The Attractional Versus. Missional Debate

I was looking through my notes tonight and found this discussion about the nature of many of our traditional or institutional churches. They function in a "come to us" mindset whereas a missional mindset is about going into all the world and making disciples. Alan Hirsch blogged about it on The Forgotten Ways site.

Some comments by Alan Hirsch.
I think the use of the term attractional is a tad ambiguous, but because I am partly responsible for introducing it into the broader conversation I have to stick with it. What I am trying to get at in using the term attractional is what I call the missionary mode or primary posture of the church in relation to its context. An attractional church is one whose primary stance towards those it seeks to reach is couched in the expectation of a come-to-us mentality. And this expectation as it plays out in the US, Europe, Australia, etc. was basically formed in a time in history where the church had a central position in the culture and people naturally came to church to be cared for, to hear the gospel, and to participate in the community life.

The problem is that adopting such a mode is at the cost of fundamentally altering our understanding of ourselves as a ‘sent’ people. (Incidentally, the word missio, from which we get our word mission, comes from the Latin word meaning sent.) And this is further exacerbated by the fact that we live in what historians and theologians rightly call a post-Christendom era. In other words, an attractional church can work in a Christendom context, but in a missionary context it actually undermines our efforts to reach people meaningfully with the Gospel of Jesus. It is literally out-moded! A ‘sent people’ no matter how you configure it implies a going of sorts. And when combined with the other primary theological metaphor in the bible of how god reaches the nations, namely the Incarnation, it clashes head-on with the primary expectation built into attractional forms of church. Hence the conflict–they are basically two different conceptions of church vying for our loyalty in our day.

But another ambiguity can be explained by saying that while a more missionally defined church moves from a come-to-us mentality to a go-to-them mentality, nonetheless all expressions of church should be attractive. That is, we should always be culturally compelling. Don’t mistake not being attractional for not being attractive.

Comment from Alan’s readers:

Comment # 1
This has become a hot button for me - and all because I read The shaping of Things to Come. I believe that churches need to avoid the danger of “Attractionalism” - the belief that creating an appealing church service and programs will attract unbelievers to come to church. The majority of members in attractional churches have abandoned personal responsibility for showing and sharing the truth of the gospel. Instead, they expect the church services and the paid professionals to accomplish the evangelistic ministry of the church. This abdication of personal responsibility to join Jesus in His mission, coupled with churches that design church services to attract unbelievers to church, are significant obstacles to missional activity.

Comment # 2
As Ed Stetzer states, “attraction is not enough.”
In American Christianity there is a growing tendency among churches to believe that if they change the worship service to be more appealing or attractive to the unchurched, then unbelievers will start coming to church. Making changes because you believe it will get unbelievers to go to church is at the core of attractionalism. To truly be missionaries in their neighborhoods, Christians must not focus on attracting people to church. Instead, efforts must focus on incarnationally displaying the gospel to everyone everywhere.

Comment # 3
I agree in principal with the argument against attractional etc. However, I don’t think the case has been made convincingly enough with regards to deconstructing how post-modern culture operates. The culture I live in Australia still revolves around attractionality in all forms of life.
Our kids go to schools in the local community, along with hundreds of others. People belong to a raft of different interest groups in our community and congregate together in order to pursue these interests. People join sports clubs, pay huge fees, conform to uniform and behaviour standards.
We congregate in stadiums in our masses to watch sports or entertainment.
The case against attractional fails to overcome the reality of how people [in the West]live their lives. We happily GO to things, we happily BELONG and CONFORM to codes.
Or work habits mean that we have to go and conform. This is an everyday experience for most of us. Attractional does not run against the grain of modern culture. We are surrounded by advertising, pummelled by marketing, and harrassed by telesales people. We are surrounded by an attractional world vying for our attention and our dollars.
Whilst I don’t necessarily agree with it all, it does show that the notion of what the post-modern world is for emerging ecclesiologists, is purely romantic.

My Comments
In responding to the assertion that “attractional” is part of our culture and that non-Christians willingly allow themselves to be attracted to events, we need to ask the question: “What are they being attracted to?” Concerts and sports events are entertainment. That is what is fundamentally wrong with the attractional model. It seeks to attract people so that they are entertained. It is a consumerist model. “Come and see the great church we have so that you can be entertained by it for one hour a week!” I’m not sure that this is what Jesus had in mind.

I’m not sure He ever tried to attract a crowd. He at times tried to send people away. They came because He had something they desired. But when the cost of discipleship was emphasized and when it came time for the cross, the crowds dispersed. I think the main danger of the attractional church is that it is almost by definition linked with marketing the Gospel (doing whatever it takes to get people to come and try out your services) instead of preaching the Gospel which is always linked to the cross and the call to die to self.

The Commands of Jesus 1

I was looking at what it meant to be "missional" and found this list of missional qualities or identifiers. I don't remember where I found it - otherwise I would give you a link for it. but here is the list. (EDIT: It's from the introduction to Dan Kimball's book "They Like Jesus But Not The Church").

1. Being missional means that the church sees itself as being missionaries, rather than having a missions department, and that we see ourselves as missionaries right where we live.
2. Being missional means that we see ourselves as representatives of Jesus “sent” into our communities, and that the church aligns everything it does with the missio dei (mission of God).
3. Being missional means we see the church not as a place we go only on Sunday, but as something we are throughout the week.
4. Being missional means that we understand we don’t merely “bring Jesus” to people but that we realize Jesus is active in culture and we join him in what he is doing.
5. Being missional means we are very much in the world and engaged in culture but are not conforming to the world.
6. Being missional means we serve our communities, and that we build relationships with the people in them, rather than seeing them as evangelistic targets.
7. Being missional means being all the more dependent on Jesus and the Spirit through prayer, the Scriptures, and each other in community.

I went to the Bible to find some Scriptural basis for some of these things and turned to the Great Commission found in Matthew 28.
16Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. 17When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. 18Then Jesus came to them and said, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in[a] the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age."

What jumped out at me was that the commission didn't just tell us to go and didn't just tell us to make disciples baptizing them. It also tells us to teach them to obey the commands of Jesus. Obey the commands? What are the commands of Jesus? I suppose I could list a few. Love God, love your neighbour, believe, be born again and go into all the world and help the poor. That just about dried me up. So I went googling for more. I searched for "commands of Jesus" and a whole list of sites popped up. Some link to websites for communities who have committed themselves to living a life where they obey all the commands of Jesus. (In my mind they took a few liberties in interpretation.)

But what I did find was a whole list of commands that Jesus gave in the New Testament. This is Jesus - full of grace and mercy and love - giving commands. So I looked at them and put together my own list of 50. But that's in the next post.

Hospitality 3

Hospitality has been a significant theme for me - even though I don't think I practice it very well at times. I've blogged about it before (here). I really do feel that it is one of the missing dimensions to true church and the lack of it in our society harms us. Brian Brisko at Missional Church Network blogs a number of posts on hospitality. I've quoted a few lines here.

