– Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together

I have long wanted to plant a church. I have dreamt of all the evils of the conventional church I could rectify and the many values of Jesus I could exemplify if only I could gather some people together with me. Without the restraints of corrupt church practices, without the taint of a church history, we could then be free to become everything the church should have always been.

On this road toward church-planting it doesn’t take long to discover the well-trodden path toward a successful institution:

Number 1: Discern your call. If you aren’t called to church-planting you’ll quit. Cause it’s hard.

Number 2: Pick where you are planting. Location and demographics are key.

Number 3: Determine your vision.

This is where everything hinges—upon your vision. If people don’t catch your vision, they won’t join what you’re trying to do. If people don’t join what you’re trying to do, then you won’t be able to accomplish the vision. So you become a vision-salesman. You must learn to articulate and then re-articulate until all are able to recite your vision verbatim. Once your vision has been caught and others are articulating it, the thing will spread like wildfire. But you must do maintenance on the vision and keep people motivated. And if everything goes as planned, lots of people will join you in the pursuit of what could be. 

But is this the way it ought to be?

Besides the fact that I cringe at the thought of being a salesman (if even well-intentioned)… I sometimes wonder if we are focused on what could be because we lack the resolve to make something exist presently. And so we gather together large numbers of people resolving to be something we dream of, and yet day-after-day we wake up and live in the shadow of our illusions. With each new day we are more and more in danger of letting this shadow of the ideal become our comfortable shade from the ideal.

I’m quite certain Jesus employed vision throughout the whole of his ministry, but not as some abstract ideal to be achieved when all the resources would fall into place. When he says to his future disciples, “Follow me, I will make you fishers of men,” he does not say so without inviting them into a present reality (the following him) or the assurance that such a “vision” is really no vision the way we think of it—it was a reality he would personally secure with certainty (I will make you fishers of men). And other times he asked individuals to follow him, they were required to “take  up their cross” or “sell all their possessions” as a prerequisite to follow. Talk about counter-intuitive church-planting tactics… 

Could it be that all our vision-casting—with its competitive drive to stand out from other visions, with its focus on realities far too distant, and its questionable success rate to actually produce the desired results—could it be that this method is great for making large movements, but left wanting in terms of building Jesus’ church? And what kind of people has this attracted but those who continually look to something that will demand their participation but never presently?

What if we were able to call people into a tangible reality instead of a distant ideal? What if we asked people to join us in a path we are already walking, not meet up with us somewhere down the road? Gone would be the unrealistic expectations we conjurred for ourselves, and the legion of paralyzed followers who have been required to do nothing but believe in a future never-to-be-realized.

I say if we want a church that cares for the poor then we get together now and care for the poor, even if there are only two or three of us. And if we want a church that welcomes the lowest of the low then we welcome the lowest of the low into our own lives, even if we’re doing it in small numbers. That’s what it would look like to lead no longer from dreams, but with our lives. And when we invite others into the present reality, we shouldn’t ask what could be if only 100 more people cared for the poor together, but  let our current service be pleasing to God where other’s dreams feed and clothe no one.

On the whole, I don’t think we have. And I guess I should have asked those questions before I decided to go to Bible College to train as a pastor. But I didn’t.

Our culture has rightly called us out on the carpet. Today, everyone outside the church has answers for what the corporate church is—a money-making machine, the place where men sing of their strange love for another man, where the self-righteous go to pat their own back. So with all these supposed-misconceptions, how are we Christians supposed to respond?

For many years within Christianity, we saw the church merely as the group of people who are “saved” and are about getting other people “saved.” Church was about growth, about evangelism, about saving the “lost.” Many people outside the church didn’t feel lost, but we decided to call them that to their face anyway.

And many churches grew, and many people were found. But for what? Does this whole Christianity thing end when you get saved? Is the rest of our time on Earth supposed to be spent twiddling our thumbs while we wait to contract some terminal illness that will take us to Heaven?

