Enchanted Community

BLOG 8/3/18. THE PLATFORM OF JESUS’ NEW CREATION

A couple of generations ago, Martin Marty was the very prominent and distinguished and brilliant church historian on the faculty of the University of Chicago. He was also a columnist for a journal, land a frequent author of articles. But what made him so much fun was his puckish and unpredictable sense of humor. It was during a presidential campaign in the early 1970s that he wrote an outrageous and imaginative article in which  Jesus, in a post-resurrection appearance, was pursued by a political group to run for president. (My memory is that Jesus was reluctant, but acceded to their proposal for some reason knowing he could never win an election.)

In this imaginative episode, the reporters were trying to find out what his platform would be. Jesus’ response was brief: “I thought I made that quite clear when I was on earth!” As they pressed him, he kept responding to how much that was done in his name had nothing to do with what he taught, and was often a contradiction of his teachings. That article is a bit dim in my mind these decades later, but the essence of its insights comes to mind in our present confused and distressing political scene when so many misappropriate the name of Jesus in an attempted justification of policies that are the obverse, the exact opposite, of what Jesus taught. Consider, that Jesus inaugurated his public ministry with the announcement that he was the fulfillment of the prophecy of Isaiah:

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.   (Luke 4:18-19)

This was his announcement, at the very beginning of his messianic ministry, of the platform of God’s new creation, of his messianic kingdom. It is focused on healing he brokenness and distressing helplessness of so many. And, as if that were not enough, Jesus concludes his public ministry, just before his crucifixion, with a statement of what it is that he expects from those who are his followers in verification of their understanding of his Kingdom agenda (check yourself against this). It is that they, like he, would care for the hungry, the thirsty, the strangers, the poor and naked, the sick, and the imprisoned. It was his infinite love and compassion for the helpless and hopeless of our communities being incarnated through his disciples.

This was his platform. Toss in his twice repeated sermon (the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew, and the Sermon on the Plain in Luke) and you get a brilliant and unmistakable statement of the agenda of Jesus for his people: radical and unselfish love and caring.

This being so evident, for those who profess to use a Christian label to justify their political and economic agendas, who seem to be indifferent to his humanitarian agenda, those who are filled with being against all of those evidences of compassion in our present scene, … proves how very deceived they are in even beginning to understand the platform of Jesus. “Why do you call me: Lord, Lord, and do not do the things that I say.”

BLOG 7/31/18. A REMARKABLE RESOURCE IN NEW TESTAMENT STUDIES

I’m not sure that bloggers are supposed to be in the advertising business, or promoting books (there are so many books being published regularly) … but I can’t resist, especially when there appears on the scene a series of commentaries on the New Testament that is so remarkably and skillfully done as a series written by N. T. Wright, and published by Westminster-John Knox under the overall theme of New Testament for Everyone. My comment? Wow!

Let me explain. For fifty years, I sought/attempted to be a skillful preacher-teacher of scriptures out of the pulpit. I was very convinced of the essential role that such teaching is to have in creating well-equipped disciples of Jesus Christ. I knew my limitations, but I was conscientious. I had access, along the way, to major theological libraries and, hence, to the best scholarship of the day. I profited by those engagements in good scholarship. But, then came the equally intimidating task of translating that scholarship into the language and realities of the ordinary mortals to whom I was preaching … that they could identify with. After all, the folk sitting in front of my lectern/pulpit were those who lived a wide diversity of daily occupations, and with the ordinary stresses, doubts, and vicissitudes of a multitude of scenarios.

I was often affirmed by those whom I was teaching, and attained something of a reputation as a better-than-average Biblical preacher. I was involved in various settings with internationally known Biblical scholars, and appreciated their gifts. But, … I often found them, sort of out-there in their own scholarly world and not all that keen on translating that scholarship into a form, and street language, that was understandable and digestible by ordinary folks.

Then, several decades ago, there appeared on the scene N. T. Wright, who was leaving behind him a whole new generation of New Testament scholars who had a whole different flavor, good scholars who were culturally sensitive and could ‘mash’ Biblical scholarship with cultural phenomena so that it became alive and dynamic to its recipients. Wright’s name had passed across my scope, but when I was in a conference with him, and saw him in action, and witnessed his capacity to communicate compellingly, that I sat up and took notice. At that conference it was a new experience to sit in the hotel’s cocktail lounge with Dr. Wright and a half-dozen others, lift a pint, and spend an hour with such a contagious and good-natured personality as he is.

