Enchanted Community

BLOG 7/13/14. WE ARE CHRIST’S FRIENDS AND DISCIPLES IF WE OBEY HIS COMMANDS—THERE IS A SOBERING PRAGMATISM IN CHRIST’S INVITATION.

From the outset, Jesus makes no secret that his followers/friends/disciples are to be engaged in the very things that he, himself, is engaged in. They are to be like branches on the Vine, which bear the same kind of fruit. All that follows in his teachings defines the sheer pragmatism of what he designs this community of his New Humanity to be and to do. Implicit in all of his teachings is that: they (we) are to be those who are the sons and daughters of Light in the midst of the darkness, i.e., that they/we should go looking for where the darkness is the greatest, that we are called to storm the gates of hell—all of us!

My thesis in this series of Blogs (on the four gifts given to the church) is that it is the purpose of the Risen Lord that every one who identifies himself with Christ’s cause by profession of his/her faith and baptism, is to be equipped and commissioned to be a mature participant in the same mission for which Jesus came, namely the realization of his New Creation, or Kingdom, right here and now—no exceptions. That is why the threshold to such faith is also a call for a radical change of mind and direction (called repentance). We are delivered from our captivity to unbelief and darkness in order to go right back into that same culture of unbelief and darkness as agents of the Light.

There are listed in Ephesians 4, the four equipping gifts that Christ gives the church. They are all critical to the task. They are also symbiotic—they interpret and inter-animate each other. They are: apostle, prophet, evangelist, and teaching-shepherd. I began my last Blog by interpreting the teaching-shepherd as one in the community who teaches, and models, and coaches God’s people so that: they are formed by the Word of Christ. But that is not just some ‘cool’, religious activity. Not at all! It is quite (again) pragmatic. To invade the darkness, one must be wholesomely and contagiously and intentionally formed by the great passion of Christ for this very world. Yes, and the context of this world is a context that is often one of rebellious darkness, and that can express itself in hostility, in frustrating circumstances, in difficult persons, … like: not always congenially receptive to the Light.

Now note: in the church’s times of vigor and health and missionary fruitfulness, that is exactly what happens: “the word went everywhere.” Every believer should know that by virtue of his/her baptism, that they are commissioned to be part of the mission, to go as light into the darkness. (They are definitely not called to be ‘religious snobs’ who escape into church meetings!) Which gives fascinating meaning to the first three of Christ’s gifts. The first is right out there in front: it is that we are to be equipped for our missionary calling, and that gift is apostle. Every follower of Christ is called to be part of the: “… as the Father has sent me, even so do I send you” apostolate. Every believer is a potential church-planter wherever he or she resides, or operates.

The second mentioned dimension of our equipping is to be, in a very intentional and healthy way, those who understand the nuances of the particular culture, or mini-culture in which we operate. Every believer is equipped as a prophet, in the sense of being one who exegetes the cultural context of his/her incarnation. This is a continual and demanding and ever changing role. Cultural settings are not static. We need to know who or what are the ‘principalities and powers’ of the darkness, and not be surprised. We are to be equipped to meet those dwellers in the darkness on their own turf, and able to operate right there as agents of the Light.

And then, … every believer is to be a robust, sensitive, caring, courteous, humorous, warm communicator of the love of God to those dwellers in the darkness, i.e., an evangelist. Got it?

BLOG 7/9/14. EVERY BELIEVER EQUIPPED: THE TEACHING-SHEPHERD

As I have been proposing in these recent Blogs, Jesus announced to his bewildered disciples that: “I will build my church” … but then didn’t give them any algorithm of what their role was in that, per se, so that we have to extrapolate from the rest of the New Testament documents exactly how that church emerged and would be built, and what its role is in the gospel enterprise. For instance, one might look at Jesus’ prayer in the 17^th chapter of John, and imagine how that prayer would be answered in some kind of communal form. Elsewhere in apostolic writings we learn that it is God’s purpose that all of us be formed into the image of Christ. How does that happen? How do all of us, sometimes weird and broken and unpredictable folk, come to be those who are robust and authentic New Creation persons, who are not humanly explainable?

