The Shaking of All Things

This is are really good interview with Mike Breen and Eddie Gibbs - you can watch the rest over on ShapeVine. It has some really good metaphor's for what is happening around us and a lot of thought to chew on afterward. Let me know what you think.

Living Faithful

So do not worry about tomorrow. Let tomorrow worry about itself. Living faithfully is a large enough task for today.

Jesus of Nazereth, Matthew 6.34


I have been re:reading the Gospels as of late, re:finding Jesus' teachings and re:evaluating his interactions with his culture. And as I read about God's care for the birds of the air and the lilies of the field, it challenged me on a personal level, as it relates to the church of tomorrow.

I like to think that this blogging effort here on Tomorrow's Church is about dreaming of what the Church should be and could be in the future. But, it is plenty about worry for me, worrying we've messed it up too much, worried we've maimed the voice of Jesus' teachings, worried that we must re:found ourselves in the person of Jesus - worried.

Seems so silly doesn't it? The Church is the Bride of Christ, could not be mine - God's hand has been authoring this redemption story, not mine. I did not start this story and I can not end it either. I have a part to play, but it is not universal and beckons me to live a humble and faithful life today! Gandhi was so right when he said we must be the change we seek.

Living faithfully is a huge undertaking and enough work for today. Perhaps on some levels we have over-strategized, over-criticized, over-amplified the need for 'tomorrow-thinking' and under-delivered on today. We always want the bigger, the grandiose, the keys of knowledge about the future - yet we fall considerable short on the simplicity of Jesus' teachings. Loving our neighbor as ourselves is one such example and a great starting point for today.

I want to be the change I seek. And though I'm not advocating abandoning this blog or saying we should not plan and dream about the future, I am saying it should come with a heavy dose of humility and reality. A reality that God's in control, God can be trusted and God has not promised us tomorrow but has given us today to live faithfully within.

I've got a good start, but a long way to go in being this and doing it faithfully - you?

An Important Distinction

This struck me as I'm trying to finish The Forgotten Ways and what a task it has been. I feel like Jacob and I've been wrestling this book forever - but it has been good. So instead of saying it my way, I'll just quote Mr Hirsch.

Our problem, it seems, is that we too quickly identify the concrete-historical expressions of church as the body of Christ. And while there is a truth to this, for the church is the body of Christ, perhaps the greater truth is that the body of Christ is the church. When we say that the church is the body of Christ, it claims a certain authority for a particular expression of church. To say that the body of Christ is the church is to open up possibilities as to how it might physically and organizationally express itself. This doesn't just localize it to one particular expression of church. The body can express itself in many different ways and forms. The distinction is paradigmatic. To restate it in these terms enables us to escape the monopolizing grip that the institutional image of church holds over our theological imaginations, and allows us to undertake a journey of reimagining what it means to be God's people in our own day and in our own situations.

Thoughts...

Conditions of God's Unconditional Love

Over the Holiday's I was fortunate to have some time to connect with Mike and Candice (who I hope will post something to Tomorrow's Church soon, so everyone doesn't grow weary of Kevin's endless rambling and yes, I just referred to myself in the 3rd person). But Mike and I had some time to dialogue about church thought and I wanted to share some of the conversation.

We have a peculiar faith that intertwines the seeming dichotomy between the unconditional love of a Creator and the conditions of restoring the relationship between Creator and creation.

So, for those of us called and captivated by who the church is today and what it needs to be tomorrow, we have work to do in a world that shrugs absolutes. Our world is comfortable with the idea of a God who loves and who says there is nothing that can separate us from that love (Romans 8). However, our world disdains attaching any condition to that love. An example would be peoples comfort and respect for the man named Jesus, like they respect Gandhi and MLK, but are not comfortable with accepting claims that Jesus is more than a man or for that matter, the only way to God.

I recently had a conversation with a pastor, in his middle age, great guy, and we were discussing the swinging pendulum of imbalanced theology and Christian movements. Like a rubber band, we seem to go from one side, often erring on extreme, to the other side - reaching a whole other extreme. And we came to the story of the Rich Young Ruler (Luke 18) and Jesus' interaction with him. Jesus not only saw what was lacking in the young ruler's faith, but shot straight to the issue - didn't pretend, didn't glaze over the issue - and then was willing to let him walk away saddened.

