 members. Some friends of ours moved away to Kansas but came back for a short visit a few months after they had moved. We saw them after the service and they spoke briefly to us but then excused themselves to go say hi to several other friends. They returned awhile later saying that they were unable to find anyone else they knew! They had only been gone a few months and already the turnover was so great that though they had been in the church for at least a year before leaving, they were unable to find people they had known from when they lived in the area. That astounded me. (I knew there was a high turnover rate, and that I was having a very hard time feeling connected to anyone, but this brought it all home with a very specific example of the problem.) 

John Alexander points out that in a church with such a high turn-over rate, especially if we only see each other once a week on Sunday mornings, it is very unlikely that folks will get to the meaty issues of life. We may hear the pastor preach on something that's a tough issue, but then do we get a chance to talk to others in the body about our own thoughts on that issue or how we're dealing with that problem in our own lives? John asks, Do we, as a church, "talk honestly about a full range of tough issues?" That line particularly got me to thinking. I know that high turn-over rates are a problem. That's one thing that I like about our church is that there are people who have been in the congregation for twenty years, and even many of the "newcomers" have been around for upwards of 3 or 4 years or longer. (We've been members of the church for almost 9 years.) But has that familiarity led to a better ability to work through hard issues together? 

Sometimes I feel like in Sunday School or the gals Bible study we'll hit on a tough issue. And sometimes we really do have good, solid discussions on them. But there are other issues that we seem to skirt around as a congregation. So, while our congregation has the non-transient thing down pretty well, I think we still struggle with the "full range of tough issues" area. Our pastor has brought up some forums in which we might be able to tackle some of the harder discussions, but I can't say that there's been a stampede to dive in. 

And it's certainly not just our congregation. I'm sure this is a problem throughout the world. Which is a shame. God's people, of all folks, should be able to address each other in love and compassion and a thoughtfulness that enables really heavy and deep and hard conversations to take place in such a way that healing and growth and unity can occur. 

Philippians 2:1-4 If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.

My interests may not be the same as someone else's. In fact, it's quite possible that my interests conflict with someone else's. But if we are to be a body, to work together as individual bits formed and shaped into one entity, the body of Christ, then shouldn't we take time out to consider the interests of others? To discuss those interests with them and gain a better understanding of where each other is coming from? ... well, of course. And I'm sure we all would even agree on that, though the thought of sitting down and actually doing as much can be a bit daunting. 

Which really gets to the heart of the question, I suppose. What can we do to get more of this "talking honestly about a full range of issues" happening? How can we foster this sort of thing both in the local church as well as the church national or the church global? Have you seen hard discussions talked out in a loving way among believers? What helped to foster that? 

Emailing Together

I wrote two days ago about John Alexander's idea that a healthy family, and possibly also a healthy church, eats together. I suspect they also do other things together. In the book, The Blessing, one of their suggestions near the end of the book is that families that go camping together seem to be closer than those that don't. I think the essential idea here is that healthy communities spend time together. It could involve eating, or camping, or serving the poor together, or singing together, or ____ together.

But what struck me today as I wrote out a lengthy email to one of the congregation's recent college graduates who's currently overseas and who hasn't been physically present with the congregation in the four years she's been to school (excepting holiday times), is that in today's day and age, a congregation can talk together, or share photos together, or what have you, via the internet. Granted, that's still pretty different than sitting down at a table next to someone and showing them the photos of a recent trip. But it enables a congregation to continue "togethering" even when a part of that congregation is thousands of miles away. That's kinda cool.

If, as John has suggested, the health of a congregation can in part be determined by how frequently the members eat together, then perhaps another touchstone of health could be in how frequently members keep in contact with each other online, even when they might be in another state or country.

What do you think? How often do you interact with the members of your congregation online?

Eating Together

In John Alexander's book, Stop Going to Church and Become the Church (I'm not sure if that's still the title of the book, but that's what it was a dozen years ago when I first got a manuscript copy.), John lists some touch points for determining if the church you're a part of is one with a predominantly entertainment model (the congregation attends Sunday morning services and mostly just sits and watches while paid staff perform for the bulk of the event) or closer to a body model (in which members are actively involved regularly (and not just on Sundays) in each other's lives). One such touch stone that he lists is the amount that the church eats together. He says:

"How much do folks eat together in your church? I suspect that frequency of eating together is one of the best indicators of the health of a biological family. And I wonder if that's not equally true of church families."

Our church has monthly potlucks in which we all stay after the Sunday morning service and eat together. We often have at least one BBQ a month in the summer. And the pastor's family often invites people over to their house for a meal. I suspect that if we tried to get together any more than that, it wouldn't work. People in our little congregation tend to be too busy for much more than that. (We do have meetings that don't involve food. So it's not like we only see each other on Sundays. I'm just saying that adding in yet another gathering time probably isn't realistic at this point.)

John spends a fair bit of time in his book talking about where people spend their time -- how much of it is spent being a church vs. other activities. I think time spent together is a problem that our church is struggling with these days. When we first joined the congregation almost 9 years ago, it seemed that people traveled less and gathered together more. I don't think anyone in the congregation would be opposed to the idea of getting together more often. But practically speaking, I'm not sure how it could come about right now without it being forced.

I think that taking a specific, eating together, and using that as a measuring stick of sorts regarding the health of a church is an interesting idea. What do you think? How often does your church eat together (either in small groups or as an entire body)? Do you feel that the time spent together helps to grow and build the church?

It strikes me that some churches measure how well they're doing based on how many people attend the Sunday morning services. I wonder how well those same churches would fare if the criteria was how often they eat together rather than how many people are sitting in the pews?

How being a church is like playing baseball

More quotes from John Alexander's book:

"Church is a full-time occupation, not the weekly attendance of a performance. Church isn't the sort of thing you can go to. You can be the church, you can become the church, you can even do church, but you can't go to church. ... One way of saying it is that church is the sort of thing that you become part of. You're the church whenever you're with other Christians in such a way that you depend on each other, love each other, serve each other, and speak the truth to each other in love for the sake of Jesus." 

"Our task is to find ways to become the church together. I suggest that becoming the church is rather like becoming a baseball team. Players have to practice together enough to learn each others strengths and weaknesses. Then they can use each others strengths and play around each others weaknesses.  They sort out who can pitch, who can field, who can bat, who can coach. In the process, they learn to rely on each other, team sprit 'arises,' and somewhere along the way, rather mysteriously, they cease being just a collection of individuals and a group identity appears. They become a team. They become the Cubs." (lol! Sounds like John is channeling Bob Appleby here, except that I suspect he was already doing the sports metaphors before he met Bob. Those two were like two peas in a pod.)

He then goes on to explain that he's not talking about just making Sunday morning services more participatory. He says, " Services are important, but church is mostly crying with your brother in Christ when he learns that his son is disabled. Or helping your sister paint her house while talking together about the way, the truth, and the life."

John makes three points about what he calls "reinventing church":

1) Church is something you do or become or be, not something you go to.

2) It's crucial to identify people's strengths and weaknesses within the body and then each person should play their position -- do what they're good at. 

3) "God intends us to be part of team, part of a body." 

4) "In neither baseball nor church is a building crucial.

To sum up, "In both [baseball and being a church], it's more of a process than an event. In both, it's a matter of spirit. In both, the way it happens is rather mysterious. In both, coaching is crucial. In both, not recognizing your need for others is disastrous. In both, there's a place for observing, but it's for people not on the team, for nonChristians, for outsiders."