Emergent Brethren

I just read a book called, Simple Church by Thom Rainer and Eric Geiger. The premise of the book is that growing, vital churches are those who keep things simple. Do either of the following illustrations apply to your church?

We live in a fast-food world with super-size me expectations. Here’s one quote from the book:

“There is an epidemic of fast-food spirituality among believers today. We like big spiritual menus with lots of options. And we want those options served fast.

Many churches have become like fast-food establishments. A new idea emerges, and the menu is expanded. Someone wants a special event served in a particular way, and the menu is expanded. People assume that the more that can be squeezed into the menu, the better. So the brochure, the week, the calendar, the schedule, and the process gets expanded. Cluttered.” (p.199)

I’ve seen churches add more and more programs to the “menu” of their activities. Its very difficult to stop doing something when something new is added. We find it hard to lay things to rest, and so we just add more to the calendar. This creates a huge problem for smaller and mid-size congregations. We all have a finite amount of time and energy. If the church continually asks for more, something is going to suffer! (For some help in laying to rest a ministry, go to “Closing Down a Ministry”. Here you can listen to an 80 second presentation by Leith Anderson.)

Here’s another thought: churches, like people, can be thought of as pack rats. When I first arrived at my last congregation as pastor, I was amazed by the amount of stuff (mostly ancient records) that cluttered the church office. There was no space to put away anything new.

Programs and activities can be another source of clutter. Here’s another quote from page 204: “Many churches are littered with clutter. Floundering programs and ministries are stored and piled on top of one another. It is hard for people to make their way through the process of spiritual transformation because of the distracting clutter. . . it is interpersonally and historically challenging (to eliminate programs). People and history are involved.”

The solution can be summarized in four words: Clarity — Movement — Alignment — Focus.

Clarity: How clear is the mission or God’s calling upon your church?

Movement: How well are you moving your people through the process of connecting with God, growing in discipleship and getting engaged in ministry?

Alignment: How does everything your congregation does align with its mission and process for developing disciples?

Focus: How well are you able to keep the church focused on the above and free from distracting clutter of other (new) programs, activities or special events?

This book is an easy read, though you have to wait to the final chapter to really understand how to develop a “Simple Church”. Obviously, it would be a lot easier to create a simple church in a church plant vs. those of you in congregations that are decades old.

Have any of you read this book and tried to apply its principles? If so, has it helped? I’d love to hear from you!

Jeff

In the year that I’ve ministered with the Pomona Fellowship, I have gone through quite a bit of evolution in my beliefs, although mostly with regard to ecclesiology. As a result, I have recaptured a passion for ministry that I haven’t had since my first years in seminary. But that passion has also transformed me into a bit of a throwback to the earliest Brethren. That first group of believers was economically communal, intentionally peaceful, and socially, egalitarian. They had no paid ministers, no cathedrals, no choirs or complicated liturgy. By these distinctions, they created ‘another way’ of Christian community, modeled not on the institutional church of their day, but instead on the church of New Testament.

What I have written below is part of what I have come to believe. It is not intended as a slight against my friends and colleagues in full-time ministry. Rather, please read what follows as a primer on what I think the future holds for the generations emerging in the larger church of Jesus Christ. Of course, as always, this is only one man’s opinion. Search your hearts, search the scriptures, and decide for yourselves if the ideas below comport with the teachings of New Testament.

A trend has been sweeping through The Church of the Brethren for over 100 years. It’s as if someone abducted nearly every church leader and reprogrammed their minds with the logic that argues, “If you have a deep serious relationship to Jesus Christ, you should become a full time pastor or missionary.” It’s so automatic that it’s scary. Against the backdrop of our declining churches and the fewer and fewer folk who file in every Sunday, anyone whose spiritual health rises above the level of comatose is instantly encouraged to pursue vocational ministry.

It doesn’t seem to matter that God may have strategically placed them within their own unique culture and community, with a career (potential or progressing) that could amply provide for their family, and put them in touch with people who don’t know Christ. No one tells them about Paul’s clear instruction that the new birth should not affect a person’s current vocation.

He says it three times, so how do we miss this?

Each of you should continue to live in whatever situation the Lord has placed you, and remain as you were when God first called you. This is my rule for all the churches. For instance, a man who was circumcised before he became a believer should not try to reverse it. And the man who was uncircumcised when he became a believer should not be circumcised now. For it makes no difference whether or not a man has been circumcised. The important thing is to keep God’s commandments. Yes, each of you should remain as you were when God called you. Are you a slave? Don’t let that worry you—but if you get a chance to be free, take it. And remember, if you were a slave when the Lord called you, you are now free in the Lord. And if you were free when the Lord called you, you are now a slave of Christ. God paid a high price for you, so don’t be enslaved by the world. Each of you, dear brothers and sisters, should remain as you were when God first called you. (1 Corinthians 7:17-24, NLT)

But we know our recent traditions better than the ancient Scripture; so the world is drained of our brightest most energetic leaders, and the secular workplace ends up missing those truly gifted to be examples of The Faith.

