Enchanted Community

BLOG 8/19/15. JOHN OLIVER . . . AND EMPEROR CONSTANTINE

It might seem strange, if not ridiculous, to designate the humorous, colorfully profane, and in-your-face late night talk show personality John Oliver as a prophet, … but I’m willing to risk it. (Actually, I don’t stay up that late, but there are easily available re-runs who I tune-in on regularly.) The other evening he lampooned the contradiction of radio and television religious preachers (empire-builders?) who make a huge personal fortunes off of “tax deductible” and contributions to their ministries. The Old Testament prophets could eat their hearts out that they didn’t have the medium of communication that Oliver has. It has become more and more of a scandal that there is such big money being made by those (I use the word lightly) of those ostensible preachers making such huge incomes upon the sacrificial giving of folk who think that they are serving God by sending in their money to such, often because of promises of blessings and healing that will come their way if they do.

But that reductio ad absurdum exposure by Oliver opened a whole ‘can of worms’ that the larger public takes for granted. Why is any religious institution or church tax-deductible? Where does that privilege come from? Why is it that church institutions can occupy valuable real estate and carry on such expensive enterprises, expect the civil governments to provide them services, and yet not pay their part of the freight that other organizations, corporations, and property owners are expected to pay? Did you ever ask yourself that question?

Or why does one give one’s offerings and tithes to such church institutions and organizations? Is it out of love for God and zeal for the mission of God, . . . or is it because one can write it off as a tax-deductible charitable contribution on next year’s income tax? Or, to whom are those to whom we give accountable for accomplishing some mission, and doing it economically and efficiently, and using them wisely to accomplish Christ’s mission in the world?

Here’s where the 4^th century emperor Constantine comes into the picture, a fact that John Oliver may not recognize. For the first three centuries of the Christian church’s existence it was a persecuted movement that found itself growing in the midst of continual hostilities and opposition by the pagan forces of the Roman Empire. It was an alien people, a community of religious exiles. It existed clandestinely often, and in prisons frequently—but it continued to grow at an unimaginable pace into the corners of the empire, and beyond. By the 4^th century it was one of the largest and most influential communities in the whole Roman Empire. It was at that time that the Emperor Constantine in a power struggle within the empire, professed to have seen a vision of the Cross and to have been converted to the Christian faith. The veracity of that conversion is a continual point of controversy, but that it became his profession is unquestionable.

Here’s where John Oliver and the church come into the picture. Constantine wanted his newfound faith to have all of the perks and accouterments of the pagan religions, what with temples, priests, choirs, rites, and official status. So the Christian faith ultimately became the official religion of the empire. This is called: the Constantinian-ization of the Christian faith. It was at that point that the Empire co-opted the church for its own advantage. It was a trade-off: “You (the church) support and pray for the empire and we’ll take care of you.” The church became captive to the empire, it became “landed.” And so it has come down through the centuries with: the Holy Roman Empire, with God Save the Queen, with God bless America, and with the dubious claim that any nation is a Christian nation. Ah, but it has its ‘perks,’ and one of those is that religious organizations become recipients of the civil community’s largesse and tax-deductibility. John Oliver may have given the opening shot at the integrity of the church’s present day captivity to Constantinian-ization and its perks. But the church pays a heavy price!

BLOG 817/15. A SUBJECT OF HUGE CONFUSION WITHIN THE CHURCH: THE KINGDOM OF GOD

As much as the concept of the Kingdom of God gets tossed around in the church, … as often as church folk pray: “Thy kingdom come,” as often as they read in the New Testament gospels about Jesus preaching the gospel of the kingdom, or the loaded prediction that “when this gospel of the kingdom shall have been preached in all the earth,” … it is a verifiable fact that most church folk have a very fuzzy, if not totally inadequate, concept of what the kingdom of God is all about. It, more often than not, has to do with some future state of things when there is some kind of harmony, and everybody lives happily ever after.

