BLOG. 11/2/14. COLONIES OF GOD’S NEW HUMANITY: DE-FUSING THE CYNICISM
I have been fascinated reading the accounts of some creative new church plants, all over the country, by a bunch of innovative and perceptive folks seeking for a way to reach into this increasingly post-Christian and ‘cynical-about-the-church’ culture we live in (cf. Starting Missional Churches, edited by Mark Branson and Nicholas Warnes). I am fascinated because the context into which these church planters move resonates with what is so obvious in so much of the community that I see and know. The cynicism is especially true (and warranted?) with the younger generations, but also becoming inescapable to the old church veterans of my generation.
One of the guys writing (AJ Swoboda) tells the story of his engagement in planting a church in Portland, Oregon, especially rang my bell. Anybody who has been to Portland knows that it is a vibrant, colorful, and notoriously secular city. Swoboda’s off-hand comment was that they knew that if they were going to reach the weird people in that particular neighborhood, then they needed to recruit weird people to be part of the church plant. I love that. Do you know why? Because if, as Christians are described in the New Testament, we are “aliens and exiles” / “pilgrims and strangers” (I Peter 2:11), then—face it!—we are in the eyes of those around us: really, really weird.
Those church folk, who build ‘sanctuaries’ for themselves, where they can retreat and have church activities, and not have to be in contact and conversation with those cynical and indifferent folk ‘out there’ creates the church a totally ignorable entity in the experience of our neighbors. And, if all I knew about Christianity and the Christian church was what comes across in the media, and in the caricatures of the secular press—then I would be cynical too.
For years I have been a reader of an alternative press publication called: The UTNE Reader, which continually gives me insights into the world and thinking of all kinds of people from all over the cultural and intellectual map. There are remarkable insights, and creative proposals, that I have seldom encountered inside the institutions of religious Christianity. It has also made me aware that there are very real spiritual longings out there. There is quest for justice, a longing for authentic relationships, and a delight in beauty and the environment (to plagiarize insights from N. T. Wright). Don’t be fooled by all those younger adults tethered to the iPhones—there is a haunting desire for hope, and for acceptance, and for meaning in there somewhere.
How to defuse the cynicism? Simple. Do what those church planters, and so many who are serious about being the true body of Christ are doing: and joining Jesus in bringing light to those in darkness—move back into the neighborhood. Get out of your Christian ghettos. Go to the neighborhood events, to the coffee shops, and to the pubs. Create small colonies of God’s new humanity that actually incarnate Jesus’ passion for the very people who are cynical, often hostile, frequently broken, even psychotic—and yet (perhaps even unacknowledged to themselves) desperately hungry for an authentic demonstration of the very reality that Jesus came to inaugurate. Get into conversation and into identity with such, and in that context of mutual friendship, perhaps, begin to defuse the cynicism.
Actually, it is this for which Jesus Christ made us. Vast church institutions engaged in all kinds empire building, ecclesiastical personalities, and ecclesiastical controversies are one of the most tragic contradictions and subversions to Christ’s new creation. “I came to call, not the religious, but sinners to repentance (newness).” … Is that enough for starts? Defusing the cynicism begins somewhere near where their cynicism in contradicted by our authentic demonstration of God’s new humanity, and the colonies thereof.
