Enchanted Community

BLOG: 8/17/14. HAS THE CHURCH MISSED THE POINT OF BEING A PRIEST?

OK, allow me to be my contrarian self—but I struggle with the whole idea of a ‘priesthood/clergy’ category of Christian discipleship. So help me, I scour the New Testament and what I find is that when Jesus inaugurated his New Creation (the Kingdom of God), he inaugurated a whole new concept of the community that would result from that new reality, and it did not include the traditional temple as the dwelling place of God, nor did it include a caste of priests, or clergy, to see to the rites of the temple, and to serve as the community’s necessary intermediaries with God. Every believer was to have direct access to God through Jesus Christ.

One of the only clues one finds as to what Jesus intended as the purpose for his church is in his revealing prayer on the eve of his crucifixion, when he told God the Father that he had completed the work he was sent to do … and then prayed for what was to be incarnated in his followers. There is no mention of priests, or of temples. There was the implicit understanding that all of his followers were to be those who incarnated, or demonstrated, his teachings and that for which he had come … all of this by their relationship to him by the Spirit.

Yes, there were his unique twelve immediate followers, and that larger group who were also his disciples, but they were to be models and teachers of his teachings, and who had engaged in a life-transforming encounter with himself, and so become a part of his new creation. Moreover, it was Peter, who was something of the acknowledged leader of the community, who used the designation of priesthood, only it was that the whole community of believers were to be a “nation of priests”—every believer a priest! (I Peter 2:9). Or maybe it was John, who described the church as those whom God had made us to be “a kingdom and priests to our God” (Revelation 5:10).

And the temple, by the way, was replaced by God making his ‘dwelling place’ to be in and among his people by the Spirit. But we keep reverting to the Old Testament pattern of temple buildings, and a special caste of priests—which in essence makes the church to be something utterly different than the awesome and omnipresent phenomenon that is set forth in New Testament documents. Martin Luther, in a sense, tried to make a case for this, but it all quickly reverted to the default of the dominant Roman Catholic ecclesiastical pattern of buildings and priesthood.

Let me make my case: every believer, by virtue of his/her baptismal vows becomes ordained to be a priest, to be a missionary, to be the demonstration of New Creation in behavior and thinking—every believer! Every believer is to be the glory of God and demonstrations of the divine nature. I watch the tragic events in the Middle East and remember that this whole region was where the Christian faith was centered until the 12^th or 13^th century, but rather than make disciples, and rather than being a holy nation and a royal priesthood, it became a ‘religion’ centered in its sacralized buildings and with its caste of clergy. It ceased to be leaven and light. It became cloistered, but it did not make radical disciples who were practitioners of New Creation. John, in Revelation, says that God’s people overcome the works of darkness: “ … by the blood the Lamb, by the word of their testimony, even at the cost of their lives.”

The church was never promised status, nor sanctuary from the hostility of the dominion of darkness. It was commanded to demonstrate love for each other, and for enemies. It was promised suffering and persecution, but it was also promised that it would be accompanied by the Presence of the Son of God. That is all still true. We have watched this with China in recent generations, when the church was outlawed, and disenfranchised, it went underground and became faithful to its original calling, and then against all human odds has grown exponentially.

Every believer a priest, 24/7. Disciples on the loose as practitioners of the love of God. Take note.

BLOG 8/13/14. BI-POLAR DISORDER: ROBIN WILLIAMS AND WILLIAM COWPER

The distressing report of the death by suicide of actor-comedian Robin Williams is a sobering reminder of how non-selective is this mental illness. Having been friend and pastor to a few folk with this disorder, William’s death brought sadness with it. But it also reminded me that such a mental illness is not exclusive of those of Christian faith.

I have in mind the poet and hymn-writer William Cowper, who was one of the most prolific hymn-writers we have in Christian hymnody. He lived in the middle of the eighteenth century in England and was considered also one of the great poets of that period, by such literary greats as Samuel Coleridge Taylor. But Cowper was bi-polar, and on several occasions sought to commit suicide without success.

