Enchanted Community

LOG 4/8/17. THE CHURCH AND SELF-SACRIFICING LOVE (CONTINUED)

The theme I pursued with my readers on the last Blog deserves a bit more clarification. The reality is that all too many existing churches never spell out to those coming into ‘membership’ what will be the requirements/demands that this community of discipleship requires, i.e., what are the disciplines? It is all too common for the ostensible church community to speak all the advantages that will accrue if one joins, and because of that many join with expectations that they expect to be fulfilled, or with their own personal requirements/demands of what they expect the church fulfill on their behalf. The idea of self-sacrificing love may, or may not, be one of those expectations.

Always lingering in the ethos of an authentic Christian community, that colony—that is called to be the incarnation of God’s New Creation in Christ—is the image of Jesus himself: “… even as the Son of Man came not to be served (ministered unto) but to serve (minister) and to give his life …” (Matthew 20:28). And those who are to be his followers are to be formed into his likeness. When (as one might say) the genome of Christ inhabits his followers by the working of the Holy Spirit, … then there comes naturally to them the self-giving, or losing-one’s-life for the sake of others. The others in the community, in all stages of their need and broken-ness, or maturity and godliness, become both the responsibility of one another, and also those ‘one anothers’ to whom one is accountable.

I learned this a number of years ago when (for complicated reasons) I fell heir to the role of the teaching-shepherd of a dispirited church that had existed for several decades in a fairly dismal industrial village. It had been founded as a mission, primarily, so that our Presbyterian denomination could have it ‘denominational franchise’ there along with the Baptists, Methodists, and Pentecostal Holiness churches. Folk had joined it because that is what one did—one belonged to a church whether one attended often or not, and usually not with any compelling understanding of the Christian faith—though I hasten to say that there were some real saints around the margins of the church, but they were not at all the dominant force.

Along the way, as I sought to be a faithful teacher of scripture in my Sunday morning role, there began to be a trickle of folk who were attracted by that teaching and who wanted to join in the community. I was torn. It was not a healthy congregation, and they needed to know that up front. Ultimately, in desperation, I wrote out a Covenant of Membership spelling out my understanding of what should be the commitment of those joining, and our leadership team of Elders approved it as the standard by which folk would be received. I leap ahead here to report that these sixty years later, that same congregation, now a very robust community of faith, still uses that covenant—decades of believers accepting such a life-style. But, apropos to our thesis here, let me share Article VI of that Covenant (heavily influenced by Bonhoeffer’s Life Together).

“I come accepting the responsibility of being a part of this congregation as God’s gift to me and as the community of people where He is at work redemptively. I do not come making demands on it, but rather giving myself to its unity, its peace, and its purity. I covenant with 

God and this congregation to encourage, to love, to bear the infirmities of, to pray for, to minister to, and to be reconciled with, to forgive, and to be forgiven by my Christian brothers and sisters here in accordance with scriptures so that the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace be maintained among us. “Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ” (Ephesians 5:20).

Yes! And, as per my last Blog,…  a sense of humor, and true humility make such self-sacrificing love much more winsome and contagious, … the sweet aroma of Christ. Let me encourage such a fulfilling way of life and love among my readers.

BLOG 4/4/17. THE CHURCH: SELF-SACRIFICING LOVE, … AND A SENSE OF HUMOR

A life, such as mine, spent in church leadership soon teaches one that he/she needs a great sense of humor. Persons engage the church with all kinds of ambitions, agenda, demands, expectations, persons who take themselves quite too seriously … and often with very little understanding of what the church even is. The church defies human definition, primarily, because it is of divine origin, and with a divine purpose, and with a divine habitation. To be sure, it has very porous boundaries, but it has an awesome purpose in that it is to be the recreation of the human community, and its first-born is Jesus Christ. It is into his image and likeness that all those who come are to be formed.

In a recent Blog, I spoke of those who seemed perennially passive participants, and who never seemed to get the message and become part of its dynamic mission. Perhaps it is because they never asked the question: What is the purpose of this Christian community? What does it require of me if I identify with it as a participant? What would be my role? What would I gain, and what would I have to renounce?

