Enchanted Community

BLOG 10.18.12: DISCIPLEMAKING WITH A BAND OF OTHERS ON SAME QUEST

Let me continue on with the question I have raised in the past several Blogs: Whose responsibility is the making of disciples? To whom do we look who can say, as did the apostle Paul: “What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me—practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you”?

We can always be thankful when those who are the church’s leaders, or pastors, or elders who are such persons. But, again, as I suggested in the last Blog, this isn’t always so. The resident clergy can be a wonderful friend, be a very effective institution-keeper, carry out all of the custodial duties that are a part of the traditional pastoral role … and yet not be a disciple maker. He or she can deliver enthusiastic homilies called sermons, which while interesting may also be quite vague in equipping God’s people for their works of ministry. So, when this is the case, what is one to do?

The answer is to find a band of others on a similar quest for faithfulness in discipleship as your self. Actually, this is where disciple making takes place in many (if not most) traditional church institutions: community groups, Bible study groups, intentional classes, or simply covenants made between two or three, or a smaller band of brothers and sisters determined to walk together and be accountable to each other, as well as responsible for each other.

This has always been so.

Even after the huge throng were converted at Pentecost, we find them meeting together in homes and around meals, even sharing possessions … which means that every new convert was in some kind of a context in which he or she was known, i.e., had a name and a face and a story. They were support for each other in learning the apostles’ teachings, in facing the demands and hostilities of their context, of walking the new path of obedience to Jesus Christ in the mission of God.

I am personally persuaded that the primary (and even essential) size of the church must be quite small. The omnipresent “one another” teachings of the New Testament require such intimacy only possible in a small company, i.e., love one another as I have loved you, confess your sins to one another, bear one another’s burdens, etc.

I am familiar with such a group of friends who saw this need among themselves and came together after reading Dallas Willard’s wonderful book: Divine Conspiracy, and invited others to join them in weekly reflection on scripture and then asking each other how that effects daily life. The group has been wonderfully encouraging to the participants.

Globally, the cutting-edge of the church’s growth is in house churches. If you want to read more, try: Jesus and Community, by Gerhard Lohfink, or Houses That Change the World, by Wolfgang Simson, or Life Together, by Dietrich  Bonhoeffer.

I see this need played out frequently when I see two or three folk with their Bibles in one of my favorite coffee shops, sipping the lattes and reading and discussing a text together. Find one or several others on the same quest and walk the path of discipleship together with them. It is absolutely energizing and necessary for our spiritual health.

BLOG: 10.15.12. “DISCIPLESHIP: NOT A SPECTATOR SPORT”

Christian faith and Christian discipleship are not a spectator sport. There is an expectation implicit in Christ’s calling of each of us that we will be active participants in his mission. As the New Testament documents (Paul in particular) teaches us that we are to be “imitators of God as dear children.” We are to be renewed in knowledge after the image of him who created us. We are to wear the helmet of salvation, which means that we are to be formed by the word of God, so that the word of Christ dwells richly in the community of Christ’s followers, so much so that they are all able to teach and admonish one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs (Col. 3).

Check it out!

When I asked, in my last Blog, the question: whose responsibility is disciple-making? The answer has to be extrapolated, actually. The New Testament church did not have clergy. There was no “ministers of word and sacrament,” or resident priesthood. But what is clear is that the risen Lord did, indeed, give gifts to the community so that every member would be: “equipped for ministry, for the building up of the body of Christ, until all attained the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ” (Ephesians 4).

Without any explanation, Paul says the Lord gave four gifts for this purpose—all of them necessary to accomplish this maturity: apostle, prophet, evangelist, and teaching-shepherd. He doesn’t tell us whether these gifts belong to separate persons, or can be combined in one person, but what he does says is that they are all necessary.

Somehow we have lost this. Every believer needs to be equipped in his or her participation in the missionary work of Christ’s church. Every home is to be a potential church-plant. Someone in the community has to mentor new believers into this calling. This is the function of the gift of apostle.

Every believer needs to be equipped to discern the social, cultural, realistic, every-day, political, economic, environmental, etc. context of his or her life. This is the necessary function of the gift of prophet. Every believer needs to be mentored into how to engage in wholesome, listening, and fruitful conversation with his or her colleagues, friends, working-associates, etc. who are still those outside of the family of God. This is the necessity of the evangelist, i.e., of someone to walk with us into this ministry (it’s not learned in a classroom!). And then, every believer needs to be formed by the word of Christ, the word of God. This is not just an intellectual exercise, and hence the composite gift of teaching-shepherd.

