Enchanted Community

BLOG 3/31/14. SECULAR WORSHIP AND SACRED WORKPLACE

Here’s one for you: I am persuaded that all worship must be secular, and that our ‘Monday morning world’—be it workplace, home, family, whatever—must be sacred. The community’s times of gathering together for worship have always got to be in the midst of the realities of our lives, else they become sheer escapism. Our calling, after all, is to be God’s New Creation people incarnating that New Creation, to be the sons and daughters of ‘the Light’ right in the particular contexts of our lives, i.e., the secular context of ‘this present world of darkness.’

That means that the focus of our gathering together is for us to be energized afresh for that calling. It means that we are continually being equipped and encouraged for that task by the teaching of the Word of God and as we gather around the Eucharistic symbols of our redemption and calling.

Our worship has always got to be aware of our self-identity as a people called out of the dominion of darkness and into the kingdom of God’s dear Son. Just as he, Jesus, was the Word made flesh and (to borrow Eugene Peterson’s paraphrase) “moved into the neighborhood,” so we as those who have received him, are also called to live out our lives—not in an escapist world of ‘spirituality’ retreats and church meetings, but rather in our real flesh and blood neighborhoods.

This is where we grow. Our communal gatherings should result, not only in our being energizing for this calling, but actually causing us to ‘salivate’ over the challenge of the week before us, that of taking the light and hope and love and grace of Jesus right into the company of those—maybe affable and personable, or maybe agnostic, maybe hostile, maybe cynical, or … maybe those longing and hungering for some focus—real persons with whom we are inescapably thrust day by day.

We live in a remarkable new culture. We live with many incredibly bright and informed products of the internet-dominated culture, which has access to more information than any society ever in the history of the world … yet, one cannot find one’s own true center, or authority, or creative source, or guiding line, or final goal … on Google. We: Christ’s church, are those who are witnesses to this infinite grace of God to real and broken people as we move among these persons—some gifted, some disgusting, some morally in shambles, and others winsome and yet lonely. We know that when the iPhones and laptops are turned off … that these are left with a haunting loneliness because they are made by God and for God.

It is this secular reality and calling that must suffuse our times of worship, so that as we become the church scattered we can engage in our sacred calling, that of demonstrating the glorious gospel of hope with humor, warmth, sensitivity, caring and courtesy. Being faithful in this sacred calling is where we really grow strong, but then it thrusts back into our community of accountability and into our times of worship to be further equipped, encouraged, and energized and to share our thrilling pilgrimage, and to renew our strength as we engage God in his Word and the Eucharistic encounter.

Yesterday at the particular gathering for worship of my community, I talked with a chef, a small business owner, a surgeon, a grieving mother, a filmmaker, an actress, a new father, a building contractor, and many others. I am in awe of the New Creation potential of such as they move today into the neighborhood of their incarnations.

3/26/14. BLOG: THE POPULAR DESIGNATION AS ‘PASTOR’ IS REALLY FUZZY …

Pursuing these Blogs along the theme of an alternative narrative for the church will of necessity bring us to the question of the church’s leadership, and of that role which we have designated: pastor. This came to mind this week as we observed the 34^th anniversary of the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero in El Salvador as he was seeking to challenge the faithful to oppose the horrendous use of power by the government and the criminal cartels. He was faithful, and also is an example of how faithful pastoring doesn’t always make one popular.

How do we even approach such a question: How do we define a true pastor? The answer is both simple and complex. There is no simple algorithm that we can invoke to answer this question. For the sake of this discussion let me propose that there are two primary definitions—one is the product of a Christendom redefinition of the pastor into some kind of an official ecclesiastical figure who oversees a community. The other is a mature practitioner of the teachings of Christ who, in turn, equips others into maturity and ministry by teaching, example, and mentoring. I will designate these two definitions as: 1) custodial pastors, and 2) equipping pastor-teachers. The line between these can, admittedly, sometimes be ambiguous.

