In our last post, we continued to explore the importance of “choosing the right soil” as we seek to plant a church: the soil of the broken, the poor, and the needy. This For it is only when we choose the right soil with which to work that we can expect an overwhelming response to the gospel. But what implications might this have for the resource-hungry “institution of church” as we know it? How could the machinery of today’s consumer-driven church support the decrease in financial capital that would naturally follow? But even more importantly, how can the church truly pursue loving relationships with the needy if it remains the exclusive domain of a select few members?
One of the greatest obstacles to truly making serving a “way of life” in the church today is the overbooked schedules of its members. Unless radical steps are taken in our churches, committed relationships with the poor will never materialize for the vast majority of American churchgoers today. How can it be otherwise when Sunday meetings, prayer meeting, small groups, and leader’s huddles dominate our already harried schedules? Something in the church is going to have to go if we are to transcend these limitations and concentrate on what’s really important. For City On A Hill Community, this has meant incorporating service of those on the margins into our regular weekly meetings, as we exchange one traditional meeting a month for a churchwide serving project that week. On the first Sunday of every month, we worship God not by another church service but by serving the poor and needy together. The structure of this may vary from week to week; some weeks we go to a homeless shelter, perhaps others to a nursing home. During the summer months, we have decided not to meet in a home or private gathering place, but rather in a city park that is known as a place where the homeless of the city naturally congregate. Though we still have a long way to go before we truly realize God's heart for the poor, we hope that these are at least positive, beginning steps in the right direction. One thing is certain in our community, however: we’ve all agreed that we’ve heard enough messages about serving the poor and would rather begin to put these ideas into actual practice when we meet together.
I believe that God is calling His church today to employ radical, unconventional, and out-of-the-box measures today if we are to truly live up to our calling of serving those in need. The church cannot wait any longer for the needy to show up at its doorstep: as experience shows, these opportunities will rarely present themselves without any effort on our part. In our insulated suburban culture, the poor and marginalized rarely cross our paths today. A truly radical church recognizes this fact, and in response adopts a more proactive approach to reaching out to those in need. As Tony Campolo once said, “Jesus never says to the poor, ‘come find the church’ but He says to those of us in the church, ‘Go into the world and find the poor, hungry, homeless, imprisoned, Jesus in his disguises.’” The truly radical church takes this search for “Jesus in His disguises” seriously by “going into the highways and byways, and compelling them to come in” (Luke 14:23).
By proactively taking the good news of Jesus to the marginalized and needy around us and actually building the church among them, several beneficial results are produced. First, it fosters a lifestyle of caring for the needy in all of the church's members, a goal not attainable with present paradigms of church. Second, greater response to the gospel will be seen in the “good soil” in which such a church is planted, a phenomenon that is common to endeavors such as these. Thirdly, it draws unbelievers to the church who are presently alienated from traditional models of church, yet who desire to serve those less fortunate than themselves. By tapping into the common desire of both believer and unbeliever alike to make a positive impact in the lives of the needy, the gospel is freed from its “Sunday morning shackles” to bear fruit in the lives of many.
I believe that a radical new model of church is needed if we are to truly “turn the world upside down” with the message of Jesus Christ. It is high time for us not to seek not friendships with the rich and powerful but to identify ourselves with those on the margins in the example of our Leader. In the words of Minna Canth, “Christianity has been buried inside the walls of churches and secured with the shackles of dogmatism. Let it be liberated to come into the midst of us and teach us freedom, equality, and love.”
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
It All Starts On The Margins
In our last post, we explored the vitally important difference between poor soil and good soil as revealed in the pages of Scripture. The Word of God is crystal clear as to what people generally constitute poor soil: the moral (Lk 5:31,32), the educated (I Cor. 1:26), and the wealthy (Lk 18:24,25). But if this is true, this has enormous implications for how we should attempt to bring the message of Christ to the world. As Jesus said in the Parable of the Soils, “If you do not understand this parable, how shall you understand all of the parables?” Truly, identifying what is good soil and what is not must be foundational in our efforts to sow the seed of the gospel. Quite simply, our evangelism efforts are generally doomed to failure if we choose the wrong soil with which to work!
But in contrast to the poor soil of the middle class suburbanite that the church normally concentrates on, those who are enslaved to darkness, oppression, and poverty tend to respond enthusiastically to the gospel. Neil Cole reports that of the thousands of church plants his organization has begun, their most successful churches have begun among those fresh out of prison and dealing drugs! In fact, in his advice to church planters, Cole recommends that in an effort to find good soil, they should find the roughest, meanest, and most shady part of town to begin their efforts. If you’re having trouble finding good soil in the suburbs, Cole says, ask a local policeman where the trouble resides. Find out where the roughest bar is, where drugs are sold, or the homes where domestic violence lives. Or find a 12 step group to begin your outreach, not one that meets in a church, but “where the smoke is thick and the darkness thicker.” These people are enslaved to sin, desperate for a cure: these tend to be good soil. Wherever there is drugs, alcohol, or violence, Cole says, this is where the good soil is found.