“We always treat guests as angels — just in case.” – Brother Jeremiah

“Hospitality begins at the gate, in the doorway, on the bridges between public and private space. Finding and creating threshold places is important for contemporary expressions of hospitality.” – Christine D. Pohl

“If there is room in the heart, there is room in the house.” – Danish Proverb

“If you have a hospitable disposition, you own the entire treasure chest of hospitality, even if you possess only a single coin. But if you are a hater of humanity and a hater of strangers, even if you are vested with every material possession, the house for you is cramped by the presence of guests.” — Chrysostom

“Fear is a thief. It will steal our peace of mind and that’s a lot to lose. But it also hijacks relationships, keeping us sealed up in our plastic world with a fragile sense of security. Being a people who fear the stranger, we have drained the life juices out of hospitality. The hospitality we explore here is not the same kind you will learn about from Martha Stewart. Benedictine hospitality is not about sipping tea and making bland talk with people who live next door or work with you. Hospitality is a lively, courageous, and convivial way of living that challenges our compulsion either to turn away or to turn inward and disconnect ourselves from others.” – Homan and Pratt in Radical Hospitality

Hospitality should be understood as a way of life rather than as a task or strategy. It is easy to slip into viewing hospitality as a strategy for reaching migrants and refugees, or for that matter, for reaching postmodern youth or homeless people. But such an approach misunderstands the basic orientation of hospitality. Hospitality is not a means to an end; it is a way of life infused by the gospel. – Making Room: Recovering Hospitality as a Christian Tradition by Christine D. Pohl

Cultivate Learning Party

I spent the day at an event called Cultivate – which was a one day conference at in Hamilton. It is the fourth in a series of an ongoing mini conference discussing new church initiatives. It is held in a neat place called The Freeway – a coffee house that has a drop-in and an art gallery and a stage for musicians.
Cultivate Gathering is a learning party. What does that mean? Well, I took some stuff off their website … basically it's designed to be everything good about a conference without all the rigamarole... and much more fun and interactive. Instead of bringing in some big-name, American speakers to tell us what they already wrote in their latest book we are looking to Canadian church planters and leaders to tell their stories. Instead of you listening to message after message and being filled with information we want you to be part of a dialogue with people in similar shoes and learn and grow within that relationship.

How the day worked was that we had a panel discussion with people who were doing the stuff in one of three areas; Planting [grassroots storytelling], Neighbourhood [living incarnationally], and Leading [forming community]. Then we broke up into small groups or discussion pods and discussed some of the topics that came out of the panels. You could switch groups anytime. At the end of each discussion time people tended to congregate in the two or three most interesting pods and the moderator needed to repeatedly call us back to the next session.

I took some notes on the day – part of them are what people actually said and some of it is my thoughts as I interacted with what they said. This may not be entirely coherent but it is probably in keeping with the informal style of the day.

Sunday is for telling our stories and for worshipping God.
A lot of people have great ideas about how to do church and how to make a difference in our society but how do we create something that is rapidly reproducible? The Emerging Church/Missional Movement is just a lot of hot air if it is not really effective in reaching out to people and creating some kind of reproducible model or churches.
What really is good news for the poor?
Transformation of the individual only really happens in community. A lone Christian is an oxymoron – is this a true statement? How does transformation really happen.
Being a neighbour starts by being a good neighbour to the people in your own house
Building relationships is hard work and it takes a long time
It’s not something that you do it’s something you are, something you are becoming
Sharing our stuff with other families is countercultural to most of western society. For example buying one lawn mower or one snow blower for every ten houses.

Some discussion pod topics: Pocket living (connecting with two or three others in your neighbourhood for prayer, study, accountability, fun), Living in community – i.e. in a house or apartment together, Third spaces (a place like the Freeway), Finding and working with a person of peace (how do you connect with them?), and How do you offer community?

Segment Three - Leading [forming community]
What is your own story of leadership
What is the most important issue in leadership in your church that needs to be fixed or emphasized – what’s our job?
We have to admit that we are leading
We sometimes pretend that we are not leading but we really are.
People are on a journey and we are midwives coming alongside to assist in the birth of a new thing
Many times power is held on to too tightly and not given away
Requires taking risks with young leaders
What is the role of the leader in inspiring people to follow Jesus?
First of all I follow Jesus
Live authentically and transparently
Be and encourager – cheerleader build people up
Take a chance on people
Leader takes on the responsibility given – understand the contract between me and the people who are following me
I need to have proper confidence in my role as a leader

It was a thought provoking day. It will take some time to process it all.

So How Many People Do You Have? 5

This is the conclusion to David Fitch's posts on how church planting is changing in Canada. It has been an enlightening read for me and it is something I plan to study in greater detail. It reveals that what I have been doing almost instinctively in trying to respond to my community and the changing Canadian cultural scene, others have been doing as well. Maybe God is up to something.


THE PROMISE OF CANADA'S NEW MISSIONAL LEADERS

All of the above paints a picture of a leader mentality drastically different from the church planter of the past. Yet most (not all) of the missional leaders I have met possess strains of this new mentality. I believe this bodes well for the future. For I believe this next generation of pastors (in my experience coming mostly out of evangelicalism) provides hope for a renewal of Christianity in Canada.

Like a fermenting revolution evolving out of a tired and reified ancien regime, these tiny bands of Christians have come on the scene committed to live a life together of worship, spiritual formation, community, hospitality and service to the poor (of all kinds). In ways never imagined by the machinations of the mega church, many of these bands are already infecting their neighborhoods with an embodied gospel that cannot be denied, only responded to. Knowing Christendom is gone, they carry no pretension. Instead they embody the gospel in its most compelling, authentic, non-coercive form.

This new wave of Christians is small in number and possesses little to no resources financially. Most do not impress with their grandiose visions. They do not hang in the halls of power. They do not make a show of their successes. Yet their vision of a simple Christian habitat as witness in the world reminds me of the Irish missional orders God used to effect a profound conversion of European society in the 4th century. We have seen the world changed like this once before (read How the Irish Saved Civilization, Thomas Cahill). Could we be in the early stages of seeing God move in a similar fashion once again? Let us pray it be so.

So How Many People Do You Have? 4

This continues the (copying of a) series of posts by David Fitch. In the last post he described how Canadian missional church planting is changing. Here he describes how leadership is changing.


SOME OBSERVATIONS CONCERNING MISSIONAL LEADERS

THEY WILL BE SURVIVORS

Enduring missional leaders learn how to survive financially and spiritually for the long term. They must be able to hold down a job that does not consume him/her, merely enable them to live simply for the long term. In Christendom, the denominations used to pay someone to get a self-sufficient church going in three years. This person was in essence paid to extend an organization, open up a franchise, and set up a version of church with the distinctives of the denomination.

In the new post-Christendom, this doesn't make sense. In my opinion it takes at least 5 years of "seeding a community" before one even begins to see an ethos of community and new life develop that can be a cultural carrier-transmitter of the gospel. As a result, the new missional community leaders must have patience, steady faithfulness and the ability to live simply. They must have a mental image of how they are going to sustain their lives financially, relationally, spiritually and personally. It all must take the shape of a sustainable rhythm.

THEY WILL BE COMMUNAL SHEPHERDS

I have found that missional leaders are most often shepherds of an overall ethos of a community. They are not starting and managing an organization. They may not even be good at organization. Instead they are cultivating a communal sense of mission identity among a gathering people "for this time and place".

It used to be every church planter had to be an extravert entrepreneur, someone who looked good and had the perfect family. This person had to be a good salesman (woman) and had to have endless energy. He or she had to set a vision, direct a course, motivate and sell. Yet I have seen, in this new era, that the missional leader is most often someone who can take time and be with people. He or she will listen to people, discern the needs, articulate where we are going, knit the community together in a common struggle with gentleness, encouragement, listening.