In the Christendom era, the pastor tended to be someone appointed or approved by a higher ecclesiastical body, and made available to local communities. These persons usually had been to some kind of theological school, and perhaps held a degree in divinity, which, ostensibly, qualified them to assume the custody of the congregation. What this so often produced were those who were institution-keepers, who created a safe religious zone for the parishioners, who preached therapeutic sermons, which sermons were long on the promises of the gospel and short on the costly demands of the gospel, i.e., faith without repentance. You know the rest: they visited the sick, buried the dead, tried to keep the peace, especially not offend the prominent and wealthy members of the community. Plus they like to be called “Reverend” or “Doctor,” to be “clergy” and they tend to hang out with other clergy. They tend to be ‘light’ on scriptures, so that (to quote Milton): “The hungry sheep looked up, but were not fed.”

Contrast that with what the New Testament gives us as the one pragmatic definition of what the pastor is all about (Ephesians 4:11-16). Here we have a gift from the Risen Lord to the church of a teaching-shepherd, or pastor-teacher. It is a hyphenated designation. Its purpose is to equip all of God’s people into maturity in Christ so that they can be fruitful in the missionary essence of the church. It has a goal of spiritual and Biblical maturity for all of God’s people. Paul will, elsewhere, testify that he declared “the whole counsel of God” to those whom he discipled in Ephesus. The pastor-teacher, by this definition, is the one who is the one who equips God’s folk in the teachings of Christ both in word and example, so that in the Christian community, the word of Christ dwells richly (Colossians 3:16).

By such a definition, this pastor-teacher emerges within the community of faith as one who is mature in knowledge, and in the praxis of Christ’s teachings. This role has nothing necessarily to do with seminaries, or ecclesiastical affirmation, and may be carried out modestly and quietly on the fringe of a Christian community—but it is obvious. There are those who know and teach that: those who build their house on the rock are the ones who have Christ’s teachings and keep them. They know and teach that it can be dangerous to one’s health to be a follower of Christ. They remember that Jesus began his ministry declaring good news to the poor, and release to those captive to economic injustice. They teach that it is dangerous to be rich, but that to faithful to Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount teachings can result in persecution—it is such that makes God’s people to be the light of the world and the salt of the earth.

Archbishop Romero was a faithful pastor to a nation, and he paid the price.

BLOG 3/23/13. NEW CHURCH FORMS FOR A NEW CULTURE ?

Those wedded to the archaic church forms and institutions (which I spoke about in my last Blog) seldom have ears to hear any critique of such, and will seek to maintain them even though they are expensive relics of a past generation, and will probably recede into oblivion. So lest I appear too much of a contrarian (which I probably am), let me return to my Alternative Narrative thesis, and propose some directions for the form of the church in an emerging generational culture.

I frequently sit in the colorful Dancing Goats Coffee Shop to work on my notes or read. The other day I counted at least forty laptops, with younger adults (primarily) completely absorbed in their work. Not only did they have their laptops, but frequently also their iPhones propped against their ears. Before me in those absorbed younger adults was the equivalent of several office buildings, office suites, banks of file cabinets, clerks and secretaries busy answering phones and searching for files. Not only so, but many of those young adults were also graduate students, and they had access to whole libraries, and resources that my own generation hardly finds imaginable.

On weekends that same coffee shop becomes the landing-place of friendly chatter between friends, or where bicycle clubs land after their forty-mile ride, or young parents come with their kids for a family event. This is to say that such venues are the familiar locus for a new kind of societal and generational culture, and the locus for convivial relationships. So also are many neighborhood pubs.

But that’s not the end of it. In such casual locations I have also observed tables of folk with their Bibles, deeply engaged in study and conversation, even quietly praying. They have on their Kindles, or iPads Biblical and theological resources, not to mention Wikipedia and Google, so that they can process their texts in the context of their real lives with those others who share the faith adventure with Christ along with them.

(A hundred yards down the avenue sits a handsome Georgian church structure, essentially unused and empty except for some childcare, and a few meetings on Sunday.)

Even the business community is eschewing the building of expensive (and expensive to maintain) office complexes. Major corporations are substituting shared space and shared equipment for their necessary places of operation, or resorting to virtual offices. That’s one dimension of the emerging culture that is worth noting.

This same reality is also a principle with many savvy church planters seeking to reach neighborhoods, or demographic groups with the everlasting gospel. They seek some place to gather that is indigenous to their mission, and seeking to provide the congenial context for the development of deep and interactive and supportive relationships. They are recreating neighborhoods. Their focus is on developing and encouraging one another in discipleship and mission.  They are intent on understanding the cultural context in which their participants live and operate. (And, by the way, they tend not to be ‘clergy-dependent.’)