Meanwhile, in the realities of daily life, and ordinary ‘church life,’ folk go merrily along and do not realize that, if they have taken their baptismal vows seriously, then they are to be the present dynamic agents of that kingdom right in the midst of life’s daily realities, whether those realities are pleasant and filled with beauty, … or whether they are hopeless, tragic, or frustrating, or filled with injustice, greed, and human brokenness.

So, just to get the conversation going, let me see if I can begin to get some focus here. In the Old Testament there were all of those hints of the day when God would inaugurate a whole new creation. There are the prophecies about God’s anointed servant who would come and establish a dominion which would reconcile the rebellious human community to God, and where God’s design would be motivated by his law being written in human hearts. A new creation.

And then comes Jesus onto the scene. The angel told Mary that her son would sit on the throne of his father David, and of his kingdom there would be no end. That same Jesus several decades later came onto the scene proclaiming the thrilling news of the kingdom of God, and making the outrageous (?) statement that if he by the finger of God could cast out demons, then the kingdom of God was among them. He explained to his twelve disciples that upon the reality that he was God’s anointed he would call out a people who would then live out the divine nature in their daily lives, be God’s new creation people. He gave them a prayer that they should pray that God’s kingdom would be coming, and his will be being done … not in some future bye and bye, but here and now. He gave them guidelines for that life. He told them that those who had teachings and did/obeyed them were those who were his true disciples, his new creation people.

I could go on and on, … but just to prime the conversation, let me state for your investigation that: the kingdom of God is a designation that is near synonymous with eternal life, with new creation, with salvation, sometimes with righteousness, … but all speak of God’s great eschatological design to make all things new, and that reality was inaugurated in Jesus Christ, and is to be dynamically incarnated here and now by his church, and will ultimately be consummated when Jesus comes again. The calling to be Christ’s disciples is not to be taken lightly. Because of Christ’s life, death and resurrection, they are called to be the dwelling place of God by the Spirit, and to be the incarnation of the divine nature right in the midst of the here and now. They are called out of a dominion of darkness, and into the dominion of God’s dear Son.

This makes our calling to Christ thrilling, filled with challenges, subversive to the present darkness, but so very purposeful and filled with hope. So if you have a fuzzy spiritual image of the kingdom of God, then you have missed the point. Get over it. Check out your New Testament and see how this central theme is the church’s mission until it is heralded into every tribe and nation. It will tax you to the limit, but it is never dull. “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done …” Fasten your seat belts.

BLOG 8/12/15. GREAT FEEDBACK QUESTION: WHO MAKES DISCIPLES?

I love it when some of you guys feed me back comments or questions. I got one this week asking for some specifics on how the church should make disciples. That question raises a whole plethora of other questions, … plus there is no one-size-fits-all answer to it. Let’s start with goals, or purpose in one’s discipleship. I’m intrigued that the geniuses in Silicon Valley are passionate about clear goals, and focused on the customer. That may be a good clue to us.

First of all, the very term church can get us off track if it is conceived as an impersonal assembly in which we are passive observers of religious rites. The church is a community of those called out to incarnate the thrilling news (gospel) of God’s design to make all things new in and through Christ. The New Testament doesn’t give us any instructions of exactly what form that takes, and that is because it has to be versatile and flexible according to its particular context. But we do get a couple of dimensions demonstrated in the example of Jesus, and then his disciples. Jesus, first of all, did in fact do a lot of teaching to large audiences, such as the Sermon on the Mount. So larger assemblies in which the teachings of Christ and the Scriptures are clearly propounded were also practiced after Pentecost, then by Paul at Ephesus, and elsewhere. It is always a great gift when there is a skilled teacher who can assist us in understanding the riches and depths of God’s word. That communication of clear understanding of the meaning of Christ and his calling is one component of disciple-making. That makes disciple-making, on one hand, a communal learning process.

