A Recipe from my Neighbor Laila

I have absolutely no intention of baking these cookies!  However, she wanted me to give it to someone who would make them, so here is to you!  Make some cookies, let me know how they taste!

Fig Cookies

Filling: (Make 2-3 days ahead)

1 ½ lbs. figs

½ lb. raisings

½ lb. dates

1 orange

2 oz. whiskey

1 tsp. salt

2 tsp. cinnamon

1 tsp. black pepper

½ lb. brown sugar

6 oz. bottle maraschino cherries

Boil figs and raisins with brown sugar and add 2 cups of water for 10 minutes (save water).  Grind figs, dates, and raisins with whole orange.  Add cinnamon, pepper, and whiskey, salt and cut up cherries.  Add liquid from fruit into the filling.

Dough:

12 cups flour

3 Tbsp. baking powder

1 ½ tbsp. vanilla

9 eggs

1 lb. lard melted

1 lb. sugar (2 cups)

1 or 2 grated orange rinds

¼ cup orange juice

Mix all dry ingredients.  Add melted lard and beaten eggs and orange rind.  Mix in.  Roll out dough, not too thin.  Cut long strips, about 1 ½ to 2 inches wide with a knife.  Put filling down center of strip of dough in a long line.  Fold both sides of the dough over filling.  Slice small pieces diagonally with a knife.  Place individual cookies on cookie sheet and bake at 375 degrees.  About 25 minutes.  Time varies.  Bottom should be lightly browned.  Cool and frost.

Frosting:

Combine 1 ¼ boxes powder sugar and orange juice and milk.  Frost cookies and dip upside down into sprinkles or decorations.

Worship Changes Us

St. Paul writes the following in the twelfth chapter of his epistle to the Roman Church:

¹Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. ²Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.

Here Paul is instructing us that true worship involves our total humanity.  A living sacrifice that continually presents itself, not merely in song, but in its physical entirety.  Our thoughts, emotions, actions, and lifestyle are included in our worship, not merely words.

In worshipping God in this way we are honoring Him according to His proper worth; we are giving Him something.  We are also, however, giving God access to us; He is giving us something in return.  By acknowledging God for who He truly is, and by doing so whole-heartedly, we are receiving a renewed self.  A self that begins to look more and more like Him.  Our whole being is being conformed to His as we worship Him.

We are made in His image, designed to reflect His glory into the world around us.  Like a mirror turning towards the source of light, in order to reflect it; we turn towards God in worship to do the same.  In proclaiming the majesty, beauty, and power of the Creator through worship, our reflection of Him becomes cleaner, clearer, and brighter.  It is then that we are able to truly understand, discern, and perform His will.

In my own life this has been true.  Decisions I had made for evil, destructive patterns of thought I had settled into, bitterness I had held onto, lies I had believed; all melted away in moments of worship.  Almost without notice these things came to pass; there was no conscious renouncing of these evils but only an embracing of God.  After such an embrace, I discovered that those evils had been let go of almost against my will, they had been crowded out of my soul.  As if there was not room for bitterness or envy within a soul filled with thoughts of God.

In idolatry our humanity is perverted and our godliness polluted.  In worship of our Creator, we become more fully human and more godly as well...

Rough Draft Pt IX

Students of a Heavenly Kingdom not a Consumer One

Discipleship in the 21st Century necessitates a commitment to a deep intimacy between women and men of all cultures.  A disciple must embrace community, but even more a community of diverse people.  Where that diversity, or community is not present a disciple must work to create it.  Discipleship in the 21st Century must produce disciples who tirelessly confront the powers of injustice at work in the world around us, and who abandon themselves to life among the world’s marginalized.  Discipleship in the 21st Century requires a resolute rejection of materialism, consumerism, and individualism; in short, we must reject the Church Growth movement, and the toxic way it has infected our Kingdom imagination by playing to consumer desires.

The Vineyard’s relationship to Evangelicalism is a point for much conversation.  However, for our purposes here it is not necessary to clarify the degree to which we should be differentiated from other Evangelical streams.  When it comes to a theological commitment to the Church Growth paradigm, the Vineyard has historically given unquestioned assent.  Much of our material for church planters is focused primarily around gathering crowds; John Wimber himself was heavily influenced (and was in fact an influencer!) by the Church Growth mindset.  Leaving aside questions of decades past, Church leaders today must constantly assess their own sense of worth in the unholy tension between meeting consumer demands and faithfulness to the King.  What in the past may have been good, or simply unintentionally bad, is now unquestionably bad.  We must turn from it.

                 

My prayer is that we turn to the City.  The wondrous diversity of cultures and classes is enough to woo any missionary.  The inherent community is enough to endear anyone who loves people.  The brokenness will induce compassion for people, and the systemic nature of it induce defiance in the face of the powers, in any Spirit-filled disciple.  The sheer ingenuity of immigrants and the unique economic realities of urban markets should excite any creative businesspeople. The urban centers of America are filled with opportunity for the Church to rediscover Herself.  Here we can seek again to set our face towards a Kingdom dream, and invite others to join us as we labor under Jesus to forward that dream.

