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.“

Paper Pt XVIII: Emphasizing IS Prioritizing

Prioritizing: Majoring on the Minors

Educators talk about something they call Hidden Curriculum.45 A perfect example would be a History class that accomplishes the goal of teaching students facts about History, but does so with a method that has the unintended consequence of causing students to dislike the study of History. The hidden curriculum is, ‘history is boring.’ This can be said another way; what is taught, and what is learned, are not the same things, and so we must think through our curriculum from the learner’s point of view, not the educator’s.

This applies practically to the Church in our previous point on ‘counting.’ A large attendance isn’t bad, nor is counting it bad; rather, it is simply not comparatively all that important! After all, Jesus seemed more interested in hiding from the crowds, and sending people away (directly or indirectly), than in counting the number of His followers.46

The same goes for most of what passes for ‘Church Growth’ wisdom. Strategically thinking through the various church systems we employ, designing creative logos or corporate names, crafting precise mission statements, or implementing programs that meet congregational needs, are all varyingly good things. However, they are not best; something can be good, yet be 52nd on the list of importance.

We must stop prioritizing issues of secondary importance! There are appropriate times to deal with minor issues, but we cannot ever allow them to usurp the place of major issues.

We must start prioritizing what is primary! We must make our focus a theology and practice of the Kingdom of God; in terms of power, justice, and the Cross.

The amount of time spent on something, and the priority that it has in the discussion, communicate something. Our current practices often have the effect of communicating that something is 1st or 2nd when it is actually 52nd. My pastor would call that “majoring on the minors.”47 We will stand before our King and be held to account for the way we pray and teach people to pray, the way we serve and teach people to serve, the way we sacrifice, and teach people to sacrifice; not for the flashy mailers we do or don’t send to encourage church hoppers our way.

"My Rights" and Circumcision in Acts 16

This song is from my old life before Jesus, and I think it typifies the American cultural values of individualism and self-determination. Here are the lyrics:


My right to say what I want
And think the way I wanna think
My right I wanna speak my mind
My right to yell my right to scream
My right no one's ever gonna
Tell me what I have to do
I'll live my life the way I want
I don't care about your little world
And I can't believe you're telling me
What's good for me how do you know what's good?
And I can't believe you're telling me
What to believe, get away from me - my right
No matter what I do, to you
Is one big mistake
Well I'm sick of you I know I'm right
You sleazy money grubbing fake
My right my life my soul my mind
My body my existence means
That I don't have to listen to you
It's my right cause I'm a human being


The message? Stand up for your rights!


=======================


Here is a passage from the book of Acts, it comes right after the great Church Council in Jerusalem to determine the question of the Gentiles and the Law:


¹He came to Derbe and then to Lystra, where a disciple named Timothy lived, whose mother was a Jewess and a believer, but whose father was a Greek. ²The brothers at Lystra and Iconium spoke well of him. ³Paul wanted to take him along on the journey, so he circumcised him because of the Jews who lived in that area, for they all knew that his father was a Greek. ⁴As they traveled from town to town, they delivered the decisions reached by the apostles and elders in Jerusalem for the people to obey. ⁵So the churches were strengthened in the faith and grew daily in numbers.


"...so he circumcised him..."


Four very important words for any man to read!


Why did Paul circumcise Timothy?


Because he was taking him on a journey through a region with many Jews.


What was the purpose of the journey?


To let everyone know that circumcision was no longer required!


=======================


A very different message than the one our culture gives us!  Paul is clearly compelled to fight for the rights of others (he goes to Jerusalem to battle against those who would compel Gentiles to obey a Jewish Law), and yet wants to teach his young disciple not to stand up for his own rights.  The message is, make sure people know you didn't have to do this, but rather that you chose to do this for their sake.

The Parable of the Hungry Girl

Paper Pt XVII: We Count What Matters

Counting: Poor Labeling Effects

A major effort of Environmental and Health advocates is changing the labels on our products. They are doing this because the label affects the consumption decisions people make. When we count something, or label something in a particular way, we create a sense of importance about that aspect of what we are labeling or counting. If this food product is indistinguishable from that one in all areas except for price, the obvious choice is the cheaper product. If however, there is new information added to the decision making process (it was produced in ways that don’t exploit labor, it is from a local producer, it uses a higher quality standard, etc.), we may choose the more expensive product.

Labeling is a key issue for the Church as well. Dallas Willard has said, “We need to stop counting people and start weighing them.”44 This is a critical task! It will require a lot more effort and ingenuity to take qualitative measurements instead of quantitative ones. However, it is not impossible, and to fail to do so is to fail at our calling.

We must stop counting the wrong things! If we count attendance, offering, and square footage, we are reinforcing the false value of these things, and we will continue to see the Church leveraging our resources to produce more of these things.

We must start counting the right things! A potential list of ‘hidden ingredients’ that we could start placing on the Church label could be thoughtfully created out of the fourteen implication listed in this paper. If we start counting these things we may actually begin to see the Church leveraging our resources (perhaps even intentionally decreasing in attendance, budget, or facility) to pursue these things.

In short, we need to think deeply and critically about the effect our labeling has on Christian holiness, community, and mission.

Paper Pt XVI: Where do we Shine the Spotlight?

Spotlighting: Imitating Popularity

Much is often made of the primacy of place given to athletes, actors, and musicians in our culture, simply because they are able to score points, look cool, and, well… Conversely educators, carpenters, retirees, or even simply ‘moral’ people, are never placed into the spotlight for these characteristics. Cultural exegetes are right to say that this communicates our cultural values; we place more importance on ‘being cool’ than being wise, skilled, or having good character. In short, what we give attention to, what we spotlight, communicates what we value.

