Why I Did This, Part 1: Ministers and Mission

I think I was awakening to something during my ministry in Milwaukee in the early 90s, without fully realizing it. We were engaging the neighborhood school near our church, making advances in racial reconciliation, and also breaking down barriers between Christian fellowships. Looking back, I think I was experiencing missional impulses that were moving me beyond our church walls.

For reasons too complicated to sort out here (and I’m still not sure I could), we felt called to a church in Houston. It was a church with a great, and well-deserved, reputation for supporting many good works in the city. It was also a church with an ecumenical spirit and equality for women. But it was not growing, and I set myself to the task of trying to help the church make the changes necessary to attract the unchurched to hear the good news. It was the only way I knew.

For years I had studied church growth, and nearly all the experts said the same things—and most established churches struggled with their recommendations. We brought in a consultant, read books, and felt the pain of trying to change. But there was a revolution already happening in Christianity, and I was only beginning to become aware of it. America was becoming postmodern and post-Christian, and the theories of what this would mean for the church were becoming hot topics.  If I had understood these issues better, I think I would have understood better why I was struggling so much.

Many factors make it difficult for churches to change—tradition, natural human resistance to change, institutional leadership structures, increasing cultural irrelevance. But I am convinced now that the most significant issue we faced was a personal issue in my ministry.

After several years there, we moved back home to Nashville and I continued the mission of trying to lead an established church toward growth and outreach—with many of the same struggles. Then, with the help of Randy Harris and David Wray, we began a study of the “missional church” (interestingly, the church in Houston began the same study at about the same time). The issues facing churches in postmodern, post-Christian America began to appear in sharper focus, as did some of the more substantive changes we would need to make if we were truly to begin advancing on mission in the world—which is not the same as trying to attract people to the church building and church activities.

We began to see that “mission” is not just one of several things a church is supposed to do. Mission is the reason the church exists. God is on a mission in this world, and he created the church for that mission. As missional writers often say, “The church doesn’t have a mission; the mission has a church.” And being on mission doesn’t just mean trying to have the kind of church that will attract consumers to its services and programs. It means living on mission in the world—serving those in need and being friends to those who don’t know God.

But change was no easier even with a clearer vision. In fact, in some ways it seemed to become harder. We still faced issues of tradition, human nature, institutional leadership structures, and cultural irrelevance. But I began to realize that the issues churches face are deeper than could be addressed with program changes.

It began to become clear to me that a great deal of the problem was that too many of us in leadership in churches—including me—were not living missionally. I was a minister on a mission in the church, but I was not personally on mission in the world. How could I lead a church to become God’s people on mission in the world when I was not on mission myself?

My job was the church; my church was the church; and my friends were the church.

I had long lamented this reality as a barrier to my ability to reach unchurched people. But now those words were moving from an excuse to a conviction. I had to learn a new way of living in this world. Perhaps I could have done that and stayed in my role as a minister, but I don’t think so. 

We don’t really pay our ministers to be missionaries. Everything I was reading and hearing said I had to spend time where people are, in coffee shops and pubs rather than in a church office. But there were three problems with this. First, I hate coffee and beer…seriously! So what was I supposed to do in a coffee house or pub? I figured out I could drink hot chocolate at a Starbucks and fit in ok, but at the neighborhood pub there is no hot chocolate option.

Second, what church pays its preacher to hang out in pubs and have a drink with worldly people? Jesus ate and drank with tax collectors and sinners, but preachers don’t (and look at the reaction Jesus got from church folk!). Good brothers and sisters who want to believe that Jesus had matzos and grape juice at the Passover would not be ready for this!

Third, and maybe most importantly, I liked my church office. I liked being surrounded by my books, with my colleagues and friends just down the hall. I liked using it as a base to prepare to preach to Christians, to teach classes to Christians, to have planning meetings with Christians, to lead small groups of Christians, to visit Christians in the hospital, to comfort Christians at the funeral home, and to attend ministerial association meetings with Christian ministers. I knew how to do this. I liked it. I was pretty good at it. But I needed to leave it.

So we moved into the city and have been learning a new way to live. It has taken us to new experiences, but more importantly to new relationships. We built a house in a transitional neighborhood, one where the privileged and underprivileged live on the same streets. (We hadn’t planned on building, but we met the builders at a neighborhood meeting—they live here too.) Some of our neighbors are well off and are building new homes near their downtown offices. Others are on government assistance. We love the socio-economic and racial diversity of these neighbors working together to improve their community.

