October 2003 Archives

Mike Yaconelli, who was tragically killed this week, challenged the church to get over itself. Mark Oestricher, president of Youth Specialties, said of Yaconelli:

He thought that the church needed to get over itself, stop taking itself so seriously, and focus more on being in love with Jesus. He had very low tolerance for bureaucracy and red tape and process and committees. Institutionalism was very frustrating to him. He would regularly talk about his desire that a church staff meeting would be about talking about Jesus rather than about programs and calendars and carpeting.

This is the same guy who wrote words that began to shape my thinking in an article called Getting Fired for the Glory of God. What he said of youth ministry is probably true of ministry in general:

I'm beginning to believe that if those who are called into youth ministry follow the lead of the One who called them, getting fired is inevitable.

Why? Because, in general, the institutional church doesn't get it. The institutional church has become hopelessly corporate, hopelessly tangled in a web of secularism. Instead of the church being the Church, it has opted instead to be a corporation.

I wonder if the very prominent concern about survival in churches is a sign of their fallenness...Both the concern for "church growth" and the concern for survival (which can sometimes be the same thing) lead to many of the tactics of fallen powers, such as competition, the overwhelming pressure on church leaders to be successful, reduction of the gospel for the sake of marketing, and so forth. (Marva Dawn, Powers, Weakness, and the Tabernacling of God)

Marva Dawn describes the predominant way that churches operate within our culture, and then correctly identifies the underlying problem. A church can never worry about its own survival if it wants to stay faithful.

It's a little like the way most of us live. At one point, I wouldn't have minded losing all my worldly possessions. That would have been fifty books, some clothes, and some battered furniture. Now that I own a house and a car and tons of other stuff, it's harder to think about losing it all.

It's easy for a start-up church to lose everything. It's much harder for a church with a big campus and a reputation and history to lose it all.

It's harder to follow Jesus, individually or as churches, when we feel we have to carry all the stuff with us. Leaving it all behind scares many of us to death. But we won't be able to follow until we do exactly that - leave it all behind.

If all you desire in a pastor is someone who entertains and provides people with good, happy, relaxed, cheerful feelings, then what you want is someone who's been out in the world and who knows how to provide customers with what they ask for.

But the real business of clergy is to train people in worship and service of God, and we must learn that from the Scriptures. We need more than tips and techniques, which is our modern way. We need Bible study, and real learning of God's truth. -J.I. Packer, from an interview with Peter Moore in Seed and Harvest

I spent part of last week in Atlanta, Georgia, in the middle of the Bible belt. Churches there (not all of them, but a lot of them) grow from nothing to thousands in no time.

It's easy when I'm there to think that the church doesn't have to die, at least not in that area. Why should it? It's growing. It's reaching people. In the words of one pastor down there, it's prevailing.

But dying has nothing to do with how well a church is doing. All faithful churches must die to themselves. Those of us in Canada and Europe, and in parts of the States (New England, the State of Washington, etc.) need to die to ourselves and be willing to give up everything to follow him. But this applies to the churches that are running 15,000 plus every weekend. It's almost harder for them to die, but the call to them as well is to take up their crosses daily.

It will look different. It's harder. But it's just as necessary.

Ron Martoia writes:

just returned from the 2003 catlyst conference in atlanta and had a blast with our 40 or so other teammates that went. I remain quite confirmed after doing two labs sessions that the issue of theological reflection, how we use biblical and extrabiblical terminology and our understanding of missiology and the kingdom are watersheds for this next edge of the emerging church. The response I got from over 100 people attending my labs almost exclusively focused on this issue of salvation, our language, kingdom, conversion and the movement from point to process. Those topics seemed to stoke the fires the hottest.

I was in his lab session, and he's right. He convinced me that our terminology and mental maps are at the heart of what needs to be examined to stay faithful.

Ron dusted off 2,000-year-old teachings and exposed them in ways I'd never heard before. I suppose some would accuse him of not being Biblically faithful, because his conclusions deviate so widely from what is taught in many churches. Ironically, it's because he is Biblically faithful that he's able to expose how we've got it wrong in the recent past.

