Enchanted Community

BLOG 9.13.12: ENCHANTED COMMUNITY: JOURNEY INTO THE MYSTERY

“Mind if I ask you a question?”  Alan inquired.

You can ask. I don’t guarantee answers. Fire away.

“What’s your ‘take’ on the church? What’s it got to do with anything? Where does it fit into my life as a follower of Jesus? As a disciple?”

In five words, or less? Like, first of all: where does that question come from, and what’s behind it? It’s a loaded question, you know.

“Before I get into that I’d like to know. Just off the top of your head, how you perceive of the church. I’m totally confused, and get more so the more I try to find a place for it in my commitment to be a follower of Jesus.”

OK. But when you ask that, you’ve got to begin by sorting out the distinction between your own personal experiences of the church, then all of those other expressions of the church in the past and present, and then, finally, discern whatever it is that is the essence of the church in the mind and mission of God.

That can become pretty complicated.

“Maybe so, but let’s start with your own experience of the church. How would you describe it to me? Because frankly, I’m pretty confused, maybe even bummed by it all.”

(I had to laugh) OK. Try on some descriptions like: enigmatic, enchanted, confusing, mysterious, awesome, contradictory, uncontrollable, clandestine, impossible, laughable, and unpredictable—just for starts. These descriptions come to mind. All of the above. Are you still with me?

“Sheesh! Where did you ever come up with a list like that? Especially the ‘enchanted’ bit? Where’d that one come from? That has to do with something, like, magic. That’s about the last thing I would never connect with any church I ever encountered. Are you serious?

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Alan is twenty-two, blonde, pony-tailed, bespectacled, and a graduate student in bioengineering. His exceptional intellect is obvious. His questioning is relentless. His insatiable spiritual appetite is often in conflict with his brutal honesty (which is not always well-received in “comfort-zone” Christian communities). I found him to be a gift of God to me. He provoked me to climb out of my own jaded acceptance of the normal ecclesiastical ruts, which I had come to accept. He also made me stretch into his generational culture, which is so radically other than mine. We had originally met on several occasions after worship with the large congregation which I attended and which he attended, occasionally, on his search. These questions came up when we met by accident in a coffee shop. He was a winsome guy. I came to love him.

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This was the beginning of an intense conversation between us, which lasted for many months and which became the book: ENCHANTED COMMUNITY: JOURNEY INTO THE MYSTERY OF THE CHURCH (Wipf and Stock, 2006), and is, obviously, the source of the name given to this Blog-site.

I invite you to tune-in. It was a fascinating journey.

(To be continued.)

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BLOG 9.11.12: REFOUNDING THE CHURCH FROM THE UNDERSIDE

I am going to engage in a bit of self-promotion in this blog and the next. My own engagement with the essence of the church has been in dialogue with some wonderful young adult friends, and has been published in two books. The most recent is: Refounding the Church From the Underside (Wipf and Stock, 2011). The following is excerpted from the publicity information accompanying that book:

AS THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH IN THE WEST MOVES FURTHER INTO THE POST-CHRISTIAN ERA a dilemma rises for those thoughtful followers of Jesus Christ who find themselves in venerable older church institutions that have become forgetful of their reason for being in the purpose of God. Such Christendom church institutions, as Henderson designates them, rather become somewhat idolatrous of their traditions, sanctuaries, their ecclesiastical accouterments, not to mention their dependence on a questionable category of persons called clergy. A younger generation, involved in many of these churches, is raising insistent questions about the integrity of so much of this—while at the same time being appreciative of so much that is good.

Henderson’s long career as a teaching pastor and mentor to younger generations helps us walk through this dilemma with refreshing insights about purpose (teleology), Kingdom integrity, form, and the disciplines necessary to transform these communities from the underside. He employs the term refounding as indicating something much more profound than renewal—a reclaiming of its original intent in the heart and mind of God.