Now, this series of paperbacks on the whole of the New Testament. To say that they are riveting is an understatement. They are compelling, understandable, and Wright exercises his gift as pastor by anticipating the doubts and misunderstandings, as well as the applicability of the texts he is dealing with. I actually look forward to my reading of them each evening, and am the richer and stronger by the encounter with such a remarkable teacher. Simple, profound, rich in insights, engaged with real life.

Do you sense that I am ‘high’ on this resource? You betcha! My highest commendation. What a gift from God this guy has. Twenty-one compact paperback commentaries. That’s my commercial for the day.

BLOG 7/27/18. ELLESIOLAE IN ECCLESIA, LITTLE CHURCHES IN THE CHURCH

Where are you likely to know where to find a real church? Does this sound like a stupid question? Hey! This, admittedly, is a “fools rush in where angels fear to tread” blog—right up front. Face it, for some it is some traditional church institution that has been around for a long time, and folks get downright idolatrous about such institutions. But then again, there are such a vast number of expressions of the church, so how does on sort out what is real and what is just playing church games?

Shifting gears, however, brings us to the sobering reality that for a considerable segment of this generation of self-satisfied humanism, this post-Christian culture, whatever the church is doesn’t even register with them. It was such a discovery that I made in a coffee shop a couple of years ago when several people, with whom I was in conversation, had no idea what the church was, when they asked me what I had done in my career. It was out of that those encounters that I wrote What on Earth is the Church? An Inquirer’s Guide. Correct. For a whole lot of people, their answer to what is the church is: Who cares?

But, then, for many, along the way, when a lot of questions about life and meaning and hope begin to burble-up in them and the presence of communities of folks who also have grappled fruitfully with these questions emerges into a possibility for them. There can be a lot of disappointments in this quest, but pursuit might well begin to lead them to something that one can call a real church. It may be some traditional old church institution that has maintained its vigorous grasp of the message and mission of Jesus, or it may be a group meeting under a shade tree to share scripture and to sing songs of praise. The forms and patterns are multitudinous.

And then there are those old church institutions, whose lights have essentially gone out, and yet where there are those who have found some refuge there, and so who continue to meet together in what some along the way have described as ecclesiolae in ecclesia, or ‘little churches in the church.’ After all, Jesus never gave us any pattern for the church much beyond: “For where two or three of you are gathered in my name, there am I among them” (Matthew 18:20). (That “in my name,” however, carries a lot of freight—it means, quite un-equivocally, that those together are together in their affinity for both the message of Jesus and the mission of Jesus! It is not a spiritual tea party were one is free to espouse all kinds of religious stuff.)

The apostle Paul reminded the Christians in Ephesus that he taught them in public and from house. The early church in Jerusalem also had such a pattern of meeting in public and then from house to house. There was public teaching, and then there was the interpersonal processing of that message, and holding one another accountable for it. Such ecclesiolae, or little churches, were (and are) the habitations of the Spirit of Christ, … and, note, they were contagious with the message and the mission. One would be quite secure in saying that they were the primary form of both the message and the mission of Jesus Christ. They were mobile, flexible, versatile, and often temporary, … but they were the agencies of the testimony of Christ to a world desperate for the Bread and Water of Life.

Where to find the church? Where ever you find two or three gathered in the name of Christ! Got it?

[http://wipfandstock.com/what-on-earth-is-the-church-14083.html]

BLOG 7/24/18. THE CHURCH, LIKE EVERTHING ELSE, MUST GRAPPLE WITH CULTURAL CHANGE, … AND IT’S A TOUGH DISCIPLINE.

The church of Jesus Christ will always survive in some form, but those forms will, of necessity, be ever engaged with the inevitable tides of culture. We read daily of major economic and political institutions, who either come to grips the realities or a changing culture and generational realities, of fade in their inability to relate to that change. And there will always be those believers in Jesus Christ, and who are indwelt by his Holy Spirit—who are the dwelling-place of God by the Spirit—and who find one another and know of their need for one another and so find some manner of connecting with each other in order to show their love, support, encouragement, in mutual instruction within that relationship.