Now we have open houses for our neighborhood instead of for church members. We have our neighbors into our home, go to restaurants and events with them, and plant the community garden with them. I play trivia at the pub with the guys (I’ve learned to drink light beer…and have almost learned to like it). Our neighbors invite us out to eat and to their birthday parties. For the first time in 30 years, we were invited to a Christmas party at the home of an atheist—it’s the first time in 30 years that I have an atheist friend.

And that’s what bothers me most—30 years of missed opportunities to be like Jesus. I look back now and see so many chances I missed to be friends with people Jesus would have been friends with . . . but I was too preoccupied with being a Christian.

Why Did I Do This? A Brief Introduction

I haven’t blogged in a long time—probably too long. I return now with an attempt to answer a question I am frequently asked (and often ask myself). After 30 years of being a pulpit minister, I am now working with a nonprofit that serves inner city children and trying to plant a missional network of house churches in the city—so, why did I do this?

The list of preachers in my generation who are abandoning the pulpit to work with nonprofits and parachurch ministries seems to be growing, and it reads like a “who’s who” of preachers in the Churches of Christ. I can’t speak for them, though I have talked to enough of them to know that some aspects of my story are similar to some aspects of their stories. But this is not an attempt to describe this troubling trend. It is merely an attempt to share my own discoveries in the hope that it will be helpful to others trying to make sense of what is happening to the church in America and to their own congregations and ministers—and perhaps what is happening in their own discontent with American Christianity.

I’ve been wrestling with this for almost a year. I’m still not sure it’s ready to share publicly, but maybe it will never be. I have promised others that I would share some of these thoughts, so here they are in a series of three posts on “Ministers and Mission,” “Prophets and Priests,” and “Scribes and Disciples.”

Why You Can Bet the House Jesus Won’t Return Today

Perhaps you've seen the news reports about the group predicting the world will end today, May 21.

Associated Press (OAKLAND, Calif.) – Some shut themselves inside to pray for mercy as they waited for the world's end.
Others met for tearful last lunches with their children, and prepared to leave behind homes and pets as they were swept up to heaven.
And across the globe, followers of a California preacher's long-publicized message that Judgment Day would arrive Saturday turned to the Bible, the book they believe predicts Earth's destruction on May 21.
The doomsday message has been sent far and wide via broadcasts and web sites by Harold Camping, an 89-year-old retired civil engineer who has built a multi-million-dollar nonprofit ministry based on his apocalyptic prediction.

But I am absolutely positive he's wrong. Not because I think he's a little confused about how the calendar works (I saw a TV interview with him, and he was definitely confused). Not because I interpret some Biblical prophecies differently (which I do). And not because I've figured out the errors in his mathematical calculations (I haven't bothered). I am confident he's wrong because of one simple thing that Jesus said:

So you also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him. (Matthew 24:44)

So I'm certain Jesus will not be coming back today, precisely because the people are expecting him. Even if this was supposed to be the day, when these folk launched their ad campaign announcing the world would end today, I figure God would have just changed the date.
So instead of trying to calculate when prophecies will be fulfilled, maybe we ought to be trying to do what the prophets told us to do—take up the cause of widows and orphans and foreigners, help the poor and the weak, protect innocent blood, be honest and righteous and faithful.
Which might suggest some better uses for those multi-millions Camping has raised than buying ads to spread his fanciful calculations.

Good Friday from Below

Last night we attended a Good Friday Service, as we have for some 20 years. This year was different, but not just because I am no longer leading the service.

Since we are free now to choose where to visit a service, we considered options. We decided, rather than shopping for a service we might like, we would try to do something consistent with the mission of God which this day commemorates, the mission which has called us into the city. So we chose to attend the service at an African American church in our community.

My parents joined us and the four of us were the only whites present, which we anticipated. We were warmly welcomed by the small gathering. (Good Friday attendance is always much lower than Easter Sunday, and apparently that is true across racial and denominational lines.) The brief litany was thoughtful and challenging. The cross-centered hymns were very familiar, though the style was less so. They sang my father's favorite song, and I was feeling glad we had come.

Then the lesson began.