I come again and again to the fourth chapter of Ephesians, which gives some of the most provocative clues as to how the colonies of Christ’s new humanity are to be formed. It simply states that Christ gives, to such communities, four specific gifts, so that every believer will become mature and fully equipped to fulfill that for which Christ has called them. Note: all four are essential.

Now: how do those gifts manifest themselves in such communities / colonies? Well, for starts, there may be some person(s) who emerges from within the community, who is commonly accepted as one who is uniquely gifted in helping the rest, by one of those gifts—or … it may be that the expression of those essential components / gifts is a communal project. Like, get a half-dozen believers together with scriptures and let them work out how they will equip themselves and each other in these component gifts, and be accountable to one another for them.

Specifically, I want to begin with the last mentioned: the teaching-shepherd gift. In the Greek this appears to be a hyphenated, or composite designation. Like the others, it is not defined, but obviously is the gift that equips the community in the teachings of Christ / the word of Christ. Participants in the colony of God’s new creation must have a good grasp on the message: its data, its promises, its demands, and how it expresses itself in the colony / community of God’s new humanity—maybe its praxis.

This gift, in turn, informs the other three gifts: apostles, prophets, and evangelists. And there is reciprocity here—the other three gifts must be dynamically informed by that word of Christ and by the teaching-shepherd. If what the teaching-shepherd is doing to form the community in the word of Christ does not produce evangelists, prophets, and apostles, … then it is essentially irrelevant to the building of the church. The four gifts are symbiotic; they are inter-animating, and interdependent. This is an inescapable factor in the formation of the church, whether it is accomplished by gifted individuals, or by the colony gathered around scripture, … or in some isolated situations is a do-it-yourself project. (Being designated a ‘church professional’ or ‘clergy’ doesn’t guarantee the realization of such gifted-ness in the community, alas!)

Resources: So, if you are tracking with me here, you may ask: what are the resources that you would recommend to assist us? Let me give you several that are my own personal favorites: 1) An English Standard Version Student Study Bible (ESV)—an accurate translation with helpful study and footnotes (and available on Kindle); 2) The one volume New Bible Commentary (brief and helpful expositions of texts, etc.); and 3) The one volume New Bible Dictionary (look up words and concepts that seem strange). Then there are always the resources of Wikipedia and Google, which are generally pretty good. (What I am proposing here: the dynamic presence of these four gifts and the maturity they are designed to produce, may well render much that goes on in so many ‘church institutions’ irrelevant to the mission of God in their present self-understanding!) … Next time: the gift of apostle.

BLOG 7/6/14. UNBELIEVING CHURCH MEMBERS … OR CONTAGIOUS DISCIPLES OF CHRIST?

Let’s continue where we left off in the last Blog. Let’s acknowledge that all too much of the church scene, i.e., the image of church institutions replete with professionals and constant recruitment programs to obtain more members … seems to have little resemblance to anything we read in scripture. But that may just point us to the heart of this very dilemma. How many of those who are church members are actually formed by New Testament teachings? How many are absolutely captured by what God has done in Christ? How many are passionate about, and thrilled by all that Jesus did and taught? How many are models and communicators of such?

What you have in the four gospels is the account of the incarnation of God in Jesus Christ, and of his teachings and commands. You have him calling a small group of guys (along with some very faithful women always there) to be with him during his brief earthly career of teaching. At the critical moment when he asked them who they had concluded him to be, it was the erratic Peter who affirmed: “You are the messiah” (i.e., the long-anticipated deliverer anointed of God to make all things new). It was there that Jesus responded that Peter was right on target, and that it would be upon that affirmation that he (Jesus) would build his church—a word that only designated an assembly of people called out for a purpose.