At the same time, those forms that may have been meaningful and fruitful in those communities of nurture yesterday, may become the victims of those very same cultural tides that are affecting every other human community. Yes, there will always be those who wear the garments of peace, the garments of salvation, but their incarnation as the people of God will morph as those communities (conventicles?) are committed to fulfilling their mission to demonstrate God’s New Creation in Christ. To cling to those forms which may have been meaningful and fruitful in the past, may be an act of unbelief.

It may sound like an oxymoron, but the gospel of peace can be very disruptive. Unlike so many merely human communities, the true Christian community sees beyond nationalism, beyond tribalism, beyond comfort-zone religion, or any merely-human scheme to accomplish God’s tomorrow, which ‘tomorrow’ has now invaded our today. This discipline of thinking into God’s tomorrow is of the essence of the Christian discipline of repentance by which we begin to thing and operate in a whole new frame of reference.

Those persons, who have been described by some as “religious Christians” are not up to this, not more at home with what is. They are not, seemingly, capable of engaging in the radical obedience that is required by being Christ disciple in this world of constant new challenges and change. Of course it’s demanding! Nobody ever said that to be a disciple of Jesus was (to quote the hymn) being “carried to the skies on flowery beds of ease.”

One might look at all of the innovations being engaged in by new digital age corporations (such as the innovations in office space by WeWork) and so many start-up companies that become successful, by approaching their goals in ways foreign to former cultures.

Happily, there are a multitude of just such culturally sensitive Christian communities functioning most fruitfully in a very diverse set of contexts, and bearing that fruit which God’s New Creation is called to exhibit, and joyously being God’s people of the Light in what is so often a turbulent, and short-sighted humanity.

This isn’t really new. The church has existed from its very beginning as aliens and exiles, but in recent centuries, in the culture of Christendom, the church settled down to enjoy its gains and to construct human institutions in an attempt to guarantee its role in society—and this is all evaporating very rapidly.

And yet, … our calling is still to herald the gospel of peace to every people group in the world (Matthew 24:14). It’s our calling as Christ’s disciples. It’s what we were made for. And it calls for the cultural sensitivity of all of God’s people: the weak and the foolish and those of no special reputation. This is the harvest field we are called to. “Come, labor on! Who dares stand idle on the harvest plain …”

BLOG 7/20/18. “WHY ARE YOU ALWAYS SO CRITICAL OF THE CHURCH?”

One of my dearest friends would occasionally ask me the probing question: “Why are you always so critical of the church?” My response was to refer her to God’s calling to Jeremiah the (7^th century BC) prophet from Israel’s history: “Behold, I have put my words in your mouth. … to pluck up and break down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant” (Jer. 1:9-10). I had to explain that God’s calling of Jeremiah was because Israel, which was called to be a holy nation, had long-since forgotten that calling, and had contrived a comfortable religious structure which was high on God’s promises, but totally oblivious and forgetful of the purpose and demands given to it in its own founding, namely its calling to be obey the law, the Torah, which was to define its character which would set it apart from other nations.

God had to send prophets to Israel because they had forgotten Torah, i.e., their own calling, purpose, identity, and instructions.

God also told Jeremiah that it was unlikely that Israel would hear what he was saying, since they were completely self-satisfied with their reinterpreted sense of their uniqueness. Later, God would send Micah (8^th century BC) to rebuke Israel again: “… and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God” Micah 6:9). One can easily summarize the message of all of the prophets to Israel in a reminder to: remember Torah. Israel could not be a light to the nations if they forgot their calling and the character they were to demonstrate as they conformed to the teachings of the Torah, the Mosaic law.

So, then, here we are looking at so much the ostensible church in the 21^st century, which has forgotten that its very designation: ek-klesia (translated into English as church) means ‘called out’. The church is a people called-out to herald in both spoken word, and in obedient lives, the teachings and mission of Jesus. The church is called out to be the continuing presence of Christ in the world. The church is called out to demonstrate God’s New Creation, his kingdom, in flesh and blood community.