But then, secondly, what do we do with that teaching? How do we process it, and how do we learn to put it into practice in our particular lives? The writer of the Letter to the Hebrews chastises his readers that when they should be teachers of others, that they were still in need of being taught first principles themselves. He seems to put to burden on each person who has embraced faith in Christ. Jesus would teach that it was those who had his teachings and practiced them who were his true disciples, who build their houses on the rock, and he seems to make that the responsibility of each hearer. There is a huge host of believers globally who have become fruitful disciples by engaging in a study of Christ’s (Biblical) teachings and seeking to put them into practice without any encouragement from outside, simply because there isn’t any such.

There is an often hidden component here that speaks to the comment of my reader: the church is most basically that small unit (like: “If two of you agree … where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them” Matthew 18:20). This doesn’t take extensive scheduling or organization. It can be several guys around coffee fitted into busy schedules. It can be dinner table conversations. But it is always that set of relationships in which we can genuinely be responsible to and for each other. It is where we know each other’s strengths and weaknesses. It is where we share our journey into discipleship together with a wholesome dimension of intimacy. Such relationships are incredibly durable. I am still accountable to and responsible for those dear friends whom I have not lived near for many years, … but our mutual accountability to encourage each other is as strong as ever. My sense is that this cannot easily be organized by an administrator, nor should it be. It is one believer finding another. Jesus chose twelve out of the much larger group of his followers. Jeff Bezos of Amazon says that the effective planning/working group in his company must be able to be fed on two pizzas. That’s probably a good rule of the thumb. In such group we teach and admonish each other. We are mutual disciple-makers. We can both rebuke, instruct, encourage and pray for one another knowledgeably. A “two-pizza” working group of disciples with their Bibles, with the teachings of Christ, processing their lives together and with a sense of responsibility for each other is where the church makes disciples most effectively, … and where we can laugh and cry unashamedly.

BLOG 8/10/15. WORSHIP SERVICES … NEED TO GO SOMEWHERE

Our calling in Christ is not to “go to church” or to “attend weekly worship services.” Yes, we are encouraged to make our assembling together with other believers a part of our necessary disciplines, but that is because we actually need the mutual encouragement that should come from such gatherings (Hebrew 10:25). And, yes, there is the sabbath principle that is there from the beginning, and which comes from the very model of God, who worked in the six days of creation and then rested. We, likewise, need to recognize the necessity of both daily responsibilities and work, and then a time to rest and reflect.

But then we also need to stop and reflect on exactly what it is that we are called to be and to do as the followers of Jesus Christ, … and this is may not be as simple as it sounds. Paul taught that all things work together for good to those whom God calls. He goes on, then, to say that God has a purpose in knowing and calling us, and that is that we should be conformed to the image of his Son (Romans 8:29). If that is not sufficient to get our attention, then note that Peter taught us that God has called us to his own glory and excellence … and to make us partakers of his divine nature (II Peter 1:2-4). I love Gregory Boyd’s explanation that to glorify God is to be the radiant display of his divine nature, … and that takes place in a very real, often hostile, context.

So God calls us to be the walking, talking, living, breathing demonstrations of his own divine nature. And just where does remarkable display and incarnation this take place? It takes place in a very broken and fallen world in which we are, on one hand to be the thankful recipients of all that is good and true and beautiful, … but on the other in the grim realities of all that is ugly and broken and discouraging. We are aliens and exiles to be sure, but we are also called to be the children of the Light, i.e., “lights shining in the darkness.” And in this pilgrimage we are given, hopefully, a community of others who are walking it with us, and among whom we are mutually encouraging and teaching each other.

This means that when we assemble ourselves together for a worship service as the colonies of God’s New Creation people that those assemblies should go somewhere that is germane to our calling. They are not just a religious duty that church members are to ‘check-off’ once a week, and hope that they will be inspirational and well performed. Rather they are to be that absolutely transformational encounter with God (through his Word) and with our fellow sojourners in which we are reminded of what our calling is, of what the realities of our context are and the challenges which that context offers to us. We come to be refreshed and formed by the Word of Christ, to receive the reminder of our forgiveness, and to be equipped for our daily calling to walk in the context of the dominion of darkness as the people of the dominion of God’s dear Son.