In Bible college, sometimes we read the Bible. When I would read the Gospels, I was struck with the ministry of Jesus. He healed people, He gave incredibly bold teachings about life, and He was a general nuisance to the religious people of His day. He spoke of a Kingdom that would come in the future, God’s Kingdom, a Kingdom that was very different than the kingdoms of the world. It redefined what success was, what power was, and what meaning was. And Jesus said it wasn’t just something for the future; it was something that had come with His arrival.

What a minute. I thought Jesus came to die on the cross and make us “saved.” Wait, wait, wait, hold-the-phone—he actually did stuff? He actually asked us to do stuff? This wasn’t my momma’s Jesus. This wasn’t my church’s Jesus.

This Jesus of Scripture was calling people not only into a right relationship with God and salvation, but to a life of service in God’s Kingdom. He was calling people to be a part of God’s community, the church, and bring a taste of His Kingdom to earth. It was to be a community of God’s people based on God’s values, and God’s heart.

As Christians, we are God’s people on a mission for Him. And that mission is to create communities that bring God’s Kingdom into every context we encounter. Life isn’t about waiting to die, it’s about bringing life everywhere we go—as God’s ambassadors, we bring a taste of Heaven to Earth.

Your will be done on Earth, as it is in Heaven.

Does the Church deserve this kind of debasing and disparity? Hmm. Well, it has done a few things wrong. Okay… it has done a lot of things wrong.

But finding fault in the Church is like taking candy from a baby. There’s so much that could be said! Turning Jesus into a commercial industry? Yep, we’ve done it. Killed millions in the name of our leader? Check. Been a general nuisance in the public domain? Uh-huh. Screwed over someone in your family at one time or another? Probably one time and another.

Having listed just a few reasons people commonly hate the Church, it does seem justified for one to utterly despise such an institution. Okay. So, that’s it—article over. Go egg a Christian’s house.

Wait, no. Don’t do that.

I can relate to those who see deficiencies in the Church. To be more reasonable, we might even call these deficiencies what they really are: incredible failings. I myself have even spent the last few articles critiquing some facets of the Church (Discipleship in the Church, Contextualizing Jesus). So even I agree that some form of criticism needs to be voiced. But not as it is often done, and not from who we often are. Allow me to explain.

Today we generally have three camps who are overly-critical about the Church: those who are choosing to remain within the Church who maintain a love/hate relationship with the thing; those who have left the Church, but still find it amusing to continually explain all of the many reasons they left and won’t ever return; and those who are outside the Church, and have always been outside the Church. Many of these different people want to metaphorically burn the current Church. And then burn the ashes. And then throw the microscopic remains in a chasm.

I will primarily/exclusively be addressing the first group–those who are within the Church who have major misgivings about its current state, those who may be attempting to reform the Church, and/or those who could be on the verge of excommunicating themselves. These are people who might find the content of this article worthwhile.

As for the other groups: people who have always been outside the Church have no basis for ceasing their attacks upon the Church, or relenting from their anger. The only way to heal wounds they bear is through a changed Church that can drastically alter their secular perspectives. Likewise, ex-Christians, by leaving the Church, have no further responsibility or pressing need to reconcile with the Church. It is clear that by removing their identification with the Church, they have no desire to put into practice anything I might say about dealing with their frustrations.

So, back to the question-at-hand: for all us pissed-off Church attenders, all us blue-like-jazzercizers—what do we do with all our pent-up angst regarding the Church? Many of us are turning to new systems of thought, new church structures, and new social gatherings that we would call “progressive.” These “radical” communities are redefining Church practices with all the vigor and idealism available in our youthful bodies, but often while critically deconstructing the church of the past. Some of us are remaining within the older conventional structures, but reluctantly and with a touch of resentment for what we are participating in. And there are others of us that are ready to call it quits with everything new and old. Well for all of you disenchanted Christians who find yourself on board the new, or the old, or the non-existent—let me give you three simple reasons you ought to let go of your bitterness and love your flawed peers and ancestors:

First of all, God doesn’t like complainers. It only takes one reading of the Exodus account for this to be apparent. The Israelites were kept in the wilderness for 40 years and unable to see the land that was promised to them because of their complaining and their grumbling against God. Again and again in the account of their journey you see them complain, and God hear their complaint with some measure of patience. But enough eventually becomes enough and God drops the hammer.