For we do not gather as we once did to hear a charismatic leader preach an entertaining piece of inspiration. We do not gather for a professional piece of programmed worship experience. In the new post-Christendom we are coming together to be formed and shaped, supported and edified for the Mission as a band of brothers and sisters. Yes we do gather on Sundays to hear the Word, to be nourished at the Table, and respond to what God is calling us to, but we do all this not as individual but as a community, a community "sent out" into mission.

Missional communities will not grow unless there is a nurturing sustaining presence prodding for the long term. Leaders that can adapt, roll with the punches, and shepherd communally are more valuable than the high-powered "strong starters" who wish to be gone in two years. These leaders are mentored not through leadership conferences and books. Instead, we must have regular times together to practice together listening, mutual submission, responding with love and guiding instead of dictating. We look together for what God is doing in our lives and in and around our community.

THEY WILL BE INTERPRETIVE LEADERS

Rarely do missional leaders lead their communities as a feature Bible teacher who dictates the a.'s and b's of Biblical doctrine. Rather they are interpreters of what God is doing communally through the teaching and preaching of Scripture. They read Scripture in community and preach looking for what God is calling us to in the neighborhoods. It used to be that every church planter would be this high-towered charismatic gifted preacher. He (normally a man) would draw the crowds. Soon a crowd would be gathered to hear "the show."

These days are past, not because you cannot attract dissatisfied or thrill seeking Christians from other churches with a great preacher, but because we have seen that true spiritual growth occurs communally only when the whole congregation is involved in times of praying, hearing, submitting and responding to the Word. Interpretive leaders do not dictate from the pulpit a list of do's and don'ts and solutions from God for every problem. They interpret the Scriptures to open our eyes to what God is doing and where He is taking us.

In a different way then, we must mentor leaders who are more than great preachers. They must lead their communities in interpreting what God is doing via the eyeglass of Scripture. Where is God taking us, where is he calling us? His/her sermons therefore fund the corporate imagination of God's Kingdom in our midst and where He is at work in our everyday lives. And when conflicts arise, we sit and pray, submit, pray for courage and humility and discern the Scriptures for the journey we are in called God's mission. This kind of leader often does not come from our (all too often) modernist seminaries. They are grown in a community who gathers to worship the Triune God so as to discern Him at work in our midst.

THEY WILL BE DIRECTORS OF SPIRITUAL FORMATION

I believe that missional leaders must know how to guide the community in a spiritual formation. Admittedly, this kind of leadership is not common among younger evangelicals at least. Yet I still believe that the development of communal worship liturgies that are historically thick yet still local and organic, is crucial for these times. For we now recognize that the consumerist forces of our post Christendom Canada (and even worse United States) cannot be resisted as an isolated individual. An individual alone cannot resist the forces of desire that tell us things are more important than Mission, the life itself we share with the Triune God. Our communities therefore must be places of spiritual formation, of resistance to the forces of distraction, unsatiated desire and exploitation of those we choose not to know.

This means that our Sunday/Saturday? gatherings must be places of spiritual formation, encouragement and sending out for Mission. We must ever navigate against putting on a show that will attract, yet develop a liturgy that is simple, accessible and Scriptural that thereby guides our lives into Christ and keeps us from the distractions that would take us from Mission. But there will be no missional community of people formed and shaped for mission if we just preach Mission as a legalistic requirement. Mission requires patience, a sense of vision and a self-denial that can only be trained in the simple organic disciplines/liturgies of the historic church.

THEY WILL BE LEADERS WHO GIVE AWAY POWER

Missional leaders that have served for any length of time have learned how die to their ego's and allow God to use every man and woman's gifts in the community for the furtherance of His Kingdom.

Hierarchy is the product of Christendom. It hails to a day when Christianity still held power in society, when, Jesus was still established as a given in Canada. Hierarchy made sense in a day when the preacher in the town was looked up to and held power. This world, when one man could wield influence and get things done in the name of Christ, is waning. As a result, no one man or woman can lead a community from the top down and expect the church to go on as a viable social reality. We cannot be the very Body of Christ if we do not empower the manifold gifts in the community to minister the kingdom as part of everyday life. If we even try to operate out of the old hierarchical ways, missional communities will flounder and their leaders will die from exhaustion. I have seen it happen over and over.

This model subverts the CEO pastorate style we have all become so used to for each pastor gives away power instead of consolidating it. This kind of pastoral leadership models a kind of community for the rest to see instead of dictating the rest of the church to just do it. In this way, all shall own the leadership of this community and the journey we are on in the Mission. This kind of leadership needs to be modeled and practiced and it does not come easy in our day.

So How Many People Do You Have? 3

This next post by David Fitch describes the general movement toward new understandings of planting churches. This was the "aha!" post that suddenly named what I had been doing for the past 8 years. I had been cultivating a garden. There were a couple of comments after the post that I really enjoyed and I've copied them too. My apologies but I often enjoy the comments people make as much as the original post and I wanted to make sure you were able to see them connected to the post.

FROM SETTING UP GROCERY (BIG-BOX) STORES TO CULTIVATING GARDENS

For those of us born before 1970, this change (to post Christendom) is truly stunning. The landscape of post-Christendom demands we think about church planting with a new eye for faithfulness, truth and integrity. Among the new missional leaders, church is the name we give to a way of life, not a set of services. We do not plant an organized set of services; we inhabit a neighborhood as the living embodied presense of Christ. Missional leaders now root themselves in a piece of geography for the long term.

We survey the land for the poor and the desperate, not just physically but emotionally and spiritually as well. We seek to plant seeds of ministry, kernels of forgiveness, new plantings of the gospel among "the poor (of all kinds)" and then by the Spirit water them, nurture them into the life of God in Christ. We gather on Sunday, but not for evangelistic reasons. We gather to be formed into a missonal people sent out into the neighborhood to minister grace, peace, love and the gospel of forgiveness and salvation. The biggest part of church then is what goes on outside gathering. If the old ways of planting a church were like setting up a grocery store, now it is more like seeding a garden, cultivating it, watching God grow it amidst the challenges of the rocks, weeds and thorns (I owe this metaphor to my fellow co-pastors at Life on the Vine). What do these leaders look like? How can we walk alongside them? After hanging with a hundred or so of these leaders over the past few years, I offer the following observations. I'll post on this next.

Comments
len said ...
david, glad this has been an opportunity to put these thoughts on paper. Here are some thoughts from Michael Toy a few years back reflecting on the implications of organic gardening..


• take crap and use it to nourish things 

• it isn't "dirt," it is soil, and the preparation and maintenance of the soil is really important

• things that are garbage are used to grow the garden 

• vigilance is important 

• be willing to take smaller fruit in order for it to be truly healthy 

• gardening requires a systems understanding

• gardens die every winter and require replanting 

• things can only grow in certain climates 

• hybrids don't reproduce 

• if you use miracle grow to start, you have to keep boosting the amount 

• what you plant next to what is important 

• you have very little to do with the success of the gardern, photosynthesis is still a mystery, you can't make it grow, it is a miracle 

• backs and knees are sore because you are down in the dirt, you don't stand above the garden

• we need to protect the garden from bunnies. Worms are good, bunnies are bad. 

• organic fruit doesn't all look like the stuff in the market. Quality is over beauty, and there is no uniformity.. you share from the excess.

bigmikey (not me) said...
Dave,

Great post. Very enjoyable. The more you explain the metaphor of the garden, the more it resonates with me.