I’m convinced that we have such an artificial system of “church” that most of us can’t even process Paul’s logic. We have created a mythical category of Christian service known as “full-time ministry” supported by an un-biblical clergy/laity division within the body of Christ.

In 1 Corinthians Paul catalogs the leadership roles of the church. There he lists apostle, prophet, evangelist, and teacher as essential for a healthy Christian community. But because they’re paid a full-time salary, most parishioners expect a full-time pastor to have all these gifts. Unfortunately, none of them do, and so our churches are robbed of the spiritual leadership they need and deserve.

I’m not suggesting that we ‘muzzle the ox’, people don’t value what they don’t pay for, and theological education is expensive. But a prophet is not a prophet if he is beholden to those that pay him. Courageous honesty is just too easily corrupted when you’re worried about your mortgage or whether or not you can afford to retire. Leaders like that neither make waves nor disciples.

Freedom to tell the truth is the key to leader-like, leadership. Absent that, everything that matters will be absent; no apostles, no prophets, no evangelists, no teachers; just sad, scared, scrambling ministers all too aware of their own limitations. What we need is a revolution of thought. A new paradigm that opens the pulpit to a multiplicity of voices, and frees our ministers to live as a citizen missionaries.

Today I celebrated my 43rd birthday. Nine years ago, when those numbers were reversed into a 34, I remember finally beginning to think of myself as a full grown adult. This year I celebrate the birthday that’s finally got me thinking that I’m gettin old. For the most part that doesn’t bother me much. Those that know me know that I’m still quite young at heart. And aging has its benefits. Now more than ever my faith is quite authentic. Doubts no longer shake me but rather add mystery to the things that I believe. My priorities are almost always Christocentric. And I’ve learned to love work as much as I love leisure. All that came at the hands of father time…

And God my Father

Still sometimes, some things hurt. For example; every morning (and whenever the weather changes abruptly), my wrists and knuckles burn and ache. The same is true of my shoulders. Of course that’s arthritis. Arthritis is an autoimmune disorder that inflames the tissue that surrounds overused joints. In my case, 25 years of disciplined practice on the guitar has deteriorated the connective cushion between the bones in my wrists and hands. My shoulders were damaged by years of heavy lifting. The deterioration caused by those activities now often results in inflammation; and inflammation causes pain.

I think most of us are at risk of the same sort of thing with regard to emotional maturation. As we age and apply spiritual disciplines to the human experience, over time, overuse of those disciplines can result in inflamed, painful emotions. For example, all of us endure petty cruelties throughout the course of our lives. But the discipline of forgiveness requires that we turn the other cheek and make peace with those that hurt us. But as we get older, a lifetime of disciplined ‘cheek turning’ can result in so much scar tissue, that even the slightest offence can inflame our emotions. Which begs a difficult question; what are we to do when practicing a spiritual discipline causes us emotional pain? To be frank, because it’s not a simple problem, there is no easy answer. But it’s a problem worth solving, and I think this is how that works.

When I play guitar my hands hurt… sometimes a great deal. If they don’t ache while I am playing, they are bound to burn and pinch the next day. Yet, never in my life has there been a single day when the fear of that pain has caused me to put down my guitar. In fact, when I first learned to play, I would practice two chords, over and over, until each finger was dented with a blood stained, string shaped callus. And when my fingers hurt I was happy, because the pain I experienced was caused by something I love, In fact, the pain wasn’t a problem, it was evidence that I was improving.

I can’t say the same about my feelings for heavy lifting. Be it furniture, or weights or anything in between, I do not love picking things up. As a result, when I am forced to carry something that’s painful to lift, I either put the thing down, or resent the whole experience. But it’s not the pain that causes me umbrage; it’s the lack of love for the thing to begin with. This means that the only cure for the pain that practicing forgiveness can cause, is love. If we practice forgiveness as a spiritual discipline, merely because Jesus told us to, we will eventually be awash with deep-seated bitterness. Christians are not called to be disciplined; we are called to be disciples. And disciples of Jesus do not love the discipline of forgiveness; they love the people they are forgiving.

Discipleship to Jesus is not something that you can be born into; it is something that you claim by repenting and pledging allegiance. When Jesus called this community together he gave its members a new way to live. He gave us a new way to deal with offenders – by forgiving them, a new way to deal with violence – by suffering, a new way to deal with money – by sharing it. He gave us new patterns of relationships between man and woman, parent and child, employer and employee, and made concrete a radical new vision of what it means to be a healthy, godly person. But we are only capable of living this way if we love (agape) our enemies as well as our friends. We cannot merely love the religious discipline of forgiveness, or church attendance, or service, or honesty, or anything other than the people that Jesus was born to love, and died to save. It is love that transforms our suffering into joy.

