Get Going...

I really like reading guys like Seth Godin. They challenge me to think in new ways. For instance, Godin's posts are always short, pithy, and insightful. I don't always agree with him but he knows who he is and he writes about what he knows. This causes me to want to read more and think more.

Yesterday I read a post by Don Miller where he talked about how people who follow Jesus need to "shine" not "broadcast".His point was, be like Jesus and people will want to be around you and know more about this Jesus you follow. I think we could say Miller is calling us to know who we are and to live out what we know.

Every Sunday night in our community I send our folks out with Jesus' words from the Great Commission (Matthew 28:18-20). Why? It's because this few sentences remind us who we are - sent disciples - and what we are to do - make disciples. The follower of Jesus is called to live life as one who is on mission.

Think about that for a moment. Jesus commissioning is for you. He has invited and called you to take part.

The church is to be on mission not just gathered together on Sundays for worship. Our calling is bigger than that. Take a moment and reflect today on what Paul says in Ephesians 2:7-10 MSG:

Now God has us where he wants us, with all the time in this world and the next to shower grace and kindness upon us in Christ Jesus. Saving is all his idea, and all his work. All we do is trust him enough to let him do it. It’s God’s gift from start to finish! We don’t play the major role. If we did, we’d probably go around bragging that we’d done the whole thing! No, we neither make nor save ourselves. God does both the making and saving. He creates each of us by Christ Jesus to join him in the work he does, the good work he has gotten ready for us to do, work we had better be doing.

 

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The Sales Pitch

Over this last week I have spent some time pondering Jesus words at the end of Luke 9:

57As they were going along the road, someone said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go.” 58And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.”59To another he said, “Follow me.” But he said, “Lord, let me first go and bury my father.” 60And Jesus said to him, “Leave the dead to bury their own dead. But as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.”61Yet another said, “I will follow you, Lord, but let me first say farewell to those at my home.” 62Jesus said to him, “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”

The last two verses really hit me. As we move forward in this journey of launching a movement there is the constant struggle to compare and contrast with others. There is also the struggle to look at what you left behind and wonder if you really should have made this decision. Jesus says, "No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God." And those words haunt me.

Jesus sales pitch to these would be disciples is not what you would want out of the greeter at your worship building. "You can come on in, but if you do you'll probably be homeless." What an awful sales pitch!

I wonder about this as I look around and see how we, the Church, have moved so far from the radical minimum standards of Jesus. We attract people to our worship services through gimmicks and games. We use car shows and carnival rides. We tell people how great their lives will be with Jesus in them.

You know what? Jesus says our lives will be hard as his disciples. They won't get easier, they'll get tougher. They'll get tougher because we have been invited to something larger than ourselves. We have a mission and a purpose. This mission must become our focus.

Jesus sales pitch in a nutshell: you'll most likely be homeless, your family responsibilities need to come second to your commitment to me, and your friendships are secondary to me too. What matters most is our primary relationship with Jesus as his disciple. This is tough to swallow.

Yet, we have a mission: make disciples of all nations. This mission requires all of who we are and then some. It requires us to walk in faith and faith is a looking ahead to the next step, the next moment.

Jesus sales pitch is terrible. But it is honest.

And it haunts me...

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Space Matters

Earlier this week I wrote a piece for the Antioch Movement website entitled, "What Is A Missional Community?" The purpose was to bring clarity to why we use words like "missional community" and "worshiping community".

One of the important conversations that pushed back against this concept was in relation to "holy space". Does a building matter? Is there holy ground? What about the Temple?

This is a really important question and I want to be very, very clear: Space matters. Place matters.

This summer I had the opportunity to visit St Stephen's Basilica in Budapest, Hungary. It was overwhelmingly beautiful. I was left in awe of our Creator God. As I wandered around the basilica I desired to worship. From the stained glass windows to the art and the tall ceilings, everything in that place was designed to draw you into worship.

Space matters.

I grew up attending a worshiping community that meets in a historic building. I love hearing the pipe organ boom out the Doxology and Glori Patri. You can feel it in your chest. That building was designed to bring you to a posture of worship.