In the pattern of the church we have inherited, we have something called: “church professionals” or clergy, or priesthood. I’m one of those though I think it is probably a subversion of Christ’s design. But since we have them, I will insist that disciple-making is at the very heart of their (our) responsibility. But unless we pastors are deeply engaged in dialogue with those to whom and with whom we are making disciples, it all becomes hollow. The teaching forum, the pulpit, of the church should be always a rich and informed and profound engagement with the word of God. God’s people should be shepherded through an understanding of the Biblical story. But this becomes unreal unless that same teacher spends significant time engaged with the lives of those who are his/her responsibility.

One of the most fruitful times of my own career was when a group of 8-10 good friends insisted that they wanted to do Bible study with me, and I only agreed if they would study my sermon text with me. They did. They helped me. They were my severest critics and best encouragers. They felt ownership in my sermons. All four of these gifts were exercised in that smaller group. I learned this lesson from my own mentors, models for me such as John Stott and Bob Munger. I commend it.

BLOG 10.11.12: “DISCIPLEMAKING: WHOSE RESPONSIBILITY?”

Let’s nail down a presupposition here: Our Lord, Jesus Christ, calls us to himself, to be his disciples. The entrance to discipleship and new life in Christ is by repentance and faith on our part. He reconciles us to God and makes peace by the blood of his cross. Such a calling to us is out of his immeasurable grace and love for us.

But … he does not ever call us to passive religion, or to some static and non-engaged expression of Christian identification, or some category of ‘religious Christianity’ called: “church membership.” Such would be an oxymoron, and inimical to all that Jesus came to be and to do.

Rather, he calls us to be the living, breathing, walking and talking incarnations of his new creation—to be conformed to his own image, to the divine nature. He calls upon us not only to receive his promises, but also to obey his commands. He not only reconciles us to God, but also then commissions us to be his agents that reconciliation in the daily vicissitudes of our lives.

This radically new kind of behavior and thinking is called: discipleship.

That’s the presupposition.

Now, comes the question: Whose responsibility is it to form us, or to equip us for such discipleship? Who mentors us and models this discipleship for us?

Given the huge variety of persons, of possibilities, of circumstances and contexts, there is obviously no one simple answer. Allow me, then, to propose at least three possibilities (or maybe a combination of the three):

1. The most obvious would be that this is the role of church leadership: the pastor-teachers (i.e., the teaching-shepherd mentioned in Ephesians 4:11). But don’t count on it. Not all pastors are disciple-makers, and not all disciple-makers are the designated pastors. It is always an enormous blessing when the pastor is a gifted disciple-maker, but all too often the training institutions and seminaries are oblivious to this primary calling. More later.
2. The story of the church probably shows that most good disciple-making takes place when one believer finds another, or several others, with whom to walk this path into Christian maturity: “Let the word of Christ dwell among you richly, teaching and admonishing one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs (Colossians 3:16). We do really prosper when we grow with others and accept the responsibility for and submission to others in some kind of a mutually agreed upon discipline.
3. But, a “reality check” is in order here. The third, and often only, path to disciple-making is a do-it-yourself discipline in which we accept the fact that such is work, is demanding, takes time, and will change our lives and thinking and behavior over time. By this I mean that you intentionally set aside time to become formed in the Biblical story, ask the questions, make the applications and so become one formed by the Word of God, the Word of Christ. Jesus said that he who has his word and does it is the one who is truly his disciple.

Here is where I would appreciate your questions and comments and refinements. In succeeding Blogs I will try to offer observations and (hopefully) some resources. To this end I invite your comments and questions. Who knows? I might be able to be of some encouragement to you and others. Stay tuned …

BLOG 10.8.12: THE ENIGMA OF “CHURCH MEMBERSHIP.”

The enigma of church membership? What’s that all about?

Right off: “church membership” is a designation that is never, anywhere, even mentioned in New Testament documents. Rather, what Jesus came announcing was a whole and radically new creation, and a new race of men and women, i.e., a “new humanity” (to borrow from J. B. Philips). This is what Jesus and the kingdom of God are all about.

At the threshold of this thrilling announcement of the new creation is the accompanying awareness that it was for this that all creation had been waiting. It was that creation in which all should be put to rights, and recreated again into God’s true purpose. It is what the apostle Paul repetitively spoke of as the “mystery hidden from the ages” that has now has been revealed in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, and his teachings.

