Stating the Problem, Part 1

After writing Dig That Trench, I was asked to write a bit more about the need for discipleship and especially the need for a multi-generational approach. We need to begin first by stating the problem or giving context for the current state of discipleship.

Over much of human history the family unit was not "nuclear" (mom, dad, 2.5 kids) it was extended. Extended families lived near one another. Typically, adding land near one another and working together. Children were deeply impacted by grandparents, aunts, and uncles. As we moved from a settled culture to a migrant culture the extended family broke down. What is left is the "nuclear family" which tends to be isolated.

As we moved from Modern to Post-Modern we also moved from communal to private. Few communities exist where parents look out for other people's children and have the freedom or wherewithal to <gasp> discipline them. We have become insular in our American and Western world inside our homes.

The impact that this has had on the Church is significant. As these general cultural shifts began to happen the Church seeking to fill a need in helping children to grow in the faith professionalized the "Youth Pastor". This is typically a person in their 20s who can "relevantly connect to our kids". We moved from catechism classes to youth groups. From Bible study to games. These are but surface issues, the real issue is that we moved from discipleship to evangelism when it comes to children of believers. 

This is a huge shift. The basic assumption in most American evangelical churches is that parents either will not or cannot lead their children to Christ. So, they must bring them to a professional who can "win them to the Lord". This shift has been catastrophic. It has led to parents "outsourcing" the spiritual development of their children. It has delayed the spiritual maturity of children well into their adult years.

Consider this, a child who has "grown up" in the Church will have been in and around the people of God for 18 years when they leave for college. In that time, on average, they will have been given little to no leadership, have had little to no expectations, and have been primarily evangelized.

If a person has been in and around the Church for 18 years we should have some significant expectations that they will be leading, teaching, and discipling. We should be assuming that they will be growing into significant spiritual maturity.

It is interesting that a 14-18 year old is given more responsibility at their High School than they are at their local gathering. Why? It's because at their high school they are considered an insider, a leader. At their Church, they are, fundamentally, considered an outsider.

More tomorrow...

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Dig That Trench

When I joined the staff of Grace Chapel one of the first things I was told was that I would be leading a summer mission trip for the youth of the church. This was not a very exciting prospect for me. I don't really like mission trips. Especially not the kind of mission trips that youth ministries typically participate in, like building stuff or cleaning stuff. Nevertheless, we put together a trip to the Appalachia region in Kentucky and we worked on houses and stuff.

The next year we changed the scope. We asked the whole church to be involved. Then we asked whole families to come. As we did, something happened (and we weren't just building houses anymore, we had started an educational camp too). High School kids were hanging out with adults. Elementary school kids were hanging out with High School kids. All these different age groups interacting with one another.

One image has lasted in my mind. My son, Ethan, was working at a site where he was digging a trench with a high school student. They worked their tails off as Ethan said, "It was turrible, just turrible." But, every once in a while he will tell me something about they talked about while digging that trench together. Nothing profound but some little thing that an older boy said to him that made an impact.

I have had the privilege over the years to disciple a number of folks. And I'm realizing that discipleship is like digging that trench. It's slow, painful, and in many ways "turrible". It requires sweat, blood, and effort. It's the little comments and the little things said that accumulate over years which end up making the biggest impact.

I think this is why leaders in the church are uninterested in real discipleship. It doesn't produce nickels and noses fast enough. It doesn't pay the bills. Yet, it is what we are called to do.

I really want to dig the trench. Are you in?

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Theology of the Church

Most Tuesdays around lunch time you can find me sitting around a table with a solid group of men discussing theology. We read some heavy hitters in the theological realm, men and women who are deeply challenging. Every six months or so we pick a new topic; I want us to find thought-provoking theology about the Church itself.

I have come to a conclusion: it doesn't exist.

