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In PART ONE of this Two Part post titled, The Mega Church and Home Church Networks: Twin Trajectories and Why We Need Them Both, I wrote the following:
The first [Mega Church] trajectory needs excellence and resources. The second [House Church Network] needs heart and hospitality. [More on this in my next post].
One of the reason corporate leaders and corporate churches don’t get mission to the emerging culture is because they have resources and a need for a certain kind of excellence. Google guru, church planting advocate, and friend, Mark Weible, told me of a church that wanted to get onto the Myspace band wagon.
So far so good.
But, he told me, they wanted to hire a designer to really make their MySpace look good. You know, “Excellent”. I know that a lot of you reading this are chuckling as I’m sure Mark wanted to. I can”t remember the rest of the story but I think Mark was able to gently explain that this would lack the “authenticity” Myspacers have come to expect. The social networking hub, Myspace, doesn’t work because of professionally designed sites. Myspace is 16 year olds going crazy with self expression. Not a Madison avenue advertizing company trying to sell a product.
If you’re a slick advertizing company smart enough to use the tool, we won’t know it ’till you already got us. On the contrary, social networking works because of, well, social networks, not slick advertizing.
One question I ask leaders of Christ following communities and Church Planters is this: If you wanted to reach 20-50 people this year or month without reference to your budget, building, membership or staff, how would you do it in your context?
In the end, it will always come down to remembering how to build relationships again. How to create or become a part of a social network. This is the primal sphere of:
How to take a village
How to create opportunities
Resourcefulness versus resources
Passion verses budget
Risk taking versus excellence
(Luke 10. Acts 16, 19)
This trajectory requires heart and hospitality. I think this is where both Mega Churches and House Church Networks need to go. It’s not just Mega Church leaders that can hide behind a desk, a heavy counseling schedule, and the busy-ness preparing the assimilation process in conjunction to sending out a big mailer. House Church leaders hide too –just behind a smaller desk, a heavier “secular” work load, and fellowship activities. It isn’t the resources or lack of them nor the need for excellence that keeps bot Mega Church and House Churches from reaching people. We fall inward on each other because, while we’re busy “fellowshipping,” we forgot that there are other people out there that matter to God.
As you know, the word hospitality comes from two words: stranger + love. Hospitality is the love of strangers, of the outsider, the alien. I once asked a group of leaders of a very small church what kept them from fulfilling their self-identified calling to reach the outsiders, those who’ve not yet followed after Christ. “We’re so busy doing church stuff they said that we just don’t have time,” they said.
So, as an experiment, we cancelled “church things” to create the space for reaching the unreached. Nothing changed. Why? Because with the extra time, the men all began to do the chores around the house they had been neglecting. They cleaned their yards, organized their garages, etc. Their wives had domesticated them with ease. The lesson seemed simple. Reaching unreached people was on their minds but not their hearts. Or maybe, the unreached were on their hearts, like they are on the hearts of so many Mega Church Leaders and House Church leaders. Our lives just aren’t wrapped around them yet.
How do we wrap our lives around those we most want to reach? What do you think? More to come…
See you in the Mystic,
Alex
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John Gnotek
Alex McManus
Parepidemos
David
Tracy Harms
60 Comments
How do we wrap our lives around the unreached?
1. Broken Heart- I have to pray for this. If your heart is hurting, you’ll do whatever it takes in reaction to pain.
2. Dedicated resources-Put your money toward your passion without fear of making someone else mad. Your tithe to the Lord can be 10% toward reaching the unreached.
3. Creating/Finding a Community- People with a similiar heart are effective in spurring one another on
4. Seeker Eyes- If I’m not looking for the unreached, I am less likely to find them. I need to search for that 99th sheep like Jesus would.
Just my initial thoughts.
I miss you.
I think it’s about living our lives amongst the people we want to influence (and occasionally withdrawing to spend time with Christ-followers for teaching, equipping, encouragement etc). For years I had this the other way round. I’d always be hanging out with Christ-followers and occasionally venture out and spend time with people who don’t yet know God.
I see it as being about living our lives authentically amongst those who don’t yet know Christ. I tend to think of the word “incarnation” rather than “evangelism” nowadays as my natural tendency is to think of evangelism as something I do, where as incarnation is more about who I am. It’s more holistic, living my life in the midst of the world.
I think relational is the key. I tried an experiment – I posted on Craigslist inviting anyone who wanted to know more about becoming an authentic follower of Jesus Christ to meet me at a neighborhood Panera. Not to my surprise, I didn’t get any responses. Not because of a lack of interest in Jesus, but because a lack of relationship with the poster.
I wonder if the delineation of resources v. heart into distinct trajectories isn’t a bit misleading. It seems to me that it doesn’t matter whether you are attempting to reach people who prefer the slow-paced, laid-back, consistency of small-town life or people who absolutely love the multi-sensory, options-on-every-corner, new-people-every-day adventure of big-city life. Either case, real relationships are crucial.
How do we wrap our lives around the unreached?
* Recognize that eternity gives us plenty of time to hang out with our believer friends, and decide we would like to expand that circle now while we can.