There is holy ground. Buildings, houses, bushes in the desert can all be holy ground set apart for the purpose of worship. Mundane places set apart for a glorious purpose.

With all of that being said, these places and spaces are not "church". They are chapels, basilicas, and cathedrals but they are not church. The Church is the people of God. Nothing more, nothing less. We must hold on to this theological truth as a proper understanding of it helps us to understand our very identities as followers of Jesus.

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What is Missional Community?

Note: This was originally published over at the Antioch Movement website. It is cross published here for the purposes of reaching a broader audience.

Over the last two or three months there has been one question that continues to come up:

"What is a missional community?"

The reason I get asked this is because we call our Sunday gathering "Missional Community" and not "church". This fall we will be launching our "Worshiping Community" and the questions will come. As much as the question is, "What is a missional community?" it is just as much, "Why aren't you calling your gathering church?"

I want to try and answer this as fully as I can. To begin let me lay out two premises that we have: (1) words have meaning and (2) words create culture.

The words we use matter. They shape what we do and impact who we are. We are at the beginning of our journey at the Antioch Movement. This means that everything we do builds and shapes our culture. We desperately want to be a church planting movement. This means that we want everyone who is in our community to see themselves as movement launchers. We need them to know that within them is the DNA to launch a Jesus movement wherever they are. Everything we do has that end in mind. All of our words matter and shape the way we think about our calling and mission.

Over the last year I have been wrestling with a simple question: "What is 'The Church'?" It is simple in the sense that it is four words long. That's where the simplicity ends, unless you spend time in the Scriptures. In the Scriptures, The Church is the bride of Christ, the family of God, the branches on the vine, the ekklesia. The Church is the people of God. What the church is not, is a building or a time of worship. 

We hear "I am going to church today" or some variation often. If we rightly understand that the Church is the people who God has called to himself then this kind of speaking makes very little sense. It would be as if I woke up and declared, "Today I am going to Dan Rose". I am Dan Rose, it makes no sense for me to say that. Why then do we speak of the Church this way?

When we call our worship gatherings or buildings "church" we are disconnecting them from who we are. Church is not a place we go or a thing we do, if we follow Jesus, it is who we are. When we disconnect "church" from our identity we are effectively stating that our faith is something that only matters at a specific place during a specific time.

Now, back to the question. What is a missional community? It is the kind of community that the Church practices. When we gather in community (in a chapel, sanctuary, home, field, pub, etc...) and we are the Church, then we are engaging in missional community. As the church, we have been mandated with a mission to make disciples of all nations. It is the purpose of our community. The Church gathers to do mission it does not gather to do Church. The Church gathers to do worship it does not gather to do Church.

Some will say, "But the word church carries all these meanings in our time. It's too difficult to change that." Yes, it's hard. Yes, there is much confusion surrounding the word "church". However, if more and more of us can begin to bring clarity to what we are doing and saying, then the word can be recaptured to refer to our identity as the people of God. In most of areas of theology we work very hard to be clear. Why not in this area?

We use words like "missional community" and "worshiping community" because they most accurately describe what it is we are doing when we gather. The Church needs to recapture the reality that "Church" is who we are not what we do.

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It's Been A Month...

"You haven't written in a while. Why not?"

"Hey, so do you have writer's block? =D"

"Man, I need to write a blog post...but..."

This has been the last month. I have not written. I haven't had writer's block, not even a little bit. What has happened is I have entered into a season of reflection and study. There are some big issues that I'm struggling with in my own heart that I need to resolve. Some of which cannot be written about publicly-yet. Some of which I don't want to write about. Some of which will become the new focus of this blog.

I am learning that being in the role of pastor, my words have a weight that other people's do not. I cannot "get away" with verbal processing via my blog. It is not a personal journal for the world to read. It needs to be one step further down the road from a personal journal. Why? Because when some people read what I write they believe it to be a settled, static thought and that it reflects the position of the Antioch Movement or the Evangelical Presbyterian Church. I am learning that the place for that kind of processing is with an ever shrinking group of friends.