Yet, also at the threshold of this overwhelming announcement is also the command: repent and believe this joyous news. Jesus’ calling was of such a radical newness that it required of the responders the need for a totally and radically new mind—hence the word: repent, which translates as: a change of mind. It also requires of the responders a fervent embrace of Jesus, who is the Door into this new reality, and of the knowledge of who he is and of our obedient response to his commands.

This is where the term: disciple enters in. It indicates one being taught and formed (disciplined, if you will) into the likeness of the discipler, who in our case is Jesus himself. So Paul will pray (agonize in childbirth) for his spiritual children in Galatia, until Christ is formed in them. He will use himself as a model and tell the Corinthians to be imitators of him as he is also of Christ.

But it is Jesus himself who gives his final mandate to his followers (us) to “go make disciples,” and then spells it out, that this involves teaching these disciples to obey all that Jesus has taught. Or Jesus saying that those who are truly his disciples are those who hear his word and do it. Paul will make several references to believers being renewed or recreated in knowledge, or in true righteousness and in their intimate relationship with the God and father of our Lord Jesus.

Note: there is never any word about “church membership.” An ostensible Christian community that only invites folk into its membership … is marketing the community, but certainly not calling people to discipleship in God’s new creation. Such membership requires no repentance or faith. Bonhoeffer calls it: “cheap grace.”

We are called to come together, certainly, but when and where that gathering takes place, the gathered disciples are to “teach and admonish one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs” (Cf. Colossians 3). They are expected to be disciples.

Discipleship begins with dynamic repentance in which we are committed to being changed into the image of Jesus, and by embracing him as Lord of our lives, and as our faithful Savior by his own obedience: his incarnation, his teachings, his life, his death on the cross, and his resurrection.

There are vast numbers of passive “religious Christians” (to borrow from Bonhoeffer) who are content to “go to church” and there to observe a well produced “worship service” but who have no awareness of the demands of discipleship. There’s the enigma.

And whose responsibility is it to make disciples? That’s for a future Blog. Peace!

BLOG 10.4.12: THE UN-EVANGELIZED CHURCH?

The very word: gospel, is a translation of the Greek word: euangellion, which means something like: a thrilling and insistent announcement. The Christian church uses it to speak of the thrilling announcement of what God has done in Jesus Christ.

So, a question: Is the church a part of the gospel message … or not? Is it rather an enigma, or a contradiction, a religious institution with members and typical church-like activities, but utterly confusing to those still outside? Is it populated with members who are not in any way self-consciously disciples? Persons not in any way conscious that they are each a dynamic part of the mission of God, or the kingdom of God, i.e., mindless, passive religious folk who have become part of the institution without much conviction of either knowledgeable faith in Jesus, or transforming repentance?

When such a very pervasive image of the church is considered, then you have a scene where Christ’s own mandate (commission) to his followers is not fulfilled inside of the church, and thus such a church is itself un-evangelized.

You see: disciples reproduce. Disciples make disciples. Disciples are contagious with the life and teachings of Christ. Disciples “live Christ” and have Christ’s passion to seek and to save those still out there living meaningless and broken lives, or folk content just to entertain themselves to death comfortably and never facing the meaning of it all, or the possibility that there really is life-transforming good news in all that Jesus did and taught. Disciples are never passive about what they have been called to be and do.

Disciples “get” the joyous sound of who Jesus is and what he came to do, and they run with it. Disciples are those who are being conformed deliberately and self-consciously into the image of Christ in their knowledge, behavior, and lives in conformity to the divine nature (holiness). Disciples are Christ’s agents of seeking and saving the lost sojourners out there.

Disciples move toward the irreligious, the secular, the broken, the indifferent, etc. as Christ’s agents of love and grace. They do this as incarnations of that very gospel, as the sons and daughters of Light.

Disciples “abide” in Christ and so bear all the fruits of that living relationship. Disciples are thrilled with who they are, and by what they have been called to be and do by Jesus.

What is so tragic is that the creation of such disciples is unimaginable to such a vast number of ostensible churches, and their constituent ‘church members.’

Disciples are not content to just be members … they want to reproduce, make disciples, plant new churches, shine in the darkness, storm the gates of hell.

True churches—churches that have real gospel integrity—are those made up of those who have responded to Christ’s call to become his disciples, to observe all that he has taught (commanded), who are the doers of his word.