After he had been arrested, tried, condemned, executed on a cross, and raised from the grave—did Jesus then give to his followers the mandate, namely, that they were to go into every ethnic group in the world and “make disciples” … then he gave substance to that command. He said that they were to ‘make disciples’ or maybe to so communicate the sheer and awesome wonder of who Jesus was, so that folk would identify with him, and become part of his mission of bringing into being God’s New Creation / Kingdom of God—“Thy kingdom come on earth …” But then, a key part of that mandate had to do with teaching these same disciples: “ … to observe all that I have commanded you, and, lo, I am with you …” The ‘church’ Jesus was building involved all of those initial followers of his then creating colonies with a whole new understanding of their lives, and of putting into practice (obeying) his teachings. This is a discipline that involved every believer as part of a dynamic mission, i.e., as disciple-makers. Every believer was to be a contagious communicator of this selfsame New Creation thrill. So you find, early in Acts, both public teaching sessions by Christ’s followers, and house to house—around the table—gatherings where these teachings were discussed, digested, and appropriated.

Now to the point: There is no place in the rest of the New Testament where there is any suggestion of any kind of a colony of disciples where there were active professionals and passive recipients of their services. Rather, there is at least one place where it is plainly stated that every believer is to be equipped for the work of ministry (Ephesians 4:12) and that all are to be equipped to be mature and grow into the very stature of Christ. To accomplish this, the ascended Lord gave four symbiotic gifts (inter-animating). It doesn’t say that there is a special class of folk to accomplish this; it simply says that there are four critical gifts. What is important is that they are given to the community/colony, and so that every one who is part of that colony is to be so equipped, and that they, in turn, become part of the mission. The gifts are all very necessary for one to be a mature part of the mission. The gifts are: 1) apostle/missionary—every believer is a missionary by virtue of his/her baptism; 2) prophet—every believer is to be one who can exegete the cultural setting in which they live; 3) evangelist—every believer is equipped to be a fruitful and skillful conversationalist-communicator of Christ; and 4) teaching-shepherd—every believer is to be equipped to be a model and a teacher of the Word of Christ to others and to be able to encourage and equip new believers. Stay tuned …

7/2/14 BLOG. THE CHURCH: REPRODUCTIVE … OR PASSIVE-DEPENDENT?

Anyone who has read the accounts of the church in its earliest days cannot miss the fact that “the word (of Christ) went everywhere.” The contagiousness of such an awesome message, so consumed those who heard it that they could not keep it to themselves. That “word of Christ,” as the apostolic writings make inescapable, was unfettered and so it found its way into every place that God’s people went, both locally and in their travels. The church was growing exponentially into the whole human community, and quite quickly. It sounds almost unreal to us, doesn’t it? What happened, then, to quench (or at least slow down) that spontaneous growth?

Well, … it’s an interesting bit of history, but a long in the fourth century, or so, when the Christian church became one of the most influential realities in a turbulent world, and after it had been outlawed to no effect, the Emperor Constantine testified to having been converted t it at a critical moment of his life, and gave Jesus the credit for some major accomplishments, and in appreciation made the church, not only legal, but the religion of the empire. He wanted it to be prestigious, and so used his influence and wealth to build for it temples, as well as encouraging it to appropriate all of the trappings of the pagan religions, such as priests, and choirs, and the like.

Granted, I’m generalizing a bit, but essentially the Christian church became the official religion of the empire. From that point on, to be a part of the empire and to be part of the Christian church were almost synonymous. After several centuries of persecution, this probably brought forth a sigh of relief from a whole lot of Christian folk. But it was one of the greatest subversions, or disservices that could have been foisted off on the Christian church.

What took place (not instantly, of course, but irreversibly over time) was that the ‘church’ inadvertently ceased being focused on obeying Christ’s mandate to mission, and became, rather, a more custodial religion in which there were official priests/clergy who were the controlling class of the church, and then there were the passive-dependent laity attending liturgical rites. Before that transition, the church leaders were those in that rapidly growing new community who were the mature, wise practitioners/models of the Word of Christ. They emerged from the ranks, and became responsible to see to it that all in the community were equipped to be also mature and functioning agents in the mission of God to see the gospel of the Kingdom taken into the corners of the world.