Here was a giant, who was befriended and pastored by John Newton (of “Amazing Grace, How Sweet the Sound” fame, and himself a prolific hymn writer). Cowper could write such awesome hymns as: “There Is a Fountain Filled With Blood,” or “Sometimes a Light Surprises,” or “God Moves in a Mysterious Way,” which are such profound statements of Christian theology and faith—and then sink into the sheer despair and depression caused by this illness.

For those of us who are somewhat healthy, or who have only experienced very mild mood swings into depression, it is difficult to even imagine what it is like when all rationality/reason and all faith in God’s love simply disappear and we are left in the dark in sheer hopelessness and meaninglessness. It is in such a dark night that suicide becomes an option, even a desirable one—somehow to escape this nightmare.

So it was with Robin Williams, who though not evidently a person of faith, was so enormously gifted as an actor and as a comedian. Somehow the bi-polar disorder seems to be more common among those of genius. Williams could be so funny, such a clown, or such a talented actor, and so loved and popularly acclaimed—then almost immediately sink into the darkness, and so to substance abuse and endurance of his darkness.

Face it: we are all very vulnerable and fragile human beings. Our mental and emotional states as well as our physical well being are such a gift. We dare not take them for granted. I certainly am not anywhere close to being genius, but I do have those times where the clouds of confusion and darkness close in. It is because of this that I include always a prayer to the Father in heaven to be kept or guarded in my life and health—in my walk of faith (cf. I Peter 1:4-5), especially when I am not in control of my own moods and emotions.

Every time I sing one of Cowper’s incredible hymns I am reminded of the realities of the humanity of this person who contributes so much to my own spiritual nurture.

God moves in a mysterious way
His wonders to perform;
He plants His footsteps in the sea
And rides upon the storm.

Deep in unfathomable mines
Of never failing skill
He treasures up His bright designs
And works His sovereign will.

Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take;
The clouds ye so much dread
Are big with mercy and shall break
In blessings on your head.

8/10/14. BLOG: WE WHO ARE COLONIES OF GOD’S NEW HUMANITY ARE ALWAYS IMMIGRANTS

This may come as a surprise to some who inhabit North American churches … but those of us who belong to Jesus Christ are never primarily American citizens, though we inhabit this country with much to be thankful for. But like Daniel in Babylon, we don’t ultimately belong here. Our priorities are with the kingdom of our God, and of his Christ. That priority means that when government policy (or lack thereof) is at odds with the purpose of our calling to be God’s new humanity in Christ—we become a counter-cultural force and a voice of protest.

Not only this, but the clear teachings of the apostles is that we who belong to Christ are always sojourners and exiles here, in whatever particular country we inhabit. Or maybe, as Eugene Peterson paraphrases it: “Friends, this world is not your home, so don’t make yourself cozy in it. … Live an exemplary life among the natives so that your lives will refute their prejudices.”

What provokes this line of thought in me is our current heartbreaking crisis along the Mexican border, and all of the voices from our culture of discontent, or indifference, the naysayers, and self-centered libertarians who ignore the pathos of the whole complicated episode. We Christians often forget that we have often been illegal. In the early centuries of the Christian church one could be executed for professing Christ. It was in the midst of such a hostile culture that Christians demonstrated their alternative humanity. Many of the previous waves of immigration into this nation were because of persecution of one sort or another: political, economic, religious, etc. Our forebears were pursuing a hope of a new future, and it was often provoked by a religious quest.

So here are hundreds of thousands of real human beings from Latin America, who have lived under horrific circumstances, seeing hope in the rumors that in the United States there might be jobs, or freedom from criminal gangs ravaging your neighborhood, or stark hopelessness. Who, pray tell, should have a heart for such?

“I was a stranger and you welcomed me.”

I really do not think that the people of God’s new humanity in these United States, who are always to be a people of hope and of compassion, who are always called to costly obedience … can ignore such, so long as we have any capacity to bring solution and humane responses. We cannot simply say that it is too big for me, or us, to solve. There have been some 6000 deaths along that border, many if not most by our own governmental policies. That makes the humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip seem almost minor. And yet the politicians, whom we ostensibly elect, keep procrastinating out of political paralysis or procrastination.