If such is not the self-understanding of some ostensible church, then that church is itself a mission field. And, alas! There are a whole lot of them. But conversely, there are a lot of churches that are themselves communities of the gospel, and so are part of that same gospel.

Now there’s good news!

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10.1.12 BLOG: HOSPITALITY AND THE SOJOURNERS NEXT DOOR

Forty-plus years ago a big news article in national magazines was the episode of five young missionaries who were killed in an attempt bring the Christian gospel to the unreached Auca Indian folk in the rain forests of Ecuador. This event became the cause celebre among a large company of missionary-minded Christian folk.

The late missionary leader, Horace Fenton, loved to tell the story of a couple of such concerned Christian folk, who about that same time received an invitation to a neighborhood cocktail party, and decided that they should accept though they weren’t part of the cocktail partying set. So they spent an interesting Saturday evening with their neighbors, and on the walk back home were reflecting on what they had experienced. They decided that there were some folk in their neighborhood who were as totally out of touch with the Christian message as the Auca Indians in Ecuador, and so began to pray seriously for a way to communicate the love of God to them.

The scriptures have a great deal to say about the stranger at your door, about the ministry of hospitality, and about the love of God to folk whose lives are broken, empty, captive to false ambitions, and the idols of the culture, … but could never articulate how dark it is on their insides.

We live in an interesting culture with all kinds of hidden desires for some kind of “spirituality” but at the same time we are a part of the post-Christian culture that can be almost hostile to the Christian faith and church (like: when the press identifies “evangelical Christians” with some right-wing political force with contempt).

Or a whole Facebook, social media culture that projects friendliness, but is in reality impersonal and superficial for the most part, and where lonely folk seek to communicate. We live in a setting where many folk have not the capacity to sit across a cup of coffee or a beer and have a good heart-to-heart talk with another. There are a whole lot of what one writer defines as sojourners, or “spiritually disoriented god-seekers.” Where is the point of contact with such folk?

Try beginning at home.

The scriptures make a whole lot about hospitality and about table-fellowship. I am proposing that every Christian home is the primary gospel outpost, and every home is to be a place of grace and peace that is open and inviting and caring for those next door and down the street. Our neighbors don’t want aggressive Christians, but they do want real genuine neighbors who love and care and share.

There aren’t many of these sojourners who have the slightest interest in an invitation to some church … but … they might well be responsive to an invitation into your home for a cup of coffee, or a meal, and conversation.

The fall is the season that most churches engage in a stewardship program. I want to ask the question: What kind of a steward are you of your home and neighborhood? Is your home a place where grace and peace are tangible to your neighbors?

Good question. I’m wrestling with it myself.

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BLOG 9.27.12: “THE QUEST FOR RELATIONSHIPS”

Warning: This blog is not “light reading.”

In N. T. Wright’s fascinating book Simply Christian, he lists as one of the four basic human hungerings, or quests, that of the quest for relationships. That sounds innocent and convincing enough, but it requires that we examine the very foundations of human existence, of human community, and of every dimension of such relationships, and the source of our norms for such.

If the Christian community is to deal with this quest with any integrity, then if must engage in a serious theological (and metaphysical) investigation of the divine purpose in the creation of humankind, of the need for human community, and of the divine nature, which is to be exhibited in this. We are not left to impose our own autonomous solutions and definitions upon them, given the flawed and fallen condition of this present human scene. The church cannot be defined by the norms of the dominant social order.

Consider, for starts, that the crown of God’s creation is the creation of man and woman in God’s own image and likeness. That, image and likeness in itself demands understanding. Humankind and all of creation are to reflect God’s glory, and that also requires that we understand what constitutes God’s glory. I will appropriate a definition borrowed from Gregory Boyd: that God’s glory is “the radiant display of the divine nature.” Within that divine nature is the church’s belief in God as eternally existing in three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Reflect on that belief and you are brought to the next question of how these three divine persons relate to one another—which in turn will lead us to how such relationships within the Trinitarian community are to be reflected in the human community (and the church). Somehow we are inescapably led to the understanding that before the human rebellion, the man and the woman related to each other according to the divine nature in which they were created, and also related to each other in the embrace of the Trinitarian community.

Theologian Colin Gunton gives some specifics to this relationship within the Trinitarian community when he understands the Trinity as three Persons who are in each other, making room for each other, drawing life from and pouring life into each other, interpenetrating and interanimating each other, rejoicing in each other, and seeking the glory in each other—“in eternity Father, Son, and Spirit share a dynamic and mutual reciprocity” (From his book: The One and the Three and the Many).