Up until that point the church was by its very nature reproductive. Every baptized person was expected to become part of the gospel enterprise. After that point, one could be a part of what was called ‘the church’ and be comfortably (what we term as) passive-dependent—so that we now divide the church into two classes: clergy and laity. What is more, those clergy did not then actually have to emerge from the community, or to be the wise and mature practitioners of the Word of Christ, just so long as they were officially sanctioned by some higher church officials.

And the church’s participants were no longer expected to be reproductive. The church’s growth slowed perceptibly, and the church engaged itself in many internecine squabbles, alas!

I saw this graphically exhibited at one point in my life when I was asked to teach a typical, venerable old adult Sunday school class in a church, which class was populated by the church’s leading members, and who were mostly significant professionals in the city. The problem was that the class had been in existence for nearly a century and had never, ever, produced its own teachers, and essentially had no mission except to provide a pleasant spiritual social context on Sunday morning—while remaining Biblically illiterate. Spontaneous reproduction was the last thing on their agenda. Such passive-dependency is a most effective and devastating weapon of the Prince of Darkness against the church. (Next time: Four essential gifts to the church.)

BLOG 6/29/14. WHENEVER LIGHT CHALLENGES DARKNESS—TROUBLE.

Sometimes those of us who live inside of our comfortable Christian communities need to stop and remind ourselves of our calling, and of the very forthright warnings of our Lord Jesus about the hazards and consequences of following him in the path of obedience. I have been thinking of that on this 50^th anniversary of “Freedom Summer”—that enterprise by a host of young adults to register black voters in Mississippi in the summer of 1964. Granted, there were all kinds of forces at work in that enterprise, but it was primarily young adults who were formed within the black Christian community who were so very much at the heart of it.

The sheer injustices that were part of the segregationist culture of that region were not new, and were the subject of discussions within Christian gatherings, not only in black churches, but also in some of the white churches. It was quite safe to discuss this among those who agreed with each other. It was, however, quite another to confront that injustice in the bastions of white racism, and to challenge it with public demonstrations. In that cold war era anyone who proclaimed such a quest for equality was easily labeled a ‘communist’ or a ‘socialist.’ It was much safer and easier simply to remain silent and to let the status quo remain undisturbed.

But … the time came when younger black adults, college students primarily, and a much smaller number of white students began to think pragmatically about how to bring light into that darkness, how to effect real change. Their conclusion was that non-violent protests and demonstrations would make the injustice visible, and would have some economic consequences that might produce change. Of course, that is exactly what happened. Even though there were many from all over the ideological and religious spectrum who participated, the church became the rallying point, and often the victim of violence, church burnings, church bombing (such as in Birmingham where children were killed) that ultimately began to get results.

When the summer of the voter registration strategy took place, the leadership trained the mostly college students, mostly white, from mostly northern colleges at a campus in Ohio, but an essential part of that training was to let these idealistic young adults know how dangerous the effort would be, and that they could get beaten, jailed, or killed (all of which happened to many).

I bring this historical episode up here on this blog because Jesus and his apostles were also quite candid and explicit in making known that to be called into Jesus’ kingdom of light, and out of the kingdom of darkness, was also a call to “storm the gates of hell”—all of the destructive and enslaving ramifications of this fallen culture, which had been the domain of the Prince of Darkness: meaningless lives, injustice, human cruelty, torture, hopelessness, irrationality, absence of any authority or guiding line—any truth that would set men and women free.

Jesus would warn that to come after him was to deny oneself, take up the cross and follow. The apostles would teach that if we suffer with Jesus we shall also reign with him. John would write that the saints overthrow the works of the devil by the blood of the Lamb, the word of their testimony, and that they did not love their lives even unto death (Rev. 12:11). To “storm the gates of hell” is to expect satanic resistance and counterattacks, to expect, maybe, not peace but a sword. It is to forsake all that we have for the accomplishment of the realization of God’s Kingdom here on earth as it is in heaven.