This is a whole new world. It is not an aloof ‘churchy’ world, but an alive comprehension of what the church’s message and mission are. It is calling forth the creativity and optimism and innovation of a new and different cultural world. It speaks a different language than it predecessors in the church did, but is producing much more informed and engaged participants.

But, I remind my readers, that this is something of a cultural shift, or a cultural diastrophism, of major proportions. I think it exciting, but it leaves former generational cultures somewhat bewildered. I’d love to hear your comments.

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BLOG 3/19/14. THE DECEPTION OF CHURCH BUILDINGS HAS A LONG HISTORY

There is an ‘idolatry’ connected with church buildings that has a long history. The prophet Jeremiah, for one, surfaced it during his challenges to the nation of Judah. He was addressing a people who were surrounded by danger and impending invasion by mighty empires externally. But for Jeremiah their greater problem was that they had forgotten who they were. They had forgotten their covenant with Yahweh, who had called them to be his people. They were ignorant of, or ignoring the practice of, the Torah—yet they had this confidence that since they had their temple on Mount Zion that nothing could ultimately harm them.

In that context, Jeremiah would stand in the gate of that temple and declare: “Do not trust in these deceptive words: ‘This is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord.’” He then went on to say that if they would find their true defense in God, then they must remember God’s call to them to be a totally different kind of people, which included a radical kind of justice and caring, as well as an absolute focus on God as God is, i.e., the one and only God who had called them to be a Light to the nations.

Fast forward into the New Testament and the teachings of Jesus and the apostles. Jesus stood in that same (by now destroyed and rebuilt) temple, and in essence said that the temple in Jerusalem could be destroyed, but that he would rebuild it in three days—that he, himself, would be the new temple, the new dwelling place of God among men. Upon the completion of his earthly ministry, he consigned this presence of God among humankind to his church, to the community of those called out of darkness and into God’s marvelous light.

Note: never, anywhere, is there a mention of any buildings being  special ‘sanctuaries’ or of designating themselves as the church. The church was a community of God’s people in Christ, aliens and exiles, but with their unique calling to be the dwelling place of God by the Holy Spirit. They met in all kinds of venues, but they were contagious in their knowledge of, and thrill at what God had done in Christ, at his calling to them to be his missionary people. The focus was on making disciples, i.e., persons who were demonstrations of God’s New Creation wherever they dwelt.

It was only several centuries into the church’s existence, and after much persecution, but also after awesome expansion, that the community called the church became a dominant influence in the Roman Empire. Then a subtle and tragic subversion entered (initiated, probably, by the Emperor Constantine) that the church needed ‘sacralized’ building, or temples, such as the pagan religions had. They would now be legalized, and even encouraged by those in authority.

But when the true church became identified with a sacralized place, a sanctuary, it’s trust shifted from costly obedience to the teachings and mission of God to the maintenance of sanctuaries and the priesthood: so much for the self-understanding of the church as a nation of priests, where every believer was called to be a vital witness to God’s love in Christ 24/7. Buildings began to be referred to as God’s house, which is a total contradiction. God’s people are God’s house. Real estate is never God’s house.

God’s people are, indeed, to gather regularly to “teach and admonish one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs,” but the gathering can happen anywhere. Church communities can secure a meeting place where they can be a staging area for mission—but it is always temporary, and never the reason for the church’s existence. They can meet in parks or rented space—anywhere. But the people of God know who they are. They live lives of obedience and worship.

Howard Snyder, that wonderful author, once said: “If you want to know how strong your church is, sell the building.” I told him that one could get killed proposing that in many churches.

“Do not trust in these deceptive words: ‘This is the temple of the Lord’ … “

BLOG 3/17/14. WILL THE REAL ST. PATRICK PLEASE STAND UP!

 So today is St. Patrick’s Day. So, who in the world was the real St. Patrick? Indulge me while I let my missiological passion come to the defense of one of the great missionaries of all Christian history. This has nothing to do with green beer (which is an offense to true Irishmen. I mean, if you really want to celebrate the authentic Irish drink, go for a Guinness, which is the national drink of Ireland).