Yet the idea of beginning a church plant in the soil of the broken flies in the face of traditional church growth theories. The first step in a traditional church plant generally involves rounding up a team of capable, gifted, mature leaders. Next, this team finds a growing locale in the suburbs where young families abound, and pass out flyers to get the word out that a new church has arrived in town, ready to meet their needs. This is a classic example of attempting to begin a missionary movement in the center. To be sure, God can bless efforts such as these, but as a general rule, not nearly as many will come to Christ as if one begins on the margins. The reason is simple: it’s all about the soil. Where the poor, broken, and marginalized live, there the greatest response to the gospel will be seen. For this reason, a truly radical missional movement in our day must begin on the margins, among those in bondage to sin and poverty. These are those society has forgotten and that have been pushed to the margins, yet these are those that represent the good soil that is ripe for harvest.
If we as the church actually realized these truths, we would naturally choose not to settle for occasional, distant acts of charity in our compassion efforts. Rather, we would insist on regular face-to-face opportunities to meet the physical and spiritual longings of those in need. To quote Shane Claiborne once again, “The problem is not that we don’t care about the poor; it’s that we don’t know the poor.” To truly serve the poor, we must build committed, loving relationships with them first and foremost. By building such relationships with the oppressed and marginalized of our society, the gospel’s transforming power is maximized. Further, when all individuals in the church pursue such relationships, it is only then that serving the needy becomes a way of life for all members rather than an isolated, sporadic event for a small minority.
But does not the present paradigm of church as we know it prevent this from becoming a reality? How can the burdensome financial needs of the church institution be met by those who are truly “good soil” with their large hearts but small wallets? What far-reaching financial implications might this have for our churches if we really concentrated on working in the “good soil”? Further, do not the overbooked schedules of the church’s members prevent true every-member, regular interaction with the poor? How can these two barriers be overcome? We will explore these answers in our next post.
But in contrast to the poor soil of the middle class suburbanite that the church normally concentrates on, those who are enslaved to darkness, oppression, and poverty tend to respond enthusiastically to the gospel. Neil Cole reports that of the thousands of church plants his organization has begun, their most successful churches have begun among those fresh out of prison and dealing drugs! In fact, in his advice to church planters, Cole recommends that in an effort to find good soil, they should find the roughest, meanest, and most shady part of town to begin their efforts. If you’re having trouble finding good soil in the suburbs, Cole says, ask a local policeman where the trouble resides. Find out where the roughest bar is, where drugs are sold, or the homes where domestic violence lives. Or find a 12 step group to begin your outreach, not one that meets in a church, but “where the smoke is thick and the darkness thicker.” These people are enslaved to sin, desperate for a cure: these tend to be good soil. Wherever there is drugs, alcohol, or violence, Cole says, this is where the good soil is found.
Yet the idea of beginning a church plant in the soil of the broken flies in the face of traditional church growth theories. The first step in a traditional church plant generally involves rounding up a team of capable, gifted, mature leaders. Next, this team finds a growing locale in the suburbs where young families abound, and pass out flyers to get the word out that a new church has arrived in town, ready to meet their needs. This is a classic example of attempting to begin a missionary movement in the center. To be sure, God can bless efforts such as these, but as a general rule, not nearly as many will come to Christ as if one begins on the margins. The reason is simple: it’s all about the soil. Where the poor, broken, and marginalized live, there the greatest response to the gospel will be seen. For this reason, a truly radical missional movement in our day must begin on the margins, among those in bondage to sin and poverty. These are those society has forgotten and that have been pushed to the margins, yet these are those that represent the good soil that is ripe for harvest.
If we as the church actually realized these truths, we would naturally choose not to settle for occasional, distant acts of charity in our compassion efforts. Rather, we would insist on regular face-to-face opportunities to meet the physical and spiritual longings of those in need. To quote Shane Claiborne once again, “The problem is not that we don’t care about the poor; it’s that we don’t know the poor.” To truly serve the poor, we must build committed, loving relationships with them first and foremost. By building such relationships with the oppressed and marginalized of our society, the gospel’s transforming power is maximized. Further, when all individuals in the church pursue such relationships, it is only then that serving the needy becomes a way of life for all members rather than an isolated, sporadic event for a small minority.
But does not the present paradigm of church as we know it prevent this from becoming a reality? How can the burdensome financial needs of the church institution be met by those who are truly “good soil” with their large hearts but small wallets? What far-reaching financial implications might this have for our churches if we really concentrated on working in the “good soil”? Further, do not the overbooked schedules of the church’s members prevent true every-member, regular interaction with the poor? How can these two barriers be overcome? We will explore these answers in our next post.