* Be willing to BE friends with more people. Care about them enough to see them being brought to life in Christ, but care enough about them to simply care even if they don’t. (Real love expects nothing in return!) Where my treasure is, there is my heart (and my time).
Scott, Hmm…I agree with you. Opposing “heart” and “resources” doesn’t really make the cut. I always say, Scott, that I reserve the right to disagree with myself. This is one of those occassions.
One thing about blogging [for me] is that I write and post off-the-cuff and from the gut. Kind of like a conversation. I don’t write an article and then post it so my thoughts are raw rather than polished. Thanks for reading and contributing to this conversation and my thinking.
I pray that lots of resources get placed into the hands of people with the right heart.
Thanks for your thoughts (however off-the-cuff they might be!) on these issues. I’m totally with Sam — incarnation is what we’re talking about. Not just understanding the heart of Jesus, but allowing it to fully develop in our own personal reality. Evangelism can wind up looking like a nice program in your church annual report, but the incarnation of Christ in the community of followers will send out shockwaves of change.
I’m currently with a larger (some would call mega) church in Canada - pale in size compared with our US compatriots - and we have been working with a pretty prominent American mega-church organization. What I have been excited about is the ongoing conversation about how we (collectively) are still doing church in a way that is too focused on insiders. Church tends to drift that way, and I for one am glad that there are mega-church leaders who are still offering correctives for that. I like what Alex wrote: “Hospitality is the love of strangers, of the outsider, the alien.” I have spent time in prayer praising our God for being the ultimate xenophiliac - the Lover of strangers and strange things.
Looking forward to seeing some (many?) of you at Humana 2.0.
Patrick and Sam, What is the role of evangelism as we incarnate the kingdom? While references to mission and incarnation are abundant, why do you think that we distance ourselves from evangelism?
I think it is ironic that as churches drop evangelism, corporations pick it up…
Check out this excerpt from US News and World Report:
“Evangelism is about selling your dream so that other people believe in it as much as you do,” says Guy Kawasaki, former chief evangelist for Apple Computer and one of the key people responsible for marketing the Macintosh in 1984. “Those people then, in turn, get even more people to believe. Just like Jesus was an evangelist who recruited 12 more evangelists.” With corporate evangelism, the goal is to find and identify those customers who are already crazy about your product or service–who are actively talking it up in blogs or Web forums, for instance–and turning them with loads of personal attention into “customer evangelists” who then spread the word to others, who then–well, you get the idea.
Also, check out Church of the customer
I understand the Gospel in these 3 ways. It is something we need to:
1) Incarnate (live it)
2) Demonstrate (show it)
3) Proclaim (say it)
I think we often have a tendency to jump to number 3 and yet it is often 1 and 2 that give us the right to speak. I used to have 1 and 3 the other way round.
I think that these three things - working together - make up what we call evangelism. For me I emphasise incarnation at this time because I see it as the platform for demonstration and proclamation. Everything flows out of that. I think also, people - myself included - can have a tendency to think only proclamation when we think of evangelism.
in the states, people use to say, the best way to share the gospel is to live it. people understood this to mean living a moral or clean life before others. how do you envision “living it”?
also, what if you 1] live it and 2] demonstrate it, can this ever be considered evangelism if it is not 3]proclaimed? or at least, gossipped?
when you get a chance send me along your e-mail address…hey i noticed in the blog you mentiond being welcoming to strangers/ aliens….my new cd is called alienation and while there are no lyrics i think i’ve been able to capture the sounds of what it feels like to be alienated/unwelcomed…ive also been working on new graffiti type of art series with the same theme….
…hope you guys are well….send me your mailing address and i will mail you a copy of the new cd and art prints when there finished…mid-late november……d
Good questions. I would see “living it” on multiple levels. I think our simply building relationships with people not connected to God is part of it. Loving people, accepting them. And yes, living authentic lives where we represent Christ well. Light doesn’t affect darkness by hanging out with other lights. Salt doesn’t bring flavour to the food it it is not poured out onto it. It’s about rubbing shoulders with people, building friendships, leaving the comfort of the 4 walls of our church buildings and being willing to be called a drunkard and a glutton because of the people we hang out with and the places we’re willing to go. Character has to be there though to make any of that meaningful or influential.
I’m not sure that the 3 elements can - or should - be separated. Paul talked in Romans about the need for people to hear the Gospel and I think he’s right. But reading through the book of Acts, you see these 3 things working together in harmony.
Alex
Authenticity is important….. Nowadays people want you to really love them before dumping a gospel story on them. I remember training people in a church setting to build relationships to convert…
Nowadays I’m wondering if that was very real?!? I now feel that it was sleasy…. In our movement here we want to love people for who they are, but when they are with us, give them the opportunity to experience who Jesus is and how we live life to the fullest. It just seems more real….
Take care,
Hermann,
I agree. here’s where I would tweak the wording a little bit.
People never want the gospel dumped on them, even after we’ve loved them. usually, when we use the expression “to dump” it refers to sharing something unpleasant or undesirable. I wouldn’t want us to pick up from certain strains of the emerging church an attitude of disdain for the gospel.