Books about the Church are typically pragmatic in one way or another. They are typically church growth-centric, mission-centric, or some mix of the two. We need some fresh insight into what it means be the Church. There are so many confusing concepts floating around. The word 'church' has so much baggage and communicates so many different things that most can't accurately put their arms around what it means to be the Church.

Why is this?  Why do we struggle so much to get our hearts and minds around what it means to be the body of Christ, in all its facets?

As I continue work in Ypsilanti, launching a church planting movement, I am overwhelmed by the variety of ways to understand what it means to be the Church. It causes me to have so many questions. Questions I need to get answers to.

What questions you ask?

• What is the primary identity of "the Church"?


• What is the primary responsibility of "the Church" in the world?


• What is worship?


• Is there a proper form for worship?

This is just a sampling...Add yours in the comments.

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Movement? Not A Church?

It seems one of the questions I answer most often about the church planting movement we are launching in Ypsilanti is about the name. We call our community a movement and not a church. Why? The reason is simple, the Church is much broader than our local incarnation of the body of Christ and the Church, when it is truly being the Church, is a movement.

What is a movement you ask? A movement is organic, it's alive, and it's messy. It's multiplying and replicating. A movement is not in stasis. It's a community of people who gather around a mission and passionately pursue it together. Some movements last for a moment. Some movements last for a long time.

In its purest form the Jesus movement has been alive and well since Jesus' ascension. There are those who have tried to institutionalized it. There are those who have tried to use it to consolidate power. In many ways when this happens the Church isn't really the Church. It's simply a gathering of people who are members of the Church. For the Church to be who it really is, you must have movement. You must have multiplication and sending.

Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. And when they saw him they worshiped him, but some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” - Matthew 28:16-20

You can't live out this vision of Jesus as an institution. We can only live it out as a movement. An organic, living, breathing, community on mission together.

 

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The Morning After

It's a funny thing, preaching. Sometimes you hit a home run. Your words and phrases and everything are perfect. Your delivery is flawless. You leave the pulpit feeling like you really accomplished something. Then you find out nobody else felt the same way. There are other times when you feel like you flied out to first base on a 3-0 pitch. Afterwards you're almost despondent and then you find out that it was used by God to transform someone's life.

Then there are times where God uses the act of preaching itself as a sanctifying moment for you, the preacher. You're laid bare. You know your words are meaningless. You know that the handful of minutes of failure were time for God to do work in your life. As you are speaking, you just want it to end. You feel exposed and helpless.

You go to sleep. You arise the next morning hoping that it was all a bad dream. It was not.

When these experiences happen, like it did for me yesterday, the morning after is brutal. Self doubt, self condemnation, self hatred, all of it. You don't even want to get out of bed. But the alarm goes off and you have to wake up your son for school. You have to get out of bed. You have to enter back in to real life.

So, now what? Do you linger in the mess and brokenness? Do you let the brutality of the morning after take over? Or do you listen and seek to hear what it is that the Father wants to say to you in this moment of failure?

The morning after can be sanctifying and life-giving or it can be destructive and ruinous.

Thankfully, I have an amazing grace filled community who love me in my failure and speak words of grace to me. I am also learning that my identity is not wrapped up in the moment of preaching.

The Father is speaking in this moment and he is teaching me. Pruning is painful because stuff gets cut off. But, in the process new growth occurs and makes you healthier. But it hurts nonetheless.

This sermon that I preached was about practicing resurrection. Living life resurrected and not dwelling in death. I get to live that out now, in this moment. I am so grateful for the resurrection. I am thankful that I am united with Jesus in his death and his resurrection.

Some days, that's all I have to hold on to.

And that's enough.

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It's Friday

Today's the day.

It's unique.

It's Friday.

We call it "Good". But in the moment, it was anything but good. A mother weeping for her son. Friends weeping over their friend. Fear filling them all.

The sacrifice was real. It hurt. It was costly.

Friday.

The King is caught.

The King is crucified.

The King is dead.

The Enemy has won.

Hasn't he?