Saturday, April 24, 2010
Good Soil vs. Poor Soil
In our last post, we explored the limitations of traditional approaches towards caring for the poor practiced by the church today. As we saw, caring for the poor is not accomplished by short term mission projects, rare serving events, or mere charitable giving, but can only be done in the context of loving relationships. Christ calls His followers not to just open their wallets to those in need, but their lives, their homes, and their hearts to them as well. This call stands in sharp contradiction, however, to the current paradigm of the American church that view the poor as mere recipients of charitable acts rather than integral members of the church itself. For though we may
occasionally serve the poor in our churches today, rare is the church that attempts to actually build its membership among the needy. When it comes to church growth efforts, the needy are seldom part of these attempts, but remain a peripheral group that although are valued, remain separate from the church itself.
If the church is to prosper again in our day, it will only do so when it chooses to concentrate its building efforts among the poor and marginalized. As Alan Hirsch notes, all the great missionary movements in church history have begun on the margins rather than in the center. Examples of successful outreach movements do exist in the suburbs, but they are few and far between. The greatest responses to the gospel are almost always seen among the poor and marginalized, and church history bears ample witness to this fact. However, when a church grows more by transfers from other churches than from conversions on the margins, as is the case in most of our suburban churches today, the work of the Spirit is markedly absent in contrast.
This consistent response to the gospel at the margins is consistent with the teachings of Scripture on this topic as well. In the Parable of the Soils (Matt. 13), Jesus tells us that some people are good soil and some are poor soil. Jesus’ point to his disciples is clear in this parable: we cannot expect the same response to the gospel among all people groups. Not all groups of people are good soil. The Bible is clear on who these people groups are who tend to be poor soil: the moral (Luke 5:31,32), the educated (I Cor. 1:26), and the wealthy (Luke 18:24,25). All of these descriptions tend to be descriptions of the middle class suburbs that so many of us call home. Generally speaking, people like us, who are moral, churchgoing folk, fairly well educated and certainly well off financially, tend to be poor soil. It’s not that smart, wealthy people won’t come to Christ; it’s that relatively speaking, fewer from this demographic will respond than from others. For this reason, it is very hard to find successful church planting movements started in the middle class suburbs.
Simply put, the wealthy and educated suburbanite tends to be poor soil. It is this fact that has been overlooked in today’s church and one of the main reasons the church is floundering in America. If we continue to concentrate our church building efforts among the middle class, we will continue to see little response to our evangelism efforts.
So if we wish to build the church of Jesus in good soil, where do we begin? We will explore this in our next post.
occasionally serve the poor in our churches today, rare is the church that attempts to actually build its membership among the needy. When it comes to church growth efforts, the needy are seldom part of these attempts, but remain a peripheral group that although are valued, remain separate from the church itself.
If the church is to prosper again in our day, it will only do so when it chooses to concentrate its building efforts among the poor and marginalized. As Alan Hirsch notes, all the great missionary movements in church history have begun on the margins rather than in the center. Examples of successful outreach movements do exist in the suburbs, but they are few and far between. The greatest responses to the gospel are almost always seen among the poor and marginalized, and church history bears ample witness to this fact. However, when a church grows more by transfers from other churches than from conversions on the margins, as is the case in most of our suburban churches today, the work of the Spirit is markedly absent in contrast.
This consistent response to the gospel at the margins is consistent with the teachings of Scripture on this topic as well. In the Parable of the Soils (Matt. 13), Jesus tells us that some people are good soil and some are poor soil. Jesus’ point to his disciples is clear in this parable: we cannot expect the same response to the gospel among all people groups. Not all groups of people are good soil. The Bible is clear on who these people groups are who tend to be poor soil: the moral (Luke 5:31,32), the educated (I Cor. 1:26), and the wealthy (Luke 18:24,25). All of these descriptions tend to be descriptions of the middle class suburbs that so many of us call home. Generally speaking, people like us, who are moral, churchgoing folk, fairly well educated and certainly well off financially, tend to be poor soil. It’s not that smart, wealthy people won’t come to Christ; it’s that relatively speaking, fewer from this demographic will respond than from others. For this reason, it is very hard to find successful church planting movements started in the middle class suburbs.
Simply put, the wealthy and educated suburbanite tends to be poor soil. It is this fact that has been overlooked in today’s church and one of the main reasons the church is floundering in America. If we continue to concentrate our church building efforts among the middle class, we will continue to see little response to our evangelism efforts.
So if we wish to build the church of Jesus in good soil, where do we begin? We will explore this in our next post.
Monday, April 19, 2010
Serving the Poor: The Importance of Relationships
In our last post, we contrasted the glaring contradiction between how the early church cared for the poor and the church today. Though the early church was known throughout the Roman empire as radical lovers of the poor, this is certainly not the case for the church today. Christ has given His church the responsibility to share His gospel, described as “good news to the poor”, with all people, yet today’s church has lost sight of this call. What steps must the church take today to realize that its message truly should be good news to the poor?