This cycle of complaining permeates our current Church. The tie that seems to unite some new church movements is their mutual hatred and grumbling. But these movements will have nothing to stand on because their agenda is actually a petty vendetta! And for others of us who are a part of existing church structures—by just simply grumbling against the current state, we will be making no forward progress, but merely add to the confusion and frustration of the present. The fact is, if we base ourselves or our gatherings upon complaints, we will end up in an ideological wilderness—when all the dust settles from our criticisms, we’ll be left in a desert we created.

The second reason that we should be more respectful of expressions of the Church is because, contrary to popular belief, we came from them and are sharpened by them. Not one of our new movements (or even old movements) could exist without building upon the past mistakes, and past successes. Whether we are aware of it or not, we could not have reacted to institutionalized Church, and created a decentralized model unless there had first been men who attempted to institutionalize the Church. Given their circumstances and put in their shoes, we might have made the exact same mistakes they have.

We are often oblivious of this reality. We believe that we create our structures ex nihilo, or out of nothing, and that our only influence is the Word of God and our own ingenuity. But that’s ridiculous. The truth is we are building on the work of many well-intentioned, albeit flawed, human beings. And someone, one day, will build upon our well-intentioned, flawed structures as well. Respect the process.

The third and final reason, and the most obvious reason we ought to embrace the current Church is that Jesus loved/loves the Church. In fact, Jesus’ ministry was to pass on teachings that would shape the Church, and then He died to create it. Did He teach and die exclusively for a perfect Church? Well, if you read the Bible, the perfect Church lasts but a few chapters in Acts. If you go on to read through the pastoral letters (Galatians, Corinthians, ect.), it becomes obvious that the Church of the Bible is rife with all kinds of issues—people turning Christianity into a competition for righteousness; people making money off the institution; people using it for power; people participating in all kinds of hypocritical, sexual, and corrupt practices.

We often get this sense that the Church of the Bible was very different than our own, and only since the advent of the Roman Church-state did the Church truly become deficient. False. It has always been deficient. But Jesus, knowing the Church was deficient, bore the deficiency in His own body, and gave Himself for it—”while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

Of course, as I said before, I see the need to deconstruct the Church and reevaluate many aspects of it—as long as that deconstruction does not simply end in absolute destruction. And the motivation for this should be a concern and love, not a heart composed of hardened resentment.

If we succumb to bitterness, we will attract people of similar attitudes. And it can be assured—a group of people who are first-and-foremost critics will not remain united for long. The scrutiny will quickly transfer from the external ideals to the fellow members of the congregation. People will devour each other. And you will have nothing but a bunch of individual complainers who simply don’t want to put in the hard work of being an agent for positive change.

It is clear in the example of Jesus that we have the fullest expression of how to deal with deficiency. We live to change it, and we sacrifice our very being to see it reborn. People who want to grumble and complain will quickly find themself outside the Church where they can maintain their negative perspectives. They will attract similarly-minded people, and participate in an enterprise that leads absolutely nowhere. But those who want to do something about the Church, and see it changed for the better will live like Christ. They will recognize the failings of the Church, but give their lives to see the wrongs made right. They will build a bridge of peace from the past to the present. They will bear the scrutiny and shame of being associated with such a flawed and human institution, but will likewise participate in a future glorification as the people of God.

And the Church may remain hated by culture, but will always remain unimaginably dear for those who cling to Jesus.

Let me illustrate this profound point: Let’s say you meet someone for the first time, and you begin some sort of ice-breaker conversation. In the midst of your friendly banter you discover that this new acquaintance shares similar music tastes. As a result, he climbs a little higher on the likable-continuum. And then you discover his political ideology is in line with yours. Consequently, his worth rises even higher in your humble estimation. This series of events continues on and on; you find yourself affirmed in nearly every aspect of your life. It turns out that this chance meeting may have resulted in you finding your new best friend.