I’m thankful for those who are, in fact, doing what they can. There is a humanitarian organization called NMD (No More Deaths), which has linked with other humanitarian agencies such as the Ark of the Covenant to provide aid camps along the border in places like Arizona. NMD volunteers provide basic human help to those who have suffered so much seeking to find some hope for their own lives and those of their families. I like that.

The highest homicide rate in Latin America is in Honduras. It is dangerous in many villages to even go out on the street. If I lived there I would be seeking escape to the United States myself. Meanwhile, we who are the colonies of God’s new humanity in Christ must not seek to escape, or look the other way at our humanitarian responsibility. We tragically tried to look the other way during the holocaust in the 1930s and 1940s. We dare not repeat that violation of our calling by Christ to welcome strangers in our midst, along with the sick and naked and imprisoned.

Have I begun to make my point?

BLOG 8/6/14. A NEW PARADIGM? (CONTINUED FROM LAST BLOG)

To say that the responses to my most recent Blog, raising the question as to whether we needed a new paradigm of the church for an emerging generation, only underscore in my mind, the necessity of such a quest. To those of my generation who responded, the whole incapacity of the emerging generation to conceive of the church was: “sad,” or “unbelievable” … as though the problem was with the emerging generation, rather than with us.

But, for me what may be even sadder is the vast phenomenon of those who happily inhabit traditional ‘church’ institutions, and who find ‘church’ activities a wholesome part of their social fabric … and yet are equally incapable of giving any convincing reason why such church institutions ultimately exist, and who are hardly formed by any transformational encounter with Jesus, the Lamb of God, or with his awesome mission to make all things new.

There is a very real sense in which such an emerging generation, whose minds and experiences are not immunized by such forgetful church institutions, may be the generation, which produces that new paradigm which sees and understands how God’s plan is to recreate human relationships in authentic colonies of his true humanity, and which will incarnate the teachings of Christ in unlikely and unexpected ways.

And, yes … Christ is irresistibly and ineluctably building his church in this world, and in ways and by means, and in circumstances that no one suspects. Our human failures in seeking to build humanly controllable religious institutions (and calling them churches) do not in any way mean that Christ is not building his church, or that the church is not growing spontaneously and contagiously everywhere in the world today, often unobserved, sometimes in dangerous and life-threatening scenes, but in dynamic colonies of God’s new humanity—in those who have been transformed by their encounter with Jesus Christ and have embraced his teachings, and have covenanted together to love, encourage, teach, and be accountable to each other. The living and authentic church is alive with faith and obedience, and grows spontaneously wherever (even inside of moribund church institutions).

There are so many illustrations of this, but I am reminded of a graphic episode out of World War II (written about in the book: Through the Valley of the Kwai, by Ernest Gordon) in which a British military unit was cut off and captured by the Japanese in Burma and taken into a forced labor camp, where the conditions were totally inhumane. The morale diminished, the death toll rose, disease and exhaustion and malnutrition were diminishing the numbers daily.

It was in that horrific situation that the unit officer, a Scottish lieutenant by the name of Ernest Gordon, became one of the victims and was taken to the pavilion where soldiers were taken to die. But it was there that a church was born. The officer, himself a professed agnostic, was ministered by a simple country lad from England, who carried out his wastes, bathed him as best he could, and exhibited a gentle, self-giving love that was so very remarkable, not just to Gordon but to all of those in that hopeless place. Gordon was so taken by this exhibition of love that he asked the lad why he was doing all of this nasty work. When the reason for his ministry was discovered, it was his simple Christian faith exhibited in acts of love. He also had smuggled a tattered, coverless, copy of a New Testament in his loincloth. Gordon began reading it, was powerfully converted, and the faith became contagious, and in that most unlikely place a church was born, and those lads formed a church around the teachings of that tattered copy of the New Testament that had powerful and transforming effect and saw them through. They all returned home after the war as transformed New Creation persons. That is Christ building his church.