                 

We must be clear, this is not a critique of suburban missions, but rather those who end up there for the wrong reasons.  Those lonely, isolated souls in the suburbs are crying out to be liberated from bondage to material wealth and fulfilled consumer desires by Kingdom agents sent there with power from on high; just as the poor, broken, disadvantaged, and oppressed of the cities must be liberated.  This is not a call to abandon one mission field for another, but rather a refocusing on the goals of the mission in both fields; we must rethink our commitment to suburbia only because it so often results from a commitment to Church Growth.  Our calling must be to reject the powers and kingdoms of this earth, and conform instead to that heavenly Kingdom that will one day replace these others.  No longer can we acquiesce to a culture that enshrines unrestrained desire and comfort.  As St Paul says:

¹⁸For, as I have often told you before and now tell you again even with tears, many live as enemies of the cross of Christ. ¹⁹Their destiny is destruction, their god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame. Their mind is set on earthly things. ²⁰But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, ²¹who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body.

Philippians 3:18-21

Rough Draft Pt VIII

Brokenness

Our Master has established by clear example and plain teaching that we are to “take up our cross and follow Him.”³⁹ Jesus did not shy away from the coming crucifixion, but simply asked for God’s will to be done.  Even in simpler matters, Jesus did not pursue a life of comfort, but rather suffered the hardships of life amongst the poor, manual labor, even homelessness; not to mention the constant interruption by crowds, the annoying and constant pestering of the authorities, and the heartache of identifying with the broken.  As it imitated His example, the early Church was also well acquainted with suffering and persecution, poverty and discomfort.

Life in the suburbs is certainly not without problems, but the suburbs exist as a monument to the Western quest to eradicate discomfort.  It is in the pursuit of the consumerist vision of a better life that we have left the Cities to build strip malls and sub-divisions.  Individually our fear of poverty and violence, and our discomfort with laborious cross-cultural exchange, has pushed us out of the neighborhoods where we might encounter them.  Corporately our desire for Church Growth has led us to endorse these cultural trends as a way of welcoming larger numbers of people into our buildings; we are offering them the upwardly mobile life they are seeking.

                 

The unfortunate situation in the Evangelical Church today is that many have seen the upward mobility of suburban culture as something to imitate, and the church has often baptized such a mindset.  Our Master, on the other hand, modeled for us a downward mobility that we were intended to imitate; a life in close proximity and service amongst the least and lost; living in intimate community with those suffering, fatherless, divorced, diseased, addicted, paroled, or simply just incompetent, ugly, smelly, stupid, and boring.  A mature Christian is one who understands this and lives accordingly.  Too often in our churches we insulate and isolate ourselves in ever bigger homes, ever safer neighborhoods, and send kids to ever better schools yet are still considered ‘mature disciples.’  This is a failure in the discipleship process.  As we learn to live under Jesus tutelage, we should find, welling up within us, an attraction to those places where we might encounter hunger, danger, injustice, addiction, oppression, or poverty.

All four of these discipleship implications could actually be summed up in St. Paul’s words, “in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.”⁴⁰ The above are four battlefields where the Kingdom is waging war against the demonic powers at work in Western society, and the evangelical church.  These powers have manipulated our minds, our behaviors, and even our political, economic, and social systems, to bend human action toward the pursuit of self.  A disciple of Jesus contends with that unholy trinity of materialism, consumerism, and individualism; no longer acting on the belief that accumulating stuff, fulfilling desire, or looking out for number one, are methods of gaining a blessed life.  Our ultimate aim and purpose here is not to neglect the suburbs, as we have the City, but rather to point out the radical implications for discipleship that our theology of Church Growth has brought about.  Our commitment to suburbia is simply the vehicle for discovering those implications.

Rough Draft Pt VII

Systems

Jesus consistently confronts the powers at work in politics, religion, and culture whenever they marginalize and oppress; He crosses gender and racial boundaries, He ignores social taboos and religious tradition, He confronts political leaders and the influential elite; all of this in spite of the implications for our comfort or our pocketbooks.  Returning again to the parable of the Good Samaritan: given the context of the lawyer’s question and Jesus’ closing commentary, it becomes clear that Jesus’ main point is not that we are to be nice people.  Rather Jesus is making it clear that it is simply not enough that we refrain from assaulting and robbing people on the Jericho road, rather godliness requires that we go out of our way to address the problems of others, regardless of who caused those problems.  Jesus makes it clear that when His students are confronted with the facts of hunger and AIDS on another continent, homelessness and fatherlessness on the other side of town, or loneliness and divorce on the other side of the street, they must never dismiss these as ‘not my problem.’  Jesus makes apparent by His lifestyle, and the early Church displays through imitating Him, that we are to “wrestle against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.”³⁷

Suburban culture is woefully unaware of the systemic nature of justice.  The process of suburbanization is a clear example of a systemic injustice that must be confronted and yet has no individual culprit; in past decades the people with the means to leave the City did so, and with them went the jobs, the adequate housing, the leadership, and even the access to healthy food.  Generally those left behind were those without the means to leave, the orphans and widows, the foreigners, the poor.  The very existence of the suburbs is parasitic.  Without the infrastructure of the City, suburbanites could never maintain the lifestyle they have built; these communities exist because of their proximity to an urban environment that they do not have to take responsibility for.