 Patrick was a youth in Roman Britain in the fifth century, and in a family that contained some clerics of the church, though he was uncommitted to a vital faith in Jesus Christ. He was kidnapped by some Irish pirates and sold into slavery in western Ireland, where he labored as a sheepherder for six years. These were evidently soul-searching years for him, and in a mystical set of communications was determined that he should escape, which he did. He fled across the island and persuaded a ship-owner to transport him back to Britain. In Britain his Christian faith became articulate and became the most formative force in his young life.

Long story short: Patrick had a vision that he should go back to Ireland and become a missionary to the very folk who had enslaved him, which he did. Our sources here are very limited, but he ultimately established a base of operations and a Christian monastic community in Armagh. He is considered the father of the Christian church in Ireland (with many myths surrounding his life). The long-term fruits of his life are quite amazing. His spiritual heirs—persons such as St. Columba, St. Brigid, and St. Brendan—continued the missionary passion of Patrick, and were ultimately responsible for a vital mission that took them again to Britain, and ultimately to the continent.

Consider that the only church that there was in the fifth century was the Roman Church, but with communications with Rome being virtually non-existent, Patrick was essentially operating in independence of any influence from the Holy See in Rome, so with his heirs. But what they accomplished culturally is awesome. A few years ago Thomas Cahill wrote a marvelous work entitled: How the Irish Saved Civilization, which records how the Irish monastics retrieved and copied the great works of European culture in their monasteries, when the libraries of Europe were being devastated by vandals.

Changing focus a bit, St. Patrick’s Day in Ireland is a day of sober Christian reflection within the church. But it is more of a celebration of Irish-ness, or Irish cultural history, than anything else. My own sense is that you’ve almost got to be Irish to appreciate the Irish psyche, and Irish-ness. It is very unique. The Irish are a fascinating mix of melancholy and mirth, of song and poetry, of profound piety and sensuousness. It is a culture replete with the myths of leprechauns and elves, all of which seem so strange to our own scientifically sterilized culture, our digital age that has little place for colorful myths and legends and imagination—of elves and leprechauns. I’m not sure we are at all the richer for this mentality, and sometimes I envy the Irish.

Recently, Seamus Heaney died, who was a much-loved voice for the Irish folk. One of the obituaries described him in four words: warmth, humor, caring, and courtesy. Heaney was a product of the Irish culture, and those words are a glimpse of the Irish personality. So on this St. Patrick’s Day, hoist a Guinness in honor of the Irish heritage, and remember that Patrick did what every true believer in Christ should always be doing: being one contagious with his faith in Jesus Christ and being a messenger of that liberating faith to the areas where it is yet unknown—from next door to the ends of the earth.

BLOG 3/12/14.  THOMAS KINCAID ECCLESIOLOGY

There is a commercial artist by the name of Thomas Kinkaid, who produced a lot of very popular ‘schmaltzy’ art (?) pieces that are romantic, idyllic, unreal, sentimental, etc. … always with mellow, rustic, domestic scenes replete with soft light (coming from nowhere) and totally devoid of any stress or conflict. ‘Mellow’ would be the word.

There are a whole lot of ‘church folk’ who envision the church in those same terms. They have what I have (maybe being more than a bit ‘snarky’) termed: Thomas Kincaid ecclesiology, i.e., they’re looking for a church that is comfortable, mellow, without conflict, filled with warm feelings, etc. But … to accomplish such, one has to domesticate the gospel of the Kingdom of God, and create one that is congenial to their social norms, and so it becomes unrelated to the real world or to the teachings of Jesus Christ.

Hey, don’t leave yet! Sure, the very word gospel means ‘joyous announcement.’ Our gospel is called the ‘gospel of peace.’ It is the announcement and incarnation of God’s new creation in Christ—but it is not unrealistic, or schmaltzy, or even (in much of the popular mind) religious. Remember, that when Jesus announced that he was going to build his church (Matthew 16:18-19), the went on to say that the “gates of hell cannot prevail against it.” That in itself should alert us to the reality that the church is a community called to herald something of eschatological importance, but that it would never be done in neutral territory. There would be resistance from the gates of hell all the way.

The church is described (by students of the mission of God in the world) as standing “in missionary-confrontation with the world.” The church, thereby, is always counter-cultural. Its gospel is a two-edged sword, which both attracts and repels, both creates and destroys. God’s people live within a totally different framework than those who are still outside of the household of faith. God’s people have a different center, a different authority, a different creative source, a different guiding line, and a different final goal than their counterparts still living outside (even those described accurately as: “spiritually confused god-seekers”). The apostle Peter described God’s holy nation (the church) as always sojourners and exiles.