 

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Who You Are Is What You Do

My friend Michael R. Jones got me hooked on a television show called, Justified. It's the story a US Marshal in Eastern Kentucky. In a recent episode that I enjoyed one of he characters kept saying, "Hey man, who we are makes us do what we do."

Have you ever thought about that?

Growing up our family owned a car dealership. When I went to work there I was told, "Your name is on the building, this means you work twice as hard for half the money." I also noticed that when my Grandfather arrived to the dealership, he usually walked through the doors with a handful of litter and would then progress around the building watering plants. He took care of the little things, because his name was on the building. Even after I stopped working there I would almost always enter the building with trash in my hands to throw away, because my name was on the building.

Who you are determines what you do.

Peter talks about this in one of the letters he wrote,

But you are the ones chosen by God, chosen for the high calling of priestly work, chosen to be a holy people, God’s instruments to do his work and speak out for him, to tell others of the night-and-day difference he made for you—from nothing to something, from rejected to accepted. 1 Peter 2:9,10 MSG

Peter clarifies our identity: chosen ones, holy people, God's instruments. As a result of that identity we have a job: to do God's work and to tell others about what he has done.

Who we are determines what we do.

If one is a follower of Jesus, then they will be telling the story of all that God has done for them. It's what they do, because it's who they are and it is His name on the building.  So it is not about bringing someone to a worship gathering. It's not about introducing them to a pastor. It's simply about sharing our stories and proclaiming the excellencies of Jesus.

It's who we are, so it's what we do.

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Tell Him About It...

Hotel pools are great for kids. They're warm, they're loud, and they have a pool. Hotel pools are brutal for adults. They're warm, they're loud, and they have a pool.

As my brother Jay and I were sitting next to the pool, with a couple of his friends, it came out that I was a pastor. Jay said, "Don't worry, he's different. Tell him Danny, tell him about what you do..."

I love that. I love that my little brother sees what we're doing and knows that there is something different about it. So, I told his friend about Doubt on Tap. I told how we get together and talk about things you can't discuss in polite company. I told him that we talk about God and stuff.

120 seconds.

Yelling over two princesses splashing in a pool.

The response, "I would check out a church like that."

Alan and Deb Hirsch wrote in their book, Untamed (Shapevine): Reactivating a Missional Form of Discipleship that Jesus' holiness attracted people far from God and for some reason ours repels them. One of us is doing something wrong and it wasn't Jesus.

As I move more and more into the culture of our city and further away from the institutional church culture, I am starting to learn that what made Jesus' holiness so attractive was that it was a lived holiness. He lived it our everyday in the marketplace, the bars, and neighborhoods. He was holy when surrounded by "sinners and tax collectors", the key here, is that he was holy among them.

We as the people of God need to move out of our holy huddles and move into the neighborhood. Eugene Peterson says it well in his translation of John 1:14ff in The Message, "

The Word became flesh and blood,

and moved into the neighborhood.

We saw the glory with our own eyes,

the one-of-a-kind glory,

like Father, like Son,

Generous inside and out,

true from start to finish.

One of the things I love about the The Antioch Movement is that we are moving into the neighborhood. We seek to live on mission everyday. It's not about getting people to a worship service or getting them to meet the pastor. It's about followers of Jesus living out the holiness of Jesus every day, wherever they are, all the time. 

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The Day It Felt Like Church

It was sunny and the birds were singing. The clouds were nothing but wisps in the sky. As I walked into the Corner Brewery for my favorite pint I bumped into a couple in line. As the husband, a rather imposing fellow, was working on ordering their beer, the wife and I talked about the weather.

They got kicked out, because the wife didn't have her license.

As my friend, Todd, and I sat on the patio sipping our IPA's and talking about Jesus, the couple returned. We spent the next couple of hours talking about life, Jesus, and the church. Todd stayed another three.

Chris and Liz showed up at the next missional community gathering. It was like they had been a part of us from the very beginning.

