We all tend to put God in a box bounded by our own biases, giftings and sensibilities.
I do it. You do it. We all relate to Jesus within the confines of our own God-given (and sometimes not so God-given) attributes. And we all tend to think our own box defines, or should define, the totality of life, reality and even Jesus Himself.
Maturity, however, is recognizing and affirming Christ – often in others (including their warts and shortcomings) – outside our box.
Exactly. This video captures my passion and expresses my life.
Jesus is not about “us” ministering to “them”, or “us” creating cocoons of shared sensibilities as though we are “Beyond” everyone else.
God help us – institutional and organic churches alike.
Hear me on this: God may not call all of us individually to this or to that, but He does call all His people to a big “us” – also known as His Church, the multifaceted Body of Christ.
And in His Church there is no “them” when it comes to His life being expressed in us, among us and through us.
Two days after I posted my series “Beyond Evangelical?“, Milt Rodriguez – who I took to task in my series – wrote a blog which helps close the gap, so to speak, that I was addressing.
I urge everyone to read Milt’s new blog. It really is very good, and is at http://miltrodriguez.wordpress.com/2012/02/24/10-myths-about-organic-church-part-9/.
But the gap still exists so long as he continues to have a very limited view of the “objective” aspect of his “holistic approach” (as he discusses in his blog).
Specifically, does he still discredit, as he’s done in other blogs, those who (to quote him directly) engage in “praying and working toward … bringing this nation back to God” because political and civic engagement “is just another distraction from the person of Christ Himself” (emphasis added)?
Helping the poor and needy – as Milt’s blog urges – is not just doing charity and personal ministry (it certainly can include that, and I’m active in those areas), but also can legitimately include dealing with systemic social and political issues. It also can include those who labor in economics, law, politics, media, the arts, education, and all other spheres of life – not as “distractions” from Jesus but as expressions of the love of Jesus which is alive in them.
I have no idea if God has called Milt to those larger arenas, but my plea is that he expand his vision to embrace those who are called – and rethink some of his very harsh prior rhetoric against other brothers and sisters whose holistic approach may be broader than his own.
As a fellow church planter, I think it is best that we avoid imposing our own gifts, callings and sensibilities (including our political likes and dislikes and maybe our natural tendency to discount those things that we don’t necessarily personally grasp) on God’s people as somehow normative. That is so limiting to those who have God-given abilities and motivations which may exceed or differ from our own.
As I state in my Beyond Evangelical? series, and it bears repeating: Jesus is subjective, personal and relational. But He is also objective, cultural and propositional. And true fellowship – organic, missional, or whatever – must permit folks to express all of Jesus, no matter what our gifts, our callings, or our sensibilities.
Again, though, I think Milt Rodriguez’s latest blog is excellent and I applaud him for it.
Post-Modernity
The “You Can’t” Crowd
What I find most bizarre among emerging “Beyond Evangelical” authors is how vocal they are in telling Christians what we can’t do – we can’t be engaged in cultural or civic reform, we can’t go and disciple the nations, we can’t be engaged in politics, we can’t ever take a social position that offends, we can’t this, and we can’t that.
Sometimes, it gets so bad that you can only laugh.
This PowerPoint presentation looks at the seven gifts listed in Romans 12, and the motivations and ways that different people use those differing gifts. More significantly, what is the resulting fruit when your church allows those seven gifts to be fully expressed in its structure, ministries, leadership, meetings and day-to-day fellowship?
In nature, there’s a word for a place with inflow but no outflow: It’s called a swamp. God’s people are not called to be dead, stagnant swamps, but to offer living water: Cool, fresh, flowing and life giving.
Unfortunately, too many church gatherings are about inflow and not outflow. Churches today are focused on meetings and programs where people receive ministry, rather than places where we can minister one to another — as Scripture commands — according to our differing gifts. Getting people out of the familiar, traditional swamp of going to church to receive ministry, rather than the Biblical mandate to be the church where everyone ministers, is very daunting!
This dichotomy is amply illustrated by two ministries I’m involved with in the local jail. One is a highly structured, thirteen week program that provides intense teaching and scripted study materials to about thirty men who live together in a low-security, faith-based dorm. In that program, some of the strongest pulpit ministries in the county come to teach and minister to the men. With two meetings each weekday, they receive the best preaching and teaching imaginable. It’s like “podium church” on steroids.
So when we get together, what should our meetings look like as we use our differing motivational gift?