Sadly, far too often, the church re-interprets is reason for being into something far less than that. It becomes complacent about its own calling to be the missionary arm of the Holy Trinity, and becomes a merely human religious institution, many of whose members cannot even articulate the teachings of Jesus to which and for which they are called. Those new creation communities may begin well, focused on their calling, and teaching one another and encouraging one another in this calling. But all too soon, forgetfulness sets in, and missional obedience is replaced by entertaining church activities. Their communal lights go out.

I had to explain to my cherished friend and inquirer that one could not “build and plant” positively until all those evidences of forgetfulness and gospel disobedience were exposed, plucked up, broken down, and destroyed. This, I explained, was the necessity of critical rebuke, which also is a God-given ministry.

I hasten to add, that such critical rebuke can easily become a very useless function when it becomes carping criticism born out of selfish dissatisfaction. It must always be done in love, and with positive intent, i.e., with kindness and humility. What this reminds us of is that we need to be continually engage in those disciplines that will keep the  community contagious with message and mission given to us by Jesus Christ when he calls us to himself.

At the heart of our calling is that we are to demonstrate the love of God in all our relationships, in both mutual encouragement and nurture, and in our ministry of rebuke and reproof within the community. “By this shall all men know that you are my disciples in that you love one another.” Run with it!

BLOG 7/17/18. THE CHURCH NEEDS BOTH ARCHAEOLOGISTS AND ARCHITECTS IN THE TURBULENT BETWEEN-THE-ERAS CULTURE

Those of us who inhabit church communities are certainly no more exempt from the turbulence of our present cultural whitewater as we are irresistibly carried along by all of the changes that are taking place in nearly every dimension of our lives. The church which took on many institutional forms over previous centuries has been seeing those institutions become victims of a post-Christian era, and being replaced by a culture formed by a much more secular era, and one so often indifferent to the Christian faith. In my city, here it is now common to see handsome old church sanctuaries demolished and replaced by housing or commercial developments. Denominations become increasingly irrelevant, and the digital age brings us into intimate contact with the presence of other followers of Christ across the globe.

I was in conversation with a gifted bunch of younger men and women a few years ago who were trying to figure among themselves what it would take to be a community that had integrity with what were the essentials of Christ’s intent for the church. A few of the leaders would get together with me from time to time to ‘pick my brain’ about my insights gleaned from decades of leadership in the church. They were a gifted, and not at all a passive group. They would would report in periodically. The day came when they wanted to share one of their insight with me, and I will pass their insights on to you here.

In essence: they shared that they did not want to forsake the treasures of the church’s past, or the lessons the church had learned in, often, extenuating circumstances and seemingly intractable difficulties. Nor did they want to forsake its heritage in the components of purposeful gatherings. But then again, they did not want to be captive to those forms as our emerging era is carried into a digital and global community of ethnic nomads who bring their cultures and religious or irreligious persuasions with them. So, Christian communities in Myanmar will partner with Christian communities in American cities and towns.

That means that the church must be always rediscovering itself, and reconfiguring itself. Their conclusion was simple: they were to be, intentionally, both ecclesiastical archaeologists and ecclesiastical architects, i.e. those who were always retrieving the treasures of the church’s past, and at the same time forming communities that were sensitive to the emerging future. They sensed that having integrity in this nation might well be, at the present historic moment, one of the most difficult what with those forms of communal life that perpetuated overfamiliarity and mindless participation. They were keenly aware that there are abroad in this country and at this moment those who make the most noise about their Christian faith, who seem to be the most illiterate of its essence, which makes those outside the church the more resistant to the true church’s message.

Their insights get very close to home with me. As my own Presbyterian denomination was rapidly losing members, a professional study group did an in-depth study of the causes. Here we were with venerable theological institutions, ostensibly producing good leadership, yet it was the conclusion of the poll that, note, … a denomination of Biblical and theological illiterate laymen and laywomen. Alas! My young friends were sharp enough to know that it takes continual work to maintain a fruitful Christian community in a culture that is rapidly in transition—and yet without losing touch with its rich heritage from the past two millennia. Archaeologists and architects. Indeed, that is a compelling calling for all who participate in such communities.

