Small Churches; Getting it Right

Buddy Oliver over on Rev22 just posted a pretty neat update on his small church endeavor, “Open Hearts, Open Minds, Open Exit Doors.” Kinda hits the nail on the head, I think.

http://rev22.org/index.php/archives/101

What Kind of Christian are You?

There is an interesting article over on Christianity Today called “Five Kinds of Christians” http://www.christianitytoday.com/le/2007/004/1.19.html .

Here is the table they use to summarize their findings:

Active Christians 19% Believe salvation comes through Jesus Christ Committed churchgoers Bible readers Accept leadership positions Invest in personal faith development through the church Feel obligated to share faith; 79% do so. Professing Christians 20% Believe salvation comes through Jesus Christ Focus on personal relationship with God and Jesus Similar beliefs to Active Christians, different actions Less involved in church, both attending and serving Less commitment to Bible reading or sharing faith Liturgical Christians 16% Predominantly Catholic and Lutheran Regular churchgoers High level of spiritual activity, mostly expressed by serving in church and/or community Recognize authority of the church Private Christians 24% Largest and youngest segment Believe in God and doing good things Own a Bible, but don’t read it Spiritual interest, but not within church context Only about a third attend church at all Almost none are church leaders Cultural Christians 21% Little outward religious behavior or attitudes God aware, but little personal involvement with God Do not view Jesus as essential to salvation Affirm many ways to God Favor universality theology

Copyright © 2007 by the author or Christianity Today International/Leadership Journal.
Fall 2007, Vol. XXVIII, No. 4, Page 19

What do you think? Which of these five kinds of Christians do you see yourself as? Or is it just more drivel?

Christian Chameleons

Tonight I will once again sally forth into the fray, exposing myself to debauchery, drunkenness, sacrilegious song and other temptations of the flesh. I just hope I have a good time.

There was a period not too long ago, just after I had my conversion experience, when I was a bit unsure as to how a Christian should behave. I think my confusion was due to where my spiritual home was at the time; a fairly conservative Methodist church (pretty hard to find these days). Confronting the challenges of Methodism’s fading Puritanism along with the ‘old time religious’ habits of my congregation, I felt like my lifestyle might be inconsistent with someone who claimed to be born again. So I faked it. I was a chimera – the owner of separate personality characteristics- some reserved for my church, some for those who knew me to be a Christian and some for those who did not know me at all.

I’ve talked about this at other times and places so I don’t want to bore anyone with the details. Suffice it to say, I was masquerading as what I thought a Christian was supposed to look like. I am embarrassed to tell of some of the silly things I did. For example; when friends from church would visit we would hide the wine, the wine glasses and the corkscrew, lest anyone get the ‘right’ idea. I began to think of myself as a clean cup with a permanently stained bowl.

You can imagine my relief when I found out that I need not become a 21^st century disciple of Carrie Nation in order to be a “good Christian”. I remember the pivotal point as an enjoyable evening spent having cocktails with another Christian couple while listening to live music at a local…(gasp!)….bar. No lightning bolts fell from the sky and it was not the slippery slope to hedonism that I’d heard about. (Or more likely what I thought I had heard.) That was a few years ago and since then I have grown in my faith and, losing some of these hang-ups, learned how to enjoy life in the process. I’ve also had more opportunity, through the casual acquaintance of people I’ve met in “secular” venues, to talk about Jesus.

A friend from work has a band, a classic rock- heavy metal type band that will be playing near my home tonight. He’s had a fairly difficult time of it lately. About a year ago he had his own ‘conversion’ experience and, like so many of us, went through some significant lifestyle changes. The partying he once enjoyed has fallen by the wayside, with the smokin’ and the drinkin’ that go along with it. He’s had some influence on the band as they no longer play music that employ lyrics of a violent or overly sexual nature and any song that even hints of insulting God has been kicked off the play list.

Yet the people of his church are telling him that he is sinful and the Bible is very clear in its condemnation of bars, bands and beer. In the process they use terms such as; sinners, fornicators, profane, drunkards, depraved, sluts and whores. I guess I should take offense, since these epithets are also directed towards people like me and my wife, since we will be in attendance this evening. But that doesn’t bother me. What does bother me is that these words, these bigoted thoughts, are being directed at anyone at all. None of the patrons at these clubs and bars are known to his congregation yet they have been conveniently labeled and filed away under the heading “unsaved”.