This pastor rightly accused our younger generation of being unwilling to let people walk away saddened by the conditions and the reality of the Liberating King story. I believe we must seek a balance in being able to dialogue with the world, engaged in our culture and still maintain our absolutes and the conditions of the gospel. And as I said to him, we are only trying to respond to his generations all-to-willingness to let people walk away not only saddened, but also pissed off.

There are a lot of thoughts about this, but I will end it with this; We have to bring balance to our practical theology and interactions with the world we are called to make disciples of. Discipleship necessitates conformity on some level, necessitates abiding in and under the conditions of God's unconditional love. Our challenge lies in simplifying what our absolutes really are. We must resist denominationalizing/dividing/separating over peripheral theological issues and center again on the love and person of Jesus Christ.

Thoughts...responses...

Kill the Clergy! [Part 2]

Yes, I took a long time in coming back to finish Part 2 of this thought process - my apologies. You can read Part 1 here and catch back up on where I was going with this, but I've been thinking about this a lot lately. And with saying that, I'm nervous I won't be able to fully articulate what I'm feeling, but will do my best and look to hear your input.

I believe a key in killing the terminology of clergy and ridding ourselves of the separation between clergy and laity is no longer using the word 'pastor.' Wait...what? Let me explain...

1st - We are all pastors and we all have pastoral roles to play in our families, work places and circle of friends. We are all called into the priesthood of God's Kingdom (mission) through our marriage with Christ and the Body. Thus we all have responsibility in loving, leading and caring for those we are gifted with the opportunity to have relationship with.

2nd - Because we don't realize the 1st, we have done a poor job of fulfilling our role. I believe we are all theologians too, though most would never call themselves a theologian, we are nonetheless so. Because we are human we occupy a unique space in creation, being fully physical and fully spiritual. You can be no more 'less human' than you can be 'less spiritual', which is exactly why throughout history humanity has struggled to grasp truth and either define or deny the existence of Deity. We are all theologians and we are all pastors and we need to start doing a better job of them.

3rd - This has all lead to an unhealthy and unbiblical set of expectations for those burdened with the title of 'pastor'. I have written about this aspect on my other blog (here), but when pastors become superstars and anything more than just human (another person trying to figure out this journey of life), pain and hypocrisy are inevitable. When Catholic Priests molest young boys, it is not a sign that they weren't 'holy men,' it's just a sign of the same broken human condition we all share. And it is the same when a pastor has a moral failure - they were never more than human, though we allowed them to be, and in a lot of cases, we thrusted them onto the pedestal ourselves. We shouldn't be 'more devastated' by their failure, we should be just as devastated by our own, remembering that sin is sin and we all fall short.

4th - So we must move from the title of pastor, to an understanding of leadership and influence. We need to have a more holistic understanding of what being a pastor means. We are all called to be disciple-makers and some are called to be apostles, some prophets, some teachers, some administrative, but we are all called. And changing our terminology will free the leaders of our local church communities to fit the role God designed for them and their passions. They will not have to conform to all the vague, unbiblical and unbalanced expectations that are encompassed in the title of 'pastor.' Instead, they will be free to lead us as they follow God and His calling for them - no longer having to pretend to be the marrying-burying-teaching-preaching-hospital-visiting-counseling-pastor the Church has come to expect of them.

So many more thoughts come to mind, but I'll stop here and ask you for your thoughts...

Our Space in History...

So some scholars are calling our era, our gift of time on a earth 'The Great Emergence.'

What that means is yet to be fully known, but we all seem to know that change is not only needed, but coming. I've stumbled on some great articles about this lately (here and here) and wanted to share this quote.

"The duty, challenge, joy, and excitement of the church and for the Christians who compose her, then, is in discovering what it means to believe that the kingdom of God is within one and in understanding that one is thereby a pulsating, vibrating bit in a much grander network. Neither established human authority nor scholarly or priestly discernment alone can lead, because, being human, both are trapped in space/time and thereby prevented from a perspective of total understanding. Rather, it is how the message runs back and forth, over and about, the hubs of the network that it is tried and amended and tempered into wisdom and right action for effecting God’s will." - Phyllis Tickle

Thoughts?