Len, great additional comments. If I may be so bold, the "bunnies" in my experience are the disaffected evangelicals who hop from church to church. They come in so gently and softly, saying all the right things etc, but you turn your back for one minute and ... the radishes are GONE. Those evil b*st*rds!

So How Many People Do You Have? 2

David Fitch has created a couple of posts on his blog on how church planting has changed over the years - especially in Canada. Although you can go over there to check it out, I want to post here a lot of what he is saying so to create some continuity with what I am thinking in terms of what church will look like over the next few decades. I will also tie some of this stuff into my DMin work.

50 YEARS OF CHURCH PLANTING: THE STORY AS I SEE IT

Over the last three decades, I have watched church planting change dramatically in Canada and the Northern parts of the United States. Back in the sixties/seventies, we used to send fifteen or twenty people from one local church into another place several towns over that was "under-churched." We would hold worship services, teach Sunday school, have a children's ministry. We would set up shop. We would choose a pastor who had all the tools as "they would say." He (most often a male) would be young, energetic and able to work like crazy. We would send out announcements expecting many who were looking for a church to show up. And if we did the basic services well, then we assumed the little gathering would grow into a self-sustaining church in 3 years. We might call these churches franchises.

Church planting worked like this because there were still large numbers of Christians to draw from for a congregation. We were in the great post-WW2 expansion in North America. New towns and subdivisions were springing up left and right. And just as each town needed a supermarket, a library and public schools, it needed a church. One could assume that out of the many thousands moving here into these new habitats, some would be Christians and need a church. So we planted churches like franchised local grocery stores. This was still an era of Christendom.

In the Eighties, the focus on church planting changed. Post WW2 expansion had slowed. More and more of the suburban boomers had not returned to the churches of their youth. The focus of church planting shifted to recapturing these now unchurched people for Christ. Now when we went to plant a church we needed first to conduct marketing surveys. We asked what we could we do to make church more relevant and user friendly. These surveys focused on finding out what these unchurched people were looking for? What turns them off of church? How can we do church in a way that relates to these people?

How can we make church relevant so that the "unchurched" would want to come to our services. What could make church more attractive? We focused on delivering the services with "excellence" and "efficiency" characteristic of the marketplace. In this way we planted churches like Wal-marts. The seeker service and church growth methods were invented. Hundreds of boomer generation people came who had left the church a decade before. Many hundreds of people in traditional churches left as well for "the new and improved" big box churches. Today, hundreds of mega-churches exist across North America as a testimony to "the success" of this approach to church planting.

Church planting like this worked because there were still huge amounts of unchurched people who had once learned of Christ in the earliest years of their upbringing. These unchurched had some familiarity with "who Jesus was." Deep within their boomer psyches, Jesus still carried credibility, even authority, even if they did consider the church obsolete. We assumed therefore that if we could just make Jesus relevant and attractive (as opposed to their former experiences of church) they would come. If the Bible could be communicated in a way that was meaningful to people's everyday life and needs, these unchurched would surely listen. They did come. People making "decisions for Christ" multiplied.

Church-planting like this however, still depended upon what was left of the vestiges of North American Christendom. A majority of the conversions were former high-church catechumens "coming back to Jesus." They had never made a "personal" decision to follow the Jesus they had earlier been taught about (most often in catechetical rote fashion). In this way, the seeker church movement was built upon Christendom.

To most Christians living in Canada, the days of Christendom are fading fast. There has been a change in mindset of those who would plant churches. As the number of Christians without a church shrinks, as the number of unchurched who once were catechumens of Christianity grows extinct, I have witnessed first hand the new wave of church planters who think of church planting in completely different ways. They are not interested in competing for the leftovers of Christendom. They resist the notion that the church is in need of just one more innovation. They are interested in nothing less than becoming missionaries, to plant churches cross culturally, across the barriers to people who have no knowledge or language about Jesus.

So How Many People Do You Have?

There are times in life when you meet someone or read something or see something that creates an "Aha!" moment. That happened to me this week.

For the past eight years we have been in the process of establishing a faith community, (planting a church, starting a new work, pioneering - whatever term you might like to use) in our community of Thornhill. When I meet people who know I'm doing this one of their first questions is "So how many people do you have now?" When I say "20-25, if everyone comes" they kind of look at me funny. If they are just making conversation, the conversation usually ends there. If they really want to know, I start telling my story.

I approached church planting the way I thought I was supposed to - because I really thought I had heard God calling. So I read all the books on church planting, attended a church planting bootcamp, had a church planter's assessment done, established a prospectus, read books about establishing a mission statement and core values, set up a time line, gathered a core team and started to pray. I did the demographic studies and determined that the least churched place in Ontario was Thornhill, got approval from the district, sent out prayer letters, decided on a name and started planning a kick-off event.

Even at the beginning I had the real sense that what we were supposed to do would be different in the church planting world. First of all, when I read other people's plans and looked at their organizational structures it just made me tired. I did not want that! I wanted to establish a community that was more organic than organizational. I wasn't exactly sure what that meant but I was sure that I was not going to begin a church plant with a structure that included 17 committees.

So we started. We did what we were good at. We had a great worship team. We had a couple of kick off events (a "shout from the Hills"), met in a church for a while on Sunday evenings and then took the leap to meet on Sunday mornings in rented facilities in a school. The evenings were good worshipping times but meeting in a school was kind of deflating. The school was expensive. We had to set up and tear down every week and transport our stuff to and from the school. It was too cold in the winter and too hot in the summer. It was usually not cleaned up from the week's activities (because the janitor used Sunday mornings to clean). It was a long walk from the parking lot (at one end of the school) to the gym (at the other end of the school). When visitors did come we couldn't spend time visiting with them because we needed to clean up and get out by one o'clock. I felt like a failure every week.

I know now that what we were trying to do was establish an attractional model of church in a neighbourhood that was not (and would never be) attracted to church. I had done my demographics - 80% of the community was Jewish! I only realized later that because of the demise of Christendom very few unchurched people are attracted to church (Jesus - yes, authentic Christianity - yes, but not normally a Christendom style church.)

After a year and a half of meeting in the school we decided to meet in our home. It was in the middle of the community. It was large enough to host the 15 to 20 people who came. Surprisingly enough we grew as soon as we moved into our house - 3 or 4 new people. And as soon as we moved into our house this artificial pressure to "be" something disappeared and I started enjoying church again. We started a process of sharing with one another, praying for one another, calling people up if we hadn't seen them for a week or two. We started becoming a community.

We started focussing on our community (or more correctly our communities). People began to realize that they were not there to run a machine called church. There were no ushers. There were no Sunday school teachers. There was no building committee or finance committee or outreach committee. It was just us trying to figure out how to make an impact on our world. So we started praying for one another's work environment and co-workers and neighbours. When someone was sick we laid hands on them - all of us! We went to one another's houses to bless their homes and to prayer walk their neighbourhoods.

Sundays became not the main focus of the week but a time and place to share with others the significant events of our weeks, the answers to prayer, the divine appointments. Ministry wasn't what happened on Sundays but what we were experiencing during the week - not just a place to hear sermons but to tell our stories. It was not about me pastoring a church but all of us pastoring a community (neighbours, family, co-workers and one another). People have come into relationship with Jesus but they don't necessarily connect with us as a worshipping community.

There are times where I wondered if anyone else was doing church like this. Most of my colleagues were talking about their busy counseling schedules, committee meetings, the programs they were involved in or their preaching plans for the year. None of it really related to where I was. I wondered if I was completely missing the whole concept of church. I wondered if anyone else was experiencing what I was.