What I hear you saying is that we shouldn’t push ourselves on people in inappropriately forward ways. We must develop social intelligences such as courtesy, and disicpline, and respect. We must focus not on winning arguments, but winning hearts, hands, minds and relationships to Christ.
The real question for me is, how can we enhance our delight in and for the gospel? It is as difficult to dump the gospel on people as it is to dump the fragile fragrance of a rose on them.
I struggle with ever feeling like people are ‘projects’, and sometimes that’s how evangelism can be carried out. While I absolutely believe it’s the core of God’s heart to see people released from the entrapment of sin and set free to live out the experience of running with the Kingdom, I know that as human beings we can short-change, short-sight and short-circuit that to be about padding numbers and elevating our “productivity”.
My sense is that evangelism shouldn’t be so much a scheme or a strategy as a mode of living. Embodying (or incarnating) the good news is about demonstrating an (otherwise) inexplicable love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Doesn’t that fruit bear in itself the seeds of reproduction?
I always have absolute joy in declaring the truth about sin, and grace and redemption in Jesus Christ. The joy in that is enhanced for me when I recognize that through the relational bridges that I’ve tried to build, God has already drawn the curtain back in their to reveal that the Scripture is their story. That something has resonated with them long before I felt the need to verbalize it.
I need to prayerful about having my heart transformed more into the semblance and rhythm of God’s heart. I want to delight in what the lives of family, friends, neighbours and strangers profess and what their mouths confess. It’s a daily request that more and more I long what God longs for.
Patrick, Sam and Hermann:
Do you see Paul feeling as you do when he speaks of Christ and his resurrection at the Acropolis (Acts 17) or with Lydia at Philippi (Acts 16)?
Patrick, I’m especiallty interested in your thoughts on seeing people as “projects”. Was Paul doing this in Athens?
Is it the differences in our contexts [i.e. Paul's and ours] that makes the big difference? Or is it a difference in calling [again, Paul's and ours] that makes the big difference? Or was Paul just insensitive? Or was there more back story to these accounts that Luke doesn’t include? Or is there no difference at all in Paul’s feelings about evangelism and ours?
Hmmm … thanks for those thoughts. I think that where I see potential departure from what we often do and what Paul was about in Athens is in motivation. I try not to be a skeptic, but am willing to challenge our accepted patterns all the same - so are we motivated by love (the heart of hospitality?) or self-congratulation? I know that Paul ended the day on rejoicing in the preaching of the gospel for whatever reason (Phil. 1.18). I still nervously wonder what kind of ramifications the “project” or “notch in my belt” mentality holds for us and for them.
I recognize that there’s still much to be learned from Paul about being apostolic.
patrick, a quick question…do you think if we matched the apostle in attitude that it would make his approach more palatable today?
paul’s take seemed to be that he celebrated the announcing of Jesus as the world’s new king regardless of an evangelist’s motivation. Philippians 1.15ff seem to point in this direction.
by the way, patrick, sam and hermann, thank you for kicking around this very important subject with me.
ok, here’s what i meant to ask, patrick, what do you think paul might have answered to your question of “ramifications”?
since he celebrated in it, he must have thought that on balance it was a good thing.
but also, was paul more anchored in the objective truth of the gospel than we tend to be today? many emerging leaders today seem far more anchored in the subjective experiences surrounding the gospel?
This are great questions, Alex. And it’s really helpful to be working through them.
I think the line we have to walk on in living lives that ooze the Gospel in every sense (lives, deeds, words) is a very narrow one. On the one hand, making someone a “project” can appear horrible, false, and very unauthentic. But this is where motivation is so key. If we make someone a “project”, and our doing so is wholly fueled by love, I think that makes a huge difference. Here’s where a second key comes in though. I think love has to be far more encompassing than “winning the “project” to Christ”. If our love and interest in someone is no longer there if they don’t respond to the Gospel, it just leaves a sour taste in people’s mouths.
I think the the truth is that we ARE meant to be people who live with intention. Every day we are meant to be fueled by an all consuming desire to influence people with the good news of Christ’s kingdom. And there’s lots at stake. We mustn’t forget that! There needs to be an urgency and passion in our desire to see people come to know Christ. And for that NOT to be there, I think is to actually be inauthentic.
What I love about Paul is that is had no doubts about the power of the gospel story to transform lives. We need to be careful that we don’t end up coming accross as though we are ashamed of it!
So, whilst I don’t think making someone a “project” is particuarly helpful, I do think we need to make sure we don’t lose the sense of mission, purpose, and intention when we are building relationships with people. We are here to influence people. I think we need to avoid making people feel like projects, targets, or that we’re trying to “win” them, but we mustn’t be ashamed of letting people see that we are passionate about letting them see the reality of Christ through our lives. And, again, I think we do this through how we live, what we do, as well as with our words.
I don’t want to come across as covering up my missional intent. I think that would be inauthentic.