“With equal parts of wit and humor, coupled with a pastor’s penetrating insight, Henderson asks the tough questions about the church’s relevance today. Readers will find his humility in the face of the church’s self-absorbed nature refreshingly honest for a career pastor and missiologist and his steps for refounding the church both practical and compelling. As a self-confessed ‘church cynic’ and someone torn between my identity as a beloved of God and as a ‘millennial’ in a decidedly post-Christian age, I found Henderson’s book both dangerously subversive and altogether captivating.”                                                       – Erik Vincent, M.Sc. (Oxon) –

“If Robert Henderson never writes again he has given the church a splendid capstone to his years of service in its behalf … This is his call to move forward by going back to the core of Christ’s teaching about the way God works in the world through his chosen disciples. These are they who pledge to obey Christ’s teachings and embrace his kingdom mandates. This is a bracing manifesto from a dedicated servant of the Lord who loves Christ’s kingdom too much to allow it to be trivialized by churches more interested in being contemporary than being faithful. Tough stuff!”                 – William Pannell, Professor Emeritus, Fuller Theological Seminary –

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Grace and peace to you.

(… To be continued …)

BLOG 9.6.12: WHAT WOULD A “CHRIST-O-CENTRIC” CHURCH LOOK LIKE?

In my last Blog I described the all-too-familiar phenomenon of the ecclesio-centric church in which a church communities become focused primarily on their own communal life: church activities, their buildings, professional staff, etc. …and in which Jesus is relegated to the margins. At the end of that Blog I tossed off the proposal that in my next (this) Blog I would attempt to spell out what a Christ-o-centric church might look like.

I think that in such a proposal I have bitten-off more than I can chew, and will certainly raise more questions than I can answer. But let me dive in anyhow. A Christ-o-centric church would look like a community of Christ-o-centric disciples!

The very reality that there are so many such ecclesio-centric churches (especially in the western world, and in our post-Christian North American scene) makes insistent upon us that we realize that we need an alternative imagination in order to see beyond what is, and what is deficient, … to what an authentic Christ-o-centric (Christ-centered) community might consist of.

[First of all, we need to disabuse ourselves of what Christ-centered means. To be Christ-centered absolutely does not mean some otherworldly, church-ified spirituality. Quite the contrary to be Christ-centered is to be very much this worldly, it has the meaning of earthiness and reality all over it. Jesus Christ was the one who consorted with real sinners: crooks, prostitutes, profane fishermen, and all manner of broken human beings.]

First, a Christ-centered church can only become a reality if it is composed of Christ-centered men and women who are intentionally formed by the data of the life and teachings of Jesus, and such formation makes them to be totally counter-cultural. They are formed by knowing the data of his life and teachings. They are formed by the promises of Jesus with all of the accepting, forgiving, grace and love which Jesus offers to such real broken folks such as we. They are formed by the demands of Jesus to the effect that they are called to a life of obedience to his commands, to his Sermon on the Mountain lifestyle, and to his requirements of being engaged in his mission of demonstrating and heralding his New Creation to the whole human race, beginning right where we are.

Such formation is called: disciple-making. We are to become those who are imitators of Christ because: we are inhabited by his own Spirit.

Paul reinforced this goal when he tells the Ephesians that all of Christ’s people are to be equipped “for the work of ministry, for building up of the body of Christ [the church] until we all attain to 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 4:12ff).

Now take note: Here is where the breakdown comes which produces ecclesio-centric churches. When this primary discipline of disciple-making is displaced, or diluted, or marginalized, or forgotten, … then participation in the church doesn’t require much besides our membership. And what happens is that: churches become inhabited by unconverted believers, and church communities become only what Bonhoeffer described as religious Christianity, which is so conformed to its social context that it becomes of no effect as a Kingdom force.

(To be continued)

9/3/12 BLOG: AN ECCLESIO-CENTRIC CHURCH IS AN OXYMORON

What, pray tell, is an ecclesio-centric church?

Allow me to tread on some delicate territory here, but for good reason.

An ecclesio-centric church is a church focused on its own institutional life, prosperity, and survival. It heralds its commendable preacher, or choir, or youth program, or mission trips to some needy areas, etc. (all of which are good in themselves) … all you have to do is to read the church page (for those who still run such) in Saturday newspapers, or check out a church’s web-site to see this in spades. What comes across is an invitation to “make this church your church home.”