Kill the Clergy! [Part 1]

Okay, not actually kill the clergy - let's just kill the terminology. Tomorrow’s Church has to rid itself of the separation between clergy and laity.

When the Early Church became an institution, lines began being drawn between the trained and the untrained. Separation of those who can perform the religious duties of the new religion of the Roman Empire under Constantine and those who could not. The reformation restored some of the faulty practical theology that transpired, namely putting the scripture of the bible into the common language. However, we are due for a 2nd Reformation.

As I’ve heard it said before, the 1st Reformation took the scripture out of the clergies hands and placed it in the hands of everyone – a 2nd Reformation is needed that takes the ministry out of the clergies hands and calls everyone into their God-given roles.

Frank Viola said it this way, “What the Reformers failed to do was to recover the corporate dimension of the believing priesthood. They restored the doctrine of the believing priesthood soteriologically—i.e., as it related to salvation. But they failed to restore it ecclesiological—i.e., as it related to the church.”

I believe that the separation only feeds the weak, consumerist Christianity we have throughout America today. People come to a ‘service,’ are seated as if it were a show, lead in worship by professional musicians like a concert and taught by a trained speaker – there is a lot of entertainment built into Sunday gatherings. 90% of Christians only attend a church related event on Sundays, according to a survey I made up for this post. Seriously though, most people only go to Church once a week, which builds this false separation of Church, work, family, hobbies, etc – instead of it being a Christian faith woven through out our weekly activities in the lives we live.

If all followers of Jesus are his ‘priesthood’ we should seek to define it better. And not just define it better, but begin bringing it to be. We give a lot of lip service to the topic, but have failed to realize it. This is why Jesus died for us – not for a heaven ticket – but to restore our connection with God. That all followers would have a connection with the living God and a life radically affected by that reality. You know - all that 'the Kingdom of God is at hand' stuff.

How would it look?

Being Good At What We're Supposed To Be Good At

As someone who works predominately with teens and children (I'm currently the student guy at His Hands Church in Woodstock, GA), my dreams of what tomorrow's church could be tend to be focused on it's impact with teens. Obviously, there's more to the church than teenagers, but hopefully my thoughts, though more narrow in focus, can have broader applications. Then again, they might not amount to much at all :)

Last week, I was working at a frantic pace to kick off our school year with momentum in our student department. We had a big Jr. High kickoff on Wednesday and a big Sr. High kickoff on Thursday. Our Jr. High kickoff party looked like a lot of church's events probably do: loud music, tons of energy, caffeine, giant inflatable games, video games, etc (our Sr. High thing is quite different, but that's another topic). As I worked long hours setting up all the flashy stuff we were going to use to woo Jr. High kids, I couldn't get over the fact that even though our kids would likely have a blast, I was generally unexcited about the night. I couldn't stop thinking about the fact that we were relying almost purely on entertainment (something that few teens are in need of in today's culture) to get our kids excited.

Don't get me wrong...the event was a success by most standards. We had a great turn out and likely built momentum. The truth is that we're good at throwing crazy parties; most churches are. The church is probably one of the nation's experts at crazy games, goofy videos, and teenage-friendly stunts and spectacles. All those things are good, and the church often relies on them to attract kids and attempt to retain them. But do we rely on all the flash because we're better at it than we are at the things we're supposed to be good at...noticing, accepting, loving, encouraging, and inspiring people to pursue a passionate love for Jesus? It's only natural to play to our strengths when we're trying to accomplish something, but have we been working on the right strengths?

I'm not saying that we should not use our technical & artistic talents to the fullest. Excellence honors God. But it's possible that we get so caught up in creating flash that we neglect the things we're called to be truly excellent at: relationships, love, healing, inspiring, etc.

My wife is a photography enthusiast to some degree. She once told me that great photographers never need to use a camera's flash, not even in the dark. They adjust the shutter speed and aperture to fit the occasion, but flash is only used to enhance rather than to simply get a passable picture. If a photographer is great, flash is never necessary, but a powerful tool in the right circumstances. What if the church was like a great photographer? What if we were so good at the things that we're really supposed to be good at that we never needed to rely on anything flashy? We could still use it to enhance, but it would never make or break us because we simply don't need it. Let tomorrow's church play to its strengths, but let its strengths be the things that truly impact people.