[http://wipfandstock.com/the-church-and-the-relentless-darkness.html]

BLOG 7/13/18. THE CONTRADICTION OF CHURCHES IMMUNIZED TO THE MESSAGE AND MISSION THAT JESUS GAVE THEM

If this kind of situation were not so tragic it would be humorous, i.e., that landscape is filled with ostensible churches who are totally sterile and non-reproductive. Jesus taught us that we are to be branches of a grapevine (which grapevine is his own life and power), and that it is to be expected that the branches would bear fruit. OK? But what happens when a branch does not bear fruit? What does the keeper of the vineyard do? Simple, he prunes the branch off so that it does not continue to sap the of its intended purpose, which is simply to bear fruit. And the pruned branches are then cast into the fire and burned.

So, then, how does one account for all of those communities purporting themselves to be Christ’s churches that seem totally immune to the obligations of discipleship in knowing the teaching of Jesus and the mission of Jesus, which he committed to his followers? Happily, this is not true of a great host of alive, growing, thriving Christian communities globally, … but it is pathology that needs to be diagnosed and dealt with in all-too-many. Living churches created disciple, which disciples are informed of the message, and engaged in the mission, i.e., disciples make disciples. But when one is somehow immunized to the message and mission, one suspects the subtle wiles of the devil at work. One of the fruits of having been engaged in the church’s leadership, for as long as I have, is to have to observed such subtle subversions take place, and to wonder why?

To that end, let me give you one ‘for-instance’. I had been the pastor of a fairly traditional Presbyterian church for several years. I was well received. We engaged in all the expected functions that churches are to perform. It was a comfortable and congenial company of church members. We had a well-thought-out membership class for those seeking admission into its membership. With that background, I had the bright idea of allowing the congregation to participate in the sermon with me. I was to preach, that Sunday, on the text from I Peter 3 in which Peter tells those of that community (which evidently was living in a very hostile environment) that they should, first of all, live out the lives as illustrations of God’s new creation in Christ, even if it subjected them to harassment and persecution. But, also, they should be ready, peradventure someone one asked them for the reason for their hope (like: “What give with you guys?”), with a thoughtful answer for that hope, and to do it with gentleness and sensitivity.

With that in mind, I proposed to my congregation that as an exercise of that teaching that we take a few minutes, and for them to turn to the person next to them, and to share with them the reason for their hope, their belief in Jesus Christ, the joy of their faith. The response? I could observe that some picked right up on that and happily engaged in such sharing. But then there was also some obvious dismay and embarrassment among all too many. Alas! After the service, one of the prominent first ladies of the church approached me, eyes flashing with anger, and said: “Bob, don’t you ever do that to us again,” and stormed off.

How to explain one so prominent in the community, and yet so immunized to the gospel and its mission? At the end of the letter to the Ephesians, Paul tells those folks to be strong in the Lord and to beware of the wiles of the enemy, i.e. Satan’s subtle schemes to render them immunized to the gospel and to be less than contagious with it in fulfilling his mission. They are to be irresistibly reproductive. And when this is not so in a congregation, then our yellow-lights should blink on. True disciples make disciples. That is the work of the Spirit that enables us to bear much fruit, even in the most unlikely circumstances, … and it is every believer’s responsibility. It is the life of Christ at work in our very human lives. Got it?

[http://wipfandstock.com/subversive-jesus-radical-grace.html]

BLOG 7/10/18. CLINGING TO ‘YESTERDAY’… WON’T WORK

A certifiable reality among us is that very small percentage of persons have the capacity to think in terms of the future. This results in their passionately clinging to past patterns, even as those patterns and strucures become dysfunctional and counter-productive. This reality cropped-up recently in a news release from a mid-western state where a political candidate was advocating his support of a politician because he was seeking “to preserve Christendom,” … alas! We are long-since past the era of Christendom, that collaboration between church and state which began with the Emperor Constantine, and which determined so much of western history, probably down to somewhere in the early 20^th century. We are for the last century, at least, solidly in the post-Christian era.

We are watching the demise of many patterns of that past era: viable political parties, church denominations and institutions, standards of morality, and so much more. Christian dominance in the culture has been replaced with a self-satisfied humanism whose response to Christian affirmations is a dismissive: “So what?” To be candid, our western cultures have always been replete with embarrassing contradictions, intractable challenges, and charismatic personalities who were at the same time toxic in their influence.