What does not come across as a priority, and as their thrilling raison d’être, is Jesus Christ, who is the reason for, and focus of any authentic church.

What does not come across is the passionate love of God for broken people, for those searching for meaning and hope and future, for those who know they are really screwed up but are too proud to admit it.

What does not come across clearly is that the church (to borrow from my Latin American brothers and sisters) is the “missionary arm of the Holy Trinity” in God’s great search-and-rescue mission in and through Jesus Christ.

Ecclesio-centric churches, like the church at Laodicea (Revelation, chapter 3), have become so unwittingly pre-occupied with their own inner-life and comfortable social relations with each other, … that Christ has been left outside the door, and no one seems to notice! (Even though they would hasten to deny such a charge).

The church is to be the restored community of God’s New Creation (kingdom) in Christ. As such it exists to be the demonstration of that New Creation in communal form. It is to be the demonstration of the welcoming grace and love of God in the behavior and thinking of those who compose it. It is to throb with Christ’s own zeal to seek and to save real messed-up, blind, captive sinners (such as you and me).

So, when that which presents itself as the church is focused on its own inner-life and activities and desirability as a religious institution … and not on its God-given purpose, it is an oxymoron. Right? It becomes a church centered church. Yes, there certainly are almost certainly those smouldering embers of true life and faith in Christ in such, but they tend to be out of sight.

The question comes: Were one (of us), out of some spiritual hungering on a quest to find meaning and hope and forgiveness/acceptance for our lives, … to venture into such a scene, one would most likely find or hear or observe what?

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Maybe in my next Blog I will be more positive and seek to spell out some of the life-giving dimensions of a Christ-o-centric church, and communal practices that communicate the sweet aroma of God’s love in Christ.

Peace!

BLOG 8.28.12: QUESTION: HOW MANY DOES IT TAKE TO MAKE A CHURCH?

How many of Christ’s people does it take to be a church?

Dumb question?

Jesus told his disciples that he would build his church (Matthew 16:18)—using the Greek word, which we translate as: church, that bespeaks a group of people called out (ek-klesia) for some purpose—but Jesus never defined what form that will take, or how many it will require to constitute a church. We only begin to get clues in the Acts and the other New Testament letters.

For starts, Jesus did say: “For where two or three of you are gathered in my name, there am I among them” (Matthew18:20).

What becomes obvious is that those folk, who have found new life in Christ, do in fact seek out other fellow followers of Christ and create bonds of helpful relationships with each other. (It is never a company of religious strangers or of folk irresponsible for each other’s welfare in their walk of faith.) At one point a New Testament writer will say: “Let us consider how to stir up one another one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another …” (Hebrews 10:24-25).

How many does it take to meet together in order to encourage and love one another?

In another place we are told: “Let the word of Christ dwell in/among you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom …” (Colossians 3:16).

Such mutuality in accountability and responsibility and encouragement and love has a level of interpersonal intimacy it relationships written all over it. This is not possible in large church assemblies of religious strangers who sit side by each in pews and don’t even know each other’s names.

I’ve watched two guys on the deck of a coffee shop deeply engaged in a study of Colossians (I eaves dropped) together and praying for one another. Then, for months there were about eight Korean young adults who met at Panera Bread with their Bibles and spent an hour intensely studying and discussing the text before them. I recall many occasions where believing folks met over meals to mutually process life, to teach and encourage one another, … and to which they would sometime feel free to invite inquiring and curious friends.

Are these small clusters of mutually ministering believers a church?

If such a church-around-the-table chooses to break bread and drink wine remembering Christ, is he not among them according to his promise. I would venture to say that they are possibly more truly the church than those vast ecclesiastical institutions with all their “bells and whistles” made up of religious strangers. Even in the infant post-Pentecost church, the thousands of new believers in that hostile Jerusalem setting, not only met publicly, but more interestingly, from house to house sharing faith, life, and possessions.