For this reason I look at the emerging generation as one that offers a fresh, clean slate on which to incarnate a fresh and authentic new paradigm of the church as spontaneous colonies of God’s new humanity that is the unmistakable creation of the Holy Spirit. Fascinating.

8/3/14. BLOG. THE CHURCH: DO WE NEED A NEW PARADIGM?

Let me pose a question, or maybe a proposition, that will be widely misunderstood by many. I’m thinking about a generation that is either just emerging, or maybe not even born yet—but time moves swiftly. Here’s the question: Do we need a new paradigm, or a whole new conception of what the design of the church is to be in the purpose of God, and how it relates to its mission as we move further and further into the ‘post-Christian’ culture?

What provokes this was a random conversation I had with a young adult the other day on the covered deck out in the back of one of my favorite coffee shops. Most of the folk there are totally absorbed with their laptops, or with a book, or maybe doing business on their iPhone. Mostly, it is a quiet thoughtful place, where each is absorbed in his, or her, own project. I love it. But, the other day there were just two of us on the deck, and we made eye contact, which indicated that we acknowledged each other as persons, and a willingness to chat for a moment. The title of an open textbook on this guy’s table triggered an inquiry on my part, and I asked him what he was working on … which precipitated a question about what was his occupation/profession.

I pursued that with him, and he was quite eager to share what he was all about. But then he asked me what my career had been (I’m obviously way beyond my prime, alas!). I told him that I had been a pastor for fifty years. But now, get this: His surprising response to me was, “What is a ‘pastor’?” So I explained to him that it was the teaching-mentoring function I held in the church for all of those years.

Are you ready for this? His response to that was: “What in the world is a ‘church’?” He acknowledged that he had heard the word, and had seen the name of some buildings, but it never triggered any inquiry. He acknowledged that even though it had never been anything that called forth his interest, that something on the fringes of his mind became uncomfortable about it.

This is a guy, who is a graduate student in a prestigious university, mind you. But church and pastor were not categories that he had ever had to come to grips with. Here’s my point: in this year of 2014 there are still plenty of people who have had significant and positive engagements with the church, or with pastors, … and there are also those who have been burned, or had unpleasant experiences with it, … but, there is a growing demographic group of younger adults who have no concept of such whatsoever. A new generational culture is emerging very rapidly.

And there is that fact that over 50% of the world’s population is under 25 years of age, and there is a generation yet unborn who will more and more be products of the post-Christian culture, and for whom the whole Christian phenomenon is off their chart. At the same time, there is that huge human hungering for caring human relationships, for meaning, for some kind of a community of encouragement that doesn’t come by way of social media, iPhones, health and exercise clubs, and those sorts of neighborhoods.

The sad fact for many of this present generation, who do, in fact, have connection with the church, is the reality that many so-called churches can be places of loneliness, confederations of religious strangers, and with no context for the kind of wholesome and redemptive and transformationalintimacy that the New Testament so strongly indicates is to be the dynamic of the love of God made flesh and blood in God’s recreated human community.

I’m looking at that generation yet unborn, and at the need for a new paradigm for the church as it pursues its missionary mandate in the world, … a paradigm that moves totally away from impersonal church institutions with their dependence upon sanctuaries and church professionals and rituals, … to a paradigm that is something more like colonies of God’s new humanity in Christ that grow out of a dynamic encounter with the love of God in Christ.

That’s what I’m chewing on. Stand by.

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BLOG 7/30/14. LATIN AMERICAN BISHOPS, PRIESTS, PARISHES … THEN VIOLENCE, TRAGEDY, AND EXILES TO NORTH AMERICA.

Several years ago there was a remarkable conference of the Roman Catholic bishops from Latin America and the Caribbean, and attended briefly also by the then Pope Benedict XVI. The report of that conference is written into a document entitled: The Aparecida Document. I have been reading it with much appreciation, and one part of me was wishing that more of those who call themselves ‘the church’ could struggle with cultural, theological, and missional issues so profoundly. But another part of me, in the process of digesting this report, found the ‘disconnect’ that I so often seek to address in these Blogs. That disconnect is delicate, since I do not have any desire to denigrate, or underestimate the enormous contribution that the Roman Catholic Church and its clergy have had on Latin America, and the huge contribution to the humanitarian crises in so many locales in that region of the world.