(By the way, I am not saying this is what I always do…but it’s the direction I want to move towards)
Alex
Love your words…
Winning hearts!!! Thanks for that, it gives me words for my thoughts. I agree we should not develop disdain for the gospel, that is what made Paul do what he did (Rom1:16)!!!! It’s my passion to, to win hearts, to love people to enjoy the life that Jesus meant for all of us to live!
What an adventure!!!!!!
Patrick and Sam
Thanks for your thoughts. I appreciate you sharing your experiences and thoughts.
Another concern again might be that we sometimes think that God is dependant on us? I was taught to think that God’s Kingdom was dependant on me converting and convincing individuals.
I later realized that God is always at work and that when I meet individuals it is my responsibility to show them God’s work in their lives. I realized that God works in the lives of individuals who are not converted. It is an honour and adventure to be a part of God’s work in an individuals life.
This has become my missional focus : to help people realize that God is at work in their lives and to help them enter into God’s kingdom with Christ through His grace.
Hermann, I hear what you’re saying. When I was in seminary we read an excellent text by David Bosch called “Transforming Mission”. I recall that in discussions around the book we reflected on what it meant to be joining in on the mission that God was already carrying out.
Alex, I too wonder what Paul might have said about the ‘ramifications’. I’d have to consider it a bit more, but I wonder if he truly celebrated in it, or if he was exercising greater trust than I am (!) that when the Word of God is sown, it will not return void.
With respect to your observation about emerging leaders and the focus on subjective experience, I’d like to believe that it’s not true. The leaders of the future church must be rooted in the objective truth if they and their communities are going to have a faithful bearing. And at the same time, I’m cautious about somehow assuming that objective truth is just propositional. I believe that God is the objective truth, and yes that is rooted and revealed in His written revelation but also essentially complemented by the relational experience of His Spirit.
I’m a bit tired today - is this sounding like mumbo-jumbo?
alex, i think wrapping our lives around theirs involves dropping alterier (did I spell that right?) motives. as a youth pastor, i used to tell my students they need to make friends with unchurched kids so they could show their faith to them. in other words, what I was saying was, love them so they will come around to our way of thinking. which in and of itself wasnt bad i suppose, but really it was loving someone for the sole purpose of our agenda. i wonder if the future of “evangelism” will simply love for the sake of love and others. that is, what if we loved them just because they were people and God loves them? if we get to bring them along in faith, great. but, as heresiacal as it sounds, maybe our primary purpose in loving people is not to tell them about christianity, but to love them.
I did not have time to read all the comments, but what I read was insightful. If I understand the assignment, the goal is not to just come up with some good ideas- it is to live them out.
A house church I am serving in was talking about covenenting recently. Instead of just talking about guide lines we saw as important or fair we decided to pray in community and ask God to show us the standard we were to bind ourselves to. Three things came out of the next two plus hours:
1) Love God
2) Love our neighbors (The World)
3) Love one another (The Family of God)
I had not concidered these things in relation to our covenent, but they are Christ’s greatest commands. As we make disciples (in all that means) the primary goal seems to be to build a community of total love. Our Master told us, “Where your heart is, there your treasure will be also.” If we want to engage the “new” culture, we have to love God and love people. And both of them (God and people) have to see that.
Just some ideas. Hope I can live it.
great post alex
Hey John, appreciate your candor but couldn’t help but reminice on an experience I had as a teen. Friends and I took an illadvised white-water expedition down a large, swift canal near our home. We took an unexpected plunge over a concrete-lined spillway. The whole group of us were stuck in what’s known as a “Keeper” and were totally incapable of swimming out of it. We were drowning. What saved us is the fact that someone came into that rediculously dangerous place in one of those rafts with a rope around it and helped us each grab hold. As we lay on the bank in tears, all I could do was thank God for rescuing me and giving me life.
As I read your comments, I couldn’t help but wonder if, instead of diving in with an agenda, he had only loved us as we drowned… Harsh perhaps, but real enough in my memory to shake me free from the notion that love (if merely warm feelings or emotional support) will never answer the need of people without hope.
Blessings!
Sorry John, actually I was responding to Chad.
Dave,
great story. as a former white water rafter –did the whole guide school thing plus swift water rescue when my son turned 15 — i totally felt you when you talked about being caught in a “keeper”.
have you seen “The Guardian” (Costner)? It’s a movie about Coast Guard Rescue Swimmers. Their motto is “That others Might Live.”
Love is jumping into freezing water and getting “those who will otherwise drown” out of the water.
Wow Alex, you continue to amaze me! One guy, so many talents!
Haven’t seen the Costner film yet, but it’s on the list.
To me, love MUST have agendas, otherwise, is it really love?
in defense of chad, love really isn’t real love without some form of action, is it? as the saints of dc Talk once said, “luv is a verb.”
especially in places where there has been much overwhelming, negative representation of jesus, i think we probably have to LOVE that much more before we earn the right to speak.
should speaking be the goal? perhaps, but without trust/relationship, our words probably do as much good as a guy on the corner with a bullhorn.
Loved “Bullhorn”!
And thanks Dave for the insight from the “keeper”. That’s a powerful story.