In the Church we continually spotlight communities, ministries, and leaders who have a large attendance and polished administration.  These individuals are the speakers at conferences, they are the regional overseers within denominations. They are the authors we read, and the blogs we link to. We need to rethink this practice, and begin to choose what we highlight, in light of what is actually valuable, and what true indicators of the Kingdom’s presence are.

We must stop spotlighting people and ministries because of their size or polish! This merely reinforces the stereotype that Church is about large crowds, charismatic speakers, and anointed musical performances.

We must start spotlighting people and ministries because they faithfully articulate and practice the theology and praxis we see manifested in the Cross of the Messiah. We must highlight those ministries that successfully model the equipping role of leadership, that send out with no regard for ‘personal ministry success;’ that identify with the broken, and effect justice; that embrace the Cross.

To clarify, we don’t need to stop highlighting large ministries as a rule, we simply need to think critically about what we are trying to accomplish when we choose who and what we highlight, after all Jesus wouldn’t qualify for our spotlight! In beginning to spotlight (for example) churches that successfully send out Church planters instead of large Churches, we will communicate a value for Church planting that will result in a greater leveraging of the movements resources towards this value; moving it from a stated value to a lived value. The same is true for Churches that successfully reach multi-cultural populations, establish centers for artistic and cultural influence, etc.

Paper Pt XV: Show and Tell

COMMUNICATING BY DOING: A MORE REFLECTIVE PRAXIS

As we said at the outset, what we do communicates our theology. Even the ‘roommate wanted’ ads attached to the Church bulletin board, intentionally or unintentionally, speak to what we think about God. In four specific areas we will attempt to diagnose the underlying problematic theology, and recommend practices that communicate a theology of the Kingdom, centered on the power and purposes of God as revealed in the Cross.

Most of what has been presented above is not new material, nor is it peripheral to the discussions going on in Christian circles. The main contention and concern behind this paper is the failure of a thoughtful and cohesive implementation of Kingdom theology to the everyday practices of the Church. We are talking the talk, but not walking the walk. We are guilty of bad praxis more often than we are guilty of bad theology, but whatever the root cause, the agenda must change. The agenda going forward must be to find ways to make each of these areas an avenue for fostering a Kingdom Vision of the Church, in terms of God’s purpose and power revealed in the Cross! It is in the following areas (Spotlighting, Counting, Prioritizing, and Defining) that a more thoughtful praxis will enable us to fix our focus on the whole story, instead of our lines, or our costume.

Paper Pt XIV: A Successful Church

The Cross and Ecclesiastical Success

It should be clear to any individual reading the canonical gospels that our formulation of a ‘successful ministry’ was foreign to Jesus. Perhaps we had better restate that; it was not foreign to Jesus in that He was unaware of the concept, but rather in that He explicitly and repeatedly rejected such a concept of success. Jesus deliberately rejected fame and the approval of the crowds,38 He hid from people who wanted to be with Him,39 said and did things that made people leave,40 and used a metaphor of torture and death for discipleship.41

12) Carrying the Cross – Our Master has made it clear, by personal example, and plain teaching, we must embrace suffering, and die to self. This stands in direct contradiction to the stated aim of most Church programming. A friend attributed the following anecdote to pastor Rob Bell (Mars Hill Bible Church, Grandville, MI): He was asked by a visitor, “what programs do you have here to meet the needs of me and my family?” If only more pastors would give this response, “we only have one program here, ‘Come and Die!’ “

13) Identification with the Broken – If the Cross is the center of the Church then we should share the same passions as the man who hung from that Cross. We should find, welling up within us, an attraction to those places where we might encounter hunger, danger, injustice, addiction, oppression, or poverty. This is the shame of the Western Church, we have retreated from the brokenness of the world, and then congratulated ourselves on how well our programs work without those broken people. We must reverse the trend of Christians emigrating to homogenized suburban communities pursuing idols of safety and security.

14) Necessary Failure – If the Cross is our Victory, then we must reexamine our language of ‘success.’ For Jesus, success, was abandonment and failure. We must think through our use of language; we say, “healthy things grow,” but Jesus said, “unless a seed dies, it will produce nothing.”42 Our yearning for success has more in common with the gospel of prosperity, than the gospel of the Kingdom. We must create contexts where failure is a part of our culture, where our failure and that of others is a normal occurrence, and where polished presentation is not the sign of God’s presence.43

Of course none of this is a repudiation of God’s good creation. Embracing the Cross is not an end in itself; but rather the only road to Resurrection and New Creation. Rebellious humanity needs to be crucified with Christ, not because we are human, but because we are rebels.

God has glorified Jesus and has promised to glorify us in Him. His very promises of justice are an affirmation of creation. We must prevent, however, an attempt at justice that does not involve the Cross, for that would not be justice. Resurrection is on the other side of the Cross. We must embrace the lessons taught by suffering, we must submit our egos to death, indeed, the motive behind our lust for success is simple pride.

Paper Pt XIII: The Purpose of the Church

In claiming justice as the mission of the Church, we are rethinking commonly held beliefs and practices. This does not negate the need for evangelism, and compassion ministry, but rather places these essential pieces in their proper, more comprehensive, context of ‘salting and lighting’ the earth. The purpose of the Church is to proclaim the Victory of the Cross to the powers,37 but also to participate in and implement that victory as both a manifestation of the presence of the Kingdom, and a sign of its future consummation.

For Bernard

John takes 8 stickers, 4 black and 4 white, shows them to his three friends Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and then sticks two to the forehead of each friend so that each of them can see all the other stickers except for the two in John's pocket and the two on his own head.


John then asks each of them if they know what color stickers are on their head:


Matthew says, "No."
Then Mark says, "No."
Finally Luke says, "No."

So John starts to go around again:


Matthew says, "No."
Mark says, "Yes."


What color are Mark's stickers?