The disconnect is subtle, and has to do with the presupposition of these discussions: that of the primary role of clergy, and the fostering of a church that is near totally dependent upon those clergy, and upon the ultimate control by the ecclesiastical hierarchy of the Vatican. The disconnect has to do with the misunderstanding of both Catholics and Protestants (and Pentecostals, etc.) that the church is a humanly built and controlled ‘institution’ in which there is a class of ‘clergy’ who are those to be looked up to as the active, equipped agents of Christ’s Kingdom/New Creation, and that the rest, the laity, are to be appreciatively passive and dependent upon those clergy in the mission of God to the world.

Such an understanding (or misunderstanding) seems: 1) not to have a place for the primary and spontaneous role of the Holy Spirit in the creation of the Church; and 2) seems not to recognize the primary function of church leadership in equipping all of God’s people for their work of the ministry in places of their incarnation. Yes, there is to be order in the church. The New Testament speaks of overseers (bishops), and wisdom figures (elders) to whom the folk in a local colony of believers are responsible. But, previous to all of that, is the reality that I repeat again and again in these Blogs: there are those four equipping gifts mentioned in Ephesians 4, and given by the risen Lord by which all of Christ’s followers are to be mature demonstrations and communicators of the faith in the social and cultural vicissitudes of daily life.

A tragic episode of this misunderstanding (to my mind) comes in Oliver Goldsmith’s classic poem: The Deserted Village, written in the eighteenth century and at the beginning of the industrial revolution when the working-class population moved from home industries in the villages, the security of a small village, and the role of the village church and the much loved and caring clergy at the center of their social life, … to the vast impersonal, faceless employment and poverty of urban centers. The tragedy? Their passive role in village churches did not equip them to be the mature and fruitful disciples of Christ in the secular urban culture where the church played a very minor role, and they were pretty much on their own.

The Latin American bishops look with some fear upon all of the members of their parishes who are migrating to North America, and who have no priests/clergy to accompany them on their journey into the North American scene where they will be but ‘aliens and exiles’ (immigrants).

But it’s not just Latin American immigrants. We all live in a very mobile culture, vastly connected by social media, but without the close relationships of neighborhoods, or vocational stability, aliens and exiles, and churches hardly a factor. What if the church were transient colonies of well-equipped disciples who find each other in unlikely settings, and covenant together to encourage and support each other in that calling? Something like that is what is on my mind—a church not dependent upon place or clergy. But that’s a whole other paradigm, and for another time …

BLOG 7/27/14. AT THE RISK OF SEEMING PEDANTIC—THE WORD: CHURCH

All right, so I am being a bid pedantic, but the very word ‘church’ is a source of confusion to many, and in my own quest to help liberate the Christian community from all of the misunderstandings that clutter that quest, one significant factor is the very word ‘church’ itself. Actually, it is not even a Christian term. It is employed by Jesus only a couple of times. Rather, in the original Greek New Testament documents, it is a common word: ekklesia, (ek kaleo, or ‘called out’) which refers to an assembly of citizens called out for some common purpose, maybe political or civic. It was only the later translators of the Greek text into English, who took the translator’s liberty of substituting a word that reflected an assembly of the Lord’s people—kyriakos (or: an assembly that belongs to the Lord), or our word: church.

It’s worth my using this Blog to attempt to bring it somewhat into focus. It is a word which a whole lot of people (most?) use, but which almost nobody can define—or, at least if they attempt to define it, usually identify it with some traditional religious institution of their experience.