The Western consumer culture that is so prevalent in American suburbs takes for granted the ability to drive to a big-box-store and purchase affordable goods, rarely questioning the realities of child exploitation, environmental degradation, or corporate heavy-handedness that provides that ability.  Our global economic system incentivizes corporate greed and consumer waste; third world parents must chose between bathing their children in runoff wastes, or subsisting in extreme poverty; third world husbands must chose between starving their families, or being absent from them.  Western purchasing power is tearing the world apart, and we are largely ignorant of it.  We believe our wealth, our upward mobility, our education, our social network, and even our work ethic, are a product of our own moral effort, when in reality they are inculcated to us by the system we live in; the system tilts in our favor, and so we never really look too closely at the details of it.

The systemic nature of justice, however, becomes readily apparent in an urban context.  Generational poverty, illiteracy, addiction, and dependency are widespread.  A child raised by a mother who cannot read, and a father who occasionally shows up to collect money to support his addiction; who attends a classroom with two dozen other children in similar circumstances; whose role models are dealers and thugs; and whose whole circle of relationships consist of people who have never left the City, nor worked consistently, nor gone to college; such a child will almost surely live in such a way as to perpetuate that brokenness to his own children.  When confronted by such an environment, it becomes obvious that individual choice is largely overridden by forces of impotence and despair; something like a system wide failure is taking place.

When we pursue the Church Growth dream in a suburban community we blind ourselves to the plight of our neighbor.  We become guilty of walking past the bloody man on the side of the Jericho road.  We are unwilling to do the difficult work of teaching broken people how to work hard, be responsible, and be self-confident, because we understand that it will cost us time, effort, and ultimately a building full of smiling people once a week.  We are unwilling to confront the realities of a global economy, or acknowledge that our purchasing dollars may well fund injustice.  We may appease our conscience with charitable giving, but not at the cost of our place of cultural privilege.

                 

To be a disciple of Jesus is to set ones face against the cultural, economic, and political forces at work in the world.  A disciple of Jesus will go beyond mere charity and labor to see justice come; as St Augustine says, “Charity is no substitute for justice withheld.”³⁸ If we are His students then we will listen to His voice regardless of the cost.  It is not a matter of profits and losses, but rather of obedience.  Charity is the easy way out, to our shame we often give, but rarely confront the systemic injustice.  This reveals a serious problem in our discipleship process; how is it possible to call someone a maturing disciple of Jesus who is unconcerned at the way wealth, comfort, safety and security have been siphoned off of the world’s poor and poured out in his lap? 

Rough Draft Pt VI

Community

Jesus commanded His students that our love for each other should be our defining trait.³³ He modeled a life of community for us; living daily in close proximity to His friends and followers.  The early church imitated this communal life; as Luke says, “they devoted themselves to fellowship.”³⁴ Our regular feasting together at the Lord’s Table is a constant reminder that our union to Christ is also a union to each other.  It is a unity that we need not build or earn, as St Paul tells us, it must only be kept; we already possess it by virtue of our baptism into the family of God.³⁵

It would be a mistake to think of suburban culture as lacking nothing.  There is a form of poverty present in suburbia.  The consumerism and individualism rampant within suburban culture has wrought a tremendous isolation.  What Mother Teresa called, “that most terrible form of poverty: loneliness.”³⁶ Our pursuit of the good life has us spending hours in traffic, and overcommitted to circles of relationship that rarely overlap; our work-life, home-life, church-life, play-life, and family-life are almost totally compartmentalized.  It is with herculean effort that suburban Churches are able to promote any degree of community, most, however, simply do not make the effort; it is often enough the anonymity of the crowd that draws people to the successful suburban Church.

The urban neighborhood, on the other hand, has community in abundance.  Most urban dwellers spend the bulk of their lives within blocks of their residence, this means a constant stream of daily encounters with neighbors.   Not to imply that this community is necessarily healthy (it is often severely unhealthy); but it is hard to escape!  People know each other, and know each other’s business; the neighborhood is interconnected by a constant stream of conversation.