So, what is to be the Christian response? Are we to be a people of despair? … Or of hope? I am frequently reminded when tempted to despair that when God commissioned Jeremiah to his prophetic ministry to a rebellious people, to a people who seemed blind and deaf to their calling, … with the instruction to “go and buy a plot of land in Anathoth,” in a high-risk area, as a token of God’s design for Israel’s future. Always there comes to us in scripture our calling to be a people of hope, to be tomorrow’s children, knowing that we will find unexpected co-belligerents along the way, who though not sharing our Christian beliefs or calling, never-the-less share our vision for peace and order and righteousness, our zeal to be reconcilers and peacemakers, our compassion for those homeless and poor and infirm.

I have often borrowed two graphic descriptions of this historic moment in which we are living: 1) it is a cultural whitewater between what was, and yet un-knowing of what is before us, and totally at the mercy of forces and turbulence over which we have no control. And, 2) it is a cultural diastrophism, that phenomenon when subterranean tectonic plates shift and so cause earthquakes that destroy much of the familiar on the surface. Both are suggestive of where we are living.

And so much of the church tends to fail to recognize these realities and clings to patterns no longer viable, and indifferent to the forces impinging upon us, and often even denying them, and so becoming salt-less salt. It is one thing to sing: “O, where are kings and empires now of old that went and came? But Lord your church is praying still, a thousand years the same …” and yet becoming immunized to the reality that we are the children of God’s tomorrow, and, so, called to be those radical practitioners of God’s love and hope, … even in the seemingly impossible realities of this moment. The prophetic voices also, frequently come from very controversial sources: Nelson Mandela, Mohandas Gandhi, Martin Luther King, … plus a host of little people who are faithful, and who are energized by the reality that we are living in God’s tomorrow even though the victims of this confusing today. But clinging to yesterday won’t work.

The Book of Revelation has a telling, and very instructive (for us) description of God’s people living in hostile cultures: “They overcame by the blood of the Lamb, by the word of their testimony, even if it cost them their lives.” (Rev. 12:11). We are to be a people of contagious hope. Yes!

BLOG 7/6/18. WHEN AND HOW SHOULD A CHURCH BE TERMINATED?

I want to introduce a very serious question with my readers, and then pursue it in my next several blogs—maybe this is really a series of questions. When is a church really a church? When does a church cease to be a church? What defines a true church? What is the difference between a true church, and a religious institution?

I am not being cynical here. This was provoked in my mind as I have been reading a fascinating book about the ethical challenges faced by the humanitarian organization: Doctors Without Borders (or, Medecins Sans Frontiers). In their forty years of existence they have, of necessity, had to be continually refining their reason for existence and how to efficiently and rapidly get aid to the victims of plagues or natural disasters. Yet, they admit that it is, for them, much easier to know how and when to initiate a venture into a disaster area, than it is to resolve how to terminate their presence once the situation has been stabilized. Its participants have become familiar with the local culture, have made resolved the crisis for which they initiated it, have made friends, have established routines, … and to consider their agency packing up and moving on is a very difficult decision for them.

Not only am I a student of church history on one hand, but on the other hand I have personally engaged in decades as a teacher and leader in a mainline denomination. I have written extensively on the nature of the church (ecclesiology) as a missiologist. That is a dangerous combination. (A scholar in the field of missiology, David Bosch, has noted that missiologists are always ‘gadflies’ in the church or, in the field of ecclesiology). I have too frequently observed how many traditional church institutions are totally un-evangelized. People love the place, the worship services, gifted church professionals, and so to get their regular ‘spiritual fix’ but never make any connection with what Jesus intends his church to be and to do, … and even more with any connection with the obligations to costly obedience that come with being baptized into Christ, and his church.

This is not a moot question. In the early chapters of the Book of Revelation, the ascended Lord evaluates the seven churches in Asia Minor, and finds that most of them have already, after a generation of existence, drifted in one way or another, away from their intended essence, their calling, their faithfulness (only the two who are suffering persecution are affirmed for their faithfulness). But, the Lord warns those churches which are forgetful, or drifting, that if they do not repent (get their act together) he will remove their lamp from the lampstand, i.e., they will cease to be part of his mission and purpose.