When we find ourselves reflected in other people, we get filled with warm and fuzzy feelings. Yes, when others share in the glory of our perspectives and positions, we feel that much more solidified in the right-ness of our convictions. This is because we really, truly, whole-heartedly like ourselves and think we hold the best perspectives. Yes, despite all of our social-dysfunctions, and our overly-critical self-analysis–we still really like ourselves and the opinions we possess.

Now the only thing in the world that we enjoy more than possessing our opinions, is the act of professing them. I mean, how many times have you told someone about a movie you love, that they HAVE to go see? When they come back and have loved it as well, the sense of satisfaction is absolutely palpable. But when they come back at odds with your opinion, it feels like a personal affront.

This is called influence. Influence can be used to expose people to our perspectives and positions. Influence can also be used as an agent of change.

Jesus asks us to employ this influence, this agent of change. In fact, He demands it when He says that we are to “Go and make disciples.” There’s no doubt that plenty of individuals and churches today are influencing culture–just look at church attendance, and book sales–but to what end? For all of that influence, are churches and individuals employing it for the task Jesus called us to? Are we doing a good job “making disciples?”

Well it depends on how you define a disciple.

Today, the word disciple seems synonymous with regular-attender; convert is another word for baptized; mature believer is just another way of saying that you frequent a small-groups ministry. Are these conditions unrelated? Well, maybe not outright. But one’s attendance to an event does not necessitate an assumption about matters of the heart.

However, that does seem to be the practical rule by which we judge if people are disciples or not. And it makes the process of being a disciple much more accessible, albeit much less life-changing. See, if we link participation in programs to spiritual depth then we dumb down the process of being a disciple to a series of habits we invented. All you need is a few hours open during the week, and you have become just as saturated in spirituality as the next guy. You are a disciple because you do what other church-goers do.

Evangelism is also affected by this perspective. It becomes an exercise in trying to get other people to do what church-goers do. The first goal is, clearly, to get people through the doors of your local church building. Then it is to get them in the spa your church installed within the sanctuary. Then it is to get them in someone’s living room once a week. Mission accomplished–another clone cut from the melting ice-block that is contemporary Christianity. You have effectively exercised your influence to create another disciple. But a disciple of whom?

Now there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that most leaders and pastors do not set out from the beginning to perpetuate this system of discipleship. Certainly, they do not. Church services and small groups are all built to fuel a spiritual fervor found in the authentic hearts of believers. They are meant to be springboards for a lifestyle lived 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. But do they accomplish that?

I find the answer to be a resounding “no.” The systems that were built to serve Jesus instead become places where Jesus serves only as content. Instead of seeing these structures as ways to accomplish Jesus’ mission for the church, they are seen as the mission-already-accomplished. And inevitably, as things grow, the results pastors look for move away from the results Jesus looks for–successful programs, and excited people, instead of people conformed to His example, and changed communities.

We use our influence to create disciples that do the things we do. And when we see people do the things we do, we feel good; we feel accomplished. Remember why? Yes, of course you do–it’s because we really, truly, whole-heartedly like ourselves.

What is it worth though, if we simply convert people to our culture, and never to our savior? What kind of reward is that worth in heaven if we baptize 100,000 people into our church? I promise you–we all high-five each other, and sing ’til we’re blue in the face the day 100,000 people get wet in our baptistry. But if it accompanies no change of heart, doesn’t it end right there in that backwards dip and self-satisfied celebration?

Let me be clear–if our discipleship produces anything outside of believers who resemble Jesus and are changing our communities, then we have not participated in successful discipleship.

So I ask–what is our church baptizing people into? What is our church membership class indoctrinating people with? What are our programs perpetuating? Are Christians today looking like disciples of Jesus or disciples of our programmed communities? Are we loud and proud about our theology, our strategy, and our effectiveness? Or are we boasting in Jesus and relinquishing our powers of influence to Him?

Sure, we can gather in meetings both large and small, and create mirrors of who are. We can surround ourselves with others that affirm a similar lifestyle, and a similar interpretation/doctrine/perspective, and feel good about it. We can change what we believe about success. And then accomplish it with ease. We can create a system of spirituality, and exercise our influence to hold others to standards we author.