                 

When the Church pursues the cultural prestige, and economic prosperity of suburban missions it looses this rich opportunity to exist within a cohesive community.  Too often we fall into the cultural patterns of suburban individualism.  We must force church members to contradict the very impulses that informed their decision to live in the suburbs in the first place.  By seeking to go with the cultural grain we are able to gain attendees, but lose out on the opportunity to obey the command of Jesus.  Simply put, the communal life Jesus expects of a disciple is a much more attainable reality in the City.

To be a disciple of Christ is to live in intimate connection with other disciples.  It is a travesty that discipleship could in any way be devoid of such community.  And yet, so many of our ‘discipleship classes’ are means of conveying information, nothing more and nothing less.  This constitutes a serious failure to disciple women and men into the full life of Jesus.

Rough Draft Pt V

Where is Jesus?

Well I heard Jesus Christ was there, He had a car that’s bullet-proof

And that way everyone was safe from the Man who tells the truth¹¹

                 

A disciple is one who is consistently placing herself under the influence of Jesus for the purpose of learning how to obey Him, and ultimately to be like Him.  A fully-formed disciple will think like Jesus, act like Jesus, reason like Jesus, love what He loves, and hate what He hates; this is true for theology and personal finances, prayer and sexuality, spiritual gifts and relationships; but it is also true regarding ethnicity, poverty, and systems of power.  Whenever we set aside the values of Jesus to pursue Church Growth, we do serious violence to the discipleship process for ourselves and for others.  We are providing incentive for ourselves to love what Jesus hates and to hate what He loves.

                 

There are four specific areas where our enactment of the Kingdom creates serious deficiencies in the discipleship process.  Diversity: by chasing a narrowly defined success in the suburbs we have missed out on the glorious calling to be the “one new humanity out of the two;”¹² the unique people of God called out from all nations, tribes and tongues.  Community: in pursuing suburbia we have missed out on the natural network of relationships that arises when people live, work, and play, in close proximity.  Systems: we have blinded ourselves to the powers at work in our world; systems of power that often promote our own well-being at the expense of others.  Brokenness: finally, in ignoring the urban call, we have missed out on the opportunity to embrace the Cross of Christ in our own poverty and the poverty of others.

Diversity

From Genesis¹³ to Isaiah,¹⁴ and Psalms¹⁵ to Revelation,¹⁶ the Scriptural tradition is replete with hopes and promises of a multi-cultural paradise.  While Jesus was primarily focused on the nation of Israel, He nevertheless gave clear indication that the Kingdom was for the whole world.  All four gospel-writers record some version of His Great Commission,^{18 19 20 21} and His action in the Temple was in some way motivated by this multicultural vision;^{23 24} Jesus even makes the hero of one of His best-known parables a repugnant, half-breed, foreigner.²⁵  Jesus regularly violated the boundaries that divide groups of people, gender,²⁶ religion,²⁷ morality,²⁸ and class,²⁹ as well as ethnicity.³⁰

The very birth of the Church was the beginning of this vision.  As Peter preached the good sermon, the Holy Spirit fell and peoples of all nations became disciples.  It was the first fruits of the coming Kingdom; “a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb.”³¹ It is this promise of the blessing of all nations, spoken first to Abram, that St. Paul fought so hard to defend, even to the point of castigating Peter when he would not share a table with the Gentiles.³²

                 

While not all suburban neighborhoods are homogenous, and not all urban neighborhoods heterogeneous, the general trend remains; urban neighborhoods are vastly more diverse than suburban ones.   The future is more of the same: the cultural trend in most major US Cities is an increase in languages spoken, countries of origin, and ethnic makeup.  If the church is to go to the nations, then we do not have very far to go, for the nations have always come to American Cities.

                 

Unfortunately our desire for numerical growth has forced us to abandon what is clearly so important to God; it is a rare Evangelical Church that makes multiculturalism an explicit goal.  On the contrary, the explicit goals of the Evangelical Church usually have numbers attached to them.  Our theology has compelled us to leave diverse neighborhoods in pursuit of greener pastures.  Even were this not the case, our theological framework still gives us an incentive to maintain the status quo of de facto segregation; we must do whatever it takes to get as many people in the door, and people do not want to do the unsettling work of cultural integration and the sharing of power that it necessitates.  We will do nothing to rock the boat if it hurts the Church Growth bottom line.

                 

To be a disciple, however, must be to work towards this Scriptural vision, where we join with women and men of all cultures, backgrounds, and classes to live in harmony and glorify our King.  When someone can be declared a mature disciple of Jesus without any real commitment to a multi-cultural lifestyle, we have a serious problem with our discipleship process.  As it stands the majority of Evangelical Churches would never even think to place cross-cultural engagement on the radar screen as a mandatory character issue for Christian discipleship.  This is a glaring deficiency in discipleship.  

Rough Draft Pt IV

All of this comes to a critical junction when we begin to talk about the Church.  While we might describe individual life in the Kingdom in terms of submission to God’s lordship, our description of corporate life never really gets beyond simply stockpiling individuals.  Churches are successful when they gather individuals; perhaps helping those individuals to have ‘Kingdom experiences,’ but the conversation does not elevate to the level of discussing power structures in the Church, or power structures in the wider culture.