Then this week I read some stuff that David Fitch had put together about missional churches and the processes they were going through - and it reverberated with me. I will talk about it more in the next post.

And His Whole Household

I have not been able to get this concept (households and hospitality) out of my mind over the past week or so. Scot (over at Jesus Creed) has been talking about infant baptism stemming from passages in Acts (16:15) where whole households were baptized at once. Although I posted a comment there I have very little interest in infant baptism per se but this concept of household salvation is what has been capturing my mental energy.

I think the “household” concept needs some clarification and expansion. Based on some of the research of Birkey (The House Church), Judge (The Social Pattern of Christian Groups in the First Century) and Banks (Paul's Idea of Community), to think of a household as parents and children and a few servants drastically simplifies the term. Households were led by a supporting patriarch and its size was limited to his ability to support the family. Although some households were small - just scraping by so to speak, most would have had some level of ability to support a number of people. It would have certainly included extended family, servants and/or slaves (and their families), and possibly close friends (and their families) all living in the same estate or under the protection of the householder. They would have engaged in business enterprises or agriculture together and would have remained together - possibly for generations - with leadership being passed down through the male heir.

This does not mean that everyone was wealthy - or that everyone necessarily lived in the same house. It means that those with substance kept others in their employ and as part of their households and so had a certain responsibility for them. We may have some difficulty understanding that in our culture because we have have become a culture that traffics mostly in money as currency as opposed to work, or goods. It is similar to work situations today where we provide a service to a company (householder) in exchange for money which we use to buy or rent a house, buy clothes, food etc and establish a life.

The interesting part is that people believed and then their whole households also believed. For example:

John 4:53
Then the father realized that this was the exact time at which Jesus had said to him, "Your son will live." So he and all his household believed.
Acts 11:14
He will bring you a message through which you and all your household will be saved.'
Acts 16:15
When she and the members of her household were baptized, she invited us to her home. "If you consider me a believer in the Lord," she said, "come and stay at my house." And she persuaded us.
Acts 16:31
They replied, "Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved—you and your household."
Acts 18:8
Crispus, the synagogue ruler, and his entire household believed in the Lord; and many of the Corinthians who heard him believed and were baptized.

When the householder believed (and therefore changed his behaviour and his values and his business practices) those in his household who were dependent on him also believed (and changed their behaviour). What Scripture doesn't always connect is that many times this household then became the location for a new church. This is certainly the case in Philippi where the church met in Lydia's house.

This is an interesting missiological strategy. The genius of the early church was its ability to use a key social structure in the Roman world (the church that met in households) to propagate and nurture the growth of the Kingdom.

What are we to make of this? Should all churches become house churches to better propagate the Gospel? Maybe - in China, or Korea or India - but not in Canada, or in USAmerica, or in Europe. The individualistic mindset of Western culture militates against that option. House churches in the New Testament were a response to the sociology of the first century. They just fit. It was pure genius.

The question that poses itself to me is: What "just fits" in our postmodern Western post-Christendom culture? What is the sociological structure or system that will allow the Gospel to have such an impact as it had in the first century?

I don't know what it is ... yet, but it has got my mind whirring all week.

The Rise of the Feminine in the Postmodern Turn

There's a great article over at Allelon by Sally Morgenthaler about the role of women in ministry in the postmodern milieu called After the Show is Over: The Rise of the Feminine in the Postmodern Turn. (Scot McKnight from Jesus Creed posted a link to it.) I've quoted a couple of sections below.



When the question is asked, “What is it to lead the church in the postmodern context?” and then, more specifically, “What is it for women to lead in the postmodern context?” it is hard to get around the refreshing, contrarian turns in Laurel’s journey. At base, the way she influences, whether at Target or through her e-devotional, is unapologetically organic. There are no top-down systems here, no grandiose, lone-ranger dreams, no mega-church blueprints. Rather, here is a woman, showing up with her full self, her full story, and in full presence – on the people’s turf and in the rhythm of their lives. Surely, she must have earned A’s in Missiology.

Yet, Laurel’s presence is the antithesis of impotent. Laurel’s late-night co-workers who stock the wide-aisle shelves at Target know her as a powerhouse of a woman. Not only is she a hydrant of comedy (Laurel believes life is comic relief to the weight of eternity). The way she invests time in her co-workers, Laurel’s lived spirituality makes the four spiritual laws sound like a multi-level marketing come-on. At 12:30 a.m., Laurel and Suzanne are doubling over in laughter about Suzanne’s Match.com disaster on Saturday night. At 2:25 a.m., Laurel hefts big boxes of laundry detergent onto her motorized cart and tries to help 26–year-old Jennifer figure out what to do about her autistic son’s latest bout. At 4:05 a.m., Laurel is stocking dog-food, engrossed in Bob’s tirade about his alcoholic wife. At 7:33, she’s punching out, heading to the pancake house for breakfast where the coffee, pancakes, teasing, guffaws, and conversation will be flowing non-stop. At 9:00 a.m., she’s driving home to have a last cup of coffee before her pastor-husband leaves for work. Maybe she’ll be able to catch a few hours of sleep before her grandson arrives at 3:30, but only after she checks out that quirky journal article on Kierkegaard she’s been waiting to read. She’s been a Kierkegaard fan since seminary days. Her seminary days.

In many ways, Laurel is an anomaly within American religion and most certainly, within evangelicalism. Ordained and newly planted in a rural/bedroom community, Laurel rejected a comfortable church job (her husband had secured a pastoral position only twenty miles away), striking out in ministry completely on her own. What could have been the picture-perfect scenario – “clergy couple pastors neighboring parishes” - became “middle-aged woman hangs out with Target misfits.”

Even at fifty-five, Laurel is more postmodern than modern. Perhaps it was a gradual transition. Perhaps she woke up one day and screamed, “This isn’t working!” Perhaps it was one too many budget meetings, one too many building committees, or one too many worship wars. Whatever the case, Laurel simply couldn’t be a woman of the great machine any longer. Besides, she’d been witnessing a quiet but significant shift in her community’s spiritual temperament. Since the late nineties, what had been at least a little stream of unchurched visitors had dwindled to less than a trickle. Even the megachurches down the street from her little red-brick congregation were hurting for new faces, their 1980’s, “if we build it, they will come” approach operating on fumes. To Laurel, the community both she and these megachurches served had moved on. One could not simply put up a billboard sign and expect the unchurched to come knocking, even if you showed up in the neighborhood with the formula intact: a cute-sounding church name, killer band, concert-venue tech system, and a golden-haired pastor-boy.

No, as Laurel saw it, the audacious, “we’ve got just the thing for you” years were over. For years, she’d had the nasty habit of spending time with people totally disconnected from religion (it was her secret solace), and she knew first hand that none of them had the slightest interest in checking out the show under the big top. They were more interested in eating pancakes, lingering in the parking lot at their kids’ soccer games, drinking beer at the local grill, or playing Texas Hold’em on Saturday night. Their sacred space was wherever life was happening, and after all these years stuck inside the redbrick ghetto, Laurel wanted to be there.

Missional DNA (DMin)

How did they do it? How did the church of the first three centuries and the church in 20th century China grow so quickly?

Alan Hirsch’s concept is the mDNA of Apostolic Genius – that is, the “missional” DNA of how the apostles were led by God’s Spirit to unleash the gospel. He believes this mDNA is latent in every church and in every Christian. “So I come to believe, that every church, indeed every Christian, if truly birthed in Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit, has the full coding of mDNA and therefore has direct access to the power of Apostolic Genius. … Institutional systems tend to try and organize through external hierarchical command and control; organic missional movements organize through healthy mDNA coding embedded in each cell and then let go.”