To obey Jesus mandate to herald his gospel of the Kingdom, is to actively engage the reality of a malignant darkness that comes in all of its economic, social, and religious norms of the darkness, and culturally its entrenched patterns that dare us to protest. But all of this is implicit in our obedience to Christ’s commission—and it is not safe. But it is liberating and fulfilling even when initially it can have disturbing and painful consequences. We dare not filter out this dimension of Christ’s teachings. Jesus came to set men and women free.

BLOG. 6/25/14. DEVELOPING THE GIFT OF CONTAGIOUS CONVERSATION

(This is a continuation of the 6/23/14 Blog, and comes in response to some inquiries and comments by my readers.) My personal persuasion is that anyone who has intentionally received Christ in to his/her life, is thereby inhabited by the Spirit of Christ, which Spirit then incarnates Jesus’ real love toward those broken, rebellious, lost, confused, preoccupied (call them what you will: sinners? sojourners?) folk that he came to “seek and to save.” You will notice also, in reading the gospel accounts, that Jesus didn’t hang-out all that much with the religious-types, but seemed to move easily toward crooked guys like Zacchaeus, or to eat and drink with “publicans and sinners.” After all, these were the folk he came for.

It is so convenient for us to get so engrossed in ‘church activities’ that we have no contact with, or communication with those who are not our in-house friends. This is tragic. This is the short-circuiting of the mission. If Christ is in us, then no agnostic responses from others, no hostility toward religion, no indifference to things that are precious to us, no nasty put-downs of the Christian faith, are going to deter us from being right there, in love as the sons and daughters of light.

So let me give you a few leads on how to begin to work on this (in case you are not already). For one thing, you may frequently, in this post-Christian culture, have folk tell you that they don’t believe in God, or are not religious, but that they are spiritual. That intrigues me. It is worthy of a follow-up question to them as to how they interpret that word ‘spiritual,’ and see where it goes.

We are not involving ourselves in this communication with some kind of a religious ‘hard sell.’ Rather, it all begins with our compassion and our sensitivity, and our awareness (to borrow from Blaise Pascal) that there is a “god-shaped vacuum in the human heart.” We, who are Christ’s folk, after all, have the conviction that we are created by and for God. That reality may be deeply buried in others, but it lingers there somewhere. So we begin our communication with others in love, friendship, congeniality, and sensitivity by listening deeply to them—tuning in to them. This doesn’t happen quickly but must be patiently nurtured.

Here are some guidelines that I have borrowed from other, and have recorded in my own prayer notes. First of all, from the Irish poet, Seamus Heaney, at whose death it was written that four words described why he was so much loved: warmth, humor, caring, and courtesy. When I read that, I said: “Of course!” I have no idea about Heaney’s faith but I like the sensitivity of these adjectives, and seek to emulate them in my conversation.

Then there is a note from some contemporary psychiatrists to the effect that there are three anxieties that are common to all humankind: the anxiety over meaning (what is my life all about?); the anxiety over acceptance (does anyone care that I’m here, or care about me?); and the anxiety over death (what is after this life, if anything?). I sort of keep those in my mind and use them to trigger some thoughtful response when the context of the conversation warrants it.

N. T. Wright lists the four human quests as: 1) the quest for justice, 2) the quest for spirituality, 3) the quest for relationships, and 4) the quest for and delight in beauty. Another theological voice (P. T. Forsyth) records that human kind has five needs (these take a bit more thought but are rich: 1) a center, 2) an authority, 3) a creative source, 4) a guiding line, and 5) a final goal.

Ultimately, we only learn how to be communicators of the mind-boggling wonder of God’s love in Christ for folk such as we by actually seeking out such conversations over coffee/beer, listening deeply, and being patient and authentic as God’s New Creation folk. And it is what we were made for: to be spontaneous agents of the love of Christ for the real community of folk among whom we operate.

BLOG 6/23/14. SHORT-CIRCUITING THE EVANGELISTIC MANDATE OF THE CHURCH?

Why is it that some Christian communities are growing spontaneously, while others are slowly devolving into some kind of evangelistic atrophy? Why, if a ‘believer’ is a person in whom Jesus dwells by his own Spirit, and if Jesus is one who came to “seek and to save the lost” … how can every believer not be a person who moves spontaneously toward those ‘spiritually confused god-seekers’ who are the objects of that very passion of Jesus? How can that be?