If a worship service doesn’t go beyond its own performance, then it is useless no matter how well performed. The church, the people of God, lives in a multitude of daily contexts. Consider where God’s people live, so often not in control of their own circumstances: some of our sisters and brothers are sex slaves (not of their own choosing), some are venture capitalists, some are those who stock shelves or are cashiers in local stores, some are educators, some are sanitation workers, some are entrepreneurs, … and so vastly many more roles. But all have in common their calling to be the glory of God even in often boring and seemingly future-less places.

Paul catalogs the fruits of the Spirit in Galatians 5, and nearly all of them are relational and can be practiced quietly in most common contexts as the display of God’s design. Then he catalogs the works of the flesh, i.e., the grim realities of the broken dominion of darkness that speak of the sexual, ethical, behavioral fallen-ness in which we have our pilgrimage.

If our worship services do not equip us to live out our calling in such a world, then such services are meaningless. It is our calling to be the glory of God the other six days that counts.

BLOG 8/5/15. THREE DISCERNABLE LAYERS IN MOST TRADITIONAL CHURCHES.

Just for the sake of our conversations about the church and its authenticity, let me lift up three discernable components among the participants of most churches that have been around for a while. If a church is well founded it will have a very clear persuasion of its message and its mission—of who Jesus is, what he came to do, what he taught, and what is his purpose for his church—it is a Christ-o-centric colony. Yet as a church community begins to take root, or have traction, it will begin to attract people … but sometimes for reasons for their resonse nothing to do with the message and the mission of Jesus Christ.

The first component is the healthy one. It is made up of those persons who are sincere in their desire to be faithful disciples of Jesus Christ, and who know that they need each other. They come together for mutual encouragement, growth in understanding, and to be equipped to be the children of light in their everyday lives. These are the hungry sheep who are worshipers of the Great Shepherd, and who thirst for his word.

The second component begins to emerge when a church dilutes, or displaces, or forgets its essential message and mission, relies more and more on its success and image, but then reverts to (what Dietrich Bonhoeffer calls) religious Christianity, i.e., the words of the gospel but not the reality in obedient lives of discipleship. In any church congregation over a decade old, this becomes more and more obvious.

And then there is usually the third component (frequently overlooked), and that is made up of those bewildered by it all, or those seeking to understand what it is about Jesus Christ that deserves their attention. Any healthy colony of God’s New Creation people should be very sensitive to the presence of such persons such as these and make a place for their inquiries, their doubts, their misunderstandings, and their engagement with the enigmatic realties of their daily lives.

Whichever of these components is the dominant one will determine the self-image and witness of a particular church community. All three are nearly always present in any church community from its earliest days. Many churches were built on false foundations of denominational identity, or for some selfish reason apart from obedience to Jesus Christ. Such usually were frequently dependent on a building and a clergy person … but not primarily on the mission and message of Jesus Christ unfortunately. I don’t think I am being unreal or cynical here. What happened along the way was that Jesus continued to build his church, and that there were frequently those serious believers and disciples who found each other, and found some form in which to meet, and so also became the contagious and vital communities of new life in Christ, with or without a traditional denominational label.

Now, here in the 21^st century it tends to be such innovative communities of discipleship that are emerging spontaneously (sometimes even inside of denominational congregations!). At the same time, Christian communities have a life span. Church communities can and do dilute or displace or forget their mission and message, and fade. The landscape of many of our cities are now littered with formerly prestigious church institutions, now aging and sinking under expensive corporate structure, but facing their imminent demise, … yet usually in total denial.