If the answer to this dilemma was conducting a periodic serving event, this would be an easy problem to solve. Church-sponsored serving projects at a homeless shelter or soup kitchen every few months are certainly a step in the right direction, and short term mission trips are to be applauded. Yet these types of endeavors, although of value, fall far short of the lifestyle of serving that Christ desires for His followers. Though these occasional events make us feel good about ourselves, how much lasting impact do these things accomplish in the world around us? Too often, the sporadic church-sponsored serving event does little but further insulate us from the plight of the poor by appeasing our consciences in the midst of our materialism. Steps need to be taken in today’s church to build a lifestyle of serving in its members that far transcends the sporadic serving event that characterizes our efforts today.
Nor can the mission of the church to serve the poor be fulfilled by mere charitable giving. Instead of individuals in the church housing, clothing, and feeding the poor themselves, these functions have increasingly become the domain of the various institutions and parachurch ministries that dot the Christian landscape. Our “providing for the poor” has been reduced to food drives at the church, where members bring the raw materials and the institutional employees do the dirty work of distributing. In this scenario, the churchgoer is able to feel good about his participation in “ending poverty” while sparing him the uncomfortableness of a one-on-one encounter with those in need. Similarly, independent charities can serve the same function to the wealthy suburbanite as the occasional serving event, as they appease our consciences while insulating us from the suffering of the poor. In both cases, the institution does the dirty work while the individual simply throws money or goods at the problem. Yet as Martin Luther King said, “true compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar.”
Christ’s intent for His followers is not the performance of sporadic acts of charity that serve our consciences more than the poor for whom it is intended. Neither should the church be a faceless distribution center where the poor receive what the rich have dumped. Sadly, this common approach leaves no one transformed and forms no radical new community. Rather, the church needs to remove itself, in words of Shane Claiborne, from “distant acts of charity that serve to legitimize apathetic lifestyles of good intentions but rob us of the gift of community.” Christ’s call to the church is that its members would not only open their wallets to the needy, but their lives, their hearts, and their homes to them as well.
As Shane Claiborne once said, “the problem is not that we don’t care about the poor; it’s that we don’t know the poor.” How true this is. Sporadic acts of charity and donations are wonderful things, yet these practices are limited in value because they are incapable of building relationships with those in need. This is the biggest limitation to traditional models of compassion ministries: they fail to build relationships with those in need. God’s kingdom is primarily spread by His followers loving one another; these loving relationships prove to the world that Christ’s message is true (John 13:35, 17:23). If in fact God’s kingdom is built by His followers “loving one another” in the context of relationship, how can we spread the good news to the poor without doing the same? As Paul says in I Corinthians 13, “though I give all my good to feed the poor, if I have not love, I am nothing.” This is what compelled the early church to bring the poor into their homes; even more than meeting their physical needs, they sought to demonstrate the love of the Savior first hand to those in need. Spreading the kingdom in the face of poverty is not by done by random or distant acts of charity; it is spread “like a mustard seed,” through one life at a time and through one relationship at a time. For the church is called not only to meet the needs of the poor, but to build loving relationships with them as well.
In our next post, we will explore the concept of the "good soil" on which today's church must be built if it is to again prosper in our day.
If the answer to this dilemma was conducting a periodic serving event, this would be an easy problem to solve. Church-sponsored serving projects at a homeless shelter or soup kitchen every few months are certainly a step in the right direction, and short term mission trips are to be applauded. Yet these types of endeavors, although of value, fall far short of the lifestyle of serving that Christ desires for His followers. Though these occasional events make us feel good about ourselves, how much lasting impact do these things accomplish in the world around us? Too often, the sporadic church-sponsored serving event does little but further insulate us from the plight of the poor by appeasing our consciences in the midst of our materialism. Steps need to be taken in today’s church to build a lifestyle of serving in its members that far transcends the sporadic serving event that characterizes our efforts today.
Nor can the mission of the church to serve the poor be fulfilled by mere charitable giving. Instead of individuals in the church housing, clothing, and feeding the poor themselves, these functions have increasingly become the domain of the various institutions and parachurch ministries that dot the Christian landscape. Our “providing for the poor” has been reduced to food drives at the church, where members bring the raw materials and the institutional employees do the dirty work of distributing. In this scenario, the churchgoer is able to feel good about his participation in “ending poverty” while sparing him the uncomfortableness of a one-on-one encounter with those in need. Similarly, independent charities can serve the same function to the wealthy suburbanite as the occasional serving event, as they appease our consciences while insulating us from the suffering of the poor. In both cases, the institution does the dirty work while the individual simply throws money or goods at the problem. Yet as Martin Luther King said, “true compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar.”