As a preliminary matter, this example assumes that there is a commitment by all to actively participate, and that everyone in fact has a vibrant walk with the Lord so that they have something to contribute.
Those are BIG, but indispensable, assumptions (but that’s a topic for another blog!).
When we meet together, 1 Corinthians 12-14, Romans 12 and Ephesians 4 say that we are to each contribute something. In fact, Paul repeatedly uses the imperative – a command – in telling us this.
Time and again Scripture exhorts us to avoid passivity. As such, God intends for our meetings to be incubators where we identify, develop and learn to use our gifts for our mutual growth and edification.
That’s because God’s gifts are not given for purely personal or individualistic purposes. Rather, when we meet we should be ministering to each other, each according to our unique gifts. Using our gifts within the church, in turn, allows us to become a gift – to each other, the world and, most importantly, to Jesus.
It’s one thing to embrace Paul’s metaphor of being the Body of Christ, where everyone is a different part as we participate and minister one to another according to our unique spiritual gifts.
It’s quite another thing to figure out how to do that in practical terms, especially when we meet together and abstract principles hit cold, hard reality.
Fasten your seat belts, it’s going to be a bumpy ride! In this PowerPoint presentation, all that you think of as “church” is about to be challenged so God can woo us back to being, once more, the multi-faceted, wonderful, exciting Body of Christ.
“So here’s what I want you to do. When you gather for worship, each one of you be prepared with something that will be useful for all: Sing a hymn, teach a lesson, tell a story, lead a prayer, provide an insight… Take your turn, no one person taking over. Then each speaker gets a chance to say something special from God, and you all learn from each other… This goes for all the churches — no exceptions.” The Message, 1 Cor. 14:28-33.
God seems to be laying a foundation for yet another of His periodic, history-changing interventions in the affairs of man. Over the last two thousand years there have been many such paradigm shifts, and it’s naive to think that our current, settled status quo will somehow be exempt from the unsettling but progressive advance of His Kingdom.
Paradigm Shifts
This newest paradigm shift is starting with pioneers who realize that God’s primary goal in history is to change not only individuals but also whole cultures and nations — as per the Great Commission.
Likewise, as with all prior interventions in history, His will is being applied to more and more aspects of His creation here on earth, just as it is in heaven — as per the Lord’s Prayer.
We also are coming to realize that the Kingdom of God — His will being done on earth (including all spheres of human endeavor) as it is in heaven — is bigger than the church. Nonetheless, we are beginning to understand that His Kingdom is not going to advance much further unless the church re-discovers her New Testament roots.
Admittedly, there is comfort in the familiar status quo of “church” as we’ve all come to know it. Some, however, are so hungry for God’s Kingdom — as it continues to progressively advance through history — that they’re willing hit to the reboot button and look afresh at God’ s purposes.
Last night, we had one of our best times of “participatory church” as we seamlessly shared a meal, partook of communion, fellowshipped and ministered one with another — and none of it depended on me!
The last several weeks have been very emotionally and physically exhausting for me. On top of my best friend dying, I’ve been struggling to keep up with my various professional and counseling commitments while concurrently experiencing a particularly bad bout of chronic fatigue from my autoimmune condition.
The church that meets together at my home each Friday evening to share a meal, encounter God and minister one to another is an improbable assembly of believers and even not-yet believers. We 
cut across races, cultures, nationalities, social status, and so many other lines – producing a rich tapestry of interwoven lives.
It reminds me of Adullam’s cave, where “every one that was in distress, and every one that was in debt, and every one that was discontented” went to flee from Saul. While there, God began the process of forging them into leaders who eventually established and became pillars in David’s kingdom. 1 Sam. 22:2.
Likewise, if you saw us you would laugh and wonder, “what can God do with these people?” Yet, isn’t that God’s way: to establish his Kingdom on earth by transforming lives, cultures, nations and history not with the ordained, but with the ordinary?
As I’ve previously ministered in other parts of the world, I’ve been alarmed at the growing influence of the so-called “prosperity gospel”.
The prosperity message is simply the latest incarnation of the historically persistent “gospel of self” that’s been a blight on the Church since the beginning. Going back to Simon the Samaritan in Acts 8, there’s always been those among us – with gifted personalities and beguiling, mesmerizing spirits of seeming sincerity – who pimp the gospel for personal gain.
Such God pimps – including John Hagee, Kenneth Copeland, Benny Hinn, Joel Osteen and their minions – are all over the airways peddling their seductive gospel of “self”.