So, this blog is going to be focused ever more tightly on issues surrounding what it means to be the Church. Over the last few months this has been an issue that has continued to weigh on my heart. As we have launched the Antioch Movement in a counter-cultural way, it has caused me to ask many, many questions about the nature of "the Church" versus "a church".  I believe there is a distinct difference between C and c.

Everything I read seems to be a book about pragmatics or mission, but very little about the nature of what it means to "be the Church." So, I'm working through the Scriptures, creeds, confessions, and theology texts to try and figure it out. If you have any relevant book or article recommendations, please leave them in the comments.

So, it's been a month. I hope that it's not another month before I begin writing more regularly again. But there are no promises.

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Solutions

I've tried to succinctly state some of the current reality with discipleship in our context (here and here). How do we move forward? How do we change the current state of affairs and begin moving ourselves forward as the Church with regards to discipleship?

One step, is to move from evangelism to discipleship toward the children of believing families. This means that our efforts are given to helping them grow in grace and truth. We take seriously the vows made in their baptisms and trust that their hearts are being gripped by the Holy Spirit. In the context of our discipleship are speaking and living the gospel to them and before them. We focus less on "getting them saved" and focus more on "helping them live" as followers of Jesus.

Another step, is to get the focus off of the Sunday event and on everyday living. Sunday worship is critical, foundational, and fundamental for the people of God. However, it is the beginning-not the center. It is the moment where we are sent out anew as representatives for Jesus each week. When we do this we move discipleship from a classroom to the kitchen table or sidewalk or coffee shop. Discipleship is what happens when we are walking alongside other followers of Jesus seeking him with one another. We are teaching one another. Preaching the gospel to one another. Modeling a faithful life to one another.

In my opinion, this is best accomplished by bringing multiple generations and multiple life stages together. When we break out everyone by life stage to meet their needs what happens is isolation. When we isolate older from younger, married from single, children from adults, we make it impossible for discipleship to truly happen. 1 Timothy 5 is most insightful here. Paul is giving instructions to Timothy and the assumption is that there are multiple generations interacting and engaging with one another. So much so that he has to give instructions on how to help them to do just that. What you will not see is Paul instructing Timothy to pull them apart. All these people need to do life together. Older folks helping younger folks with sage wisdom. Younger folks inspiring older folks with childlike faith. It's a beautiful thing when they rub off on one another.

On Sunday nights, before worship, the Antioch Movement gathers around the table for a meal. I love seeing the generations all jumbled up in a melting pot. Each week it floods my heart with joy. It is a microcosm of the bigger picture, followers of Jesus doing life together and helping one another towards maturity and faithfulness.

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Stating the Problem, Part 2

In my previous post we looked at the first problem regarding the current state of dicipleship and the need for a multi-generational approach. This problem, in a nutshell, was the shift from discipling children of believers to focusing on evangelizing them.

We have moved the center of building our kids faith from the home, mom and dad, to the youth pastor. I call this outsourcing. Why is that? Why have we moved in this direction? First, it's due to the breakdown of the extended family. Secondly, it's due to the shift over the last 50 years to a "seeker" approach of ministry.

What does that shift have to do with discipleship?

When the church at large shifted away from its focus on discipleship to the "seeker", it moved its focus to the Sunday morning event. The Pastor and his team focused their attention on a sermon and constructing an hour that was for the person who doesn't know Jesus. These gatherings were engaging, attractive, and very effective. Lost people were found. It was amazing.

The problem is that this mentality colored everything the church did. Everything became an event, even discipleship.

Discipleship became something that happened in a classroom led by professional teachers. These people were expert communicators and they transferred information to the people.

So what is the problem? Lost people getting saved and Christians being taught, these sound like good things. They are.

The problem comes when we move discipleship into the classroom. By necessity we removed it from the everyday life of people and that took it out of the home and separated the discipleship experience of parents and children. Parents no longer discipled their kids because they were being taught at church on Sundays and Wednesdays.

But, here's the thing: discipleship is something that must happen everyday, as life happens. It is not an event. The shift to the weekly event made it so that discipleship was redefined. When discipleship became an educational event it ceased to be discipleship, it became training.

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