Christ’s intent for His followers is not the performance of sporadic acts of charity that serve our consciences more than the poor for whom it is intended. Neither should the church be a faceless distribution center where the poor receive what the rich have dumped. Sadly, this common approach leaves no one transformed and forms no radical new community. Rather, the church needs to remove itself, in words of Shane Claiborne, from “distant acts of charity that serve to legitimize apathetic lifestyles of good intentions but rob us of the gift of community.” Christ’s call to the church is that its members would not only open their wallets to the needy, but their lives, their hearts, and their homes to them as well.
As Shane Claiborne once said, “the problem is not that we don’t care about the poor; it’s that we don’t know the poor.” How true this is. Sporadic acts of charity and donations are wonderful things, yet these practices are limited in value because they are incapable of building relationships with those in need. This is the biggest limitation to traditional models of compassion ministries: they fail to build relationships with those in need. God’s kingdom is primarily spread by His followers loving one another; these loving relationships prove to the world that Christ’s message is true (John 13:35, 17:23). If in fact God’s kingdom is built by His followers “loving one another” in the context of relationship, how can we spread the good news to the poor without doing the same? As Paul says in I Corinthians 13, “though I give all my good to feed the poor, if I have not love, I am nothing.” This is what compelled the early church to bring the poor into their homes; even more than meeting their physical needs, they sought to demonstrate the love of the Savior first hand to those in need. Spreading the kingdom in the face of poverty is not by done by random or distant acts of charity; it is spread “like a mustard seed,” through one life at a time and through one relationship at a time. For the church is called not only to meet the needs of the poor, but to build loving relationships with them as well.
In our next post, we will explore the concept of the "good soil" on which today's church must be built if it is to again prosper in our day.
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
Caring For The Poor: The Early Church vs. Today's Church
In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus asks His followers, “What are you doing more than others?” (Matt. 5:47). Centuries later, this question still haunts the church. In our last post, we discussed how little, if any difference exists between the lives of today’s “Christ followers” and the world around them. Yet in the early church, a striking difference between them and the world around them would be readily apparent. In the eyes of any first century Roman, the difference between the “followers of the Way” and the pagan world around them would be clear and unmistakable; in no area was this contrast greater than in their love and care for the poor. How ironic that in the church-activity saturated lifestyle of today’s American Christian, time spent with the poor is conspicuously absent. For more than any other description or characteristic, serving and caring for the poor defined the life of an early Christian.
The early church was known throughout the empire as the selfless ones who took it upon themselves to feed the poor, house the oppressed, and care for the underprivileged. The list of persons supported by the early church was enormous; they cared for the elderly, widows, orphans, prisoners, those who suffered shipwreck, and those who lost their livelihoods due to their faith. The common descriptor of the first century Christian was that of caring for the poor, marginalized, and oppressed as they would their own family. Even the pagan skeptic Julian confessed, “the godless Galileans feed not only their poor but ours as well.”
Throughout the pages of the New Testament, we see that serving and providing for the poor was to be the guiding principle for Christ’s followers. Providing for the needy was the main mission of the early church to those outside their community (Gal. 2:10). The first official church ministry was to feed the poor (Acts 6:1-6). In fact, the Bible teaches that the poor are the primary beneficiaries of the good news of the gospel (James 2:5). When asked what the gospel meant, John the Baptist responded: “anyone who has two shirts should share with the one who has none” (Luke 3:11). Similarly, James tells us what the Christian faith is when boiled down to its essence: “Pure religion is this: to visit the orphan and widow in their affliction” (James 1:21). In some of the most terrifying words of the New Testament, Jesus tells his followers that those who will inherit eternal life are those who provide food for the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, and visit the sick and the prisoner (Matt. 25:34-40). Clearly, the abundant teaching of the New Testament is that the gospel is good news to the poor.
The early church took these teachings seriously, and attempted to live them out as an integral part of their worship. As they did so, they did not settle for merely meeting their physical needs of the needy, but by welcoming them into their homes, feeding, clothing, and housing them as they shared with them the good news of Christ. For in the early church, the gospel was indeed “good news to the poor” (Isaiah 61:1).
Yet how different things are today. This ethos of providing for the poor has been long lost in the church today. Though today’s American Christian might agree in theory with the church’s mandate to serve the needy, their actions too often speak otherwise. For the vast majority of us, serving the poor has been reduced to an occasional church-sponsored serving event rather than a lifestyle of serving the disenfranchised that characterized the early church. In a survey done by Shane Claiborne, he asked participants who identified themselves as “strong followers of Jesus” whether Jesus spent time with the poor. Not surprisingly, nearly 80% agreed with this statement. Later in the survey, he asked that same group of self-identified strong followers whether they spent time with the poor, and less than 2% said that they did. Though many of us sense the importance of coming to the aid of those in need, few of us actually get around to doing it. Today, we’ve come to believe that caring for the poor among us is merely an attitude of the heart rather than a choosing of a lifestyle.