Let me revisit an episode out of my own career. Several years back I was the visiting professor of evangelism, for one semester, at a very fine theological seminary. Not being a career theological professor, and substituting for a wonderful friend who was on leave that semester, I faced this new class on the first day and told them that their regular professor was one with whom I could not even be compared since he was so gifted. I told them that what they had in me was forty years in the pastoral trenches, and that I wanted them to pick my brain relentlessly during our weeks together. I even gave them the questions I would be asking them on their final examination, so to listen for the answers, and to ask all the questions they wanted.

But, … what became more and more apparent was that there were two absolutely different sets of young adults in that class. One of the sets was made up of those who had grown up inside the church and had never known anything else than Christian faith in the household of faith. The other set were those who had been converted, or had come to faith, as mature young adults. There was before me in that class a ‘night and day’ difference in the capacity to those two groups to comprehend what I was saying. Those who had come to faith as mature young adults were fascinated, and hungry to hear, and asked great questions and were, in short, really ‘into’ Christ’s love for those still outside the faith. They had been there. They remembered what it was like to live life confused about life’s meaning, and life without hope, and life frittered away with the idols of the day. That group all aced the final exam.

Those who had been baptized in infancy and had grown up comfortably inside their substantial and traditional church communities … just “didn’t get it.” They seemed to have no comprehension of the passion of Jesus to bring his good news of sins forgiven, and of new life to the most confused and broken and cynical and hostile folk who inhabited the world around them. It was almost as if they have been immunized against evangelistic obedience.

After the final exam, the first group asked if they could take me out to supper, and so we adjourned to a favorite bistro of theirs. After we had ordered they seemed eager to affirm me and to say that this had been the most helpful course they had taken in the seminary. I have pondered that episode in the years since. It raises all kinds of questions about the inner life of the church and about what constitutes healthy leadership. How was it, that Paul spent only a matter of months with the new believers in Ephesus, and yet in a very brief period these new believers had carried the message of Jesus Christ to all of Asia Minor?Can we immunize church folk against that passion of Christ so that they are indifferent to those Jesus came seeking? How do we equip believers for the spontaneous expansion of the church? Maybe a question raised by (someone I read recently): “Who evangelizes the clergy/bishops?” How do we call forth that passion of Christ, which is also an evidence of the Spirit of Christ within us, to love those whom he came to rescue? Is it only the new converts who still have close friends yet in the darkness who have such a desire to compassionately reach out? Why do the four gifts given to the church (Ephesians 4) for the equipping of the people of God include the gift of evangelist? Yes, who teaches or equips those inside the community of faith to have Christ compassion for those outside, and to spontaneously engage in warm, loving, conversation with them that will begin to introduce Christ to those he came seeking?

BLOG 6/18/14. OUR GOSPEL: COMFORTING OR DISTURBING?

A thought and a question: Is our gospel one of comfort, or is it a disturber of our comfortable indifference to crucial issues in our culture. This question has come back to me with the reminder that this spring is the 60^th anniversary of the historic Brown-vs.-the Board of Education decision by the U. S. Supreme Court. It has been made more insistent as I have been reading the memoirs of Representative John Lewis, who was such a key figure in the emergence of the civil rights movement/protests of that period. I have lived through so much of this.

For me it is more than an idle question. I was a young pastor in the North Carolina city of Durham during the 1960s, and Durham was, in many ways, a microcosm of the civil rights movement and the tensions that it aroused. Durham was, in those days, a textile and tobacco town with two major universities. The white community was essentially racist and comfortable with the patterns of segregation, as were many of the older black citizens who found some security in that system. But, a younger generation of black college students pressed the issue, and was joined by many from the white college community of that small city.