                 

The proponents of ‘Church Growth’ have essentially set aside Kingdom theology on a corporate level.  There is an unquestioned assent to the suburban ‘bigger is better’ mindset.  The Churches who buy in to this theological framework begin to reflect the suburban culture: taglines and advertising campaigns that are designed to exploit and promote individualism and consumerism, programs and staff that are designed to meet people’s demands for comfort and entertainment, heavy investment in facilities designed to meet people’s consumer expectations. 

                 

A theology of Church Growth often explicitly promotes strategies that sacrifice Kingdom purposes in order to gain attendance at weekly events; two simple examples of this are the specific targeting of fast growing suburban communities, and the explicit targeting of groups that are culturally similar to the planting team.  In targeting a rapidly growing suburban community for a new Church, the planter is able to advertise and gather a crowd of people who are new to the neighborhood, and have yet to find a church.  Instead of asking ‘where is the Kingdom needed and how can I participate in its coming?’ the planter is asking, ‘where can I establish the largest possible weekly service with the least amount of work and relational connection?’

                 

Even more problematic is the targeting of specific classes or ethnic groups because of the planter’s affinity for them (I will refrain from using the term ‘explicit racism’).  In attempting to reach people with whom they share similar cultural backgrounds they are able to provide people with a religious experience that does not require any jarring cross-cultural relationships.  Instead of asking ‘what should a Kingdom people look like with respect to ethnicity and class?’ the planter is asking, ‘how can I gather the largest possible crowd with the least amount of discomfort and conflict?’

                 

In both cases a fundamental shift is made in the mindset of the Church from seeking God’s will no matter the cost, to seeking large crowds at weekly events no matter the cost.  In short, a Church Growth theology assumes that God’s will in nearly every and all circumstances is to have as many people as possible gathered together in large rooms for an hour or two once a week!  Within a theology of Church Growth there are very few Biblical concepts that are not sacrificed at the altar of this golden calf.  Our description of the Kingdom in terms of financial well-being, cultural influence, and sheer numerical size is the major factor encouraging evangelical churches to commit to suburban missions.

                 

In an urban context, everything is slower.  As Bob Lupton has said, “There are too many people with a fifteen year strategy and a two year commitment;”¹⁰ this does not sit well with proponents of Church Growth.  Struggling with issues of racial tension, reconciling the radical cultural differences between socio-economic classes, navigating language barriers, as well as combating illiteracy, addiction, neglect, abuse, even hygiene problems, simply are not on the radar screen if our goal is Church Growth.  It is simpler and easier to achieve numerical success in a context where systems are healthier, people are wealthier, and the culture is homogenous.  It is for this reason that Evangelicals are committing to suburban missions; we are committed to the theology of Church Growth.

Rough Draft Pt III

Why is Heaven such a Lonely Place?

Oh, I have been to heaven and I have walked the streets

But I couldn’t find a hand to hold to keep me on my feet⁸

                 

Evangelical theology has an almost exclusive focus on the individual that blinds us to so many of the larger implications of Jesus life and work.  This is clearly revealed by looking at the language we choose to use to describe life with God.  It is the language of ‘God and I,’ we think almost completely in terms of God’s dealing with individuals with regards to salvation, holiness, and sin.  Proponents of Kingdom theology do not necessarily do better.

                 

Within the Vineyard historically our Kingdom focus has largely been described in terms of prophetic gifting, physical healing, demonic exorcisms, and perhaps less so in terms of intimacy with God, and acts of mercy.  Rarely (and perhaps only recently) has the Kingdom been described in terms of manifesting community, upending systems of injustice, or reconciling class and ethnic differences.  This description of the Kingdom in conflict with other Kingdoms certainly opens the door to a wider and more comprehensive understanding of God’s sphere of influence, however, it remains relegated to God’s activity within the lives of individuals.

                 

Other proponents of ‘Kingdom theology’ describe life in the Kingdom in terms of submitting all of the various aspects of human activity to the Lordship of Jesus.  Our thoughts and emotions, our bodies and actions, our desires and choices, and our relationships are to be placed under Jesus’ tutelage through spiritual disciplines for the purpose of becoming like Jesus.  This too, however, while expanding the evangelical understanding of God’s work in the world, continues to describe the Kingdom almost solely in individual terms.

                 

Our theological framework makes the individual the location for the whole of theology to be worked out whereas Scripture places the individual within the larger structures of humanity, within our physical universe, within the sphere of influence of the ‘powers and principalities,’ and makes this the location for theology to be discovered.  Within this theological framework the ‘Kingdom’ metaphor makes much more sense.  The ordering of larger structures of power, provision, and even protection from other powers; the governing of people-groups and their interaction with each other and their world; these are the concerns of a Kingdom, within which the individual finds her place.