But Christ continues to build his church in ways and places no one would anticipate. It is a marvelous mosaic, and replete with complexities and ambiguities, yet at the same time witnessing to the message and mission of Jesus Christ. The inquirers and the bewildered can find their center, their creative source, their authority, their guiding line, and their true goal in such. May their number multiply to the glory of Christ.

BLOG 8/2/15. HELPFUL FEEDBACK (FLACK?) ON UN-SEMINARIES

I love it when I get feedback on these blogs. I knew that the last one, in which I raised serious questions about the viability of theological seminaries, would jiggle an idol of traditional church folk. Sure enough. So let me do a re-run. I am not at all questioning the huge value of well-trained minds, and profound theological and Biblical scholarship, or my gratitude for my own indebtedness to such. There is far too much mindless and even erroneous stuff out there that pertains to be Christian, that is more like entertaining deism than orthodox Christian formation.

But there is an insistent need for the Christian church to realize that there is a huge tectonic shift taking place so that many of the traditional ecclesiastical structures that served well in past generations—even centuries—will not survive in the post-Christian culture in which the younger generations are emerging. It is probably as subtle as the rise in the level of the ocean due to global warming that makes coastal cities at risk. I am quite certain that in the next twenty years, or so, there will be whole lot of the real estate and institutional baggage of Christendom that will either be up for sale, or will be useless in equipping the church for the mission of God.

As a matter of fact I want to see more good theological education, . . . but I want it to be in a form that is accessible to the rank and file of the church, so that they are thoroughly furnished to engage the challenges of the culture, and be agents of God’s New Creation among the folk with whom they are in communication in the realities of the “Monday Morning World.” Accessibility is my quest. How is that to take place? How are they to be to be formed into fruitfulness? How to be thoughtful and caring children of God’s New Creation 24/7?

Even Dale Stephens, who wrote the book about: “hacking your way through college,” acknowledges the value of engagement with the teachers and with others in the learning process. He devised ways to sit in on classes in colleges where he was not registered, and to make appointments with the faculty of such. Those who are proponents of on-line learning with all of its asynchronous possibilities know that personal engagement with the teachers and other learners makes it much more effective.

It is not as though only some church professionals, some clergy, are the only theologically literate persons, are the only equipping members of the Christian community. Centuries ago, to be sure, and before literacy was the norm, the clergy were called: “the parson”, because they were the only literate persons to teach the illiterate Sunday by Sunday. No longer. I know those laity who have briefly made place in their professional life to attain a Master of Theological Studies degree from a seminary so that they could be more effective in their witness in the information technology arena in which they were engaged. One of the most theological erudite persons I have ever known was a chemistry professor in a university. My own father, a mechanical engineer, was a perennial student who was a self-educated Biblical and theological resource because almost nobody else was there to be such in the church community we inhabited, … or my friend who is a tattoo artist and an articulate New Testament scholar!

Vast ecclesiastical institutions with magnificent buildings, endowments, and professional staffs do not guarantee that the individual persons who are ostensibly members are equipped in mature discipleship, . . . and are probably rapidly becoming obsolete. I am not a voice in the wilderness on this. There are more and more examples of communities of vital Christian faith operating without all of the accouterments of former church institutions. I think of Redeemer Church in New York, which has a profound and very fruitful teaching ministry but uses rented spaces for its congregational worship, while being focused on equipping its participants to be God’s children of light in Upper West Side New York. They have a counterpart to seminary training, but focused on their own participants, which you can see described at www.faithandwork.com. It is the form of the church that is in transition, and a clearer vision of equipping its participant for its mission—a tectonic shift. Count on it.

BLOG 7/29/15. WHAT ABOUT A THEOLOGICAL UN-SEMINARY

I’ve just finished reading Dale Stephens’ fascinating book: Hacking Your Education: Ditch the Lectures, Save Tens of Thousands, and Learn More Than You Peers Ever Will. Here’s an entrepreneurial young guy who starts college and then decides that there’s got to be a better way. Who wants to spend tons of money, wind up in deep debt and still not be able to get a job? So the book. Traditional colleges have been in place for centuries, and most of us have been taught that the route to a successful life is a college degree, … only to find in recent years that (as Stephens discerned) it is enormously expensive, and there has got to be an alternative way.