That day on the patio at the Corner, that felt like church. It felt like church because it was people being together and being who they were, no pretenses. Todd and I were just being the church, that is, being Jesus followers. We hadn't intended on spending the afternoon into the evening with Chris and Liz, it just happened.

The best part of all this is that it is being replicated all the time. Every Sunday night when we gather around the tables in my home to eat dinner together, it feels like church because it's people being people together. Church is not something we do, church is who we are.

The day it felt like church? For a while now the best answer to that question is: "Today". Being the Church is simply living in relationship with and under the authority of Jesus with others who are seeking to do the same.

This post is part of the Boots on the Ground Synchroblog.

Check out other posts in the Synchroblog:

Chris Morton - Synchroblog: The Day It Felt Like Church

Sarah Drinka - (re)defining Church

Robert Anthony Martin - Laundry

Tíler Mícheál Ó Maoltuile - The Day It Felt Like Church

Ty Grigg - The Day It Felt Like Church was the Day we Lamented

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Be Church...

Previously, I wrote about my great frustration with the term "do church". So, if we don't use that term what should we use instead?

It all depends on what we're speaking of. If we want to talk about the corporate act of worship then let's say, "worship gathering". If we're talking about the people of God, then let's say, "church".

Why the distinction?

One reason is that language helps to shape culture. If we think of our Sunday worship gatherings as "church" then that will help determine our understanding of what it means to be the church. How so? If we think of "church" as Sunday worship then it frees us from being the church on Monday through Saturday. This understanding of "church" makes it so that our emphasis is Sunday mornings. In no way am I trying to lessen the importance of the Sunday worship gathering, but I am seeking to clarify our identity as the people of God. Our identity is not determined by a Sunday gathering,it is determined by being found in relationship with Jesus.

A second, is that the Scriptures do not equate the worship gathering to the "church". The "church" is the people of God. It is the called out ones who make up the Bride of Christ. We must understand that the church is first and foremost a being. Those who follow Jesus as their Lord and Savior, these people are the church. Neither a building, nor a worship gathering, are the "church", the people are the church. When we begin to understand this reality then we can start to understand that all of life is worship and that all of life is mission.

We must "be church" not "do church". 

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Do Church?

When it comes to talking about the Church, fewer things that bother me more than the phrase, "Do Church". Typically it's in the context of the question, "How do you do church?" Also, "When do you do church?"

Why does this phrase bother me so much? It's because it betrays a lack of understanding what the church is. When someone says "do church" they thing of the church as something that is fundamentally outside themselves. They are necessarily thinking of the church as an organization. In my opinion, to think of the Church as primarily an organization may be the greatest flaw in American theology.

When we think of the Church as primarily an organization, we are changing the very definition that is found in Scripture. The Church is  the ekklesia, or called out ones. There are other metaphors used such as body and family. The one thing that the Church is not, an organization. It is not a club or a civic group. It's something wholly different from these things.

The way that we see the Scriptures most clearly refer to the Church is that of "people". This is highlighted in 1 Peter 2:10, "Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy." God is at work making for himself "a people".

Here's a little a test that you can use to see if you're thinking about the Church properly. Simply replace the word "church" with "a people" or "people" or "God's people".  Just try it with the questions in the first paragraph, you'll see what I mean.

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Synchroblog...huh?

On April 8th I'll be participating in a synchroblog. You don't know what a synchroblog is? Basically, it's an online conference through blogging. A number of people write about a given topic. They link to and comment on one another's blog posts on a particular day. The idea is to drive some significant conversation about a particular topic. The topic for this synchroblog is, "Share a story about one moment where you experienced what you think Jesus had in mind for 'the church'."

As a result, I'll be writing a few posts leading up to April 8 on my understanding of what it means to "be the church". So, I'll write about worship gatherings, structure, etc...

If you are one of the two people who are interested in what I think about "ecclesiology" then you'll be really excited about these posts.