                 

The N. T. Wright quote below addresses this exact concern:

You get the atonement theology — boy do you ever — but you get it inside that political theology. And I’ve sometimes said that, and people have said, “Surely this is all about Christ dying for me.” Absolutely, right on, but you get that inside; again, it’s like a Russian doll. You get this Kingdom of God theology, which is a redefinition of what power is all about; inside that you get the meaning of the cross, the full atonement theology; and inside that there is room for every man, woman, and child in the world to find that Christ died for their sins according to the Scriptures. Let’s have the holistic biblical theology.⁹

            - N. T. Wright 

Rough Draft Pt II

Why are there Strip Malls in Heaven?

So paradise is a parking lot, a spot up front is your reward

And all the rest walk down streets of gold to the house they could afford²

                 

In Erie County (the location of our Church Plant in Buffalo, NY) the Evangelical churches do not typically pursue a missional presence in the City and are instead primarily focusing their efforts into suburban ministry.  One out of every twenty churches within the City limits is an explicitly evangelical church, whereas one out of every five churches outside the City is evangelical.³ Of the half a dozen major evangelical denominations and associations in the area all are heavily weighted towards the suburbs; two denominations have not a single church in the City, the largest denomination in the area has thirty-two churches in the county, and only one in the City.⁴ Simply put, suburban missions have captured the evangelical imagination.  To what extent this trend holds true for other areas is beyond the scope of my data, however, personal anecdotes, and corresponding data (e.g. the ethnic makeup of national evangelical organizations) in other ways suggests that this is not an isolated trend.

                 

The differences between suburban and urban environments are staggering.  With regards to ethnicity the City of Buffalo is majority minority (less than half of the population is white) whereas the suburban population is 92% white.⁵ With regards to class the City of Buffalo has a 27% poverty rate and a per capita income of $15K annually, whereas the suburban population has a 2% poverty rate and a per capita income $47K annually.⁶ Politically the suburbs trend Republican and the City Democratic; even in the last Presidential election where the suburbs narrowly voted for the Democratic candidate Barack Obama (51% - 48%), the City voted overwhelmingly Democratic (81% - 18%).⁷

                 

These numbers, however, fail to convey the human texture of each environment.  The City is a place of wonderful diversity.  It is common in parts of the City to be in the presence of half a dozen languages at once and to be exposed to cultures from every continent (the choices for cuisine are mouthwatering!); the Upper West Side is peopled by Sudanese, Burmese, Puerto Ricans, Somalis, Iraqis, Cubans, as well as African-Americans and Italian-Americans; the University District is peopled by Pakistanis, Indians, Nigerians, Japanese, Chinese, Koreans, Kenyans, and others.

                 

The City is also a place of immense and systemic brokenness.  Six decades of suburbanization has depleted over half the population, creating blight and abandoned housing with the attendant vandalism, vice, and violence.  The employers have also disappeared leaving behind families without hope, burgeoning lines for public assistance, and the breakdown of familial relationships.  The public schools are often powerless to educate, fraught with parentless students, violent cultural influences, and overworked and understaffed classrooms; students simply do not learn.  Even the food delivery system is broken; food desserts exist where fresh food cannot be found within whole square miles of City.  In these neighborhoods Doritos, Twinkies, and Pepsi form staples of the childhood diet.

                 

The suburban context is vastly different.  The suburbs are drowning in opportunity; affordable and available groceries, healthy and safe housing, schools that educate, a police force that maintains law and order, and a culture that encourages hard work and individual responsibility.  The suburbs, however, often lack the network of relationships that are present in urban neighborhoods, and are completely lacking the cultural strength of diversity and immigrant ingenuity that helped to build the City of Buffalo (and our nation) in the first place.

                 

And so the question is begged, why are evangelicals much more present in one cultural environ than the other?  Ignoring for the moment the question of how we got into the suburbs (a historical analysis would be fascinating, but would be a diversion from our present task of exploring the implications for discipleship of our current situation), we must simply observe that evangelicalism is both influenced by suburban culture, and a contributor to it.

                 

Suburban Churches are largely communities of white, middle-class, conservatives, and so they tend to have the thought patterns, values, and decision-making patterns of white, middle-class, conservatives.  Suburbanites consider it normal, or even Christian, to make major life choices by considering things like safety, prosperity, and comfort; suburban churches end up endorsing this pattern.  Conversely, evangelicals have often implicitly, and sometimes explicitly, promoted a lifestyle of safety, prosperity, and comfort; this has led evangelicals to build and populate the suburbs.