It is also disappointing that, when confronted with a man in their midst, who has grown closer to God through Jesus, they demand an immediate and visible change in his habits and appearances. This change needn’t be something that mimics Christ, who was also labeled as a glutton and drunkard as well as someone who consorted with prostitutes and the unclean. He need only mimic those in his congregation, becoming a born again chameleon. To avoid being preyed upon it may be necessary for him take on their colors, blending in with the ecclesiastical scenery. To his credit, he refuses to be this type of hypocrite and suffers even more scorn and derision.

I wonder how many other Christian chameleons are out there. For those of you who find yourselves in this type of scenario, weary of always having to be ‘on’, censoring your speech and playing at being holy, I heartily recommend coming in from the cold. The company is warm and the beer is cold.

N.T.Wright on the Enlightened Church

We are all children, grandchildren or at least stepchildren of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, and have cause to be both grateful for the consequent privileges and anxious about some of the consequent problems.

So says N. T. Wright, in his little yet important book “The Last Word: Scripture and the Authority of God – Getting Beyond the Bible Wars“. In a brief chapter devoted to the challenges that the church has faced from the Enlightenment, Wright talks of how Modern thinkers have successfully proposed that all the Earth’s sordid history had been making its way to this pivotal point, the point where humanity had finally come of age. From that point on, through the auspices of science and philosophy, mankind would thrive as it never had before. War, suffering and disease would soon be things of the past.

This meant that the Enlightenment was offering its own rival eschatology, a secular analogue to the biblical picture of God’s kingdom, inaugurated by Jesus. Christianity had declared that God’s Kingdom had been decisively inaugurated by Jesus himself, particularly through the death and resurrection. This sense of a one-off historical moment in the first century, however, had been so muted in much Christian theology – eschatology being replaced by systems of salvation and ethics – that the Enlightenment’s cuckoo-in-the-nest move was made all the easier, and has in fact often gone unremarked. It was this eschatological takeover bid which caused Enlightenment thinkers to pour scorn on the Bible’s picture of the coming Kingdom, in a move which is still taken for granted in many circles today; first, to misrepresent it (“All the early Christians expected the world to end at once”) and then to rubbish it (“They were wild fanatics, and they were proved wrong.”) This “we-know-better-now” move, so characteristic of various strands within Enlightenment thought (and now forming part of the mental and emotional landscape of most modern Westerners), disguised the fact that the Enlightenment’s alternative was equally wild and fanatical: the belief that world history, up until now a matter of darkness and superstition, had turned the decisive corner – in western Europe and North America in the eighteenth century! – and come into the light, not least through science and technology.

The Enlightenment proposed a new perspective and a new solution to the problem of societal evil. Not to be outdone, the church caved in;

Much would-be Christian thought (including much would-be “biblical” Christian thought) in the last two hundred years has tacitly conceded these huge claims, turning “Kingdom of God” into “the hope for heaven after death” and treating Jesus’ death , at the most, as the mechanism whereby individual sinners can receive forgiveness and hope for an otherworldly future – leaving the politicians and economists of the Enlightenment to take over the running, and as it turns out the ruining, of the world. (This political agenda, by the way, was of course a vital part of the Enlightenment project: kick “God” upstairs, make religion a matter of private piety, and then you can organize the world to your own advantage. That has been the leitmotif of the Western world ever since, the new philosophy which has so far sustained several great empires, launched huge and horribly flawed totalitarian projects, and left the contemporary world thoroughly confused.) Scripture itself, meanwhile is muzzled equally by both sides. It is squelched into silence by the “secularists” who dismiss it as irrelevant, historically inaccurate and so on – as you would expect, since it might otherwise challenge their imperial dreams. Equally worrying, if not more so, it is squashed out of shape by many of the devout, who ignore its global, cosmic and justice-laden message and treat it only as the instrument of personal piety and the source of true doctrine about eternal salvation.

In an attempt to “prove” the Bible true to those “Enlightened” critics its defenders strove to demonstrate it’s historical accuracy by redefining what a “literal” interpretation meant:

There is a great gulf fixed between those who want to prove the historicity of everything reported in the Bible in order to demonstrate that the Bible is “true” after all and those who, committed to living under the authority of scripture, remain open to what scripture itself actually teaches and emphasizes. Which is the bottom line: “proving the Bible to be true” (often with effect of saying, “So we can go on thinking what we’ve always thought”), or taking it so seriously that we allow it to tell us things we’d never heard before and didn’t particularly want to hear?