Ron's approach is helpful to me personally. I find it's easy to criticize the modern church. Talk about an easy target. In the end, where does that get us? Ron's approach calls us to something different and better: to rediscover the teachings and to learn to be God's people in the way he originally intended. I don't think we'll get it completely right, of course, but how exciting to discover the richness and depth in Jesus that many of us haven't seen in a long time.

"My job isn't to build the church. My job is to follow Jesus." (Andy Stanley)

I like the idea of this Offering Machine (found through Living Room). Okay, like may be a little strong. I can look at it as long as I'm not eating.

I would only make one modification. I would also like it to dispense money to anyone who asked for it.

There were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned lands or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to anyone as he had need. (Acts 4:34-35)

The .Plan had this quote and the italicized comment below.

Many churches have a superficial idea (and experience) of community. Christian community is easily mistaken for mere cordiality, courtesy, or sociability. It easily becomes least-common- denominator "fellowship," not much different from the Kiwanis or a neighborhood potluck. Often so-called Christian community is marked by nothing that is specifically Christian and nothing that challenges the values of surrounding pagan society.

--Shepard K. Authentic Fellowship. Christianity Today, October 7, 2003

CT has had a recent spate of good articles related to ecclesial matters. What's up?

I chatted with someone the other week about the church. I teased him by asking, "How was church yesterday?" He teased back: "Great!" We both knew that he didn't attend any church - at least in the conventional sense. When I probed a bit further, he said, "How can I go to the church when I am the church?"

He's right and he's wrong. The church isn't somewhere you go; it's something you are. But no one person is the church. This struck me as I read an article at Christianity Today about Baylor University, of all things:

...we have dined too long at the Enlightenment table, without setting richer food alongside its meager fare. Our failure to contest Enlightenment individualism, for instance, has landed us in ludicrous heresies. Luther's classic doctrine of the priesthood of all believers is a case in point. It has been corrupted into the heretical and essentially Gnostic idea of the priesthood of the solitary believer. Instead of serving as priests to each other in obedience to our one High Priest (and thus engage in the radically communal life of the church and its institutions), each individual is supposed to become his own priest...

To be free is to conform our lives to the will and way of God. And while this freedom may begin with a sudden conversion, it cannot be sustained apart from a lifelong participation in the communal life of the people of God.

I'm not sure that the institutional church is doing a good job of providing that communal life, but the solution isn't to retreat into isolation either. One of our challenges is to discover what it means to be a true faith community once again - not a church (that word's got too much baggage) but a group who really do participate in the "communal life of the people of God."

At DashHouse.com, I said:

I forget who said it, but they were right. I pastor for free. They pay me to go to all the meetings. Cut the meetings, and I just might do all this for free.

I'm only half kidding...

Kevin responded by saying:

I don't see why that would be kidding. That's exactly how I see it. I am a pastor because that is who God created & called me to be. It' who I am, not what I do. And I don't receive a salary for it.

Now, if you hire me to run your organization on top of being a pastor, I do expect a salary.

I couldn't have said it any better than that.

Forbes is doing a series on Christian Capitalism. Davie D. (who is guest blogging at Josh's place) has some comment on the first article discussing 'mega churches' ...

To me, the most interesting part of the Forbes report was the first one on megachurches. We just don't realize how new this phenomenon is. In 1970, there were just 10 megachurches in the country (defined as a non-Catholic church with 2,000+ members). By 1990, the number had risen to 250. During the 1990s, however, the number of megachurches really exploded thanks in part to people like Rick Warren and churches like Saddleback and Willow Creek, so that today there are 740 megachurches in the United States.

Davie goes on to say that this isn't a bad thing if mega church attenders are all seeking out better biblical teaching and more authentic worship. - right? But...

The two biggest churches in the U.S., according to Forbes, are being pastored by two of the biggest proponents of the Prosperity Gospel — Joel "Discover the Champion in You" Osteen and Creflo Dollar.

It makes you wonder whether numerical growth should be a measuring stick for churches at all. Did God forget to tell St. Paul that Christians were called to be healthy and wealthy (and wise), and He's now rectifying the situation by blessing Prosperity Gospel advocates? Or have these churches been growing because people are attracted to top-quality music, multimedia sophistication, and all the other good stuff Forbes lists, while the older, poorer, less sophisticated church down the street closes its doors? On the other hand, Christians are called to spread the word about Jesus and "be all things to all people". So what constitutes a healthy outlook on "church growth"?