We Evangelicals must come to grips with the simple truth that in our imagination the Kingdom is peopled by white, middle-class, Republicans, who live in well-manicured sub-divisions, carefully chosen for their safety and proximity to good schools, and whose choice to commute to work, church, and kids’ sports events inhibits most meaningful interaction with those they live next to.  This may not be the language we use to describe it, nor the plan we have to enact it, but it is the Kingdom we imagine.  This truth is manifested in our individual lifestyle choices and our corporate decisions; we live in the suburbs and consider it ‘normal.’  After all, we might hear evangelicals talk of a calling to ‘urban’ ministry, but no one feels the need to specify a calling to ‘suburban’ ministry (or for a calling to ‘rich, white, conservative’ ministry for that matter) that part is assumed; it is our default setting.

                 

It is precisely this imagination that must be renewed.  We must reexamine the way we think about life in God’s Kingdom.  We must replace our values for safety, comfort, and prosperity with the King’s values for painful reconciliation, practical love, and enduring justice. 

Rough Draft Pt I

Abiding in the Heavenly City:

Implications for Discipleship of our Commitment to Suburbia

   

Steven Schenk

Vineyard City Church

Buffalo, NY

For the Society of Vineyard Scholars

By The Renewal of Your Mind: Imagining, Describing, and Enacting the Kingdom of God

Why does this Place look so Familiar?

I found my way to a familiar place I swear I’d been some time before

I would’ve thought it was the marketplace but I could not find the door¹

                 

Kingdom is a powerful metaphorical framework for imagining life with God; it provides a way of picturing how God’s influence is infiltrating many aspects of our world and way of life.  A Kingdom is an ordering of commerce, justice, personal relationships, well-being, and provision, in accordance with the will of the King.  The way in which different people conceive of God’s Kingdom gives shape to the way those people attempt to order commerce, justice, personal relationships, well-being, and provision; however, our pattern of life may actually reveal more about the way we imagine the Kingdom than the Kingdom itself.  Our evangelical imagination of the Kingdom looks remarkably similar to the suburbs.

                 

This suburban imagination often enough leads us to a skewed description, and a skewed enactment, of the Kingdom of God.  It easily leads us to describing the Kingdom without reference to issues of class and race, and without confessing our cultural idols of consumerism and individualism.  This makes it simple and automatic for us to enact a lifestyle that reflects this monochromatic vision.  It should not need saying that such an alternative vision of the Kingdom has severe implications for Christian discipleship.

                 

Assuming that the goal of discipleship is conforming individuals to the image of the Son, we must re-conceive of the Kingdom in alignment with His vision of it.  Jesus’ imagination, description and enactment of the Kingdom should be ours.  Our framework for understanding and practicing the Kingdom needs to be rethought; our minds must be renewed, this is essential to discipleship.

                 

Over the course of this paper we will first contrast urban and suburban environments and explore the evangelical imagination of the Kingdom manifested by a Commitment to Suburbia.  Second we will discuss the theological underpinnings for such a commitment and examine the evangelical description of the Kingdom in terms of Church Growth. Third we will outline the evangelical enactment of such a Kingdom vision and detail four implications of such practice for Christian discipleship in terms of Diversity, Community, Systems, and Brokenness.

Systemic Evil

Thanks to Chris Lamm for getting me back in the saddle...

Where you been?!

Been

We have been busy lately!

I know this doesn't explain the months without posting, but I have some thoughts coming...

...meanwhile, these pictures are from our recent (and still ongoing) kitchen remodel.

The Strength of Our Convictions...

Paper Pt XXII: Endnotes

ENDNOTES


1Matthew 4:18
2NT Wright, Paul for Everyone: The Prison Letters (Westminster John Knox Press, 2004) p 102-103.
3Genesis 1:3-25
4Genesis 12:1-3
5Ephesians 4:6
6Ephesians 1:22
7Romans 8:20-21
8Genesis 1:26-31
9Luke 13:34, Isaiah 49:15-16
10Isaiah 54:5
11Ephesians 1:23
12Romans 8:19
13Ben Fielding, “He is Lord” This is our God Integrity Media, 2008.
14N. T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God (Fortress Press, 2003) p 272 par 5.
15Colossians 1:20
16N. T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God (Fortress Press, 2003) p 728-731.
171 Corinthians 1:22-25
18John 20:21-22
19Ephesians 2:14
20Ephesians 2:10
21Pastor Jimmy Siebert, Antioch Community Church, Waco, TX.
22Acts 4:13
23Pastor Mike Kerns, Vineyard City Church, Redding, CA.
24Phillip Yancey, Church: Why Bother? (Zondervan, 1998) p 33.
25Mark 5:18-19
26Matthew 10:5-8
27Luke 10:1
28Matthew 28:18-20, Mark 16:15, John 20:21-22, Acts 1:8
29Matthew 9:37-38
30John Wimber, Founder of the Vineyard.
31N. T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God (Fortress Press, 2003) p 242.
32Matthew 28:19-20
33Ephesians 2:14-16
34Ephesians 2:14
35N. T. Wright, The Holy Spirit in the Church (Fulcrum Conference Islington, April 29, 2005) Section VI Paragraph 2.
36John 12:32
37Ephesians 3:10
38John 6:15
39Matthew 8:18
40John 6:66, Luke18:18-30, Matthew 8:19-20
41Luke 14:27
42John 12:23-25
43Matthew 5:3-12
44Dallas Willard, The Apprentices (Leadership Journal) para 15.
45Thom and Joani Schulz, Why Nobody Learns Much of Anything at Church: and How to Fix It (Group Publishing, 2004) p 31-32
46John 4:1-3, Mark 1:35, Mark 6:46
47Pastor Mike Kerns, Vineyard City Church, Redding, CA.
482 Corinthians 4:8
49John Wimber, I’m a Fool for Christ. Who’s Fool are You?, (Mercy Publishing, 1987) DVD.
50Lori Sharn, Mother Teresa Dies at 87 (USA Today, 9/5/97) para 18.