How many does it take to be a church?

Given the fact that over half the world’s population is now under 21 years of age, and that this younger generation is not wedded to traditions, but looking for authentic and meaningful relationship, this question may become more urgent for the church!

8.23.12 BLOG: QUESTION: CAN A ‘CHURCH’ BE ONLY A ‘MYTH’?

A generation ago, Bolivian Methodist bishop Mortimer Arias, speaking in this country, related to an ecumenical assembly that, as a Latin American, he found North America to be a particularly difficult mission field because people think they have accepted or rejected the gospel without really understanding it. “The more I think of it, the more reinforced is my impression that this is one of the most serious obstacles for Biblical evangelism in this country. How can you evangelize people who consider themselves Christians? How can you evangelize through millions of  ‘Christians’ who assume that they have received the gospel, and that they are bearers of the Good News, but who not at all excited about it?”

In that same general time frame, the short-lived Pope John-Paul I, was speaking (I think in Chicago) and asserted that the major task of the church today is “to evangelize those already baptized.”

In recent days there have been studies that indicate that a very small percentage of those with spiritual longings who would ever look to the church as a place to seek answers. More than that, the church has become for many a confusing and hindering factor in one’s quest for God.

I could footnote this from my own career as a teaching pastor in the church and in conversation with a very large number of people who would consider themselves Christian, but had no knowledge of the teachings of Jesus, no sense of any need for any changes in their lives, no sense of real sin or real need of Christ’s saving work in their lives, … just content to be part of a community of congenial religious strangers which meets some social need in their lives. I have often estimated that in many of the several dozen churches I know quite well, that there are probably only about one third of the members who manifest any real evidence of the reality of new life in Christ, or of familiarity with the data, or of the demands of the gospel. The rest seem to be content with the church as a commodity that fulfills some “spiritual” need in theirs lives, with or without any mention of sin and salvation.

Which brings me back to the question: Can a church be a ‘myth’?

Webster gives as one definition of myth, the following: “A person or thing existing only in imagination or whose actuality is not verifiable: as a: a belief given uncritical acceptance by members of the group esp. in support of existing or traditional practices and institutions. …” So that if the participants decide a particular church is a “church” notwithstanding that it does not have much to do with any substantial Biblical definition as the “dwelling place of God by the Spirit,” or “the body of Christ,” or a community formed by the word of Christ, or the demonstration of God’s New Creation/Kingdom of God, … is it then a church, … or is it a myth?

Now there’s one to chew on

BLOG 8/20/12: “KINGDOM PEOPLE IN AN ELECTION YEAR”

In a previous presidential campaign, and in a large mid-western congregation, a sizeable number of members pushed the pastor to allow them to pass out leaflets advocating their candidate, and to call upon the membership to sign petitions advocating that their candidate was “the right candidate.” When the pastor and the church board refused, and when the pastor saw this as an occasion to preach a series of sermons exposing the danger of associating the faith too closely with any political point of view, or political party, the result precipitated the exodus of 20%, or about 1000 members. This was picked up by the New York Times and became something of such significance that the sermons were ultimately published in a book (The Myth of A Christian Nation, by Gregory Boyd).

But the effect was primarily positive since the rest of the congregation were ecstatic that the pastor had been so enormously helpful to them in understanding the role of God’s people as they live in a culture saturated with media reports, rumors, claims and counter-claims, and the confusing and intractable issue confronting the nation.

Election years are good times for God’s Kingdom people to remind ourselves that we can be troublesome and counter-cultural when we are formed by Christ’s teachings. Paul the apostle was both a Roman citizen and a Kingdom citizen, but when he became a threat to the Empire, he was executed by the very empire of which he was a citizen. Dietrich Bonhoeffer found himself and the witnessing church in German in diametric opposition not only with the Nazi regime, but also with the German church that had made peace with that evil regime.

Such election years are a good time to remind ourselves that we are primarily citizens of the Kingdom of God, and that our political persuasions and evaluations come from the teachings of Jesus and his apostles. These teachings are consistently counter-cultural and quite often subversive to the dominant political order. At the same time it is only as we live out these teachings that we are the Light of the world!