The six key elements of Apostolic Genius are:
1. Jesus is Lord
- A simple, passionate Christology shapes missional DNA
2. Disciple making
- “The greatest proof of Christianity for others is not how far a man can logically analyze his reasons for believing, but how far in practice he will stake his life on his belief.”
3. Missional-incarnational impulse
- “an outwardly bound movement from one community or individual to another… a genuine missional impulse is a sending rather than attractional one.”
4. Apostolic environment – the apostle was a custodian of mDNA and the gospel — and an apostolic, missional leader “imparts and embeds mDNA” through pioneering new ground for the gospel, guards mDNA through apostolic theology, and creates the environment in which other ministries emerge.
5. Organic systems
- the sufficiency of local churches, small groups, to get the job done — to let the mDNA do its gospel work. It’s about networks, not institutionalizing structures that maintain what has happened or try to manufacture what the Spirit generates without the system.
6. Communitas – not merely community (huddling/fellowship), but active in mission together, calling people to a dangerous journey to unknown places – Communitas happens during a period of changing paradigms (during 9/11, during the tsunami, and during Katrina). People forge together to restore life and in doing they formed communitas to make it happen. The danger to communitas is equilibrium. What is needed is certain level of chaos so the church is challenged to generate creativity and response to the conditions. This leads to self-organization which must not be institutionalized.

These attempts to revive new models of church that line up with the structures of pre-Constantine Christianity have crystallized into an identifiable movement called the Emerging Church – although not all these groups would necessarily identify themselves that way. “Emerging” catches into one phrase the global reshaping of how to "do church" in postmodern culture.

God in the Common Places

I was in my "office" again today - the Second Cup coffee shop at Promenade Mall. I have a hard time being productive when I'm just sitting at my desk in the basement of my house. It helps me focus when there is a lot of "white noise" activity going on around me. I get more reading done. I can journal better. I can even write better sitting in a busy place.

But that's not the only reason I go to the mall. I like to watch people. I like waiting for divine appointments. I like to see the interactions that happen "in passing." I wrote this following article for a newsletter a few years ago as I was trying to understand the concept of what I now know as Missio Dei or "the missional God" - the one who becomes like us and goes out from where He is to be with us. He is the incarnational God - God with us - Immanuel. Here's the article ...




It’s 11:30 a.m. on a Monday. The regular crowd shuffles in. I have a large Paradiso Dark on my table and a Billy Joel tune floating through my mind. I can hear the gentle splash of the fountain providing a pleasant white noise in the background. It’s highlighted by the staccato clank-clank of spatula against grill from the Japanese food outlet. There’s that unique hubbub a hundred voices make in a large room - occasionally punctuated by the excited scream of a toddler or the high pitched beep of a cell phone.

I watch the people. It’s amazing: the diversity of humanity that you see in a public place. The retirees sitting alone reading the paper. An older woman writing a dollar store birthday card to her granddaughter. An impossibly young teenage mother pushing a squirming, straining baby in a stroller. A nervous young guy with a black Roots toque pulled low, waiting for his dealer to come by. An old man with a full grey beard, and grey lifeless eyes, drinking coffee – looking all the world like life has used him up. The group of four or five older men having an animated discussion in a language I don’t recognize. The four teenagers from the high school, cutting class to meet with their boyfriend or girlfriend. The weird, but harmless looking guy with the silly grin, who picks up his coat and bag to change his seat every five or six minutes. He’s changed his spot eight times since I’ve sat down.

At 12:03 the place starts to buzz with the growing lunchtime crowd. Teenagers are ten deep at the McDonald’s counter. The tables fill up quickly. Security makes an appearance – standing around the edges, keeping an eye out for trouble. The guard stares for a moment at four young guys at a table near me and quickly walks over to them. I wonder what they’ve done wrong. “Sorry guys. No card playing allowed.” Crazy Eights is apparently a restricted activity here.

By 12:40 the room has become quieter again and there are no kids from the high school anymore. Only the real regulars are left – the harmless, weird guy, the seniors, moms and their kids, the unemployed guy going through the want ads, and a few “suits” still on their lunch break. Especially endearing is the older gentleman sitting two tables over, hands in his lap, patiently waiting for his wife to return from shopping. You can tell he’s done this a thousand times before.

I love to watch people. I enjoy interacting with people. I especially notice the people sitting alone, reading the paper – or more often than not, just looking around. Once in a while I have a conversation. Sometimes I see someone I know.

Yes, I’m at the mall. The mall has become the modern public square – the modern marketplace, the new human crossroads. A busy mall may see tens of thousands of people come and go every day. It provides employment for a thousand people at any one time. It’s a place people go to shop, to access professional services. It is increasingly becoming a place to go when there’s nothing else to do. It has become something of a social outlet for many – especially for youth, seniors and for others looking for connections. As a result, a mall not only provides commercial products and services, but has become in many respects a meeting place, a place to hang out, a living room.

People come to a mall because they are lonely and looking for human contact; looking for something to change their desperate existence. They may come because the prospect of facing four walls with only a TV for company is too daunting.

People come longing for things they may not be able to afford, filling their credit cards with debt they can't handle. It’s where tired mothers go when they don’t know what else to do with the kids. It’s a place estranged fathers take their children - struggling to entertain them during their one visit a week. Teenagers go to the mall – desperately wanting to fit in with the crowd at the food court – and willing to do almost anything to find acceptance. These are not just financial and commercial issues. These are social issues. More importantly these are spiritual issues.

The public crossroad places of life (malls, coffee shops, school parking lots, book stores) are places of safety and familiarity for people. For one reason or another people do not perceive the church to be a safe place any more. People tend not to share their innermost longings, doubts and self-destructive, sinful habits with the complete stranger at the equally strange church fellowship time – especially if they think (rightly or wrongly) they are going to be judged for being sinful. Why reveal yourself too candidly to people who you perceive to be “holier than thou’? Paradoxically, they will share their innermost longings, doubts and struggles to overcome destructive habits with a complete stranger at the coffee shop, knowing that they may never see that person again.

I believe people deeply need to be listened to. They are desperately interested in the healing touch of God, something that can transform dull, impotent, sick, meaningless routine, into vibrant, useful, healthy and purposeful living. People are seeking to be changed.

In order to be effective in the new millennium, we need to prioritize our time to be purposely spent, not in church meetings, but in the public crossroad places of life being with people. Can we take time to listen to people who are willing to speak candidly in an anonymous atmosphere free from fears of judgement? Can we hear the longings of the lonely? Can we read between the lines of conversation to discern the doubts, self-recriminations, and dreams of the people? Are we willing to take the risk to invest our lives encountering people we have not yet met?

The mall is one of those common places where people hang out, waiting for connection, and longing for transformation. God is in the common places. Too bad the church isn’t.

More Marketing

Isn't it always that way ... the perfect resource shows up the day after you hand in your paper, the exactly appropriate illustration for yesterday's sermon is seen in today's newspaper, and the time you really need something is three days after you threw it out.  Well I just found a great series of posts on commercialism a few days after I posted on it myself.

Check out some of this stuff.  I started with Daryl Dash's blog post on What's Wrong with the Church?* where he referred to Brian Mclaren's Christmas letter where he hocks his books while discussing the evils of consumerism. From there I went to Bill Hinon's blog where he was doing a great series on marketing the church - check out the series ... one, two, two 'a', three, four, and five.