Paper Pt XXI: Do We Really Want Success?

FAITHFUL BRIDE OR SUCCESSFUL SERVANT

The Cross is the God-sanctioned corrective to self-seeking humanity. It is the message of salvation, and the method of salvation. Jesus, fully God and fully human, was crucified to end the power of rebellion. As people joined to Him through the Cross and shaped by that same Cross, we must craft our praxis from a fully ‘Cruciform’ theology. It is not overly critical to say that we are too often missing the point. We, for all our attempts at orthodoxy, often fail at orthopraxy.

It is obvious that our failure at this point will not hamper God’s ability to move forward His Kingdom agenda. In the long run it may not matter much to God, it will, however, matter to us. In missing the point of God’s Kingdom project we will simply write ourselves out of redemptive history. Other movements have done so, will ours?

It is unlikely that the Vineyard movement will soon succumb to anything like what has stricken many of the mainline denominations. Perhaps, considering our spiritual DNA, we may never end up in the dry dustbin of bureaucratic structure and stale institutionalization with its incipient credentialism. There are, however, other ways of missing the point; crass commercialism and rampant individualism contradict the Cross as surely as calcified institutionalism. Ego-driven success is surely a sin as great as milquetoast mediocrity.

We must do away with standards of success that do not align with scripture, that are flatly contradicted by the life and ministry of the apostles, and stand in contradiction to the power of the Cross. Perhaps we should do away with the language of ‘success’ altogether. Mother Teresa was asked (in light of the continuing problem of global poverty and in spite of her heroic life-long efforts) if she ever got discouraged. She responded, “No. God doesn’t call me to be successful, God calls me to be faithful.”50 Scripture says the same thing, only in different words.

16"In that day," declares the LORD, you will call me 'my husband'; you will no longer call me 'my master.' 

17I will remove the names of the Baals from her lips; no longer will their names be invoked.

Hosea 2:16-17

It is our drive towards ‘success’ that has brought the Baals of individualism and consumerism into the Church. My prayer is that this paper would encourage the Church to cease striving to be a successful servant, and seek instead to become a faithful Bride.

Paper Pt XX: Tools That Speak Volumes

Each of these four areas should be seen as a very effective tool for communication; tools that must be implemented with a critical eye towards the message they communicate. In each of these four areas the Church is guilty of bad praxis that communicates bad theology. I am convinced however, that it is largely unintentional. This does not excuse it, but is rather a much greater indictment against us. We are guilty of engaging in practices we have not thought about. We are going through the motions, and they aren’t even the right motions.

We must move definitively out of the old paradigm and into the new one. We must not equivocate; we must be ruthless in rooting out wrong-headed praxis. The call is to abandon our successful side-shows, and enter the Master’s arena.  Here we are on less sure footing, we are with St. Paul “pressed and perplexed,”48 acknowledging that we are but children and students. We must confess that we can

successfully attract a crowd that will open their wallets or nod their heads at the appropriate times, and yet fail at church. We would do well to remember God’s word to our founder, “I have seen your ministry, John, now let me show you mine!”49

Paper Pt XIX: What Does that Mean?

Defining: Unreflective Praxis

Over time the meaning of the words we use can drift, the way that we use them can shift; the stories we tell may faithfully use the old language, but horribly misconstrue their meaning in the new contexts we are in. Fifteen hundred years can allow for quite a bit of drift! An important effort of the Reformation was to rethink traditionally held definitions. Not in an attempt to simply change existing ones for newer

ones, but to refine them for greater accuracy.

We must stop using traditionally defined words, concepts, practices, definitions, strategies, models, and methods without any significant and comprehensive reflection.

We must start defining words, concepts, practices, definitions, strategies, models, and methods in light of God’s Kingdom power and purpose revealed in the Cross.

This is a process that provokes a tremendous emotional response in those who look on; sacred cows will die, perhaps even our own; and so some fear and trepidation is expected. But, as we watch others play with matches near our cherished traditions, we must clearly state this, “We are not lighting a match to destroy our definitions, but to see them more clearly, and then compare them to the truth.“