But how can it be any other way in the face of our American schedule? Take our already crowded day timers, add Sunday morning church, add weekly small group meetings, add volunteering in the church to the mix, and there’s little time for anyone outside of one’s own family, let alone for the needy. Combine the craziness of our schedules with the middle class neighborhoods in which most of us live, and our contact with the poor and needy among us is a rarity that few believers ever have the opportunity to engage in. It is a special event that must be scheduled, usually weeks to months in advance, shoehorned into an already jam-packed schedule. The net result is a church that has a heart for the poor, but no hands for the poor, insulated from the needs of the world in our detached Christian ghettos.
So what must the church do to begin to address its mandate to care for the poor? We will begin to explore this in our next post.
The early church was known throughout the empire as the selfless ones who took it upon themselves to feed the poor, house the oppressed, and care for the underprivileged. The list of persons supported by the early church was enormous; they cared for the elderly, widows, orphans, prisoners, those who suffered shipwreck, and those who lost their livelihoods due to their faith. The common descriptor of the first century Christian was that of caring for the poor, marginalized, and oppressed as they would their own family. Even the pagan skeptic Julian confessed, “the godless Galileans feed not only their poor but ours as well.”
Throughout the pages of the New Testament, we see that serving and providing for the poor was to be the guiding principle for Christ’s followers. Providing for the needy was the main mission of the early church to those outside their community (Gal. 2:10). The first official church ministry was to feed the poor (Acts 6:1-6). In fact, the Bible teaches that the poor are the primary beneficiaries of the good news of the gospel (James 2:5). When asked what the gospel meant, John the Baptist responded: “anyone who has two shirts should share with the one who has none” (Luke 3:11). Similarly, James tells us what the Christian faith is when boiled down to its essence: “Pure religion is this: to visit the orphan and widow in their affliction” (James 1:21). In some of the most terrifying words of the New Testament, Jesus tells his followers that those who will inherit eternal life are those who provide food for the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, and visit the sick and the prisoner (Matt. 25:34-40). Clearly, the abundant teaching of the New Testament is that the gospel is good news to the poor.
The early church took these teachings seriously, and attempted to live them out as an integral part of their worship. As they did so, they did not settle for merely meeting their physical needs of the needy, but by welcoming them into their homes, feeding, clothing, and housing them as they shared with them the good news of Christ. For in the early church, the gospel was indeed “good news to the poor” (Isaiah 61:1).
Yet how different things are today. This ethos of providing for the poor has been long lost in the church today. Though today’s American Christian might agree in theory with the church’s mandate to serve the needy, their actions too often speak otherwise. For the vast majority of us, serving the poor has been reduced to an occasional church-sponsored serving event rather than a lifestyle of serving the disenfranchised that characterized the early church. In a survey done by Shane Claiborne, he asked participants who identified themselves as “strong followers of Jesus” whether Jesus spent time with the poor. Not surprisingly, nearly 80% agreed with this statement. Later in the survey, he asked that same group of self-identified strong followers whether they spent time with the poor, and less than 2% said that they did. Though many of us sense the importance of coming to the aid of those in need, few of us actually get around to doing it. Today, we’ve come to believe that caring for the poor among us is merely an attitude of the heart rather than a choosing of a lifestyle.
But how can it be any other way in the face of our American schedule? Take our already crowded day timers, add Sunday morning church, add weekly small group meetings, add volunteering in the church to the mix, and there’s little time for anyone outside of one’s own family, let alone for the needy. Combine the craziness of our schedules with the middle class neighborhoods in which most of us live, and our contact with the poor and needy among us is a rarity that few believers ever have the opportunity to engage in. It is a special event that must be scheduled, usually weeks to months in advance, shoehorned into an already jam-packed schedule. The net result is a church that has a heart for the poor, but no hands for the poor, insulated from the needs of the world in our detached Christian ghettos.
So what must the church do to begin to address its mandate to care for the poor? We will begin to explore this in our next post.
Monday, April 12, 2010
What Are You Doing More Than Others?
As Jesus challenged His followers in the Sermon on the Mount, “What are you doing more than others?” (Mt. 5:48). Jesus’ intent was that the lives of His followers should be defined in dramatically different terms than the world around them. But is this really the case today? Line up ten strangers on the street and ask them, “What actions characterize Christians compared to those who are not Christians?” Responses will vary, from “they go to church” to “they pray before they eat.” Some answers might have political connotations: “they oppose abortion” or “they are against homosexuality.” Some answers may be downright negative: “they judge others more than most.” In the public’s eye, these are the types of things that define a Christian.