I really think that we’re talking about the same thing, but may get hung up on semantics. To me , love is the agenda … if it’s just sweet talk and warm fuzzies, that’s not helpful at all. And while emotional support can facilitate healing and bridge building, it may stop one step short of actually saving lives.
It’s “faith expressing itself through love”, right? Love is active and purposeful. If God is love, and Christ is the perfect representaiton of God, then we can see that love embodies a mission. I just hope that in following Jesus, we are as much concerned with acknowledging the intrinsic value of each human spirit as we are about discharging our duties as Christians.
josh,
nice. here’s a thought…
jesus isn’t the only thing misrepresented in our culture.
love is misrepresented too. you say love, some hear
sex. or affection.
they say, people don’t care what you know unless they know that you care. that’s true unless you know something that would really benefit me. then i don’t care if you care, just hand over the info.
the goal is helping shape lives conformed to the new reality that Jesus is the end of history. we do this by explaining how the story of Jesus intersects the story of us …and how the universe changed when it did.
dave, don’t get the wrong impression. i spent the majority of guide school and swift water rescue hanging on for my life. my 15 year old son, on the other hand, could be a seal.
patrick, exactly.
great stuff, guys.
hey alex, great points man. your comments about misrepresentation and “the goal” are dead-on… at least i would agree wholeheartedly!
i’m not sure about that second part, though. it could be argued that if you know something that benefits someone else, to even take the time to share it would be insinuating that you really DO care, at least on a basic level. if that’s true, it would make the distinction between caring and not-caring moot, i suppose. that’s all kind of a silly semantics point, though.
the bigger thing is that it seems to me like that “i don’t care if you care” mentality, if carried to the extreme, could be used to justify some pretty harsh “conversion” techniques (and probably has been, throughout the years). i don’t see you ever falling into that category and don’t mean to give that impression, but in my mind we (as a jesus-following whole) have let our manifest destiny politics manage our evanelistic philosophy too much in the past. the way of jesus seems to me much more subversive and subtle — always open and available for everyone, but never forced. no one can ever be MADE to do anything anyhow, so it’s probably our job to just paint the best picture we know how.
on another note, perhaps many of the viewpoints expressed here are just our individual perspectives shining through and illuminating different sides of the same thing…
For all that’s good about the story of rescuing drowning people, I don’t think you can just carry that straight over an apply it 100% to evangelism. There’s a BIG difference: the people who are drowning, know they are drowning and therefore want to be rescued. The majority of people I know, don’t know that they’re drowning and certainly don’t feel any need to be rescued.
That is not to suggest that we don’t need to have the same passion, love, and - yes - agenda, in wanting to ‘rescue’ the people around us, but throwing a life-ring to someone who doesn’t know they’re drowning doesn’t seem to be stage one.
People need to come to see that they ARE drowning before they’re going to want to be rescued. Perhaps we should imagine the white-water raft heading towards a 300 foot waterfall and no one in the boat has any idea. We’re on the side and have a choice: we can either throw them ropes and life rings saying “we’re here to rescue you”, or we can do everything in our means to help people realise what’s ahead of them so that they come to WANT to be rescued. And the truth is, if we do the former before the latter, we’re likely to just be ignored.
There’s also another issue with the rescue approach: what if the person with the life-ring isn’t trusted by the people who are drowning?
Sam I agree.
This might offend people, but since I have left my role as pastor and now work as a consultant in the corporate world, I realize that some people are drowning because of contact with Christians. They choose to drown, rather than being rescued by Christians.
Unfortunately I hear sad stories of how people have been hurt and dissapointed by the Chruch and Christians. We all have made these mistakes and unfortunately people associate Jesus with the church and then choose to stay away from Him and rather drown.
That’s why I like what Alex said, that we again need to win the hearts of people, we need to design a culture and a place where people can feel loved and safe, because that is what Jesus did. Once we have their trust we may share with them about Christ and His way of life available to them!!!
Once we resemble something of our Master, people might want to be saved, rather than drown!!
Back to the “love” discussion.
Chad, what do mean by “love for the sake of love?” The word love, even in my writing, is ambigiuous at best. Culture always defines terms and redefines them. I think we need to know which definition we are using in this context.
If we are loving in the way the West means it, then love is worthless. If we are loving the way Christ means it, then “If you love Me, you will keep My commandments.” Love in this sense is active- always.
Dave, if you love a child that has run out into a busy road, what do you do? If you watch him die, you do not love him as much as you love what ever prevented you from trying to save him. The point is, you cannot truly love without active sacrifice at the level the circumstance demands.
Chad, is an agenda bad if its focus is the glory of God? What is the agenda you once opporated on? If you were just trying to get numbers, then you were wrong. It was not about loving others the way Christ loved us (an active and sacrificial love that cost His life for our deliverance). If you taught your students to engage lost people because Christ loved them and commanded them to love others, then it might not have been so bad.
I am often too quick to attack the conventional model and the approaches it espouses, but the people who came before us loved God and loved people. They made mistakes, but not everthing they did was evil.