I frequently ponder the incredible and very rapid expansion of Google from an idea to a huge enterprise including tens of thousands of employees How do they maintain their integrity? How do they keep everyone engaged fruitfully? Well, you see, Google is a human enterprise, and when one aspires to become an employee, then there is a very disciplined procedure.  First of all, there is little question of why Google exists and what it does. The company researches the person behind the application thoroughly, so there are few secrets about his/her gifts. Then, if they are invited for an interview, they are asked the question, right up front: Why do you want to come to work for Google? Then what would you bring to the company? Do you understand the work ethic, the accountability, and the dynamics of our working groups? Etc.

The church can’t do all of that. The  church is made up of people who bring to this New Creation community only their need of such, their need to be reconciled to God, and to be agents of reconciliation to others. They cannot come making demands upon it, or offering their human accomplishments as credentials, or even their spiritual amibitions. It all begins with Christ’s calling to forsake all and follow him, and then it requires that all become respondents to Christ’s great commandment: “That you love one another as I have loved you,” i.e., that you engage in self-giving, self-sacrificing, servant love to one another, and so demonstrate what this New Humanity is all about.

Those who come to this Christian community with motives of self-fulfillment, of some personal ambition or agenda, and demand that it measure up to their standards, … prove at the outset that they have never responded to Christ’s call and commandment to self-sacrificing love for one another.  Because—face it! —the church is weird, and filled with all kinds of evidences of the need of God’s grace, … and his calling is that we be agents of that grace to one another. That’s why, along with being agents of Christ’s reconciling love to one another in the restoration of true community, that we need a robust sense of humor.

Those who don’t get this essence will always be strangers, they will never truly join/identify, they will become part of that ever present, never satisfied, company of ecclesiastical vagabonds, going from church to church, but never becoming responsive to the church-building presence of the Spirit of God. The alternative is the life-giving presence of Christ to one another, and the creation of his New Humanity with the most unlikely components—us!

[If you want to pursue this thesis, I highly recommend Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Life Together. It’s a classic, and was written under the most stressful and dangerous circumstances.]

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BLOG 4/1/17. THE CHURCH: SPRINGS OF LIVING WATER, OR STAGNANT POOLS?

In a humorous exchange with in irrepressible fellow pastor a few years back, we were discussing some mutual friends who had become part of the Christian community which I was pastoring, I explained itheir joining in my lofty theological hubris,  by attributed it to my Reformed theological integrity in preaching. He laughed at me, with the response: “Bob, people don’t join your church because of your Reformed theology, they join because they smell life.” … They smell life!

That subject came up over lunch again, yesterday, with a gifted pastoral friend. We were wondering why there are some people who are continually present in church meetings, but never seem to become contagious with the life of Christ, and never seem to become the agents of teaching and making disciples others? This is not a new phenomenon. The writer of the New Testament letter to the Hebrews, wrote: “… you have become hard of hearing. For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again …” (Hebrews 5:12 ft.).

That reality, so regularly present, raises the question of why some Christian communities are absolutely contagious and growing, with its participants energized and reproductive disciples of Jesus Christ … like streams of living water in their context, while other ostensible Christian communities are more like stagnant pools, green grown, and non-life-producing. Or, why do some Christian communities begin as life-producing colonies of God’s New Creation, and then settle down to secure their gains, ossify, and become static and ingrown, … making an idol of their institution or of their more fruitful past?

One of my ‘takes’ on this is that Jesus told us that he would be building his church, but that our task was to “make disciples,” i.e., to be forming those who come to God in Christ into mature disciples, and fruitful in their knowledge and the practice of that new life in Christ. You see this early in the history of the church, when the apostle Paul landed in the commercial center of Ephesus, found his way to the synagogue, told some people that in Jesus, God’s messiah had come, and when a score of folks responded, he spent several months teaching them and forming them (making disciples) of them. Then—aha! They were commercial agents and on their trade travels took that word with them, and the record says (check this) that all Asia (Minor) heard the gospel. Streams of living water …

What happens? Why do some churches become so quickly ossified, and inhabited by passive, (often-demanding), non-reproductive church members, who “go to church” (even participate in bible studies) but with no evident intent, thereby, to become more fruitful in their obedience to Christ? Why have so many of the venerable theological schools not included some training in the skills of disciple-making in their curricula for equipping church leaders? This, especially, as the purpose of fruitful and effective preaching, and of all church activities should be for the equipping and energizing of the participants to become, themselves, skillful in their contagious Christian lives?