Look at the primary occasion when Jesus uses the word: he had been with his small band of intimate disciples for a couple of years, teaching primarily that the Kingdom of God was at hand, calling folk to listen to what he was teaching, to realize who he was, to understand that the long-awaited promise of God’s new creation was being inaugurated in himself—such stuff that was so off of their chart. And yet he was doing miracles, healing sick folk, raising a dead guy to life, spelling out a whole radically different understanding of what it meant to be God’s people. It must have been pretty overwhelming. He didn’t fit the pattern, or their conception (of what the enigmatic promise from their Jewish writings) about a coming ‘anointed one’—a messiah would look like.

So, one day at the city of Caesarea Philippi, he put it to them: 1) Who do the people say that I am? 2) But who do you guys say that I am? Look at the evidence. Think about what you have been experiencing, and what I have done, and what I have taught you. What do you make of this? What do you think this whole ‘kingdom of God’ thing is about, and how does that kingdom, and what you have experienced in, and learned from, me fit into this? And what does it all have to do with the hope of Israel for an anointed deliverer?

The lights went on! Peter (always the impetuous one) blurted out: “Wow! You are ‘the messiah’ we have been looking for!” Jesus affirms that Peter’s answer is spot on: “Yes, that is the correct conclusion, and it is upon that (rock) reality that I will build my ekklesia, and the gates of hell will never be able to prevail against it.” There’s that word.

Briefly, for our purposes here, note that Jesus says that he, himself, will build his church, not them. They are to obey. They are to be witnesses. They are to demonstrate him and his new creation—but he will … call out an assembly of people who will be his new humanity, and will live out his teachings. He never called upon them to build institutions, but to be his witnesses, and to herald his new creation by their witness, by new creation lives and relationships. The rest of the New Testament documents show the early history of this being realized.

If you try to trap Christ’s ekklesia in an institution, then you can rest assured that it will break out and emerge in other forms of assembly, or colony. There will always be those assemblies-colonies for whom Jesus, the new life he gives, his teachings, and by his Spirit will ultimately permeate all of the human community. Even the controlling philosophy of many church hierarchies are always faced with ‘break-outs’ in the form of base communities, floating parishes, house churches, clandestine forms of the colony, as Christ builds his church.

My point? When you use the word ‘church’ be aware that you are talking about colonies that Jesus, the crucified and risen Lord, is calling out to be his living, breathing witnesses into every corner of this very broken human community that Jesus came to seek and rescue. Got it?

7/23/14 BLOG: YES, CHURCHES CAN DIE, YOU KNOW. SOME ARE ALREADY DEAD AND DON’T KNOW IT. … BUT, THERE IS HOPE!

It’s not as though the reality of churches becoming dead is some dismal or pessimistic evaluation that I alone am making up here—look at scripture: Listen to the Risen Lord, speaking prophetically to the churches in Asia Minor through his servant John. (In a sense, the evaluations of each of these churches should be a regular ‘check-list’ for every Christian community.) This text suggests that church communities do have a life-span as vital witnesses. The seven churches mentioned here were only a generation, or so, from their apostolic founding.

But to Sardis, he speaks this word: “I know your works. You have the reputation of being alive, but you are dead.” (Revelation 3:1). So a good reputation, vital institutional life, nice folk, everything going smoothly, apparently—but they are dead. The reality is that they have somehow gotten distracted from their vital encounter with Jesus, their dependence upon him, his calling to costly obedience to his teachings, and from the mission he had given them. What seems evident is the fact that they were quite satisfied with their condition. But they had ceased being what they were called to be—like, maybe, “the missionary arm of the Holy Trinity,” as our Latin American friends like to say. This church at Sardis is given the ultimatum: “Repent! or you will cease to be a church.”

How would you know if a church—your church—were dead? What if dead churches become the norm? What if you have lots of wonderful church activities, sociable members, successful institutional life, the acceptance of ‘religious Christianity’ (which is faith without repentance), youth programs, balanced budget, a cool preacher… all that stuff that gives you a good reputation—but you are dead. You are not productive of transformed Kingdom behavior, or Kingdom relationships, or costly discipleship, or of Christ’s passion for those captive to the darkness—the broken, the hopeless, the meaningless lives striving frantically to know what life is all about. The gospel has lost its thrill for you. Who sees this? What if such dead churches become the norm, and no one anticipates anything other than such?—though the church is irrelevant to those seeking to be faithful disciples?