Someone should warn those intending to identify with the church, or be baptized, of this reality. The church is not an ‘escape community.’ It is made up of broken human beings in the process of being made whole. It exists in social, economic, political and cultural realities that are so very much formed by the dominion of darkness. They meet together in various venues to encourage and energize each other in the Word of Christ. God’s people are called to Jesus Christ, to be sons and daughters of the Light, and that can, therefore, bring with it suffering and even death. I’ve seldom heard candidates alerted to such. The church is a community to display and celebrate the sheer joy of God’s new creation. It is not Kincaid-ish. It is, rather, the messenger of God’s peace in a broken and conflict-strewn world.

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BLOG. 3/9/14. INDULGE ME A PERSONAL NOTE

I hope my readers will indulge me a personal note. In recent months I have been recording, on my laptop, my memoirs for my family and a few close friends. This has been a fascinating bit of nostalgia, if not something of a surreal experience—that of seeing the hand of God at work fashioning my heart and mind, and equipping me to write the several books on what I describe as: missional ecclesiology, i.e., the probing into the purpose and essence of the church in the mission of God. What has been interesting is that this has always been provoked by much younger minds pressing upon me their own questions of about the what’s and the whys of God’s purpose for the church. The first twenty years of my role as a teaching-pastor were in church communities inhabited by university students. Those students could be relentless in not allowing me to get off of the hook, or to dodge their insistent questions.

The result of those years, and then these most recent twenty years of dealing with both some very gifted young adult friends, and with inquisitive seminarians across the country has been the writing and publishing of a trilogy, or three separate but inter-related books spelling out my answers to the three questions consistently handed me by real probing young minds: 1) What is the church? 2) Why is the church? And 3) Why does it seem to drift away for any self-consciousness about its role in the mission of God? They are written as a semi-fictitious dialogue with a composite young friend: Alan, whom I met in a coffee shop when he was newly into Christian faith and discipleship, and with whom I continued to have discussions over the ensuing years.

It has been fulfilling to me to put into writing the wisdom and experience that God has provoked in me, and which shared wisdom and experience I wish I had had access to when I began my sojourn in significant church leadership.

The books are: Enchanted Community: Sojourn into the Mystery of the Church (on the ‘what is the church?’ question; Refounding the Church from the Underside (on the ‘why is the church?’ question; and The Church and the Relentless Darkness (dealing with the church’s proclivity to drift back into the culture of darkness even though it may have begun well). These are all in print and available from Wipf and Stock Publishers, or from Amazon. I commend them to those puzzled or inquisitive about the church’s raison d’ètre.

What I have discovered is how mindless the church so often is as to why the church exists and how it is formed to fulfill its God-given design. This is a significant part of what has been behind these recent blogs seeking an alternative narrative for the church as it emerges into a new and different culture.

In brief: the church is to be the communal demonstration of God’s kingdom (or, better, God’s new creation) in: 1) its kingdom lifestyle—its ortho-praxis (essentially defined by the Sermon on the Mount); its relationships of true mutual caring and love; and as it is the missionary arm of the Holy Trinity/Trinitarian community (I attribute this telling definition to Miguez Bonino of Latin America). Then finally the church, eschatologically, is to be formed as a beautiful Bride for the Lamb of God (which dimension will some much needed depth to our understanding of the church).

Thank you for letting me share this with you. Fulfilling these purposes guarantees that the church will never be dull.

BLOG 3/5/14. LENT 2014: “TELL ME THE STORY OFTEN … I FORGET SO SOON.”

Yes, on this first day of the Christian observance of Lent, I am thinking of the old gospel hymn: “Tell me the story of Jesus,” and the verse that goes: “Tell me the story slowly, that I may take it in, That wonderful redemption, God’s remedy for sin. Tell me the story often, for I forget so soon; The early dew of morning has passed away at noon.”

Do we ever forget? Lord, have mercy! Do we ever forget? The essential, focal, and formative raison d’être, and sine qua non of any authentic Christian community has got to be Jesus: Jesus who lived, taught, suffered, died on the cross, and rose again, … and now “walks among the golden lampstands” (which is his church). Yet, as so many of the church communities become preoccupied with their institutional form and survival, this focus is forgotten, displaced, or diluted into some pale version by other seemingly wonderful ‘churchy’ activities … and so few seem to notice the drift.

