The Forgotten Ways - part 1

When you are in seminary you read a lot of books. Some are good, some are hard to stay awake through, others change your life forever, and some just give language and vision to the things you already believe to be true. This falls into the last category for me. Although this is a read that could certainly fall into the "change your life forever" category for some who haven't thought through these ideas yet. It was the most helpful thing I have read thus far in graduate school. I would like to spend some time unpacking it for you. This will take several posts, but its something I think may be very helpful to some of you as it was to me.

I would first like to say, Alan Hirsch is a practitioner. This is helpful to know. He's not one of these guys who only works in the theory world. These theory voices are helpful, but its hard for me to take them without a grain of salt when they haven't staked their lives on their ideas like Hirsch has. Practitioners have not only thought deeply about their ideas, but they are living them out in the real world with real people and have the ability to see real results... good or bad. So remember this as you read the following posts (or better yet if you have time, read the book).

Hirsch lays a foundation by saying, "There are primal forces that lie latent in every Jesus community and in every true believer." He calls this missional DNA. He says we should ask the western church, in light of our current situation, "Will more of the same do the trick? Can we simply rework the tried and true Christendom understanding of church that we so love and understand, and finally, in a ultimate tweak of the system, come up with the winning formula?" I sense a bit of sarcasm in that there seems to be an obvious answer to the question. No.

Hirsch argues, and I fully agree, that we need a whole new vision of reality, "a fundamental change in our thoughts, perceptions and values especially as they relate to our view of the church and mission."

He spoke about how the early church did something absolutely incredible that makes no sense to most westerners as it went against all odds to grow into the most significant religious force in the Roman Empire in only 200 years. In the year AD 100 there were as few as 25,000 Christians. In AD 310 scholars say there were over 20,000,000 followers of Jesus. And just imagine their cultural climate... They were an illegal religion. They had no church buildings. They had no New Testament. They had no professional paid pastors. They had no programs or seeker services. AND They actually made it hard to join the church! So how did they grow from being a small movement to the most significant religious force in the Roman Empire in 2 centuries?

Hirsch says that this is not a freak historical event. He gives the example of the underground church in China. When Mao Tse-tung took power and purged the church, killed/imprisoned all the leadership, took control of the buildings, etc. there were only 2 million Christians in China. Since then there are now more close to 100 million! They have no professional clergy, no official leadership structure, no central organization, no mass meetings yet despite (or maybe because of) these things they have grown like no other movement the church has seen since Constantine came to power. Hirsch says, "I can only suggest that they found it in themselves… this potent coding (missional DNA) is placed within them through the work of the Spirit and by the power of the gospel in the community.” They simply needed a situation to force them to find that which was already in them.

Thank you Mao Tse-tung. You tried to stamp out the Kingdom of God in China. But you cannot stamp out the Spirit's fire. When you try, it simply fans the flames. 100 million Chinese flames and counting.

Stay tuned for more on The Forgotten Ways...

Changes (Part 1)

This semester was one that had huge potential from the onset. Sara and I made some big decisions this summer and last spring that we knew would spark some really great outcomes this semester. We were leaving our comfy mega-church to participate in what we felt like was a more faithful expression of what we believe the Lord desires his church to be. We moved into a different residence hall and I became a full time employee at ACU. And I was planning to start a new monastic community in the residence hall. So as you can imagine, we were thrilled to get things underway.

The next series of blogs will be about some of these changes mentioned above. I would love to hear your thoughts and comments on some of the work the Lord is doing in and through these changes... First things first. Here is the reflection of our change in our expression of the gathered church community. I would also like to throw a disclaimer out for those that know the congregation we were a part of. My descriptions about this particular place, are not indeed about this particular place exclusively. They are more a reflection on our experience of institutional churches. This just happens to be the one we were a part of. Thus I refer to it as "comfy mega-church." I simply use this pseudonym so that those who are there can know that I am truly not attacking them in any way. Hopefully you can find some humor in this.

Let's get started... Because of all of the unique ways that we were planning on making transitions this semester we had really great expectations. Expectations about what it might be like to leave comfy mega-church, and what a simpler form of church would look and feel like.