At the same time, there are those emerging colonies everywhere, which don’t appear in the form of venerable church institutions, but which colonies in multiple forms are incarnating God’s passion for those who are still walking in the darkness, still communicating God’s love in Christ, in surprising and innovative ways, bringing hope and meaning and love into the lives of those empty lives that Jesus came to seek and to save. Jesus is dramatically building his church in surprising ways, in surprising places, and among surprising people—though not in stagnant church institutions. For-instance, some disciples in Europe are making contact with Islamic refugees, and the reports are leaking out, that there is an awakening to Jesus Christ in that large and unlikely and tragic populace! Some churches are life-giving in often totally unlikely contexts. To be continued …

BLOG 3/28/17. IN THE CHURCH: “WHAT’S GOING ON UNDER THE HOOD?”

Savvy business leaders need to know “what’s going on under the hood?” Like: what’s happening down at the lower levels of the company, among the middle-management folk, and, more importantly among the rank and file of the company’s employees? What’s on their minds as the drink coffee together and discuss the company? Where are the glitches that make their work experience frustrating, or less than fulfilling? To this end, in the healthy and growing companies, management devises all kinds of ways to break out of their executive suites and communicate with the grass-roots, i.e. “under the hood.” Another description of this quest is for leadership to know “the big data” that is determining the course of their market and the inner-working of their own corporate structure.

This is a principle too often overlooked in larger church institutions. In a recent blog, I referred to the frequent articles in journals about folk abandoning the institutional churches. It’s not that those institutions are not rather impressive, or it’s not because their professional leadership is not well-trained academically, … but it is because that leadership too often takes on a clergy persona and becomes isolated from what is going on under the hood, or the big data that is determining the cultural setting in which they operate, … and this is ever undergoing change.

I’ve often remarked in these blogs, that the growing-edge of the church in the world today is in house churches, which means that there is some kind of energy, some kind of mutual understanding of what’s going on under the hood, some kind of common awareness of the big data that is determining their lives and society, … and a freedom to engage these realities. If you read the few passages in the New Testament that refer to church leadership, you find presbyters (elders), or episcopoi (overseers) who seem to be those in the small colonies who were the most mature and respected because of their knowledge, their maturity and wisdom, and because they are models of the faith. This means that the authentic church leaders were those who were in dynamic communication with those committed to their charge.

Even such an awesome and unique figure as the apostle Paul was formed by significant engagement with the people he was dealing with, as a teacher, as a model, as a fellow artisan (tent-maker) or prisoner, … and so who could say with complete artlessness: “Be imitators of me even as I also am of Christ.” Paul lived in the homes of many of the people with whom he worked. He spent many months with those few believers originally in Ephesus, forming them, sharing their lives, … so that ultimately they could move out into Asia Minor with the word of Christ.

Such awareness on the part of church leadership means that in its ministry to those committed to them, that their times together are transformational, relevant to their lives, mutually caring, and mutually energizing. Isolated church leadership (too many ‘clergy’) fail to provide this kind of ministry.

One of my mentors described the ministry of disciple-making (which belongs to all believers) as that of spending such significant time with others that you reproduce yourself in them (assuming that you are formed in the image of Christ). When such a knowledgeable and transformational relationship exists, church leadership certainly knows what is going on under the hood. (And … please note … you don’t learn that discipline by attaining an academic degree in theology, … but by patient engagement in the realities of those with whom you are engaged in Christ.) So, what’s going on under the hood of your colony of believers?

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

BLOG 3/25/17. THE CHURCH: CHANGING TIMES, AND CHANGING PATTERNS

Within the past week there have appeared a couple of interesting journalistic offerings that deserve the attention of those who still have some affinity for the phenomenon of the church—one article somewhat obvious, and the other, perhaps, a bit more interpretation on my part. One is an article in the Atlantic Monthly (April 2017) entitled: “Breaking Faith” and spells out how American churchgoing has declined in traditional religion—and the article deserves our careful reading, not because it is Christian, but because it is good journalism and is enlightening to any who are serious about the health of Christ’s church. The other bit of ongoing news, that has appeared again with the last week, is that the giant department stores, such as Sears and K-Mart, are probably not going to survive much longer (along with Macy’s, etc.).