With that bit of sketchy (not cynical) background, consider a briefing on the raison d’etre of the church. Jesus came preaching, that in himself, God’s Kingdom, God’s New Creation, had arrived into their history—God’s tomorrow has invaded our today, or, God future has invaded our now. He calls men and women from every kindred and race and tribe to come to him and be embraced in his reconciling and recreating grace through accepting him as Lord, and accepting a whole new frame of reference (repentance). At the same time, this is not to be a solitary spiritual experience, rather he calls them out of their broken-ness and into a new community of those so called, whose purpose is to demonstrate the actual recreation of the human community into the design of God. It is to be a community passionate in their love and adoration of their Savior, and at the same time, passionate to be the incarnation of his radical love, his radical hope, his radical new creation behavior. It is to be (as one has defined it) the missionary arm of the Holy Trinity. God’s people come to be engaged in a radical obedience and discipleship, … never in passive ‘church membership’—never! … to be continued.

http://wipfandstock.com/what-on-earth-is-the-church-14083.html

BLOG 7/3/18. THE END OF AN ERA: PART II

Last Friday in this blog I raised the question of whether, or not, we were looking at the end of an era, and of the American Empire as we have known them. Designate that blog as a reality check. The answer is that we are unmistakably looking at a very turbulent period in nearly every dimension of our culture, and with most of those influences that impinge upon all of our lives. So, what’s new? Our calling by Jesus Christ is the same even in the turbulence and unpredictability of this cultural white-water. We are those who pray: “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as in heaven.” That is the prayer that gives us focus no matter what is going on around us, … and it may lead us into some of the most thrilling episodes of discipleship that we have known, i.e., faithful discipleship in the midst of cultural white-water.

Kingdoms, empires, structures of stability, powerful agencies / power-strictures, and other unexpected forces can fade into insignificance, … but not God’s New Creation, his Kingdom. God’s tomorrow has invaded our today, and it is ultimately irresistible—God’s future has invaded our present, and that reality is present in those of us who are Christ’s disciples and who are responding in joyous obedience to his teachings, and so are a people of hope, a people of purpose, a people of love. This calling is what motivates us even in the most uncertain, and even the most hostile or uncomfortable of situations. Don’t lose this: We’ re called to be the incarnation of his design no matter how much the chaos, the cultural (social and political) darkness seem to be prevailing.

But, brothers and sisters, this also reminds us of how much we need a community of faith, of those other disciples with whom we have the word of Christ dwelling among us as we teach and admonish one another (Colossians 3:16 in loc). We need one another’s encouragement, their refinement, their input into our lives. It is such intimates in the faith who may well see in us some potential, some potential role of engagement or leadership that we don’t see in ourselves. We don’t function well in isolation from those of Christ’s people who love us. They also serve to ‘check us’ when we would take off into some role for which we are not gifted. This has certainly been illustrated many times to me, when I was encouraged into roles that I would not have chosen for myself, and likewise challenged when I was contemplating some venture that would not be helpful.

In this ‘white-water period’ this could even mean that one’s Christian friends could encourage a gifted participant to run for political office, … though most of us simply need nurture and encouragement for the vicissitudes of our lives with family, neighbors, working associates, or classmates.

But such a calling to faithful discipleship means that we need to be equipped with knowledge, to discern the times, to be informed about the forces that impact our lives in the civic communities.  We dare not go into the battle ill-equipped, or making lame excuses that are “only a poor layman” when we are, rather, called to be ambassadors for Christ, and those men and women of God who abound in hope. No, it is a thrilling time to be alive no matter the demise of an era, or of an empire. God’s future has invaded our present, and, in that reality we engage each day with the eyes of faith. Take heart! Who knows what is around the next corner for you and me? God’s kingdom is irresistible, even when all seems to be in chaos, even when its proponents are in prison, even when its heralds and disciples are called ‘foolish’. God uses the weak and foolish and of no social pedigree to accomplish his eternal design. That makes us a people of hope … even at the end of one era, and the demise of the empire.

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