We had mixed feelings and strong convictions about this change. We believed that we could no longer contribute to the dualistic and consumeristic institution that we had been part of for the last 5 years. The Lord was calling us to something more holistic and faithful to the Church Jesus died to give flight too, something that looked more like the New Testament church. We also hurt knowing the relationships that we would undoubtedly leave behind. Even though I was tied deeper into the community at comfy mega-church because I was on staff, Sara expected to experience the most pain due to leaving the people. I expected to break ties without any consequences or ill emotions (this was foolish). I was simply excited about the change to become more intimate with our new house church community. I was excited about the change to become more like Jesus through the relationships in our house church that went deeper than many had become at comfy mega-church.

The transition from comfy mega-church to the house church has not exactly gone according to our plan. We stuck to our convictions and what we felt the Lord calling us to do, but “the detox” as I have affectionately called it, has been far more painful that I expected. During the first month of the detox I experienced an extreme amount of “emotional flux.” I felt lonely and detached often. I really felt like I had lost a big part of who I was as a human. When you work in a large "successful" church for several years and grow a ministry from next to nothing to the size of the campus ministry when I left, you tend to gain much of your identity from this position. Everyone knows you as the campus ministry guy and when you’re good at it, you like that mantra, as unhealthy as it my be. The difficult part was that I expected to simply jump into intimacy with the people in our house church. I did my best to really jump into it by being as open as I could through both the things I shared with the group, and the honesty of emotion in which I did it. Unfortunately, it wasn’t as easy as that. Others in the group still had a lot of things going on and hadn’t felt the same convictions about stepping out of institutional church (several were and are a part of institutional churches, and thats okay it just slows down our progress a bit because of time constraints). This made it all the more painful. However, I learned that you simply can’t jump into relationship. It takes time and I am beginning to see these relationships form in meaningful ways.

We have come a long way in the last 5 months however. Much faster than I really even thought possible, even if I wanted it to go faster. I really feel great about where our house church is going. Sara and I had Rosten, Ben, Emily, Laura and KT come over this Sunday morning to cook breakfast, eat, play wii and hang out with each other. This is the kind of thing I want to do on a more regular schedule to help our relationships flourish. It is really great to be in community with people that you can play with and truly invest spiritually and otherwise with. Its actually a really rare combination to find both in the same people. We are beginning to see this and it is a blessing.

Like I said this is part one (of 3 or 4 to come in the following days). I haven't even gotten rilled up yet. Talk to ya then.

By This All People Will Know

I got tested for allergies today. Probably a good thing considering I am allergic to the following: Juniper trees, Virginia Live Oak trees, Mulberry trees, White Ash trees, Pecan trees, Mountain Cedar trees, Wheatgrass, Redtop, Bemuda, Orchard, Fesque, Ragweed, Pigweed, Lamb Quarter, Kochia, Russian Thistle, Sagebrush, Marsh Elder, Cocklebur, English Plantain, Cat, House Dust, Mites, Molds and Mildews. Just to name a few... Or actually all of them that I now know of...

Each time I go to the doctor I think a few things.

1) This sucks.
2) I'm so glad I have a job that gives me good health insurance.
3) There are a LOT of people that dont have insurance and doctors are expensive!

What would it look like if the church was our insurance policy? If church was the kind of community that pulled all of their resources to take care of each other. What would that say to the world? Jesus said, "By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

Or what if we had faith enough that the Lord would heal us if we would just ask.

Still thinking... Not sure where to go from here. Any thoughts?

A Vision for the Church

Elaine Heath describes the current state of the church in the US as being in a "dark night of the soul." She says there is no guaranty that we will come out of the dark night any better. And while I agree that there is no guaranty, I am very hopeful of the things to come for the church in North America because of men and women, who, like me, are fed up with the churches status quo and yet are passionately in love with Jesus. I believe it is precisely this dark night that is raising up men and women across the country that say no to legalistic and judgmental expressions of Christ’s church. These people will say yes to making space for Christ to lead His Church the way that He so chooses. These people will go into the dark places of the world armed with love in one hand and peace in the other, befriending the spiritually hurting, dirty and dying. The love of Christ will be so obvious among these lost people that they will find themselves falling in love with Him as they participate in His work even before they believe in Him. Authentic families of Jesus will be raised up from out of the mud and the mire and they will truly look like the people of God. They will be radical. They will be holy. They will look a lot like Jesus. And this world will never be the same.