He links to one of his other posts - which is a spoof on Marketing the Church, called Marketing the Family. By the way the comic is also from his series on Marketing the Church.


*Many years ago the "Times" in London invited several eminent authors to write essays on the theme "What's Wrong with the World?" Chesterton's contribution took the form of a letter, and was probably the shortest and most accurate reply they received. What's wrong with the world?

Dear Sirs,

I am.

Sincerely yours,
G. K. Chesterton

Everyman’s Religious Varnish

The last post on fruit, leads into the next section (and a couple of posts) of the DMin paper, the malaise of the Constantinian church and the scourge of rampant consumerism in the church and what some people are doing about it.


Frost and Hirsch describe the revitalization of the church as a diaspora – being thrust out of our safe environments like a mother robin pushes her fledglings out of the nest. Frost uses the term “exiles” to mean Christians who find themselves caught in that dangerous wilderness between contemporary secular Western culture and an old-fashioned church culture of respectability and conservatism.

Douglas John Hall describes it this way: “If we have the courage to give up our defense of the old facades which have nothing or very little behind them; if we cease to maintain, in public, the pretense of a universal Christendom; if we stop straining every nerve to get everybody baptized … if by letting go, we visibly relieve Christianity of the burdensome impression that it accepts responsibility for everything that goes on under this Christian topdressing, the impression that Christianity is a sort of Everyman’s Religious Varnish, a folk-religion (at the same level as that of folk-costumes) – then we can be free for real missionary adventure and apostolic self-confidence.”

Shane Claiborne says “I gave up Christianity in order to follow Jesus.” He then quotes Soren Kierkegaard: ”The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand, we are obliged to act accordingly … Christian scholarship is the Church’s prodigious invention to defend itself against the Bible, to ensure that we can continue to be good Christians without the Bible coming too close.”

If committed Christians are leaving the institutional church (yes, even Evangelical and Charismatic churches) to pursue radical obedience to Jesus, perhaps the very existence of this institutional church needs to be challenged. The philosophical aspects of church as we know it are expressed in tangible structures. The structural characteristics of Christendom thinking include:
1. dedicated, sacral buildings that are central to the notion and experience of church so that church becomes a visible, tangible place to be sacred,
2. leadership and much of the hands-on ministry provided by institutionally ordained clergy, mostly gifted as pastors/teachers/administrators – a professional guild,
3. a hierarchical/top-down organizational structure, that often excludes “undesirables” (women, youth, poor, new people, those not of the dominant ethnic group, etc.),
4. the institutionalization and formalization of sacraments into a symbolic event administered by the dominant leadership culture,
5. the perception that church is central (or should be) to society and culture,
6. an attractional (come to the church building) and extractional (extract people out of the host culture and into the church culture) missional mode.

To put it into context, this list describes a church that invests much of its time and energy into conducting a weekly “worship service” and a number of other programs that include music and teaching, designed to appeal to a small percentage of society. These events are planned and conducted by about ten percent of the people (predominantly male paid professional staff members) and presented to the other ninety percent of the people (who are predominantly female). The majority (90%) of the financial resources are committed to the upkeep of the building and the hiring of staff.

Given the poverty in the world, and that of our own neighborhoods, spending millions on church buildings begins to become a justice issue. The main mode of growth of this type of church is marketing (by members and often through various forms of media) that invites people to come to the church building to consume what the paid professionals are presenting. This description may sound harsh or crass. In reality, some are able do this type of church with excellence producing positive results (in terms of some conversion growth, and some discipleship). But the fact remains that the vast majority of resources of this type of church is consumed to sustain itself and it typically doesn’t transform communities , produce new converts or truly disciple Christians.

Results and Fruit

I had a great conversation with a friend today about how we go about measuring things in this Christian sub-culture we inhabit. We tend to be very fuzzy about what we think success is unless it involves attendance or finances. How do we really measure Christian growth or church health?

When we say "I really enjoyed that church service" what does that really mean? Does it mean that it made me feel good? Or that it was better than last week? Or maybe it's that they sang all my favorite songs? Or that I liked the stories the preacher told? It may be more well thought out and involve a new insight or a sense of connecting with God or maybe an answer to prayer.

Those things might all be true but what is the lasting result of a good service? I believe we need to measure these things by what type of action or result it produces. Spiritual things are notoriously hard to define - and not just for Christians. People sometimes say to me (in the context of arranging a funeral service) "I'm not really a Christian but I'm very spiritual." When I ask them how they would like me to help them express their spirituality, they usually have no answer or give me a "Christian" answer (like read Psalm 23 or say the "Lord's Prayer"). Most people feel that they are spiritual but don't really know what it means to live out that spirituality. They don't really know what a spiritual person is supposed to look like.

We sometimes don't know what a Christian is supposed to look like either. Sure we have some traditional descriptions that made sense when holiness was measured by what you didn't do (smoke, dance, drink or go to movies). But when we describe a mature follower of Jesus, a disciple - what does he or she really look like?

When Jesus talked about results He sometimes used the word "fruit" like in Luke 6.

43"No good tree bears bad fruit, nor does a bad tree bear good fruit. 44Each tree is recognized by its own fruit. People do not pick figs from thornbushes, or grapes from briers. 45The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and the evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For out of the overflow of his heart his mouth speaks.

But in this passage Jesus is kind of vague in helping us determine what good fruit is. It is certainly the fruit of the Spirit mentioned in Galatians 6:22 and the fruit of people coming into the kingdom, and I suppose the fruit of righteousness and right living (holiness). John the Baptist actually gives some very specific examples of what fruit looks like in a few specific examples earlier in Luke (Luke 3).

8Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. And do not begin to say to yourselves, 'We have Abraham as our father.' For I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham. 9The axe is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire."
10 "What should we do then?" the crowd asked.
11 John answered, "The man with two tunics should share with him who has none, and the one who has food should do the same."
12 Tax collectors also came to be baptized. "Teacher," they asked, "what should we do?"
13 "Don't collect any more than you are required to," he told them.
14 Then some soldiers asked him, "And what should we do?" He replied, "Don't extort money and don't accuse people falsely—be content with your pay."

John the Baptist gives some tangible actions that result from a spiritual activity (repentance). Those actions fall into the category of Justice - helping those less fortunate than yourself, being fair and equitable, being content with what you have. Those are good fruits? Apparently so.

My point is not that acting justly is the only fruit (or tangible result) of hearing and obedience. Rather it is that we should be seeing and being able to measure the result of our life in Christ - as a result of attending 50+ "worship services" a year, after reading through the Bible in a year. What is the fruit and where is the fruit? Disciples bear fruit.

John 15
8. This is to my Father's glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.
16. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit—fruit that will last. Then the Father will give you whatever you ask in my name.

P.S. This actually is challenging me to do a deeper study into what it means to bear fruit and the nature of fruit in the Bible. There may be more to come.

Everything

A friend sent an email asking if I'd seen this video. It was posted on GodTube, a Christianized version of Youtube. I hadn't heard of Godtube before but I think there is a place for it - as long as it doesn't remove Christians from interacting missionally with their culture.

I often ignore the "have you seen this" links or quickly browse through them to see if anything catches my interest. I thought I'd briefly check this one out and watch the first bit. I was surprised by its impact. I was questioning it with my intellect but at the same time it snuck up on me and struck deep at the heart level. It reminded me of my time with street kids. It's not short (almost six minutes long) but check it out.