Though most of us have never attempted such an experiment, we instinctively know that these answers would characterize our findings. Jesus has called his followers to live radically, to “turn the world upside down” with their love for others and for one another. Yet to many outsiders, believers today are known not as passionate lovers but as right wing activists and members of a Sunday morning social club. But it was never Christ's intention that His church should be a people just like everyone else save for their political leanings and church attendance. The very essence of our very lifestyles should run in marked distinction to the rest of the world around us. Yet sadly, this is not the case for most believers today.
As the King James Version puts it in I Peter 2:9, followers of Christ should be “peculiar people.” That doesn’t mean we should weirder than the surrounding world, but that quite simply, our lifestyles should be different. Look at any Christian’s day planner and ask yourself how it differs from your average non-churchgoing suburbanite. Many of the calendar entries will be the same: work, soccer practice, music lessons, perhaps even a date night on weekends. In the vast majority of cases, in fact, the day timer will look exactly the same as nonbelievers except for one exception: church. Add Sunday morning church attendance, small groups at the church, midweek prayer meeting, and youth group activities, and the already harried schedule of the average suburbanite is ratched up to superhuman levels for the Christian. Nearly all Americans will admit they’re too as it is, but it seems that far too many Christians seem to believe that honoring God means continuing more of the same and adding church on top of it all. If the “life in all of its fullness” that Jesus intended for us means merely adding church events to the world’s overbooked schedule, that is a sad state of affairs indeed.
Face it: our lifestyles look exactly the same as the world’s, and this is beyond dispute. As Shane Claiborne says, “Christians pretty much live like everyone else; they just sprinkle in a little Jesus along the way.” However, the early church stood in marked contrast to the world around them; the difference in lifestyle between those early believers and the pagan culture around them was evident to all.
In our next post, we will turn our attention to the early church as we seek to understand what the church should be known for today.
Though most of us have never attempted such an experiment, we instinctively know that these answers would characterize our findings. Jesus has called his followers to live radically, to “turn the world upside down” with their love for others and for one another. Yet to many outsiders, believers today are known not as passionate lovers but as right wing activists and members of a Sunday morning social club. But it was never Christ's intention that His church should be a people just like everyone else save for their political leanings and church attendance. The very essence of our very lifestyles should run in marked distinction to the rest of the world around us. Yet sadly, this is not the case for most believers today.
As the King James Version puts it in I Peter 2:9, followers of Christ should be “peculiar people.” That doesn’t mean we should weirder than the surrounding world, but that quite simply, our lifestyles should be different. Look at any Christian’s day planner and ask yourself how it differs from your average non-churchgoing suburbanite. Many of the calendar entries will be the same: work, soccer practice, music lessons, perhaps even a date night on weekends. In the vast majority of cases, in fact, the day timer will look exactly the same as nonbelievers except for one exception: church. Add Sunday morning church attendance, small groups at the church, midweek prayer meeting, and youth group activities, and the already harried schedule of the average suburbanite is ratched up to superhuman levels for the Christian. Nearly all Americans will admit they’re too as it is, but it seems that far too many Christians seem to believe that honoring God means continuing more of the same and adding church on top of it all. If the “life in all of its fullness” that Jesus intended for us means merely adding church events to the world’s overbooked schedule, that is a sad state of affairs indeed.
Face it: our lifestyles look exactly the same as the world’s, and this is beyond dispute. As Shane Claiborne says, “Christians pretty much live like everyone else; they just sprinkle in a little Jesus along the way.” However, the early church stood in marked contrast to the world around them; the difference in lifestyle between those early believers and the pagan culture around them was evident to all.
In our next post, we will turn our attention to the early church as we seek to understand what the church should be known for today.
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
What Does It Look Like To Be Missional?
In our last post, we examined the call of the church to bring the message of Christ to our culture and truly “incarnate Jesus” to a watching world. But in a practical sense, what does it look like for us to live out this “missional-incarnational” mandate that He has given us? Rather than hiding the seed of the gospel in our “barns” on Sunday mornings, how do we begin to sow these seeds in the world at large?
First, we must learn how to bring church to the streets. What would happen if we took the kingdom of God to where society lives and where life happens instead of keeping it cloistered in special buildings that few care to visit? To begin to embrace this missional mandate, many churches’ influence would increase simply by moving out of their buildings and instead meeting where people already are at! The church must increasingly find ways to infiltrate the culture at large, and this begins by first gathering together in society’s common meeting places. In so doing, we create “spiritual spaces” in the midst of everyday life: in coffeehouses, in bars, in parks, on football teams, in school cafeterias, and workplace lunchrooms.
I think of a church in California meeting in a parking lot at 3 a.m., attempting to reach out to the second shift workers whose schedules alienate them from present forms of church. I think of believers attempting to hang out in a coffee house that is frequented by occultists, spreading the light of Christ in a dark place. I think of a family that started a basketball ministry for junior high students in a city park, sharing games, a meal, and the message of Christ with those kids who attend. I think of a church music ministry who has opened recording studios in the community in an attempt to build bridges with local musicians. These all are efforts to move the church from a fringe Christian subculture to an integral part of the community at large.