The biggest mistake in Church History is the most repeated one. The center-peice of everthing in Scripture is not love. It is not evangelism. It is not the authority of the Pope. It is not humanity. It is God. That is it. Philippians 2 tells us flat out that Christ did everything for the glory of God. Paul also tells us to do everything for the glory of God. That is it. If we forget that life exists so that we can know Who God is, we start to make it about something less than.
Just some questions.
Help me out.
For His Kingdom
-Jon
Josh,
I find your comment “the way of jesus seems to me much more subversive and subtle…” a bit problematic and even disturbing. I trust your aquainted with Jesus’ command to his followers known as the Great Commission, repeated in mutliple gospels: “go… preach…make disciples… teach them to obey everything I’ve commanded”. Or, Paul’s words about this in Romans 10:14-15 “How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them?”
Doesn’t sound too subtle to me. In fact, the whole approach seems to be quite the opposite of subtle.
What’s subtle about the way the church leaders preached Christ so passionatley and boldy that were murdered for it for centuries? What’s subtle about Jesus message that those who enter eternity without him will hear “depart from me, I never knew you”? Nothing subtle about the call of Christ to lay down our lives and be possesed by his spirit and consumed with the work of his kingdom, is there?
While I totally agree that love must always be our motivation and that people have big problems with how Christ has been presented at times, how can a subtle approach be called loving if it’s reluctant or skiddish about speaking the truth to people? Sure, don’t beat them over the head, but if you’re suggesting, like Chad seems to be, that a better day for evangelism is the day we quit vebalizing the love and commands of Jesus, then you seem to have missed the whole point of the story… the redemption of lost peole by their loving Father, which they hear about through his messengers - US. Beyond that, how can a subtle approach be considered obedient and consistent with the New Testament commands and pattern?
I don’t mean to offend, but I’m concerned that we not miss out on our part in the story because we afraid we’ll make mistakes or perhaps offend people. If I’m going to make a mistake, I want it to be on the side of doing something (or in this case, SAYING something) rather than hoping they can find thier way through subversive subtleties.
Tara, I appreciate your concern. There is no substitute for acknowledging our place in the story, and for sharing it as well. I do think, if I’ve been following the thread correctly, that what others have been suggesting is not that we abandon the love and commands of Jesus, but that we do a serious job of rethinking how it is that we communicate that effectively. Because while I’m with you in that it’s important to be on the side of ‘doing or saying something’, I also have to factor in seriously that communication has as much to do with reception as it does with projection. And if somehow God has gifted us with the opportunity, the wisdom and the wherewithal to cultivate a more receptive audience, I think that it’s important that we not neglect the stewardship of it.
Liz,
A bit harsh there. Look at the New Testament again without presupposing direct evangelism at every turn. The Matthew 18 text you went to for example says nothing about evangelism. In fact, most of the converts we learn about came to faith as a result of insividuals living an authentic Christ-centered life in front of them. Furthermore, most of the early martyrs were killed because the Christians were wrongly accused of something (like the burning of Rome under Nero) and not for “boldly preaching the gospel.”
Don’t get me wrong; I think Josh is wrong here too. Love of the lost person was not the motivation of the lifestyle that won so many to Christ… it was love of God.
However, to imply that Josh may not know Christ becasue he does not hold to conventional (and often culturally irrelevent) evangelism schemes is outragious. At the same time to say that confrontational witness in Christian America (which nolonger exists) was not motivated by love is equally unfair.
The question is how can we effectively communicate the love of God to a culture that puts little stock in words? I think living love in front of them is the only way that can happen.
Liz, to love someone you have to know them. Being overly confrontational with a postmodern is not to err on the side of active love. It is not to know that person, and therefore not to love them.
Sorry if I’ve been too harsh as well. We need to question our hearts in this discussion. I’ve seen a lack of love for other believers. Some of us hate the ones that are still alive, and some of us hate the ones who are dead, but none of it is healthy.
Hmmm … I should stop talking to people on the phone while trying to jot down blog thoughts. Sorry Liz for calling you “Tara”.
looks like it’s time for me to respond!
liz and jon, thanks so much for your comments. as long as we’re always open to learning from each other, i think these discussions can be really beneficial.
my thoughts about the way of jesus being subversive and subtle are obviously a big subject, and i definitely do not want to tie up alex’s blog too much, but let me say this.
in my mind just because something is suble doesn’t mean it’s skiddish or lacking truth. in fact, subtlety seems to be the primary way jesus communicates truth about the kingdom of God — through parables. jesus is rarely straighforward about anything; he’s always burying nuggets of truth in layers of metaphors, as if he WANTS people to have to wrestle with them and think about them.
(if this concept is at all intriguing to you, check out brian mclaren’s “the secret message of jesus” and it’ll probably be much clearer. that guy is much cleverer than i am!)
and jon, to be clear, i never questioned anyone’s motivation at all — i questioned the methods.
rock on everybody!
josh,
my blog is designed for conversation. rock on.
Josh
Thanks for clearing up your meaning with methods and motives. It is always helpful to challenge methods… motives are bit more tricky. I would still ask you to try to understand the methods in their origional context. I totally agree that they are way out of place in a conteporary prostmodern West, but they might not have 50 or 60 years ago.