For me, there was nothing in my training to equip me to pastor a church that was deeply rooted in the racist South when such an issue of racial injustice emerged so inescapably. Very few pastors wanted to raise such a disturbing issue with their congregations, even though many of them knew there was racial injustice that was deeply imbedded. Among pastors, in the security of their own conversations, there were debates as to whether it was their role to be ‘priests’ and to comfort God’s people, or to be ‘prophets’ and speak the disturbing word.

In my own white community it was dangerous to one’s career to speak of integration of the races within the church. The voices from the white community who were willing to speak to such an irresistible cultural tide only came from the margins. So, a good portion of the white church either ignored, or slept through that critical period. A couple of us managed to get an overture passed which amended our denomination’s book of church order to insist that no one should be denied a place in worship because of race. That, along with some preaching through (especially) the Minor Prophets, with their emphasis on justice, enabled our small church to confront the issue, though we lost a considerable number of the congregation when the first black students began to participate in the congregation

Was it disturbing? Of course! Was it also liberating? Absolutely! Can one be both prophetic and priestly as a church leader? We must be. Jesus told his followers that he “came not to bring peace but a sword,’ to divide and set parents against children and vice versa. But the implementation of justice also brings comfort and hope.

I watched much of the church sleep through, or escape from facing issues of questionable wars (such as Vietnam), and from the turbulence of a restless youth culture. Yet the scriptures speak so clearly to the necessity of the church being God’s prophetic people, who continually exegete the cultural setting of their witness with all of its turbulence, and then speaking prophetically to the role of God’s people in just such realities. Every believer should be both a disturber and a comforter.

And now, there is emerging inescapably another tide of injustice, what with the dominance of wealth in the the top 1%, and the suffering that results from economic injustice—yet the scriptures speak more to the issue of the dangers of wealth, and the worship of mammon, and it’s effect on a society, than to almost any other issue. We watched the “Occupy Wall Street” movement, and the responses to it. Comfortable church folk don’t want to be disturbed by such issues, especially “in church,” but the gospel is a double-edged sword. We dare not sleep again.

BLOG 6/15/14 SO, WHAT DO WE HAVE WITH THE PRESENT CHURCH … AND WHAT ARE WE LOOKING FOR?

In my last blog, I indicated that we probably needed to be aware of some of the dominant images of the church, and of church culture, that may well distort our understanding of the church as the communal incarnation of God’s New Creation/Kingdom. So what do we have? I always ‘cover’ myself by inserting the words complex and ambiguous at this point since there is no nice, neat, clean description that covers the enormously diverse expressions and traditions that are present with the church in the world. In a sense, the word: provisional covers the ‘always-in-process’ of the church in the world. The church is also, not infrequently, quite messy. The church is, after all, composed of those of us who come in all degrees of brokenness, need, psychological snarls, etc. It includes, in all of its expressions and traditions, episodes of heartening faithfulness and obedience, but also of discouraging contradictions, error, internecine strife, etc. It comes in so many traditions: Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Protestant, Pentecostal, Independent, spontaneous, house churches, … and … none-of-the-above.

So, what are we looking for? For my part, I have retrieved from the New Testament, what I call my Eight Signs of Authenticity (explicated in more detail in Enchanted Community: Journey Into the Mystery of the Church).

First: The church must, first of all, be Doxological, i.e., it must exist deliberately and self-consciously for the glory and honor and praise of the Triune God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Second: The church is ultimately the creation of the Holy Spirit. It is not possible as a merely human construct. Apart from the Holy Spirit it is impossible to open eyes, unstop ears, change lives, and to deliver men and women from the dominion of darkness into the dominion of God’s dear Son (which is also behind the fourth sign concerning prayer, below). The church is the dwelling place of God by the Spirit.

Third: Always, always, … Jesus Christ must be the focus and center of the church: his life, death, resurrection, and teachings must be the foundation of the church, and, by them, the church must always be formed. All things exist by and for Jesus Christ. When the church becomes centered on its own inner life and not on Jesus it forsakes its authenticity.

Fourth: In the church, prayer must be a primary activity, since what we are commanded to do by Jesus Christ is not the work of merely human skills, or intelligence, or organizational skills. The work of being the missionary agents of God’s New Creation is only possible as we are in communion with the life and power of God through prayer.