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Just Stop, Again

Two films released this week have created quite a buzz in my little world, Noah and God's Not Dead. It's fascinating to watch the way folks approach these films, depending on where they come from in their worldview. I have friends who declare the greatness of one and stupidity of the other.  Others see nothing in them of any good. As they write their diatribes on Facebook all I can hear is,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LhQGzeiYS_Q

Henry Cloud in his wonderful book, Changes That Heal, talks about a developmental task called the "Good - Bad Split". This is where we are able to discern the reality that people and circumstances are neither all good nor all bad, but there are elements of both.

When people begin to diatribe about things like film, their good/bad split issues come to the forefront. They cannot see the good in them or the bad. God's Not Dead is a Christian film, it must be all good! Noah is written by an Atheist, it must be all bad (and vice versa)!

Wrong! When we wade into cultural evaluation, we must see that there is both good and bad. We must fight against the natural inclination within ourselves to only see one or the other.

I read a fantastic book a number of years ago, Plowing in Hope. It points out that the creation of culture is an outworking of the image God in humanity. We, being created in God's image, can't help but create culture. Therefore, within cultural creation there will be good and there will be bad because the image of God within us is radically corrupted.

Every diatribe I read, I cringe. I cringe, because friends, Christian and non-Christian, are acting the way they don't want the other person to act.  So my friends, as you critique culture I challenge you to do this: write one paragraph about the good things you see, one paragraph about the bad things, and one paragraph about how you would improve it. If you're not doing long form, then one sentence or one tweet each. If you're not willing to do the work, in the words of Bob, "JUST STOP IT!"

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Death Has Lost Its Sting

Over the last 48 hours some of the dearest people in my life have experienced death and pain. Their hearts are hurting. Death has a way about it that brings things into focus. It forces us to stop and look at what we believe.

What has struck me about both of my friends is that their response to the pain has been one of moving towards Jesus. There is a recognition of grief, a crying out in heartbreak, but then a turn towards joy in the knowledge that death has lost its sting. They look forward to the day when they will again be with their loved ones.

As we approach Easter I continue to think about the resurrection. Hardly a day goes by that I don't ponder it in some way. A week ago I was studying Jesus' raising from the dead the widow's son. As I have watched my friends grieve, my mind has gone to the story of Lazarus and Jesus raising him from the dead. I think of the pain and sorrow in Martha and Mary, "Jesus had you been here, he would not have died."

The resurrection is the central focus of all the Scriptures. It is the climax, everything else is leading up to or falling action from the resurrection. This is because it is in the resurrection we experience the fullness of the power of God. It is in the resurrection that the inbreaking of the God of the universe is made complete.

The resurrection points us to this one truth: Death has lost its sting. In all the ways that death stings: sin, pain, grief, expiration...the sting is gone. Jesus has risen. We grieve and then our tears turn to joy as we know that resurrection is coming. What a glorious day that will be!

Isaac Watts, my favorite poet, sums it up:

My God, how many are my fears!
How fast my foes increase!
Conspiring my eternal death,
They break my present peace.
The lying tempter would persuade
There's no relief in heav'n;
And all my swelling sins appear
Too big to be forgiv'n.
But thou, my glory and my strength,
Shalt on the tempter tread,
Shalt silence all my threatening guilt,
And raise my drooping head.
[I cried, and from his holy hill
He bowed a listening ear;
I called my Father, and my God,
And he subdued my fear.
He shed soft slumbers on mine eyes,
In spite of all my foes;
I woke, and wondered at the grace
That guarded my repose.]
What though the hosts of death and hell
All armed against me stood,
Terrors no more shall shake my soul;
My refuge is my God.
Arise, O Lord, fulfil thy grace,
While I thy glory sing;
My God has broke the serpent's teeth,
And death has lost his sting.
Salvation to the Lord belongs;
His arm alone can save:
Blessings attend thy people here,
And reach beyond the grave.

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