Put those two together in your imagination. People who are no longer shopping in the large, traditional-in-the-past, brick and mortar stores … are not ceasing toshop, but are simply changing patterns—going, rather, to Amazon, or some such on-line source. The article on the decline of church-going is more difficult to research. It is true that the day of impressive church sanctuaries and colorful preachers, etc. is fading fast, … but look deeper. There is still in all human beings—no  matter how much they may protest—a quest for meaning, for relationships, for spirituality, for some center for their lives, some authority, some guiding line and final goal. And if attendance upon some Sunday morning ‘worship service’ allows them to still be lonely and anonymous, and to have none of those quests addressed … then an honest response is: who needs it?

The fact is: many of those who are “fleeing organized religion” are simply seeking to be better stewards of their time. Atlantic Monthly employs such notions as the one that says this departure is, among others, let by secular, tolerant young people who may be a bit more insistent on some integrity in the use of their time. But it may also be the reality of honest young (or old) Christian folk who have some integrity in their Christian calling. Let me unpack that a bit. If to be a follower of Jesus Christ—a disciple—is to have the life of Christ (or the Spirit of Christ, or the genome of Christ) dwelling in our human lives, … then I want the use of my time to be fruitful in that calling, including the time I take to be with others of like calling. The Spirit of Christ in me resonates with the Spirit of Christ in you and in others, and it is good for us to be together to encourage one another, to be forming each other in the word of Christ, … and to share our pilgrimage and to be equipped to be engaged in this calling by Christ to be the ‘light of the world and the salt of the earth.’

So (stick with me here) … if the ostensible (institutional) church, the ‘ecclesiastical Sears-Roebuck’, is discerned to be disappointing and not fulfilling such needs, … then an honest generation will use its considerable entrepreneurial skills to form colonies that do, in fact, energize, inform in knowledge, equip for the Monday-morning world, and to be good stewards of their time. They may not be “breaking faith” at all, … but creating new forms of the colonies of God’s New Humanity that do what the church being created by Christ is called to do.

And, my dear readers, you can rest assured that this is happening: House churches, coffee cup Bible studies and discussions, informal but very relational and nurturing colonies, even including Eucharist after community meals, not part of any organized religion or denomination of the past, … with with access by internet to the very best Biblical studies imaginable, and communication with others like them through social media. The actuality of this now taking place is an awesome reality. Times and patterns change, but Christ is irresistibly building his church. Stay tuned …

BLOG 3/21/17. PILGRIMS AND STRANGERS … BUT NOT ESCAPISTS

We followers of Jesus Christ, need to be reminded regularly, that while “we have here no enduring city …” that we are, at the same time called to be the salt of the earth and the light of the world. Yes, and while we know that we are “aliens and exiles” (pilgrims and strangers) here, we are at the same time called to be the incarnation of God’s new creation wherever our lot finds us. We also need to be reminded that to be faithful to our calling by Jesus Christ, it can also be very costly, …  even costing us our lives. We are told, in the last book of the Bible, that in the face of the most unbelievable and horrendous circumstances, the people of the Lamb of God overcame by the blood of the Lamb, by the word of their testimonies, even if it cost them their lives.

Most of those who read these Blogs of mine are not living in overtly hostile and anti-Christian cultures and nations. The resistance we face is more subtle. It can prevent a promotion, or put us at odds with those who are ideologically different, or on a different ethical wave-length. I can report that, even as a teaching-pastor of the church for many decades, that there were all kinds of challenges to mute certain of the strong teachings of scripture, or to engage in ecclesiastical politics that took the church off on a tangent in subtle ways.

Our Christian sisters and brothers in China, or in hostile anti-Christian nations, know the daily risks, and are constrained to be “wise and serpents and harmless as doves” and still always live with the possibility of concentration camps, or being deprived of human rights, … and yet they continue to overcome, and Christ’s church continues to infiltrate the dark corners of the nations of this world.

Perhaps in our own post-Christian western culture, the church has become so immunized to its missional calling, that more and more of its former participants find it irrelevant to their desire to be Christ’s overcoming community, and so seek their community in smaller configurations of those who share together their mutual intention of being faithful to their true calling to overcome by “the blood of the Lamb and the word of their testimony…” Many venerable religious institutions that profess to be Christian, can be totally content with their only mission being the survival of the institution. Don’t be fooled, however. The gospel is out of control. It cannot be contained in stagnant institutions of ‘religious Christianity.’