Good Bread and Wine

For the past couple of weeks in class the kids and I have been learning how to bake bread. Although I have spent over half my life working with all kinds of food I have shied away from baking. It looked just too complicated, all those different steps involved, all the precise temperatures and measurements. I’ve always been a lazy cook and baking just looked like too much work.

Well, I was happy to find out just how easy it is to make good bread. Like most anything else, all you really need is the right equipment, good ingredients and the patience to learn from your mistakes. The first couple of attempts at making a good German rye would have looked more at home stacked next to a Howitzer instead of inside a wicker basket. The Italian bread turned out pretty good the first time we pulled it from the oven and today we finally produced what is an excellent, chewy and very flavorful seeded two pound rye.

It’s so cool to see how the yeast takes the dough and turns it into something that is literally alive and breathing–before you sacrifice it to the ovens. There are some other foods that serve as hosts for these or other little creatures, resulting in some delicious eating. Cheeses are the most common, some of them sporting visible molds. Then there are the fermented meats and cabbages – sauerkraut, kimchee, some pickles; but many of these are ‘acquired tastes’. But everyone loves bread.

Of course alcoholic beverages are also made by little living organisms as they encounter and thrive upon the natural harvest of the earth. Fermentation in its various forms is responsible for all the beer, wine, whiskeys, vodkas, rums, cordials and fortified drinks that are made. Some of them will even display the telltale effervescence of their active work.

I guess that it is possible that Jesus did not intentionally choose to use bread and wine for the Eucharist. After all, these two ingredients were common staples of the Palestinian people. It was pretty much a given that these two items would be found on the table. Wine was often cut with water, to enhance the dubious qualities of both the water and the wine, but good wine (like Jesus was famous for) was usually served at special occasions. Although we often hear of Jewish unleavened bread, risen dough was also baked and consumed. There were other foods served at the Last Supper, but Jesus used only these two to remind us of his living sacrifice.

I don’t think it was any accident that Jesus turned to bread and wine when looking for a metaphor for his death and resurrection. It’s also no accident that these two foods were served at Jewish holidays. Both bread and wine are the two naturally occurring miracles of the food world. Left alone, both crushed wheat and crushed grapes will invite in living creatures that change both hosts into bread and wine. This is why moistened flour will eventually start to rise on it’s own as it receives the yeast floating in through the kitchen window. Grapes (and many other fruits) will always ferment – in fact, grape juice is more of an ‘artificial’ beverage than Pepsi. Man must work hard to prevent grape juice from turning into wine.

Wheat, crushed, mixed with water and in communion with live yeast grows to become a bread ready to be baked. Grapes, crushed, it’s juices communing with live yeast, turns to wine ready to be drunk. Both bread, wine and yeast work together to become so much more than the sum of their parts. Perhaps we are like the yeast, encountering Christ’s blood and broken body, being taken in and then taking him in to ourselves, we work together with others to raise up his Church. Broken bread and poured out wine, shared by those who remember Jesus as the creator of grass and vines, giving himself to be broken and poured out for our sins – this is what we know as Communion.

What a great gift. Wouldn’t it be nice if, the next time we shared communion, that we served some really good, fresh baked bread? And maybe some good, inexpensive red jug wine? Instead of paper wafers, little cubes of Wonder Bread, Welches grape juice and Christian Brother’s Cream Sherry? Something maybe a bit more aesthetic, a bit more authentic, maybe a bit more…tasty? Instead of little medicine cups perhaps we could try intinction or -what the heck?!- take a risk and share the cup! (We can always offer grape juice for those who cannot or would prefer not to partake of wine.) Perhaps bringing wine back into some Protestant services would cause too much arguing – I don’t know. But there is no reason not to serve some good bread. Jesus chose food for a reason. He probably enjoyed good food. I don’t think it would be too hard for us to give the elements of this meal the respect that they deserve.

And now that I can bake…..

Pint Sized Preachers

Check out this report from ABC’s 20/20.  Looks very “Hollywood” to me. 

http://cosmos.bcst.yahoo.com/ver/247.1/popup/index.php?cl=4501215

To Church or Not to Church: Revisited

Jonathan Brink over on Missio Dei wrote an interesting and imaginative piece on this topic: “Jesus and Leadership Structure”. Here is an excerpt:

When Jesus said the provocative words, “Come follow me,” there must have been a chill that ran up the spine of the disciple’s backs. Imagine the moment. Ordinary people being called by an extraordinary man. This was the man who healed people, restoring their dignity and inviting them out of oppression. He touched lepers without harm, turned water into wine and caused the fish to flood the nets. To follow Him was an epic call, a moment to be part of something good. What did He see that they didn’t? His very invitation invited them into a larger mission of restoration.