From a different perspective, the authentic Christian community must never, never forget that what God is doing with his church is preparing a beautiful Bride for the Lamb … without spot or wrinkle [reflect on that image, if you will]. This being so, there is to be absolute intimacy between Jesus’ believing sons and daughters and himself. Does this sound strange to our institutional ears? It may.

But the drift into forgetfulness (darkness?) seems relentless, and over and over again we witness churches that embody only (what some have termed) ‘Christ-less Christianity’ or ‘cross-less’ Christianity. Somehow the gospel DNA is missing.

Our quest in these Blogs is for a Alternative Narrative for the church in the emerging generation, and as such, if it is to be authentic it must insist on an intimate community with a clear focus on Jesus, and in redeeming, reconciling relationships with one another in love, in servanthood, and in mutual accountability and responsibility—but always focused on Jesus as its raison d’être.

When this intimacy with Christ is at the heart of the community, it will also of necessity generate Christ’s own contagious mission to seek and to save those still outside, still in the darkness, still captives to lives without meaning, or hope, or love—or God.

Does that sound unreal? Humanly impossible? Well, actually, it is. The whole church that we are aspiring to see in this alternative narrative is actually not an alternative at all, but the original intent of Christ. It is the presence of Christ in human community dwelling in our neighborhoods, it is the “dwelling place of God by the Holy Spirit,” it is the local display of the divine nature in human lives and in a recreated human community—it is enchanted (as I have written in a book entitled so entitled Enchanted Community: Journey Into the Mystery of the Church).

I would not be surprised but what the alternative narrative for the church will be expressed primarily in small conventicles [check that in your Wikipedia] in which the participants are focused on teaching and admonishing one another in the Word of Christ, and gathering again and again at the table where Jesus and the gospel are made visible in the bread and the wine of the Eucharist. Here God’s sons and daughters will be encouraging and equipping each other for the mission of their 24/7 lives—to be the demonstration of God’s New Creation in lifestyle and relationships.

And because of the endemic forgetfulness of so many of the church communities, this authentic church may have nothing at all to do with those who have forgotten “the old, old story of Jesus and his love.”

“Tell me the story often, for I forget so soon …”

BLOG. 3/3/14. (CONT.) UNCONVERTED BELIEVERS: “I NEVER KNEW YOU.”

In my quest with you, my readers, for proposing an Alternative Narrative for the church as it moves ineluctably into a post-Christian culture—to even approach the question of: What makes for authentic Christian faith and discipleship? is to be walking on very delicate (even dangerous) territory. But it is not a subject that Jesus avoided. Do you remember that at the conclusion of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, he sobers his listeners with this very possibility that neither their orthodox profession nor their boast of many good works are really the ultimate criteria?

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’” (Matthew 7:21-23)

What Jesus had just been teaching is probably one of the clearest digests of his public ministry, and his kingdom teachings, that we have. It has to do with the lifestyle of obedience required of the disciple and the community of disciples that is to be a demonstration of a radical new order—the kingdom of God, or God’s New Creation. … But … it can be counterfeited: one can hide behind an orthodox profession of faith, or hold up all of the wonderful humanitarian and ‘churchy’ works he/she has done … and never really have one’s whole life in an existential, or life-engaging relationship to Jesus Christ himself. All of the profession and works can be self-promoting, self-affirming, esteem-seeking in the church—and have nothing at all to do with love for, relationship to, and obedience to Jesus Christ who alone is the giver of Life. Dietrich Bonhoeffer goes so far as to say that such a life can be ‘demonic’!

Many of us know this reality because of our own experiences. This is especially true of those of us who have grown up in the context of the Christian church. All of the words and affirmations and confessions are familiar. We’ve heard the teachings of Jesus. We have affirmed them, conformed our lives somewhat to them—but have never really encountered Jesus in such a life-transforming reality that his life becomes ours. We have never been thrilled with, and contagious with the wonder of what he has done, or of the radical discipleship to which he calls us. (I commend to my readers The Cost of Discipleship, by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, especially chapters 18-19).