In relation to parables, look at what Jesus says when the 12 ask him why He speaks to others in parables and why He speaks to them openly. Often the most insightful words on a subject come from the person who origionated the thought- in this case Christ in relation to the use of parables.
Thanks for your insight and willingness to dialogue.
For His Kingdom
Alex;
I am working through church life issues and concerns also and would like to submit what I have been working on…The Alternative Church and a web based tool for empowering the Micro Church and facilitating the Macro Church. The web based tool is not up and running yet but I would be very interested in your thoughts and those in your blog network as it relates to what I am thinking through.
Please check out The Alternative Church blog: http://alternativechurch.net
Thanks;
tom
Tom,
Sounds interesting. I’ll check it out. From what you’ve written here, it sounds something akin to http://voxtropolis.com except that voxtropolis is a transparent approach instead of an opaque approach.
we focus on macro/micro too but think in terms of cyber/concrete.
i’ve written quite a bot about this in prior posts and am about to launch another series on it. stay tuned.
Josh
His from Aus! The problem that I have is that I don’t think there is a “secret message” of Jesus. Paul told the Ephesians that there was this secret (mystery) but that its now been made plain through the gospel via the preaching of the Apostles. If we go down the “secret message” route we could wind up back at he point of requiring special interpreters of secret knowledge..kind of gnostic. I remember growing up in a denomination that told me that I shouldn’t read the bible becaue it is so complex that only the ministers, who are trained, can understand it. Now I tend to go with the idea that the Bible is God’s message to us and the “plain sense of Scripture is proabaly right…mostly.
hey craig!
i think i hear what you’re saying, for sure. although, i don’t think i ever said “secret.” (”subtle” and “subversive,” but not secret
you’ll have to take that one up with brian mclaren.
here’s the deal for me — i look at jesus and i see a life of meaning and purpose, a life that’s about helping other people, and a love for whatever is beautiful. i look at “christians” and many times i don’t see any of those things.
i’m just trying to figure out what went awry.
is the bible clear and understandable? well, i think both yes and no — if i were a first time reader of the bible (especially reagarding old testament) i might be very inclined to see a lot of strange things: God killing people, God having people kill people, animal sacrifices, bizarre menstruation rituals, etc.
is jesus even clear and understandable? well, i suppose that’s the question.
it seems to me like most of jesus’s life was about pedagogy, showing us how life is supposed to be. i think what jon above said about how jesus explains his use of parables (matt 13) is very helpful — it seems pretty clear that not everybody is going to get what he’s talking about. if plain sense of what scripture says was enough, i doubt we’d have the number of denominations that we do, for example. know what i mean?
so to go back to my “deal” and why there’s such a separation between jesus and his followers, in my mind there has to either be something that we’ve been missing inside jesus’s message (a secret?) or i, for one, will have to look elsewhere for purpose and fulfillment.
Josh
hope this doesn’t get to you twice something wnet awry (love that word) with my IT here. There’s no doubt that we’re missing something, the disconnect between what we see of Jesus and His church in the New Testament and what we see around us. the good news for me is that God hasn’t left us to work it out, and the fact of denominations - even so many - signals to me that we can grow in our understanding of Christianity, and for our part we get to look back over a couple fo thousand years of God wroking things out in history. The challenge as I see it is not to make a camp aorund a particular truth, but allow God to build - or perhaps rebuild a cumulative picture of the whole.
I think the writer of Hebrews points us in a helpful direction when he talks about all things being in submission to Jesus and notes that while this is not totally the case we do see Jesus.
it seems to me that you might be unfairly characterising all “christians” as being far removed from Jesus example? Maybe this is true, but I know many people who love God and are fine examples of what it means to follow Jesus.
The other issue for me is that I easily fall into what is a doctrinal issue and that is trying to work out an approach to Christian lifestyle (the pedagogical issue) - kind of “here’s how I want you to live” - separate from the redemptive issues - ie the redemptive nature of Jesus life, death and resurrection - that empowers us to live out the life. Liek the difference between Romans 7 and Romans 8 eh?
Sorry if this is a bit random its Monday morning here!
well happy monday craig!
absolutely love your terminology about “rebuilding a cumulative picture of the whole” — that’s simply fantastic.
here’s a thought: what if a lifestyle patterned after jesus IS the redemption? like, what if the “working out of our salvation” (sanctifcation, whatever you’d want to call it) is actually the salvation itself?
that might sound like a strange concept… let me see if i can describe it a bit better.
there’s a book called “searching for God knows what” by donald miler (maybe you’ve already read it); if not, here’s an interesting couple paragraphs:
+++++
“I recently heard a man, while explaining how a person could convert to Christianity, say the experience was not unlike a person who sits in a chair. He said that while a person can have faith that a chair will hold him, it’s not until he sits in the chair that he has acted on his faith.
I wondered as I heard this if the chair was a kind of a symbol for Jesus, and how irritated Jesus might be if a lot of people kept trying to sit on Him.
And then I wondered at how Jesus could say He was a Shepherd and we were sheep, and that the Father in heaven was our Father and we were His children, and that He Himself was a Bridegroom and we were His bride, and yet we somehow missed His meaning and thought becoming a Christian was like sitting in a chair.”