But, to return to my thesis, one’s faithfulness to Christ comes at a price, and Christ’s followers must not be naïve. So often they find their encouragement and mutual nurture in the company of two or three, or some smaller gathering of those who self-consciously know that they are stewards of the divine nature (II Peter 1:2-4). But idols of popularity and success and security can so easily give one the temptation to be escapists rather than aliens and exiles out of whose lives flow rivers of living water. We always live in that tension. Behind this is the fact that we are always a people abounding in hope, and (insane as it may sound) who also have the capacity to rejoice in tribulation. Be watchful!

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

LOG 3/18/17. “I APPEAL TO A HIGHER LAW!”

When Martin Luther King, Jr. was challenged that he was breaking the civil laws regarding racial segregation, his immediate response was: “Yes, but I appeal to a higher law!” Precisely. As we stand appalled at the behavior and values of the present administration of this nation, and what one columnist has described as: “the Voldemort agenda” set forth in the budget proposals, those of us who profess to be followers of Jesus Christ, have to give serious thought to our response to such. Do we essentially ‘throw in the towel’ and hunker down hoping something will change, … or is there an active, a higher power that we have access to?

It displays a profound misunderstanding when we blithely pray: “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth …” and yet have so little awareness of what a revolutionary concept that reality portends—so little understanding that Jesus came to inaugurate his Age to Come / kingdom right here in the midst of the values and power structures, the ‘principalities and powers’ of this age, what with all of the  counter-cultural and revolutionary implications of that Age to Come, that kingdom, which we are praying will come and be incarnated right here on earth, right now.

Perhaps it will be of value to plagiarize New Testament scholar, N. T. Wright’s Biblical eloquence on this:

We cannot, then, pray this prayer and acquiesce in the power and glory of Caesar’s kingdom. Augustus would have known quite well what was going on if he’d heard anyone praying this prayer, and he would have trembled on his throne. If the church isn’t prepared to subvert the kingdoms of the world with the kingdom of God, the only honest thing would be to give up praying this prayer altogether, especially its final doxology. (from The Lord and His Prayer, in his last chapter expanding on: ‘The power and the glory’.) Bingo!

Yet, our mindlessness so frequently does ‘acquiesce’ because we have not come to grips with the role of the church in the world as God’s holy nation, in which it is not the rich and powerful and nobly born who prevail, but God’s weak in this age, foolish in the world, low and despised in the world, … to confound the rich and powerful and wise, according to this age. God’s New Creation, his kingdom, is subversive to the core, yet it is the true power.

With that reminder to my friends who read this blog, we need to be ceaselessly exploring and embracing the potential, and dynamic presence of such a kingdom, … and separating it from any bland, detached ‘religious Christianity’ that resides comfortably conformed to this age. As one hymn writers says so poignantly: “Prayer is the trustiest weapon of all.” Therefore, as these days of political darkness and confusion can easily cause us to despond, … resist and pray: Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as in heaven, … cause the values and ethics of the Age to Come be incarnated in this age … as God empowers his holy nation to live out its calling.

Does that sound revolutionary and subversive enough. Believe me, it is!

BLOG 3/14/17. WHO WOULD EVER WANT TO BE AN ‘EVANGELICAL’ … IF …?

All too many of the journalists and reporters, who make up the familiar newspapers of our nation, still fail to ‘get it.’ They persist in using the term evangelical to describe a breed of (usually) negative and conservative, and ostensibly Christian, political activists, which totally misuses and misunderstands the word. I’ve sung this song before on this Blog, but it needs to be revisited.

The followers of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, in the first century, set about to commit to writing the record of Jesus’ life and teachings. Four different associates and eye-witnesses of those events and teachings adopted the word that Jesus, himself, had used in heralding his message: “Jesus came into Galilee proclaiming the gospel (i.e., the evangel, or ‘thrilling announcement’) of God, and saying, ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand …’” Jesus used the common Greek word euangellion, which pertains to a thrilling announcement of something wonderful which had taken place, or was taking place, like, a military victory, or a new king, or some wonderful event. And so, Jesus’ follower entitled their accounts of his life and teachings as gospels/evangels.