Recently we shared lunch with some of the new attenders at our church as a way to get to know them and to introduce them to our church. 

 I thought I would share with you the process we use to empower ministries to begin…

Not a lot of hoops here (no permission necessary!), and no water for the fire… just gasoline. You see, I believe that as a pastor, it is my job to empower people to live out of their gifts and callings… we are all ministers when we say yes to Jesus… I am a pastor, but all who have said yes to Jesus are ministers.

At CoJ, to start a ministry a couple of simple things must take place. First, the ministry can’t violate our vision or core-values (see our webpage for those). Second, you must get a couple of other people who will join you in the venture as a team(I can’t think of a leader in the bible that acted on their own… Moses had Aaron, Paul had many co-horts, Jesus sent the disciples out in twos). Third, be able to raise the necessary funds at least of the first year… then we can talk about if it becomes a core ministry, adding it to the budget (however, doing so, deflates commitment to the ministry somewhat at lease further removes it). Fourth, be willing to evaluate the ministry periodically and adjust or let go of it. And you see, it’s just that easy.

Someone asked, “well, doesn’t that create an opportunity for things to run amuck?” I guess it may, but I like the way Gamialiel puts it in Acts… If God is in it, I can’t stop it, and if God is not in it, it will fail. (my translation of his words in Acts 5:38-39).

Someone wrote me this week asking a curious question. The email read, “Do you believe we are at war with Islamo-fascists?”

The following was my answer:

You and I, (and the Church in general), are not at war with Islam… and I am certain that God is not at war with Muslims. If we have a responsibility with regard to other religions, it’s to ensure that when they encounter us (you and I) they see the real Jesus, not the version that confuses civil religion (patriotism), with following Christ.

Just like all real politics are local, so are the most effective missionaries. Whatever we do, wherever we go, if we do it in service to God, we are emissaries of Christ, and are therein missionaries of his Gospel. And if it is true that all mission is local then, where, how, when and why the American system confuses or confounds that Gospel is definitely our concern. I for one am VERY troubled by the global rise of corporate imperialism.

Having spent nearly twenty years as a counselor, I am capable of using the DSM VI to assess the “personality” of the corporate “person.” By employing that checklist as a diagnostic tool, I believe the operational principles of most corporations result in highly anti-social “persons.” They are: self-interested, inherently amoral, unfeeling and devious; they breach social and legal standards to get their way; they do not suffer from guilt, and yet they can mimic the human qualities of empathy, caring and altruism.

This point-by-point analysis results in a disturbing diagnosis: the institutional embodiment of imperial capitalism fully meets the diagnostic criteria of a ‘psychopath’.

Without a moral compass, and neither corporations nor capitalism are instilled with one, extreme, exclusive profit motives are inescapable. In fact, Capitalism as an economic philosophy is intentionally amoral. And today, Capitalism is a global theology. As such, the postmodern world has a international belief system, that is absent morality, absent the bible, and absent the teachings of Jesus.

What was so seductive about Marx and the theory of communism was the fact that it was as much a moral treatise, as it was an economic theory. No such moral treatise exists for postmodern Capitalism. And if the unchecked, unbridled, savage aspects of corporate imperialism become ever more triumphant, I don’t know how we can hope for a world where democracy, equality and freedom are the norm, not the exception. What we need today is a moral manifesto for capitalism; something that can reign in the ever increasing power of international corporations, something spiritual, something Christlike.

And with regard to capitol, I think the Roman Catholic priesthood got that ‘vow of poverty’ thing wrong. The world would be much better off if we all took vows to generously share our wealth and its creation… as much, and with as many people as possible. And not just in terms of legal tender, but wealth in the forms of equal access to health-care, quality education; fair and safe employment standards, and ecologically sound environmental habits. I believe that these are some of God’s goals for the Mosaic Generations; 21st century expressions of authentic Christian piety. And as such, they require that we practice these things missionally, not isolating ourselves from the world, but rather working for the healing and blessing of God’s beloved creation.

Pietism and piety, are masterpieces of Christian tradition. But even the most genius masterwork needs generational reinterpretation for it to remain historically relevant. I for one am tired of hearing that disavowing homosexuality, supporting lower taxes, and condemning Islam are the touchstone missions of the American church. Instead, we need a new kind of piety, one that combines the Sermon on the Mount, with the issues of the day. If we can accomplish that, the juxtaposition would transform the Church from an arm of the Republican Party, into the voice of God Almighty.