So here I am looking at the phenomenon that is accepted by so much of the church in the West today, that the route into church leadership (mistakenly designated as: ‘full-time Christian service’) is a degree from a theological seminary. As I read Dale Stephens, with my sixty-year background in church leadership, and a ten-year stint as the director of seminary ministries for a denominational organization, I will raise the same question that Stephens does. There is something that doesn’t fit as one looks at the New Testament pattern for its formation to be the communal form of the mission of God, and then at our present systekm. We have a system in which we may have well-meaning young women and men who want to have meaningful lives and want to somehow serve God, and so decide to ‘go into the ministry’ even though they have no track record for being fruitful in making disciples, or creating other reproductive believers in Christ, but mistakenly assume that an M.Div. degree will equip them for such, …or we take a fruitful disciple, a model of Christian maturity and community leadership, and isolate him or her into the ethos of a theological institution for several years where he or she only associates with other who aspire to be clergy, where all too often they become strangers to the very laity whom they, ostensibly, are to be forming into the image of Christ. (… I know that’s a long and confusing sentence, but you catch my drift.)

This is not to denigrate the enormous blessing of minds and lives formed by good Biblical teaching, and mature Christian thinking, but it is to challenge how this is to take place. Here we are in a digital culture in which one can access almost anything on line, where one can take on-line courses, where there is asynchronous opportunities that allow busy people to absorb information at their own pace and with their own schedule. There are actually seminaries offering many on-line courses, but it needs to become more accessible to more people.

Stephens founded UN-COLLEGE to make all of the opportunities and resources available to those who wanted to get the education without the expense and hassle of debt and impossible schedules. My question is: Why not an UN-SEMINARY whereby fruitful and spiritually hungry believers with significant roles in both church communities and professions can pursue their quest for Christian understanding and praxis without uprooting and disrupting their fruitful involvement in their local church community? Or their families from their relationships?

Personally, I’m frank to say that I spent my time in seminary, and have a degree in divinity, but my real growth came from engagement with real Christian communities, with reading, with struggles in the application of Christian faith with all of the difficult expressions of the local culture, and with actually spending significant time as a big-brother and mentor to many and diverse inquirers and younger believers.

The riches of Biblical understanding and the church’s treasures of theology will never be un-necessary, but it is possible that theological seminaries that assume that church leadership is attained by an academic degree are an obsolete and counter-productive concept.

And now I’m in trouble with all of my seminary friends. So be it.

BLOG 7/26/15. CAN YOU SEPARATE CHRISTIAN FAITH AND POLITICS?

In this political season so irresistibly upon us, often comes the protest from some that they don’t believe in mixing Christian faith and politics. But the very idea that you can separate them is a bit humorous. After all, the Christian faith is essentially incarnational, it is those of us who embrace Jesus Christ as Lord demonstrating that relationship in flesh and blood right in the middle of this polis, this very real context where there is always our passion for peace and order and justice.

Is such an incarnation easy? Never. Is there often an intense difference of opinion? Count on it. When the Sojourners Community in Washington produced the bumper sticker: God Is Neither a Democrat or a Republican, a few years ago, that is absolutely true. Our Biblical faith expresses itself in the existential realities of many different concerns. But the notion that we can separate Christian faith and politics denies our Biblical faith. When the first generation of the Christian church declared: “Jesus Is Lord,” they were in that very statement making the most political statement that could have been made in the Roman Empire, in which Caesar was indisputably held to be the only lord and to be divine. For Christians to declare that Jesus was Lord was an act of sedition. They were considered by that declaration to be atheists because they denied the deity of Caesar.