OK, now for the unpacking of that. Jesus’ evangel was radically counter-cultural. It was addresses to the outcasts, and marginalized, and hopeless, and guilt-ridden of humankind. It also spoke to the deepest un-met needs of humankind. It was designated, by one apostle, as the gospel/evangel of peace. It addressed Jesus’ work of reconciling guilty humankind to God, and assuring them of his love. It was a message of hope. It was also a transforming message. It came with healing, it came with the promise that Jesus’ own divine life would inhabit those who embraced him as God’s Son, and God’s revelation to the meaning of life and of this world. It was thrilling beyond words. It brought hope. And … its ethical teachings throbbed with thrilling implications.

Now note: It was anything but a message of a dour, conservative, self-serving political agenda (as too many  journalists employ it). Quite the opposite: It called for an ethical agenda that was willing to suffer for the cause of justice, that was merciful, that welcomed strangers, that cared for the sick, and that demonstrated the love of God in such unmistakable lives that all who observed, or lived around them, would know that they were the followers of Jesus—the radical incarnation of the life and teachings of Jesus.

In terms of the political tensions in this present scene in these United States, the agenda of those who are truly evangelical in their Christian lives, would (to use an understatement) make Bernie Sanders look conservative. The teachings of Jesus are principled and responsible (in that sense: conservative), but in terms of the welfare of humankind, the teachings of Jesus reflect an unmistakable social agenda. Check it out.

Jesus preached to those on the margins. He denounced the rich is drastic terms. He was embraced by those of no special account: the weak, the foolish, those with no pedigree, those who were irreligious. Those who have practiced and incarnated his true evangel, over the centuries since, were a culture creating force with all kinds of humanitarian ministries.

To the totally misunderstood use of the word ‘evangelical’ … my response is: Who would ever want to be an ‘evangelical’ if it was that breed of protective, negative, conservative folk who are anything but Christ’s agents of faith and hope and love? No! By Jesus’ use of the word, his evangelical followers are those who so incarnate his teachings in their daily lives that men and women will see their good works and glorify God. Thrilling news!

One hopes that the journalists will wake up to this glaring error in their total misuse of such a beautiful word.

If you find these Blogs helpful, pass the word along. Thanks. And give me some feedback from time to time.

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

BLOG 3/11/17. WHAT’S YOUR ‘MONDAY-MORNING MISSION FIELD’?

This train of thought began casually the other Sunday morning when a few of us were having coffee before our fellowship gathered for worship. A friend and conversation partner, in passing, said: “If you think about it, Bob, pray for me tomorrow—I have a difficult problem to solve.” It turns out that it was a personnel problem, which problems are always painful. … But I began wondering, who equips us, or who models for us our role of Christian discipleship in whatever our Monday morning mission field may be? Christians need mentors for life in the grungy realities they confront in their ‘Monday-morning world.’

Let me see if I can pull up an event I experienced, as something of a metaphor, as a starting point. Some several years ago, the campus ministry, Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship, sponsored a several day conference for faculty and graduate students. Here were gathered some 1200 such persons from scores of campuses, mostly from the United States, but also from several other countries. The meeting was in the Hilton Hotel in Chicago in late December. A large banner off to one side of the platform of the ballroom stated the motto of the conference: Following Christ, Changing the World. – that motto would appropriately be displayed in every church gathering and in the prayer notes of every follower of Christ. That is our calling, and our goal. But who mentors us to fill that role amidst the complexities of our incarnation?

The conference was structured around four components: 1) at the heart of which was a very sensitive and reflective and quiet ministry of worship, placing the focus on God-in-Christ, where it belonged. 2) Then there was the presence of one of the giants of New Testament scholarship, N. T. Wright, to give it its strong Biblical foundation. I remember Dr. Wright’s emphasis that our Kingdom of God gospel is incredibly subversive (which got my attention). 3) Thirdly, there were specialized, more intensive, break-out sessions with gifted resource persons engaging more thoroughly in subjects relevant to the diversity of those participants. But, 4) the fourth (and more memorable to me) component was the inclusion of the witness-testimonies of some significant practitioners of Christian faith engaged in several different disciplines. I well remember that there was a renowned environmentalist from a major university, there was a well-known poet, … and several others. They were forthright in their honesty about the discipline of living out their faith in contexts not always congenial. It was, to use the over-used word: Awesome.