But imagine for a second, after calling his disciples to follow him, he proceeded to invite them to come to the local synagogue on Sunday morning for a couple of hours and Wednesday night for another couple of hours. Forget following him around and watching Him do things. And when they got to there, he sat them down and led them through a couple of songs. Everyone sat in the same direction facing Jesus as they listened to him speak from behind a small upright box. The message was on average an hour long, tightly scripted with an introductory joke to arouse the crowd and was primarily about how to “not sin”. It usually included three points, a story from His personal life, and a summary to wrap it all up. He always finished with a challenge to his disciples to do better and closed with another song. At some point in the process he passed a large basket around expecting them to put a little something in to pay the rent and help build a larger meeting place. The reality was that those in setup were tired of unpacking and packing up each time they met in this rented building. A new, obviously larger building just made sense. As long as those in the crowd showed up, the disciples were good. Invite their friend and they were better. Serve on a committee and they were golden. Under this scenario you have to imagine the original call to “Come follow me” seems to lose its impact, doesn’t it?

http://jonathanbrink.com/2007/10/10/jesus-and-leadership-structure/

If interested in the earlier discussion that we had on this subject you may see it here;

http://sharpiron.wordpress.com/2007/09/12/to-church-or-not-to-church-that-is-the-question/

Good Book: “If God Is Love: Rediscovering Grace in an Ungracious World”

I just finished this book and thought it was superb. Very easy reading, short chapters, light and airy styling. Although written by two men, Philip Gulley and James Mulholland (both Quaker ministers), it was written in the first person singular. It is essentially a compendium of their experiences and thoughts of Jesus and his kingdom.   

I was lead to this book by reading Gulley’s blurb on the jacket of a Brennan Manning book . Gulley has a series of books about hometown Indiana and has been compared to Garrison Keillor.  He also has (or had?) a program on public radio.  I am looking forward to checking him out more thoroughly.

Jonathan Edwards; Mystical Contemplative

“The sense I had of divine things, would

often of a sudden as it were, kindle up a

sweet burning in my heart; an ardor of my

soul, that I know not how to express.

Not long after I began to experience these

things… I walked abroad alone, in a solitary

place in my father’s pasture, for contemplation.

And as I was walking there, and looked up on

the sky and clouds; there came into my mind,

a sweet sense of the glorious majesty and

grace of God, that I know not how to express.

I seemed to see them both in a sweet conjunc-

tion: majesty and meekness joined together….

After this my sense of divine things gradu-

ally increased, and became more and more

lively, and had more of that inward sweetness.

The appearance of everything was altered:

there seemed to be, as it were, a calm, sweet

cast, or appearance of divine glory, in almost

everything. God’s excellency, his wisdom, his

purity and love, seemed to appear in every-

thing; in the sun, moon and stars; in the

clouds, and blue sky; in the grass, flowers,

trees; in the water, and all nature… I often

used to sit and view the moon… and so in

the daytime, spent much time in viewing the

clouds and sky, to behold the sweet glory of

God in these things: in the meantime, singing

forth with a low voice, my contemplations of

the Creator and Redeemed”

 

These beautiful words were written by the same man who wrote “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”. If nothing else it shows that Edwards also had a much softer side when it came to describing God. More importantly he reveals a part of his nature that encounters God through contemplative prayer and meditation. This is surprising, in that many of his ardent followers of today seem terrified of this practice. Apparently Edwards had no such qualms. On the contrary, here is another quote of his;

“I felt God at the first appearance of a thunderstorm and used to take the opportunity at such times to fix myself to view the clouds and see the lightening’s play and hear the majesty and awful voice of God’s thunder, which led me to sweet contemplations of my great and glorious God; and while I viewed I used to spend my time singing or chanting for my mediatations, speaking my thoughts in soliloquies – speaking with a singing voice.”

Anita, the Christian Lesbian

I trackbacked to this lady’s website and found it to be well worth the visit. Homosexuality is such a divisive topic within the church, some think it may very well make or break many denominations. I think that any of us could benefit to listening to her story.  Her testimony is entitled “The Peace of God”.  It is thoughtful, respectful and displays a deep and authentic love for the Lord.  It is also well written. No matter what your position on this issue, please take the time to read her entire story.  For those of you who are are not familiar with anyone who is gay you may be surprised at what you find.

http://www.christianlesbians.com/about/anitastory.php