But that would not be making disciples of Jesus. Our benchmark ought not be us, it ought to be Jesus. And our influence ought not be used to create people who look like us, doing similar things we do, but it ought to be used to perpetuate the work of Christ, and lead people to do the things that He did.

I know you like yourself. I like myself too. I know you like your church structure. Yeah, me too. But it’s time we all took an ideological bullet to the head, die to ourselves, and live for Jesus. It’s time we become disciples of Him.

And today, even we see that message’s power. Who isn’t most divided in their soul in spirit by the words of Jesus, over-and-above all other passages of Scripture? Nothing cuts deeper to the intentions of our heart and judges where we stand more than when we find ourselves in the wake of His words.

So where has the power of Jesus’ ministry gone in our churches? Or is it gone? Are we still experiencing the radical life that Jesus preached, the one that caused such varied reactions?

Today we seem to “contextualize” the radical teachings of Jesus into something much more palatable for our suburban tastes. For example: ”Would you like to commit yourself to service? How ’bout you join our greeting team and say ‘hello’ to people for an hour as they enter a service. Don’t break your back and get burnt-out with that one! Would you like to give? Be a ‘cheerful giver,’ give 10% of your salary to our multi-million dollar building fund. It’s easy to stay cheerful when you keep 90% for yourself! Would you like to change our culture? Participate in a rally that condemns the behaviors of other beliefs. Nevermind the fact that Jesus condemned the religious! Would you like to step out in faith? Invite your friend to listen to a service. Besides, we’re having ice-cream afterwards! Would you like to be missional? Buy the coffees next time you go out with your coworkers who make upwards of $100,000 a year. That’ll make the message come alive–meet some physical needs for people who have no physical needs!” And the list goes on.

The truth is we’re drowning in the watered-down and diluted teachings we proclaim and attribute to Jesus. Now we’re just a bunch of religious people who do a few socially awkward things (and a few socially offensive things) without any true Biblical purpose behind them.

Well, we’re told that we’re working with a bit of a gap in terms of history. You can’t simply take Jesus’ words and directly translate them to your life, can you? That’s poor interpretation of Scripture. You need the Pope, or at least a pastor (who graduated college with a bachelor’s degree in business), to explain how His teachings translate to our lives today. I mean, Jesus uses all kinds of techniques in His teaching like rabbinic hyperbole, and parables to get His point across. And He lived in 1st century Palestine, and we live in 21st century America. There’s a real disconnect there, right?

Well to the early disciples there didn’t seem to be any kind of disconnect. Granted, they were in a similar historical context, but they were the ones who would understand more than anyone if Jesus was exaggerating His message. But they didn’t seem to think Jesus was stretching the truth when they gave up their property and pooled their resources to care for the needy, and when they put aside their intellectual differences and had “everything in common,” and when they participated in long prayer meetings and fasting, and when they got murdered, and when they got imprisoned. They seemed to take Jesus’ sayings quite literally if you ask me.

But if we’re not taking them literally, then what are we doing? Well in our free-time we like to solidify our suburban subculture of Christianity by purposely segragating ourselves. We put stickers on our cars that let others know we are “not of this world.” As if it weren’t obvious enough already when we intentionally study the Scriptures and pray at the most socially-trafficked area–the local Starbucks. And others of us? Well, we don’t want to be associated with the modern Christian subculture, so we do nothing at all.

Jesus and the early Christians weren’t “of this world” either, but they didn’t have to go out of their way to prove it. They just lived it. And they didn’t shrink back from socially-unpopular association. The culture of their day thought the Lord’s Supper was a cannibalistic event, and that their congregational meetings were sexual orgies. They were being called cannibalistic nymphomaniacs, and we’re worried about being called hypocrites. When we are.

So, in view of the entire universe that is the internet, I ask again, what was the radical life that made Jesus hated in the 1st century? Giving up one’s possessions; caring for the poor, I repeat, actually caring for the poor; altogether giving up the pursuit of material gain; relinquishing the sexual passions of the flesh; being ambassadors of reconciliation with an infinite supply of forgiveness; being concerned with the well-being of your fellow man as if he were your very own self; truly standing for a miraculous event like the rising of Jesus from the dead, not as if you invented the idea, not for the purpose of proving others wrong, but as if you believe it actually happened.