What one had to accept, in appraising that event, was that those 1200 participants all came with an intentional sense of having been called to the campus mission fields of the world. They came with a purpose—not to be entertained, but to be equipped and formed to fulfill their mission. These lived in the context of diverse philosophies, departmental politics, troublesome colleagues, and inescapable cultural realities.

The conference concluded with the moving witness of one of the daily witnesses relating his/her moving pilgrimage in Christ’s mission, … the lights dimmed, and softly the worship leader at a piano began to sing: Holy, holy, holy, Lord God almighty, early in the morning out song shall rise to Thee …” and 1200 joined in. That was the end, and the beginning. There was a holy hush. I looked around and individuals and groups were on their knees (as was I) placing their lives in obedience to Christ to change the world. This, for me was a great metaphor for how we form our times together as the people of God: Informed, challenged, mentored, … equipped for the realities, the vicissitudes, the ‘crap’ that is part of all our Monday morning worlds  (I dare say the world has not been the same since).  So, my friend’s request for my prayer for his difficult responsibility on Monday morning calls for the church community to be equipping all the followers of Christ, to enter their week both equipped … and with a vision for their transformational presence wherever they find their incarnation: Following Christ, Changing the World..

BLOG 3/7/17. EXACTLY WHERE DOES GOD DWELL? WHERE IS HIS HOUSE?

Does that sound like a stupid question? Or does it have anything to do with anything? I only raise it because of a couple of experiences that pass across my scope regularly. The first is that I frequently hear the comment coming from the pulpit about how: “we are meeting here in the house of God on this Sunday morning,” as though the building is where we come to visit God. That has deep roots into the history of the Christian movement. The Jews had the sacred temple in Jerusalem and the pagan religions had their shrines and temples, … but the Christian movement emerged and was contagious as a movement, and not wedded to such places … until the Roman emperor Constantine thought he was doing something to favor the previously persecuted church by endowing the church with grnd sacred places, … this notwithstanding that the early martyr Stephen had brought down the wrath of the Jewish leadership by stating unequivocally that God “does not dwell in  temples made with hands” (Acts 7:48).

So, if not in sacred buildings, where does God dwell? Well, the apostles made it plain that God dwells in his church, his called-out New Creation community. That community is the “dwelling place of God by the Holy Spirit.”  God dwells in the lives and community of his people. Where they are, God dwells. A particular community of those in whom Christ lives may gather  at a given time, or a given place, … but that place is not “God’s house.” But, alas! after Constantine that subversion became almost normative for most of the church, and that has persisted  for a millennium and a half in too much of the church’s movement. When the church was in unusual circumstances, or under persecution, it only communicated its meeting places secretly as temporary gathering locations, that changed frequently. The Wesleyan awakening was controversial in Anglican Church circles, so the Wesleyans had their meeting houses in public rooms, or wherever. Or the Quakers had their meeting houses, but they were not conceived of as sacralized places.

In more recent generations there have been voices such as Jaques Ellul, who flatly labelled such ‘sacralized’ places as a subversion of the Christian faith. Missiologist Howard Snyder surfaced the problem in his book, The Problem of Wineskins, in which he proposes that if you want to know how healthy your church is, then sell your church building! But such voices fall too often on deaf ears. There was a binge of building grand new structures as church institutions seeking to make their mark after World War II by investing huge amounts of money in structures hoping that these would attract new participants.

Ah! but the second provocation for my raising this questions is that there are so many new reports about how people are leaving the church, “O woe! O woe!” … While actually, something very healthy is taking place: Colonies of thoughtful (mostly) younger followers of Christ are meeting in vibrant, smaller, versatile, flexible colonies in which relationships and mutual faith and responsibility to one another are the key. Such an emerging generation is not into sacred buildings, nor are they wedded to life-long membership, … rather they are into an interactive and caring “one another” recreation of God’s design for his New Humanity community. To be sure, there are gifted teachers who find larger public forums for their ministry of equipping God’s people, but these are also often mobile and temporary.

When God dwells in you by his Spirit, and in me by his Spirit, then we share his mutual life and there is an immediate bond between us by which we become, in a real sense, Christ to one another. God dwells in his New Creation community. That community is his glory, his presence in all the myriad contexts. Church institutions may be on the decline and sanctuaries for sale, but the church is growing in coffee shops, and house churches, and under the banyan trees of the world. God is subverting the subversion of his church in creating it in new forms. Cheers!