But simply meeting in a new location doesn’t make a church missional. The church must also define success in ministry differently if we are to embody the missional example of Jesus. As one says, this means “getting a new scorecard.” The church must move beyond the mindset that measures ministry success by traditional markers such as buildings, dollars, and weekly attendance, and instead must embrace more missional benchmarks that gauge success by the transformation of the community outside the walls of the church. Better indicators of missional effectiveness and the health of a church body, for example, are hours spent praying for the community, the number of school children being tutored in after-school church programs, and hours spent by members with unbelievers. How often do community leaders call the church asking for advice? How many underserved people have been provided meals through the church’s efforts in a given month? Rather than counting the percentage of the church involved in small groups, should we not be considering the number of unbelievers in attendance each week as a better indicator of the body’s health? Until we “recalibrate the scorecard” in this manner to better evaluate our effectiveness, the traditional focus on money, numbers, and buildings as the benchmark of success will hamper our outreach efforts.
Finally, each member of today’s church must recognize the importance of their role in solving the “missional crisis” of the 21st century. It is incredibly easy to dismiss a discussion of missional living as mere ivory tower church strategy for pastors, irrelevant to the average Christian sitting in the pews. Yet once we come to grips with the fact that every Christian is called to be a church planter, these objections quickly fade. When confronted by the fact that most of our individual lives as believers are virtually devoid of missional impact, the church’s problem at large becomes our problem individually as well. When will each one of us begin to take our call to the fields of harvest seriously? It is incumbent upon all of us to respond individually to the missional deficit of our day. Clearly, if the church is to truly become missional in our day, a radical reworking of church as we know it is in order. It is up to each member of the Body of Christ today to take this mission seriously, to truly imitate Jesus by taking His good news to the streets. It is time for average, everyday followers of Jesus like you and I to realize our calling to the fields together. It is our time to become a radical church indeed.
First, we must learn how to bring church to the streets. What would happen if we took the kingdom of God to where society lives and where life happens instead of keeping it cloistered in special buildings that few care to visit? To begin to embrace this missional mandate, many churches’ influence would increase simply by moving out of their buildings and instead meeting where people already are at! The church must increasingly find ways to infiltrate the culture at large, and this begins by first gathering together in society’s common meeting places. In so doing, we create “spiritual spaces” in the midst of everyday life: in coffeehouses, in bars, in parks, on football teams, in school cafeterias, and workplace lunchrooms.
I think of a church in California meeting in a parking lot at 3 a.m., attempting to reach out to the second shift workers whose schedules alienate them from present forms of church. I think of believers attempting to hang out in a coffee house that is frequented by occultists, spreading the light of Christ in a dark place. I think of a family that started a basketball ministry for junior high students in a city park, sharing games, a meal, and the message of Christ with those kids who attend. I think of a church music ministry who has opened recording studios in the community in an attempt to build bridges with local musicians. These all are efforts to move the church from a fringe Christian subculture to an integral part of the community at large.
But simply meeting in a new location doesn’t make a church missional. The church must also define success in ministry differently if we are to embody the missional example of Jesus. As one says, this means “getting a new scorecard.” The church must move beyond the mindset that measures ministry success by traditional markers such as buildings, dollars, and weekly attendance, and instead must embrace more missional benchmarks that gauge success by the transformation of the community outside the walls of the church. Better indicators of missional effectiveness and the health of a church body, for example, are hours spent praying for the community, the number of school children being tutored in after-school church programs, and hours spent by members with unbelievers. How often do community leaders call the church asking for advice? How many underserved people have been provided meals through the church’s efforts in a given month? Rather than counting the percentage of the church involved in small groups, should we not be considering the number of unbelievers in attendance each week as a better indicator of the body’s health? Until we “recalibrate the scorecard” in this manner to better evaluate our effectiveness, the traditional focus on money, numbers, and buildings as the benchmark of success will hamper our outreach efforts.
Finally, each member of today’s church must recognize the importance of their role in solving the “missional crisis” of the 21st century. It is incredibly easy to dismiss a discussion of missional living as mere ivory tower church strategy for pastors, irrelevant to the average Christian sitting in the pews. Yet once we come to grips with the fact that every Christian is called to be a church planter, these objections quickly fade. When confronted by the fact that most of our individual lives as believers are virtually devoid of missional impact, the church’s problem at large becomes our problem individually as well. When will each one of us begin to take our call to the fields of harvest seriously? It is incumbent upon all of us to respond individually to the missional deficit of our day. Clearly, if the church is to truly become missional in our day, a radical reworking of church as we know it is in order. It is up to each member of the Body of Christ today to take this mission seriously, to truly imitate Jesus by taking His good news to the streets. It is time for average, everyday followers of Jesus like you and I to realize our calling to the fields together. It is our time to become a radical church indeed.
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