Our Biblical roots in politics may have become most obvious in the time of the prophet Daniel. The Babylonian Empire had conquered Israel with its decadent Judaism, as God had foretold the Jews that they would if Israel continued in its forgetfulness of its own covenant of unique monotheism as spelled out in the Torah. But there was a remnant of very gifted and faithful Jews even in that dark episode of Israel’s history. The conquering Babylonians were not stupid, rather they discerned those gifted Jewish citizens, the nobility without blemish, whose skills could be useful to their own empire and took them as captives. Among such were the several very bright and gifted and attractive young men: Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azarian (better known by their Babylonian names: Shadrack, Meshach, and Abednego). These were made members of the royal court. Can you think of a more challenging political context?

What did they do? They performed their given tasks with such excellence that they moved up quickly in to royal court. But it also brought them into confrontation with the pagan religion and with the jealous Babylonians who resented them. So you have the familiar stories of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the fiery furnace for their refusal to acknowledge Babylonian’s god, and the story of Daniel in the lion’s den. These were political encounters.

Believers also have different convictions. It was the zealous Puritans in England who brought a violent end (a beheading) to the monarchy of King Charles I, and sought to establish something of a theocracy with Cromwell as Lord Protector. The effort was fruitful in a way, but ultimately failed, but Great Britain never had an abusive monarchy after that. It also established a certain role for Christian expression in England and Scotland.

The founding fathers of this country had religious roots, sometime Christian and sometimes deistic, but they never sought to separate their faith from their politics. Abraham Lincoln was not a professing Christian believer, but in his agony over the issue of slavery and over a divided nation he sought the counsel of the pastor of the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church, and the theological result of those conversations are obvious in the theological content of Lincoln’s second inaugural address shortly before his assassination.

All this is to say, that part of our stewardship of the gospel is to be informed as to God’s concern for his creation, for the helpless, for the welfare of all of its citizens, and to live out our political incarnation as Christians with intelligence, love, and excellence. You can’t separate Christian faith and politics. And no political party owns the Christian faith.

BLOG 7/22/15. “IF YOU BUILD IT, THEY WILL COME!” … OR WILL THEY?

In the movie The Field of Dreams, a farmer was convinced by some strange voice that he could recall the baseball heroes of the past if he would build a playing field for them on his farm. It made a good story and was quite popular. But there is something of a similar fantasy that occurs, sadly, in a number of formerly prominent church institutions in almost any city you can name. In the post-World War II era, the Greatest Generation having survived the depression and the Great War were eager to reclaim the traditions and security of life they had missed, and part of that was the building of impressive churches. Older churches engaged in significant upgrades, and denominations planted their franchises in every new neighborhood. Church architects had a field day. The “build it and they will come” fantasy lasted through the Boomer generation, and then began a significant fade and drift, as younger generations simply didn’t come. The Generation X children of the Boomers became a bit more cynical about the church, and with the following Millennial generation that drift became a disturbing exodus from traditional church institutions. Still, many of those older church institutions identified their church with their buildings, and sought to reverse the trend by architectural upgrades, . . . but missed the point altogether that the spiritual hungerings of these younger generations were not met by architecture, . . . but by answers to their spiritual hungerings, which they cloaked behind their lively digital and social media culture, its music and entertainment.

There are some fascinating counter-examples of Christian communities that are, in fact, attracting these younger men and women in droves. In the late 1980’s a Christian teacher was challenged to consider planting a church in the upper-West Side of Manhattan, New York–a ‘no man’s land’ for the church. His deliberate investigation discovered that it was populated with large numbers of young men and women who had moved to New York to escape the stifling Christian expressions they had known elsewhere (I’m generalizing here, to be sure). So, without any buildings, in rented space, he began deliberately holding worship gatherings for the small colony of church planters who had joined him. He spoke to their actual hungerings in his teaching. He tuned-in to their lives and to their culture. The church grew exponentially, and now these couple of decades later numbers in the thousands, and has planted many new churches elsewhere in the metropolitan area—still with no permanent buildings of its own. Granted, Tim Keller is a very unique and gifted teacher and leader, but his example says worlds to those who cling to the build it and they will come fantasy.