I live in the same city as Joel "Discover the Champion in You" Osteen, and I feel strongly that the definition of church needs to be a little more restrictive. Before being ordained I was examined by a board of elders - one of the questions I was asked was to 'define the church.' The church is where the scriptures are read, the gospel proclaimed, and the sacraments are offered. Notice the defintion is not 'where 2,000 or more are gathered.' Lakewood 'The Oasis of Love' Church (where Joel Osteen is pastor) is a strange conglomeration of media, method, and fundraising. I would never say that someone is or isn't part of the general church triumphant. But I would question churches on whether they follow scripture. Prosperity Gospel - name it and claim it faith - isn't mentioned anywhere in my Bible.

"Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world." -- James 1:27

"Of course, there is great gain in godliness combined with contentment; for we brought nothing into the world, so that we can take nothing out of it; but if we have food and clothing, we will be content with these." -- 1 Timothy 6:6-8

"Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death— even death on a cross." -- Phillipians 2:5-8

Dying churches follow Jesus...

(Originally posted at the GP)

I've been reading a lot about a new book, written by sociologist Alan Wolfe. It's called The Transformation of American Religion, and it's challenging book for churches and synagogues in North America.

Wolfe analyzed American religion and found that we have adopted many of the values of the culture, privatized our religion, and given in to market forces. "Christians and Jews..have ignored doctrines, reinvented traditions, switched denominations, redefined morality, and translated their obligation to witness into a lifestyle." Overall, Wolfe (who would not describe himself as a Christian or Jew) sees this as a good thing. A Christianity Today review says the following:

By making religion not only attractive but easy, Wolfe says, we are experiencing "salvation inflation." The reference is to the well-known phenomenon of grade inflation, in which teachers give so many A's that top grades become meaningless. Likewise, as evangelical Christians expect less of people "to achieve salvation, the blessings of salvation are offered with fewer strings attached." Wolfe quotes another sociologist, who writes that most megachurches provde "high-intensity experiences of communality with relatively weak systems for insuring individual religious accountability—the assurance of right without the punishment of wrong."

So we continue to struggle wtih the tension of being in the world but not of it. In the past, churches have chosen isolation from the world and have insulated themselves from its influences. Now, many churches have adopted the values of culture and "baptized" them, as one megachurch pastor told Wolfe.

Wolfe's analysis is good news for those who think Christianity needed to lose its bite. It's bad news for those who believe that there is some tension between the Kingdom of God and this world. Sadly, that's not being reflected in many of our churches.

From an interview with Brian McLaren in Net Results:

Q: What is the single greatest threat to the organized Church?

A: God. If the church makes itself unblessable by God, it has to present an enormous charade in its own strength. The church can’t figure out what it’s here to save. Is it here to save itself? Or to be part of God’s saving grace for the world? If it tries to save itself, it will die, according to Jesus. Ultimately, Jesus will convert us to loving the world the way he does.

From Christianity Today's Books and Culture:

The deeper problem, Peterson said, is that two things that are basic to the Christian life run counter to the American ethos. First, the Christian life is not about us, but about God. It is not like giving ourselves a makeover. "We're in on it, but we're not the subject or the action," Peterson said. Ever notice how in the Bible, we always come in after a preposition? God with us, in us, for us. In an individualistic, commercial culture, where the self is the center of everything, an autonomous agent of transformation, we have lost this grammar of shalom—what Peterson called "prepositional participation."

The second principle of the Christian life that runs against the grain of American culture, Peterson said, is that the ways and means must be appropriate to the ends. "We can't participate in God's work if we insist on doing it our own way." He cited two examples of "doing the right thing the wrong way": congregation and Scripture. We consider both to be our matters, not God's. Instead of forming communities that embody self-denial, sacrifice, and patience for God to become present in them, we form "consumer churches," using commercial methods to attract people and cater to their wants. And rather than reading Scripture as a way of "listening to God revealing God," we treat it as information for us to process to become more successful and enlightened people. In both cases, the ways and means—bowing to the gods of salesmanship and efficiency—are out of sync with the ends—forming a community of believers submitting to God's work within them.