The guest speaker was eloquent, passionate, and provocative…very provocative. He delivered a fervent exposition of Mark's passion narrative told from the perspective of the suffering of the African American people. He spoke convincingly of the injury to the soul caused by dehumanizing words and injustices, which are just as painful as is harm to the body. Those with power can kill the soul with words before they kill the body—something he persuasively insisted that African Americans have long experienced. And so, he said, they did to Jesus—belittling and ridiculing him before they executed him. Vivid comparisons were drawn between the treatment of blacks and Jesus' unjust treatment by the "po-lice" and other manifestations of Empire, culminating with an excruciatingly explicit description of the horrific torture and lynching of Claude Neal in 1934, followed by an equally explicit narrative of the scourging and crucifixion of Jesus.

There was much about the exposition that was compelling and thought-provoking. It was a bold denunciation of Empire and oppression in any age, especially our own. But there was also much that was disturbing. The comparisons between Jesus and "the black body" were pressed pretty far—too far in my opinion. The speaker wanted us to see Jesus as a young black man tortured and murdered by Europeans and the "Negroes" collaborating with them. The analogy is not without merit—but it seemed to us to be taken too far. (Or maybe we were just uncomfortable being the only Euro-Americans present…and we were admittedly uncomfortable!) His manuscript was undoubtedly written for an African American audience, not anticipating our surprise visit. Yet his strong words did not confront his audience with their own sins, only those of others—missing the confessional Spirit which I personally feel should characterize this occasion.

Perhaps even more troubling to me, though, were several verbal shots taken at Republicans, George Bush, and religious conservatives. In a sermon decrying the dehumanizing effect of verbal attacks, I could not help but feel that he was violating his own principle in his prejudicial stereotyping of his political opponents. I wonder if the message of reconciliation was lost in this reflection on the cross—the cross which has "broken down the dividing wall of hostility," and calls us to do the same.

Still, according to Raleigh Washington and Glen Kehrein (Breaking Down Walls), if we are to have reconciliation we must hear each other's stories—with the pain and offense often inherent in them. From listening we can move to understanding and to mutual respect.

Following the lesson we shook hands with the speaker as we stood in line to share communion with these brothers and sisters, and I had a very affirming and hopeful conversation with the Senior Pastor after the service. So as troubling as aspects of this evening were, I am glad we were there. Perhaps this passionate sermon was not an expression of reconciliation—but hopefully our respectful presence was.

The Priority of Love

In a recent conversation on ConversantLife (http://www.conversantlife.com/life-with-god/5-questions-for-brian-mclaren), Brian McLaren was asked how he remains peaceful amid all the conflict among Christians. His answer is great. Here's a repost:

You get a lot of criticism from evangelicals, yet you seem to always maintain a very winsome and open spirit. What keeps you in such a positive and calm frame of mind when just about everybody else seems agitated for one reason or another?

I grew up in an extremely conservative and contentious fundamentalist movement or sect. It was filled with wonderful people who loved God, but the sociology of the group depended on exclusion and exclusiveness. When I "emerged" from that exclusive fundamentalism into a broader evangelicalism, I was hoping to find less contention. And I think I did. But in recent years, I think a contentious form of fundamentalism has been making a comeback and is in the process of a takeover attempt in evangelicalism. (I think similar movements are afoot in Catholicism and Mainline Protestantism too.) When I see this, I am not impressed by it, because I grew up with it and saw what it does to people.

I've learned in my own experience that it's way easier to think oneself right than to be loving. So Paul had it dead right when he said that knowledge puffs up, but love builds up, and that without love, no matter how right you are, you gain nothing but produce a lot of noise.

So really, I'm grateful for my religious heritage in fundamentalism. It taught me many things including that if you live by contention - theological swordplay, if you will - you will die by it. If you seek to argue and fight against an argumentative and combative spirit, you become what you are against. (Paul said that if you bite and devour each other, you'll consume each other, which describes our situation pretty well.) So my background forced me to seek a better way—what Paul calls the most excellent way, the way of love, the way of the Sermon on the Mount that transcends the way of the scribes and Pharisees.