Fifth: The word of Christ must be known and must “dwell richly” and be obeyed within the church so that the church is authentically “the body of Christ” in self-understanding and mission.

Sixth: The church, to be the church, must be the demonstration of the love of God for “one another,” and to all humankind. “By this shall all men know that you are my disciples …”

Seventh: [Take note] The church is the communal demonstration of the radical and counter-cultural, redemptive, and reconciling teachings of Jesus in both its thinking and its behavior—in its obedience to Christ’s commands. It is light in the midst of darkness, and so is confrontational.

Eighth: The church is always self-consciously engaged, communally and individually, in the mission of God to see his “gospel of the Kingdom” heralded to next door, and to every ethnic group on this globe (Matthew 24:14).

Those are Bob Henderson’s eight signs of authenticity that I look for in determining what the church is to be and do in its calling by Jesus Christ in order to be authentic as his holy nation—in whatever form.

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BLOG 6/11/14. THE KINGDOM OF GOD HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH ‘RELIGION,’ WOULD YOU BELIEVE?

Alright … let me unpack that title: following up on my last blog (6/8/14) requires that I make a determined effort to get us over all of the garbled, religious, ‘spiritual,’ totally-missing-the-point conceptions that seem to dominate so many who populate church institutions. Let’s begin with the very word: gospel. OK? Jesus came “proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom.” That very word, in itself, establishes my point here. It is an ordinary Greek word that conveys something that is so thrilling that it is awesome (to use our overworked contemporary adjective). It is a word used to announce some person or event or news that is so fantastically wonderful that it just blows you away. It is a word that conveys information of the highest kind of joy—maybe expected or unexpected. In the Jewish community of that first century, there had been the expectation of their God’s (Yahweh’s) visitation of his people in the person of an anointed one (messiah) for centuries. Jesus was totally unabashed in announcing that in himself that long-expected event was taking place. In Christ, God has come in a search and rescue mission in order to reconcile us and the world to himself.

Religion, on the other hand, is humankind’s attempt to respond to his/her concept of God.

Remember (as I tried to point out in the last blog), that the concept of the ‘kingdom of God’ was a Jewish concept, which was subsequently translated as eternal life, or new creation, or salvation (and some other terms occasionally) for the Gentile/Greek audience. They all conveyed the same thrilling news that God was invading his rebellious creation to reconcile it, to seek and save it, and to put it all to rights, and to perfect a whole new creation, which included the reality of a new human community called the church. He was not announcing some new religion. He was heralding the inauguration of his own New Creation. It began with Jesus coming to screwed-up and guilty human beings—folk without God and without hope in the world—and creating a new human community reconciled to God.

There is nothing ‘religious’ about it. It is robustly human and earthy. It is all about the thrilling news of becoming part of God’s ultimate design for his creation, and accomplishing this through Jesus. No, rather, he came to create this totally new community by the Holy Spirit in the ordinary lives of those who, through faith in Christ, find each other in new communities that would come in all kinds of configurations—men and women all indwelt by the Spirit (with all of their flaws and failures) to demonstrate true kingdom of God relationships, and true kingdom of God behavior and lifestyles and understanding, all of which would be a witness of its dynamic reality to the watching world.

The church is the community of those who have responded to this thrilling news, and have become, themselves, part of it. It is not a ‘religious institution’ in which one can be religious and passive. Rather, it is a community with a common life of faith and obedience that can gather under all kinds of weird circumstances and in any of multiple forms—but it is always a community of persons who are known to each other, who feel responsible for each other, who are accountable to each other, and who are always encouraging each other with the word of Christ. It is a community where all are formed into new creation maturity by the word of Christ.

It is what we are called to be. It is what we are made for. The church is, therefore, to be the communal expression of the thrilling news of Jesus Christ,and of his new creation, his kingdom … Something in that direction.

But that will means that we have to dispatch the dominant image of our culture that pictures the church as an ecclesiastical institution, hierarchically controlled from on high. Stay tuned …