Those things still seem awfully radical today.

Maybe it’s time we quit contextualizing a radical faith that doesn’t need to be contextualized. It’s not too difficult to see that giving up possessions in the 1st century equates to giving up possessions in the 21st–and the same for every other command as well.

Jesus promised His followers would be hated if they actually followed Him. Jesus was hated by His culture to the point of death, and so were His early followers. And Jesus promises the same things for us, and says we will be rewarded for being hated. We are, by-and-large, hated by our culture today. But we foolishly impose this hatred upon ourselves in a different way than early Christians. We are hated for simple reasons–lacking tact, and being needlessly offensive and overbearing. We are hated because we contextualize Jesus’ teachings into a comfortable lifestyle, that just ends up some kind of faux-religious weirdness. And we are hated because we impose new messages of condemnation within those that Jesus spoke, messages of condemnation for those who are far from God.

What if we were hated, not because we are trying so hard to be different, but because we are different. What if we were hated, not because we participate in foolish and unbiblical theatrics, but because we look like Jesus.

What if churches gave up multi-million dollar building projects? What if people sold their property and pooled their resources to make sure greater needs are met? What if churches laid aside non-essentials for the sake of unity? What if people found the poor outside the walls of their suburban context and began to serve them? What if we didn’t love money, sex, and leisure so much? Maybe then culture would hate us, not because we make ourselves look foolish, awkward or obstinate, but because we live convicting and radical lives in the same vein as Jesus–lives that illuminate the emptiness of their own.

Praying w/ Mark that God’s Kingdom would come.

3:04 PM Aug 12th from TwitterFon

Meditating on the Scriptures

4:14 PM Aug 13th from txt

Just got back from volunteering at the nursing home.

In a world where we are able to provide continuous 3rd-person social commentary about ourselves, and post it for all to see, it’s no wonder that Facebook news-feeds and personal Twitter streams are chock-full of spiritual ramblings. Today people pray, serve, praise, and pastor–and then let that little blue tweety-bird know about it (simultaneously, letting everyone else know too). Now, we are all capable of claiming a non-threatening piece of the Christian life megaphone–we are all seconds away from being able to send Scriptures, or life advice to an audience of our few close friends, and a few hundred of our furthest acquaintances.

Since this is such a new phenomenon it’s no surprise that Christians, in an effort to stay up-to-date with technology, have jumped head first into this new realm of mass communication. But what does the Bible have to say regarding second-to-second updates about our spiritual lives?

Jesus seems to have some clear teaching in Matthew Chapter 6 on just this topic when He says, “Beware of practicing your righteousness before men, to be noticed by them.” He then goes on to provide three illustrations of this principle in practice, discussing the acts of: giving/serving, praying, and fasting. With the first, a man is not to let his right hand know what his left hand is giving to the poor. In other words, even the man who gives is supposed to be in some sort of ignorant state regarding his righteous service. Does this illustration mean we can only type Facebook status updates with our left hand, our right hand remaining ignorant, while the world stage is privy to all our good deeds?

Later in Jesus’ digression He speaks of the man who prays on the street corner to be seen by others, and the one fasting who looks sickly to advertise his malnourishment. These actions all take place in the public square, in busy socially-trafficked areas, where the man in question can be noticed. What is our modern-day public square?–the obvious answer being the internet and friend-networking sites where the majority of our social exchanges occur throughout the day.

“Wait,” a man might say, “this Scripture is for the man who wants to be noticed, and I am doing this for the glory of God!” And I say, “sure, that’s well and good,” but why does Jesus go on to command that His followers are to lock themselves in a closet when they pray? And it’s not phrased as a healthy rule of thumb, but a command of great lengths.

What use is it if you lock yourself in a closet to pray, and then tweet to the world about your secret intercession session? Even if you feel free of the attention-temptation–the command is not to be free of the desire to be noticed, but to completely eliminate the context of being noticed. God is greater than our hearts and knows that no one is free from the temptation of spiritual vanity. And when you update your righteous status before God alone, He promises to reward your piety.