How to communicate this reality? I can only relate my own encounter. I was something of a ‘darling’ of the orthodox and evangelical Christian folk of my own community. I had a respectable regime of accomplishments in the church—when I stumbled into this Matthew 7 passage, and into Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s ‘take’ on it—and it ‘blew me away.’ I realized that for all of my credentials, in which I had a certain pride, Jesus could say: “I never knew you.” I count that existential moment as a moment of profound conversion in my life those sixty+ years ago. I could only cry out to Jesus that I chose him as my Lord, as my Life, as my Savior, and as the One in whom and by whom I wanted my life to respond. I wanted Him to know me.

It is for that reason that I have watched, with some sadness, in the intervening years how many folk, ‘unconverted believers,’ inhabit the church, who are trusting in their faithful participation in Christian activities, their good works, and their orthodox professions—but seem oblivious to the life-transforming joy and power of Jesus, of his Spirit, that is the essence of his New Creation folk. This applies to those who are clergy as well as the whole of the church community.

A delicate, even dangerous subject to raise? Absolutely! But I renew my vows of faith in and love for Jesus every day since that, at first, frightening, and then converting moment. I’m willing to raise this subject with you. I would love to hear your responses.

BLOG 2/26/14. “UNCONVERTED BELIEVERS”—SAY WHAT?

It could sound remarkably like an oxymoron, but there is a very subtle phenomenon out there in the church that is not at all new. I refer to it as that of unconverted believers. It sneaks up on you, in one sense, though it should not. It is replete in the whole Biblical story. If you think about Israel as it is recorded historically in the Old Testament documents, here were this people who had had dramatic demonstrations of God’s design for them over and over again from God’s promise to Abraham early in Genesis. You would think that after their deliverance from Egypt that they would forever be indebted to the God who delivered them, and be eager to conform themselves to the life-forming principles that he gave them miraculously at Sinai. A no-brainer? One would think so, but within only a matter of days/weeks they were already reverting to the pagan practices they had ostensibly left in Egypt.

The history that follows is one episode after another of Israel, on the one hand, expecting the blessings of God’s people, identifying themselves as being his, and on the other hand forgetting the very covenant that called them to be a radically different kind of people. So that by the 7^th century they were so compromised that God began to confront his unconverted-compromised people with a series of eccentric figures, who are called prophets, to describe their unbelief and disobedience, and to remind them of his purpose, his love for them, but more particularly of the consequences—judgments—of reverting to the religious patterns of the non-Israelite nations around them.

Here’s my point: God dramatically met with a God-fearer named Isaiah in an awesome encounter, basically did a radical job of transformation in him, and then invited him to go as the divine instrument to speak to Israel. But get this: God told Isaiah that the people to whom he was being sent would hear and hear but would not understand, … that they would see and see but not perceive (Isaiah 6:10). This was the experience of all of the prophets. Those who should have seen and heard were, in fact, blind and deaf, i.e., unconverted.

It was most graphically true with the great Prophet of God by the name of Jesus. If anyone should have understood who Jesus was and how he fulfilled all of the characteristics of God promised Messiah, it should have been the people of Israel. Yet they couldn’t see or hear.

So why should we be surprised that some of the people, who should most be expected to hear the invitation of Jesus Christ to discipleship, and to be the sons and daughters of Light, should be those who are part of Christ’s church? … To my point: one encounters over and over again those (even, or maybe especially, among its leaders) the phenomenon of those who will affirm all of the doctrines, say, of the Apostles or Nicene Creeds, and will fight you if you question their loyalty to the church and to faith—but never seem to get the point, i.e., remain essentially unconverted in understanding and in obedience to the radical commands of Christ.

This first dawned on me when for a dozen years I taught a twelve week class for new church members entitled: “Beyond Membership to Discipleship” which was a pretty intense refresher course on the essence of faith in Jesus Christ and the way the church was a community of that faith. I always reminded the many participants that they would have to give a statement of their faith in Jesus Christ on the last session. I sought in every way I could to help them to understand that this was of their personal experience of repentance toward God and faith in Jesus Christ. These were nearly all folk who had been members of the church all their lives in some other places.

Result: No eyes to see or ears to hear! The statements of the most of them were that they had always loved the church, that they felt that God was near, and that God would hear them when they called on him—but seldom of a knowing embrace of Jesus as Savior, and commitment to a life of discipleship.

Unconverted believers. Get it? Church members still in the dark. Where do we go with this?