The name of the song is Everything. It's by a band called Lifehouse and you can find it on their album, No Name Face - I've posted the lyrics. (Rather vague and not really a major theological treatise but goes well with the skit.)

Everything
Find Me Here
Speak To Me
I want to feel you
I need to hear you
You are the light
That's leading me
To the place where I find peace again.

You are the strength, that keeps me walking.
You are the hope, that keeps me trusting.
You are the light to my soul.
You are my purpose...you're everything.

How can I stand here with you and not be moved by you?
Would you tell me how could it be any better than this?

You calm the storms, and you give me rest.
You hold me in your hands, you won't let me fall.
You steal my heart, and you take my breath away.
Would you take me in? Take me deeper now?

Cause you're all I want, You're all I need
You're everything,everything

Alan and Esther in Africa

It's been almost two weeks ago since they left for Africa and they won't be back until late January. Alan and Esther are unique missionaries. They have travelled to Africa a number of times already and go trusting that God will lead them day by day. They raise their own support (downsizing their lifestyle, selling off unneeded stuff, taking some donations) and go to help whomever God leads them to. They have helped AIDS and war orphans, helped prostitutes move off the street, provided housing in the slums, supported micro businesses, helped fix someone's wheelchair and will be helping drill wells. Their stories are being told on their blog (Esther in Africa) and it is worth following.

I think Alan and Esther typify one of the new types of missionary that help people help themselves. They are not a drain on a denomination's finances, they don't take away from local missionaries and they empower the nationals to do the work themselves. They give life to the Chinese quotation: "A leader is most effective when people barely know he exists. When his work is done, his aim fulfilled, the people will feel they did it themselves."

Blessings to you and our prayers go with you.

Lost

It is a fundamentally difficult thing to say "I have sinned" - especially in today's culture of political correctness. First of all it sounds religious and suspiciously Christian. What we hear more often is "I made a mistake" or "that was poor judgement on my part" or most tragically an action/mistake/error is denied only to be revealed later as completely true. Certain sports celebrities come to mind (can anyone say Floyd Landis or Carl Lewis?) and a recent article in the London Times was titled "Denial is as endemic as drug-taking in athletics."

Somehow to admit that "I am a sinner and in need of redemption" is to fly in the face of our culture of self-esteem, "I'm OK, You're OK" and "spinning" the truth. In fact, I think it would cause a media stir if someone seriously stated "I have sinned!" And if someone went even further and stated "I am a sinner in need of the grace of God" it would probably be considered offensive and inflammatory. To say "I am lost" or "ruined" almost implies intolerance or self-loathing. People may be quick to excuse their mistakes or shortcomings with a "well, nobody's perfect" but won't go the next step to admit their own fundamental lostness - and we truly are lost without the grace of God.

I think the word "lost" is actually a good description of the state of much of the world. What does "lost" mean? It implies that one is on a journey from a point of origin going to a destination but somehow along the way a turn was missed (or a few turns) and now one is in an unrecognizable place and in a place one doesn't know how to get out of. One may not even know s/he is lost because s/he didn't even know s/he was on a journey. Even many who claim to know God are not not moving toward the right destination or are unsure about the nature of their journey and are also lost. Admitting one's lostness is actually the first step to becoming found.

We all feel lost sometimes. But so often pride gets in the way of us asking for help or asking for direction. To offer direction for people who are lost has become the biggest social faux pas in our society. Dallas Willard in Renovation of the Heart says it this way:

"Is it insulting to suggest that someone is or may be lost? That his or her soul is ruined? No doubt in our hypersensitive, egotistical age, that could be insulting to some people. But that merely illustrates the delusional human condition [the fundamental pride of putting oneself at the centre of the universe]. If I am god, people shouldn't say such things to me.

Lostness is a factual condition of the self, of the ruined soul. You either have it or not, just as you either have or do not have a certain physical disease that can kill you. If you have that condition of lostness, you may not know it. Indeed, it is most likely you will not know it, because it is inherently a condition of self-blindness. You need treatment nevertheless, if you are not to be lost forever, and being informed of your condition and what to do about it can help you find relief. Should I say nothing to you merely because you might find it insulting? I must think more highly of you than that. The reality of evil in the human heart is not something to be ignored or treated lightly."

I've been taking a closer look at my heart, at my journey. I'm wondering if I'm wandering around aimlessly, or if I am still pointing in the right direction and moving at the right pace to make it to my destination.

What Kind of Influence?

I’m wondering if it is ever a good thing for a Christian organization to have high visibility or to gain credibility in the eyes of the world - especially just because it is big and powerful? In our post-Christendom, tolerant-of-everything culture, is a good reputation worth anything anymore? I mean what if everybody thought nice thoughts about Christians or mega churches or faith based social work? Would it make any difference at all? I’m wondering if it would have any other impact than just: “Oh, that’s nice!” before they move on to the next thing that happens to capture their attention.

A couple of things got me thinking about this. The first was a brief email newsletter from Fred Peatross (a guy who has made a commitment to hanging out with the people Jesus misses the most – i.e. “unreachable” non-Christians). He suggests that we can become so easily distracted by the world and the stuff it offers that we lose sight of the simplicity of faith. He says it this way:

"In many ways the evolution of the church is mirrored in the evolution of the waltz which made its way into the ballrooms in the late 1700s where it became a respectable business. Professional dance troupes replaced the peasants. Simple rural clothes gave way to flowing gowns and tailored suits. Beer and bratwurst gave way to champagne and caviar. And open meadows gave way to polished ballroom floors.

In a simple way, the church evolved from a simple folk dance into a staged performance where professionals took the stage. Formality replaced spontaneity, precision replaced passion. Relegated to the audience, the peasant sat and watched. And the more they watched the more they expected the professional to entertain them.

The second nudge was from a blog post by David Fitch. Although he questions that mega churches are the best thing Christianity has produced, he suggests that nobody denies good things are happening in mega-churches - but with two caveats.

First, although some good things are happening in a few lives, are they happening in the other thousands that attend that church?
Second, are the good things just getting more press in a big churches that have the resources to tell the story well (e.g. highlight videos)? And he actually adds a third by saying that if the thousands of Christians of a mega church would meet together in smaller missional groups would there not be many more stories and conversions and much more impact on their community? Would it also have been done with much fewer resources and long term investment in buildings and staff? Statistics say yes.

Upon reading Fitch’s blog, one commenter said: “What is Biblically wrong or anti-Kingdom about some forms of decadence (large buildings that cost too much and/or expensive programs) for the influence that the Kingdom can have as a result. Is it wrong to obtain influence for the Kingdom. A large amount of influence allows for an organization to gain credibility, especially on a global scale that gives some the ability to be and do that which most of us will never have access to.”

I think he answers his own question but in case he didn’t get it Zechariah gives him an answer. “So he said to me, "This is the word of the LORD to Zerubbabel: 'Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit,' says the LORD Almighty.” (Zech 4:6)

I don’t think the goal of a Christian organization is to gain influence “on a global scale.” That smacks of control. To me it sounds like what Constantine tried to do in 313 in the Edict of Milan – influence and control those who were non-Christians by making Christianity a state religion. Christianity works because the Holy Spirit is at work. Christianity spreads when individuals gain influence in their neighbours and coworkers lives. People respond to Jesus when they are loved not when they discover what a great or powerful or influential organization the church has become.