The demise of so much of the church presence in much of this nation and the West is due to this very phenomenon: impressive church sanctuaries, eloquent clergy, impressive traditions… but dead. But this is not a letter without hope. Note: “You still have a few who have not soiled their garments … they are worthy.” Ah, yes. There are nearly always, even in the most moribund church expressions, those ‘few’ who are the faithful ones, often somewhat out of sight, but walking with Jesus as his quiet disciples, and the presence of the Spirit.

In my career I have encountered such churches as Sardis, even worse. I was once asked to come as the teaching-shepherd to a church that didn’t even have the reputation of being alive. It was a dismal and pathological scene overall, but it was the convenient neighborhood church and had survived barely. But in that congregation were the few, who were faithful. They had hung-in there through long times of discouragement. I went, and nothing happened quickly, but calling the church back to its gospel and mission took years. It was not easy. There was pain and sifting. Yet at the end of a decade, the church was alive and fruitful, and I got much of the credit. But it was not basically I who deserved it, but the few, who had longed for faithfulness, and had become part of the committee who asked me to come as pastor and teacher. They were my prayer support as I assisted them in knowing scripture, in making disciples, in focusing again on the mission of Christ. My purpose in this blog? Admit that your church may be dead, painful as that may be, but take hope. There are those random colonies of true faith that inhabit such dead churches that have a way of changing the whole scene, and refounding the church.

BLOG 7/20/14. A HUMOROUS THOUGHT: WHAT WOULD JOHN OLIVER DO WITH ‘THE CHURCH’?

For those who are unfamiliar with him, John Oliver has recently emerged as a very colorful comedian-commentator on HBO, and is already sort of a cult-figure with my younger friends, with his Last Week Tonight news commentary. What he does is what is called: reductio ad absurdum—reducing a subject to absurdity. He finds some news item that he thinks is essentially a contradiction, or a humorous glitch, etc., and then ramps up its absurd side. OK? He is, by profession, a stand-up comedian, he is British, he has a twinkle in his eye, he is colorfully profane, and nothing it out-of-bounds, nothing is sacred. In short: he is good at what he does.

So, what has this got to do with Bob Henderson’s blog? Just this: I had the humorous thought wondering what John Oliver would do with the new he reads about the church in the media, about its clergy, its foibles, and all the kinds of things the media revels in? This is a guy who does his homework well. Though he shows no evidence of Christian faith or interest, he would probably check out the teachings of Jesus and tweak the contradictions. He might even discern the teachings of Jesus much better than many of those (often mindless) folk who inhabit the pews of so many churches. He would not be inhibited by any “sacrilegious” accusations. He might even see more clearly what the church is intended to be than many inside of it seem to sense.

Case in point: he recently did an evening on the phenomenon of some horribly judgmental folk flying (falsely) under the banner of ‘evangelical Christians’ in Uganda who were grossly homophobic, and promoting the efforts in Uganda to impose the death penalty on gay-lesbian folk. It is one of the numerous aberrations exhibited by some expressions of the church that one could easily lampoon, and which should be an embarrassment to the Christian community.

[Disclaimer here: Such folk as John Oliver seem unwilling to see all of the awesome acts of sacrificial ministry, humanitarian service, costly love, and culture-creating wonders accomplished by the church across the world. But the media has a proclivity to ignore those in favor of the more scandalous.]

We folk, who take seriously the teaching of Jesus, need such as Oliver to remind those of us inside the church what those outside the church see in us, and to see through their eyes. It was Robert Burns, the Scottish poet, who wrote: “O wad some Power the giftie gie us to see oursels as ithers see us!” My point in all of this is: that over 50% of the world’s populations is under 25 years of age, most of whom did not grow up in the church, and have no knowledge of it, nor interest in it, … and all they know is what the media reports—which is often not very flattering, but too often true. It is critical for us that this emerging pragmatic and cynical generation have before it a church that is actually part of the thrilling news of Jesus. The church is intended to be the veritable demonstration of God’s new humanity in Christ—a whole new reality—and to demonstrate God’s love, grace, freedom, relationships, caring, creativity, etc. … to the watching world.