My own city of Atlanta holds a similar, though perhaps less dramatic example. Midtown Atlanta is the throbbing hub of the digital culture and powerful companies tapping into the brainpower of Georgia Tech. It is where young urban professionals want to live, where there are colorful eateries and music culture and nightlife. It is the continual area of multiplying apartments and condominiums. It is also the area where older traditional church congregations are aging, struggling with expensive buildings, but which church are commuter congregations and are now irrelevant and non-indigenous to their own neighborhood—and are dying.

Meanwhile, an enterprising group of contagious younger Christians who live in the midcity neighborhood planted a church for themselves, first renting an unused former church building, but quickly outgrowing it, so finding an available warehouse nearby have generated a church that is providing the nurture, equipping them for their daily incarnation, and attracting growing numbers of spiritually hungry residents, now a couple of thousand. It is not their building nor institutional prestige that is the key, but their contagious Christian presence in Midtown Atlanta that explains them. They are both indigenous and relevant to their context. They are also pursuing a vision of a hundred house churches in that part of the city. It is not their building but their contagious incarnational Christian faith that explains them. They are speaking to the actual spiritual hungerings of that culture. Go figure!

BLOG 7/19/15. “WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF YOUR CONGREGATION?”

Time and again I have asked otherwise thoughtful persons: “What is the purpose of your congregation?” And: “How does your pastor facilitate that purpose/vision?” Time and again I get total blank looks. Because of that lack of purpose and vision, I am here copying my own digest of Lesslie Newbigin’s essay on: The Congregation As the Hermeneutic of the Gospel.” (From Newbigin’s Gospel in a Pluralist Society, Chap. 18, pp. 227 ff.) You will find this a rich resource.

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“The only effective hermeneutic of the gospel is the life of the congregation which believes it.”

“Insofar as it is true to its calling, it becomes the place where men and women and children find that the gospel gives them the framework of understanding, the ‘lenses’ through which they are able to understand and cope with the world. Insofar as it is t rue to its calling, this community will have, I think, the following six characteristics:”

1. It will be a community of praise. a) Celebration rather than sulleness and hyperactivity. b) Thanksgiving, — a people recipient of grace.
2. It will be a community of truth. The reigning plausibility structure can only be effectively challenged by people who are fully integrated inhabitants of another. (Missionary confrontation)
3. It will be a community that does not live for itself but is deeply involved in the concerns of its neighborhood.
4. It will be a community where men and women are prepared for, and sustained in, the exercise of the priesthood in the world. a) The congregation has to be a place where its members are trained, supported, and nourished in the exercise of their parts of the priestly ministry in the world. b) The congregation must recognize that God gives different gifts to different members of the body.
5. It will be a community of mutual responsibility. “If the church is to be effective in advocating and achieving a new social order in the nation, it must itself be that new social order.” (p. 231)
6. And finally it will be a community of hope. “The gospel offers an understanding of the human situation which makes it possible to be filled with a hope which is both eager and patient even in the most hopeless situation.” (p. 231)

“Is the primary business of the ordained minister to look after the spiritual needs of the church members? Is it to represent God’s kingdom to the whole community? Or — and this is surely the true answer — is it to lead the whole congregation as God’s embassage to the whole community?” (p. 236 f)

“The task of ministry is to lead the congregation as a whole in a mission to the community as a whole, to claim its whole public life, as well as the personal lives of all its people, for God’s rule. It means equipping all the members of the congregation to understand and fulfill their several roles in this mission through their faithfulness in their daily work. It means training and equipping them to be active followers of Jesus in his assault on the principalities and powers which he has disarmed on his cross. And it means sustaining them in bearing the cost of that warfare.” (p. 238) . . . A book worth your time! Respond back to me, if you will.