In essence they related in a beautiful self-giving love to one another, and so intended the human community to be the glory of God in exactly the same way. Within that concept all human relations, every dimension of the human community are to be reflections of such grace and peace.

But when that primordial human community sought autonomy that whole scene of shalom and beauty was shattered, and there entered a brute self-interest, which sought to redefine it all out of self-interest.

Enter Jesus and the inauguration of God’s New Creation (the Kingdom of God) and you will find that the church is to be a radical recreation of that original intent—and that not only in sexuality (which so often dominates the church’s discussions these days), but also in all relationships.

One has only to do a careful reading of Ephesians 4:17-6:9 to see this divine nature being the norm for the realities of our human nature and community. We are not free inside the church to make the norms of the dominant social order to be the norms of the church. We stand under the revealed purpose of God for all of our relationships, and only in such do we find our true being, and our quest for relationships given direction.

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BLOG 9.24.12: WHAT IS THE LIFE SPAN OF A CHURCH?

What is the life span of a church, or of a Christian community? That is a question which it is almost impossible to answer given the mystery of the church’s existence and Spirit-life … but it is decidedly a question, which needs to be asked. In an oblique way, it has been raised from the beginning of the teachings of Jesus, and is replete in the New Testament.

Consider that Jesus, in some of his concluding teachings about the inevitability of the gospel of the Kingdom being preached to every people group in the world before the end comes, also included a comment that: “those who endure to the end will be saved” (Matthew 24:9-14).

Or look at the sobering first chapters of the Revelation of John (Rev. 2-3) which is written to the seven churches of Asia Minor only about one generation after their founding, and yet already many were drifting, were forgetful of their calling, were preoccupied with their inner life, were inclusive of false teachings, or pathological personalities, or had forgotten how to love, and so were in danger of ceasing to be churches (or, of having their lamp removed from the lampstand). The lessons of those seven churches should be a continual point of reference to present-day churches as they evaluate their own authenticity.

Then there is the progression of Paul’s awesome letter to the church at Ephesus, in which he lays out the whole eschatological design of the church as the demonstration of the message of Christ and of his New Creation/Kingdom, which is breathtaking. But I am convinced it is no accident that he moves to the conclusion in which he warns that the whole thing could come crashing down on their heads unless they realize that they are in a life and death battle with the prince of darkness and therefore must individually and corporately put on the whole armor of God daily in order to “stand against the wiles of the devil.”

For those of us who live in the post-Christian culture of North America, we have come to look upon all of those institutions or communities that designate themselves to be churches, and assume that somehow they are the church, whether or not they show any evidence of being the incarnation of Christ’s teachings, i.e., if they have a building and clergy and services and members, they must be churches, even if they are diminishing, and even if the light and knowledge of the gospel of Christ burns very dimly.

Churches that are alive make disciples. They grow spontaneously. They produce a second and third generation of disciples (members) who know how to make disciples, who in turn make disciples (those who know and obey and live out the teachings of Jesus).

Whenever any church or Christian community (and its participating members) dilutes, or displaces, or forgets its calling, then it reverts to the darkness. It may be the repository of a form of religion, but it is only marginally or questionably a church.

So, “what is the life span of a church?” is a question that needs to be visited purposefully and regularly by us.

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BLOG 9.20.12: IF THE CHURCH IS TO BE THE CHURCH, WHAT SIZE?

In my previous Blog I discussed the possibility of being really lonely and anonymous in the church. The inevitable question then follows: Is there a size and a form of the church in which such anonymity and loneliness are not possible? I am a bit reluctant to offer dogmatic answers to such a question, given the enormous diversity of church expressions, … but I will risk one: The primary form of the church must be small, i.e., two or three or a dozen—small enough so that every one knows everyone else’s name and face and story. (It is such a form that offers us some understanding of why house churches are the cutting-edge of the church’s missionary growth in the world today.)

When we look seriously at the purpose of the church in the mind and heart of God, it is to be not only the incarnation of the gospel of the kingdom of God, but it is also to be the demonstration of God’s new creation in the human community. It is to create, in Christ, the human community as it was intended to be in its origins. It is to the human community in the embrace of the Trinitarian community in its fullest expression of intimacy, relationships, caring, grace, self-giving love, mutuality, … and (to jump ahead) to be the visible community where the fruits of the Holy Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23) are lived out visibly and authentically. This is not possible in large impersonal assemblies.