Confession: so much of what goes under the rubric of church, its expressions and leadership, … is, indeed, laughable, self-contradictory, and puzzling to my under-25 friends. Where do we go with this? Where would this emerging generation see enticing demonstrations of God’s new creation community?

It might begin with random small colonies of Christ’s disciples (you, me, others) who take Jesus Christ seriously meeting together to probe his teachings, and assisting each other (covenanting with each other) to demonstrate to this emerging generation such a new reality that expresses Christ’s love and caring to a world of men and women thirsty for authenticity, for meaning, for hope, for some guiding line in their lives. What if … ?

7. BLOG 7/16/14. ‘CHATTANOOGA CHOO-CHOO’ CHURCHES

For all of you youngsters … sixty years ago one of the most popular songs one heard was: Chattanooga Choo-Choo. It had a nice beat to it, and it was on all the media. It told of leaving Pennsylvania Station and traveling to Chattanooga. Now, these sixty years later, the actual Chattanooga Choo-Choo still exists, but it is a museum piece in Chattanooga, in which you can revisit the ambience (even spent the night in a sleeping car)—the only difference is that now the train is not going anywhere.

There is a fascinating similarity here to what happens to the church over one or two generations. I have been insisting, in the recent couple of blogs, that all of God’s people are, by divine design, to be equipped to live out their (radical?) new Kingdom humanity in being formed by the four gifts mentioned in Ephesians 4. Then, at the very end of this awesome letter to the Ephesians, Paul reminds them that this is not a safe, or hazard-free journey that they are on, but that they need to continually put on “the whole armor of God.” He reminds them that they do have a very aggressive and wily adversary, Satan, and that Satan is going to bring them down if they fail to wear that whole armor. The church is not a citadel of safety, but an exciting but risky, even dangerous, but thrilling adventure into God’s reconciling mission to the world.

If you are thinking about it, you have to ask: Why does Paul write such a letter, and then conclude it with such a grim warning? What a strange way to end a letter. But what Paul knew was that such armor is what is necessary for survival in life and function as the sons and daughters of Light, and if you become careless or forgetful of that calling, you are giving-in to the darkness—like the Chattanooga Choo-Choo, you may call yourself a Christian, or a church, but you aren’t going anywhere. It also becomes obvious, if you think about it, that part of disciplemaking is training Christ’s followers (all of them) what these seven pieces of armor indicate.

I have dealt with these more thoroughly in: The Church and the Relentless Darkness, but in brief, Paul begins with the belt of truth, which would be the centrality of Jesus Christ, who is the truth, in all that he was and did and taught. Then comes the breastplate of righteousness, which is the character and behavior of God’s new creation people. This is followed by: the putting on the shoes of “the readiness of the gospel of peace,” which says that Christ’s folk are eager to make the message known, they move toward those whom Jesus came to seek and to save. This is followed by the necessity of the shield of faith, because Satan is ferocious in throwing ‘fiery darts’ of doubt at us, as one of his most discouraging weapons. Then comes the helmet of salvation, which has to do with our calling to think like Kingdom, or New Creation people—to understand the message and the mission to which we are called. Then we take the Spirit’s sword, which is the capacity to speak and communicate the message. And finally, we know that all that we are called to do is humanly impossible, so we pray without ceasing, and so tap into the power of God, by the Spirit.

The church at Ephesus evidently became forgetful of much of this, because it is addressed in Revelation, chapter two, with the warning that they have abandoned their first love, and are in danger of ceasing to be a church—in my metaphor: they are in danger of becoming a ‘Chattanooga Choo-Choo’ church, i.e., and ecclesiastical relic that is not going anywhere. Then Jesus says to them: “If you’ve got ears, listen to what I am saying.” Have we got ears?