We are always those of dual citizenship, and our citizenship in the land of our sojourn is only secondary. We are primarily citizens of the trans-national Kingdom of God. We view the role of politics and national life through the lenses of teachings such as the Kingdom of God, not vice-versa.

We Kingdom people pray for our enemies, we pray for the leaders of other nations as we do for our own. We are not silent before injustice, nor indifferent to responsibility to the poor and helpless among us or of other nations. We view government budgets as moral documents.

We do not expect God to bless America, no matter what! Such an election season is a good time for some profound re-examination of our primary loyalties.

We Christians have always been a troublesome lot!

8/16/12 BLOG. WHAT MAKES THE CHRISTIAN MESSAGE COMPELLING?

What with all of the proliferation of confusing church expressions, and (sometimes weird) folk claiming to speak for the Christian faith, … what might catch the attention of those unfamiliar with it all? Such was something of the question raised by one Lesslie Newbigin, who has been one of the giant figures in the church’s engagement with the post-Christian culture in the west. So let me run by my readers a digest of some of his answer.

“The only effective [interpreting factor] of the gospel is the life of the congregation which believes it. Insofar as it is true to its calling, it becomes the place where men ands women and children find that the gospel gives them the framework of understanding, the ‘lenses’ through which they are able to understand and cope with the world. Insofar as it is true to its calling, this community will have, I think, the following six characteristics:” [what follows is my paraphrase]

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

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

(From Newbigin’s Gospel In a Pluralist Society, chapter 18, pp. 227 ff.)

BLOG 8.14.12. QUESTIONS: WHY IS THE CHURCH? WHAT IS ITS PURPOSE?

If you were to ask the questions: “Why is the church?” or “What is its purpose?” or “What does it have to do with the gospel?” … chances are that would likely get either puzzled looks, or rambling non-answers. Yet it is essential that the followers of Christ have lucid and convincing answers to these, else they be easily taken captive by church counterfeits.

From the New Testament documents, let me propose a few answers to get us started on the way (after all, Jesus said that he would build his church, … but, then, he did not define what that church would look like).

In that the gospel of the kingdom of God was (and is) Jesus’ core message, it stands to reason that the church is somehow the communal expression of that very kingdom of God. In the New Testament, the designation: kingdom of God, refers to the grand (or eschatological) design of God to “make all things new,” to reconcile the world to himself through Christ, to “make known “the mystery hidden for ages” through Christ and his cross. The apostle John will use the designation eternal life to refer to the same reality, and Paul frequently uses new creation to communicate it. So, my thesis is that the church is the communal demonstration of the kingdom of God (though, as we say, “provisionally”).

So, how does the church demonstrate, in flesh and blood community, such an awesome reality?

1. The church is the flesh and blood demonstration as its people incarnate the lifestyle, i.e., the thinking and behavior (Sermon on the Mount stuff) of the kingdom, … as they communally live out that lifestyle: the  divine nature in them, in daily life, i.e., Christ in them—“that men may see your good works …”
2. The church is the flesh and blood demonstration as it incarnates God’s recreated human community in its relationships of love and grace, as it expresses among its members the relationships of inter-animation and inter-dependence and self-denying service and humility that exists between the members of the Trinitarian community—“By this shall all men know that you are my disciples …”
3. As such a demonstration of the lifestyle and the relationships of God’s new creation in Christ, the church is also (to borrow from our Latin American colleagues): “the missionary arm of the Holy Trinity” to make known this gospel of the kingdom to every people group in the world.
4. And, ultimately, the purpose of the church is to provide a Beautiful Bride for the Lamb, a Bride without spot or wrinkle, i.e., in total oneness with her Lord.

For starts, … and if any ostensible expression of the church is unfaithful to, or unself-conscious of, or oblivious to such a purpose, then it becomes something of a diluted version, or contradiction, and probably not (or only marginally) a church!

(To be continued).