If the New Testament documents are to be our guide here, then beginning with the form the church took immediately after Pentecost we note that the excited new believers did evidently did gather at the temple in Jerusalem and could have been taught and oriented to their new faith by public teaching, … but please note (Acts 2:42-47) that while they continued in worship of some kind at the temple, they broke bread together and shared their new faith and their lives and possessions as they met in homes. It is hardly possible to sit around a table for long, with its limited number of participants, and not share stories of faith and the struggles, conflicts, joys, doubts, and daily experiences that go along with such stories.

Another clue we can use to extrapolate the size and form of the church comes from the Acts account of the founding of the church in Ephesus (Acts 19-20), which is one of the most helpful to us. It began with twelve disciples of John the Baptist whom Paul met at the synagogue. Paul gave them the rest of the story and they were powerfully convinced and converted. It would seem that Paul continued to teach them in the temple (a public assembly) until they were declared persona non grata at the temple, and so rented a lecture hall to continue public teaching. But the real clue comes in Acts 20 when Paul reminds them how he taught them publicly, and from house to house.

One could be anonymous and lonely In a large public meeting, … but hardly so in house gatherings where shared faith and life are inescapable.

So the primary form of the church would be small. A secondary form would be public assemblies for teaching purposes. It is conceivable that taking on institutional form for some mutual purpose might be useful for a time, but such are only a third form and should be so constituted so that they could easily be liquidated when their usefulness is over.

That’s enough for starts. The primary form of the church should be small enough so that no one can be lonely or anonymous. It is where all of the one another exhortations of the New Testament are possible.

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BLOG 9.17.12 CHURCHES CAN BE LONELY PLACES

Can you be (really) lonely in a church? Absolutely, but … with this necessary disclaimer: that such loneliness depends on the authenticity, or lack of authenticity, of the given-church, not to mention its size.

Actually, we live in a culture of lonely people. The social networks are quite deceptive. It is one thing to project an image of oneself on Facebook, and to Twitter inane chat with others, while being hauntingly lonely and desperate for some experience of true intimacy that is beyond one’s imagination, but for which one longs. One can participate in a church in which everyone seems to agree on the words and rituals and social engagements, and yet have not a clue who these people are, how they think, what are their joys or failings, … and certainly not aware of the doubts and failures that are the lot of all of us, children of grace that we are. We see others but do we really know them? It’s easy to hide from one another in church. There are layer upon layer of personas/images, which we project in order to be acceptable to each other. We put on our Sunday-religious persona, and sing familiar hymns together, and listen to the same sermon, and exchange pleasantries with each other over coffee.

All the while we are still strangers.

A generation ago there were best-selling books that unmasked this reality of loneliness. One was Philip Slater’s The Pursuit of Loneliness, in which he sociologically and culturally spoke of how we keep moving further and further away from intimacy in every way, like: flight to the suburbs, finding places to hide, and the like. He spoke of the growing isolationism of the individuals. Then David Riesman wrote The Lonely Crowd, which produced the whole discussion of how that when we do not have an inner-core of true identity, or inner-directedness, then we look to others to direct us and so become other-directed, all the while becoming lonelier and lonelier, though being in the midst of the crowd.

A recent discussion on Mars Hill Audio was about W. H. Auden’s classic poem: “The Age of Anxiety” in which four guys in a bar begin to discuss what the meaning of life is all about. Listening to that interview, I reflected that I have been hanging around churches most of my life and have seldom heard anyone having a robust discussion on the ultimate meaning of my/our existence. Am I an oddity? Or do we avoid profound questions in the church, so that the local pub may be a better locus for provocative conversation about the issue that really form one’s life?

Yet, when I read the New Testament, I find that the clue to the communal life of Christ’s church is the term: one another (Greek: allelon). We are called upon to love one another as Christ loves us, i.e. servant, unsparing, self-denying love. We are to confess our sins to one another (intellectual, moral, ethical, sexual, economic, social, and whatever else causes us to fall short of God’s glory). We are to teach and admonish one another. Wow! You can’t do that in an impersonal crowd. We are to bear one another’s burdens, and to be subject to one another, and provide for each other’s needs. We are to be tenderhearted, forgiving one another as Christ forgave us. And so it goes. Where would such a church come into being?

But such is all too rare in all too many churches. So four guys in a bar may be a good place to start a church!

(To be continued.)