Of course, I often trip up and slip back into things I am trying to grow beyond, but even that experience of failure humbles a person and makes it harder to try to put oneself in the position of an equal, much less a superior, in relation to one's fellow Christians. I guess so much comes back to Paul's words in Philippians 2, where he urges us to consider others as better than ourselves and to follow Jesus downward into servanthood. I suppose that to whatever degree I am, albeit imperfectly, able to maintain a winsome, calm, open, or positive spirit, it's because God has used the practices I explore in Naked Spirituality to form me. I still have a long, long way to go, so even though I wrote this book, I need its message as much as anyone else.

Christmas Mission

Those are not two words I usually think of together: "Christmas Mission."
Christmas Eve. Christmas shopping. Christmas pageants. Christmas presents. Christmas dinner. Christmas sales. Christmas trees. Christmas parties. Christmas cards. Christmas decorations.
Not "Christmas Mission." Not unless you hear someone say they are going to help feed the homeless on Christmas at the Mission—but how often do you hear that?
But isn't the Christmas story really a story about mission. And I don't mean Rudolph on a mission on a snowy night. I mean the story of an angel announcing to Zechariah that God is about to fulfill the prophecies and promises of old. The story of Mary learning that she will give birth to the Son of the Most High. The story that God entered this world as a light to the nations, to bring peace to those on whom God's favor rests, to save his people from their sins.
Christmas isn't just a story about a baby in a manger, and angels singing to shepherds, and wise men bringing gifts. It's really just a chapter (though certainly a heartwarming chapter) in a greater story of a God who was, and still is, on a mission in this world.
Christmas Eve services are a lovely tradition (our family attends one every year). But the risk Christians run at Christmas is the same risk Christians run every Lord's Day. Most church goers are at risk of thinking that the focus of our faith is our faith. Church is about what the leaders can do this week that will be meaningful to me. Whether the church we choose emphasizes liturgy or preaching or music, the critical issue seems to be whether it encourages and nourishes my faith. We measure church by the quality of the experience. In short, church is about me (at least, that seems to be how we often evaluate it).
But isn't the focus of our faith really God's work in this world? Isn't the Lord's Day really about remembering the mission of God that took Jesus to the cross and brought him out of the tomb? Shouldn't we be more concerned about whether church services stir us to follow Jesus on his mission in this world?
And isn't that really what should lie at the heart of our observance of Christmas? Shouldn't Christmas call us to be light in the darkness around us? To be as concerned for the poor as is the Son of God who slept in a feed trough? To be voices of peace in the middle of all the strife? To be friends with the people Jesus came to save? To be on God's mission in this world?
Maybe Christmas at the Mission is closer to the heart of the story than most of what we do—whether at the holidays or on Sundays.
Maybe a good question we could each ask is this:
To what mission is Christmas calling me this year?

Black Friday Week???

I got an email ad this week from a retailer with this subject line:

"It's Black Friday Week! Get Started With These Great Offers."

Really? "Black Friday Week"? Has it come to that? Not only has our commercialized Christmas overwhelmed everything from Labor Day to New Year's Day, but now we are renaming Thanksgiving after a shopping day!

Ok. I know some of you who know me recognize this as my annual holiday rant. But the fact that I'm ranting doesn't change the fact that this is just simply disturbing. Predictable? Probably. Inevitable? Maybe. Pitifully materialistic? Definitely.

And the fact that I'm now working with a non-profit for inner city kids, trying to raise money so they can have something for Christmas, has nothing to do with it. Neither does the fact that I feel a little guilty about living in a brand new house that's nicer than we deserve, and we just helped a poor neighbor with her family's Thanksgiving meal. Neither does that fact that I already feel guilty for how much of a glutton I'm going to be tomorrow. Nor the fact that my car and laptop are both dying and I can afford to replace them both and still buy Christmas presents for all my family.

The only relevant fact is that a season once devoted to thanksgiving, and generosity, and penitence, and celebration of the advent of our Savior is now just one huge, seemingly endless, exercise in consumerism and self-indulgence.

If you are as disturbed by all this as I am, and concerned about the impact on your family, and feeling a little guilty too, then you might check out the Advent Conspiracy for ideas for a meaningful season. (Or, if you'll pardon the shameless plug, check out the Y.E.S. Christmas Store.)

Have a Happy Thanksgiving! And if you must venture out into the shopping madness on Friday, perhaps you might shine a little brightness into the blackness by following John the Baptist's advice and "if you have two coats, share with someone who has none; and if you have food, do the same."

I'm through ranting now.