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point being that the writers of the bible rarely talk about following jesus apart from a relational metaphor of some kind. (the book explains it in much more detail, and i highly recommend it.)
likewise, perhaps the process of growing in our faith is more like a lifelong relationship with a spouse than praying a certain prayer at a singular point in time, or deciding one time when you were 6 to sit in a chair — maybe the process of learning how to live like jesus IS our redemption.
Josh…
Happy monday”??????
the wording comes from being a bureacrat - a curse for some but who knows…. You might be on to something in that there is no such thing as Biblical faith without actions of somekind, I guess though it hinges on the nuances of what gives rise to what. Paul for eg talks abut obedience that is the product of faith (Rom 1:5 amd 16:26) which gives the idea that obedience springs from faith whiel James places works (actions) as the hallmark of faith.
I did by Donald Millers book while I was in canada recently but have yet to read it so I’ll drag it off the shelf. And the idea of realtionship - living and ongoing as opposed to a retrospective on a crisis event is right on the money, although there was a point when I wasn’t married to my wife and then I was, and the journey began. Similarly there is a point at which Jesus becomes lord and all else folws from that initiation of relationship.
Great chatting with you about this stuff.
C
aren’t all mondays happy? haha
i was serious about your wording — i love it!
that’s a great point about the a delineation between once being not being married and then being married. i absoultely agree that there’s always choice involved in who/what we love/follow.
although, just for the sake of discussion, sometimes i think it could be more like the difference between what it’s like before and after you fall in love — much harder to tell EXACTLY when the transition actually took place. i think that’s much more akin to my experience, personally.
can’t wait to hear what you think of “searching”!
Josh
I can’t wait to hear it either. I’ll need to think it through, although as a starting point I found the lead up to the wedding a little unbearable - can you have degrees of unbearableness? More n this later I think.
there is a guy over hear who used mathematical set theory to explain the faith journey that people experience. He used the idea of bounded and centred sets to explain two modes of faith experience. the first draws boundaries and explains people’s relationship to the set on the basis of where they are in relationship to the boundary. The centred set explains whether people are “in or out” on the basis of relationship to the centre. The application is that Jesus is the centre so in-ness or outness is explained in terms of trajectory toards or away from Jesus. Interesting eh?
C
Liz, Jon, Craig and Josh:
I’ve enjoyed following your conversation. I have some thoughts for you but I’m trying to decide whether or not to comment here or to make a new post. I’m in Brazil right now. In fact, I leave for the States today. I’ll jump in later.
c — if i understood anything about math, that would probably be very helpful. lol
you got a blog on here, btw?
alex, we’d love to hear your thoughts, of course! i wondered where you were… thought it was a little quiet ’round here…
Josh
literature major here too…it hurts my head to talk maths. really new to this so no blog. Kicking off a church planting initiative here in Australia and will have a website up soon.
Alex, I’m looking forward to your thoughts as well.
c
Hey guys,
I know it’s been a while since I posted, but the conversation has been great.
Some thoughts on the “secret” and why there might be a disconnect between Jesus’ manner of life and what we see today. For that matter, why there might be a disconnect between the piety (in the sense of right living) of the Apostles and the weak christianity (b/c what we see does not merrit a captial “C”) we live in now.
Paul says in his letter to the Romans (chapters 6-8)that our union with Christ frees us from our bondage to sin. Therefore we are called to live lives that reflect that freedom. That does not mean that there will be no struggle with sin (ch 7). In fact, before we died to sin through Christ, we did not struggle with sin. We sinned and we liked it. Now we do struggle with sin because for the first time we can struggle with it.
The “gospel” I was always given growing up was that “Chrstians sin everyday and in every way.” Furthermore, that is supposed to be a good thing because it means that we are not God. Salvation means that we get to go to heaven… that’s it.
That is sooooooo far from Paul’s teaching in I Corinthians 15 that it could be called blasphamous. Pauls says, in response to those who claim that there is no ressurection of the dead (semi-Gnostic), that the proof of the ressurection is found in the fact that Christians DO NOT sin everyday and in every way. He says that sin gave us our death sentance and our freedom from it is proof that death will not hold us. In the same chapter he tell us to live sober (or alert) lives and to “stop sinning.” In Galatians he tells us that we are free from both sin and the Law and then commands us not to return to bondage. Jesus Himself said, “If the son sets you free you shall be free indeed.”
My thought is that we do not see Christians living holy (in the seperate or distinct sense of the word) lives because we have become convinced that the Kingdom is only to come instead of realizing that we are Kingdom citizens both now and forever.
So my fellow country-men (in the truest sense) in the words of the Beatles (not so great theologians but sufficient for now) “Live for today!”
For His Kingdom
Your brother and fellow citizen
-Jon
Just read my post and realized I forgot to clearly state my thesis:
The secret is not something hidden in Scripture. Scripture is plain on the issue. The secret is a Scriptural truth that we have hidden so as to continue in sin more conveniently.
Thoughts?