Resurrection Dance

Well, if you follow me on Twitter (@Steve_Burghart) or Facebook, you know that I have been reflecting for a few days on the significance of the Resurrection of Christ in the life of believers. And the conclusion? Well, I do have a tendancy to see what is broken and needs improvement, but can any of you say with confidence that the Church of Jesus Christ is living in the new life of grace rather than under the burden of the Law or in enslavement to sin?

Has the resurrection power of Christ created dancing in your heart? Look at this celebration is formerly-Communist Hungary...

Enslavement

OK, I spent (some might argue “wasted”) an entire week on sharing about ecclesiology from Alan Hirsch's book, The Forgotten Ways. I hope that was helpful for all of you. The exercise was therapeutic for me. But let’s get immensely practical now…

What do we do about sin? I’m not talking about other people’s sin. I mean mine; I mean yours. And before you say that you have none, be reminded of what John wrote:

If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. 1 John 1:8

So, now that we know that everyone sins, we have no more need for pretending, right? Yet, pretend is exactly what we do. Pretend and hide.

Watch this video about one man’s struggle with sin, but please finish reading the post once you’re finished:



Could you see the insidious nature of sin in the video? There is first an allure to sin. Even what our conscience would warn against, it calls to a need within. And before you smugly brush this all aside because your temptation is different than Nate’s, know that this is the nature of all sin.

You see, sin is more than the bad choices you make. There is a spiritual dimension. Sin is alive! It has consciousness. And it would have you and me. Look at how the Lord warned Cain:

Then the LORD said to Cain, "Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must master it." Genesis 4:6-7

Cornelius Plantinga wrote a fantastic, scholarly book on the nature of sin, Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be. In it he describes how sin works in our lives. First, it allures us. When you are in a vulnerable place, your enemy knows and prepares a trap. But he’s not done once you bite. Then he begins a campaign of lies meant to drive you away from redemption. The lies are pretty standard and revolve around justification and/or acceptance. He may tell you that you deserve to do whatever you are doing because you have been mistreated or denied. Whether or not you hear that lie, he will surely tell you that you need to hide your sin from others, especially strong believers who are personally committed to helping you grow in the Lord. The lie is that you will be shunned and rejected. The truth, God’s truth for His church, is that you will be held accountable and helped toward victory and restoration. And finally, if you succumb to the second attack, the enemy makes you an apostle of death, encouraging you to drag others into your sin.

So, that was a lot of theory on sin and I promised to make this practical. Thanks for holding me accountable! What does this mean for us as Christians who are choosing to partake of Christian community? It means that community is your highest priority when dealing with sin, yours or someone in your circle of influence.

Certainly, the Bible is the source of truth, but it is only in communion with committed saints that the enemy is thwarted. So, do you ever feel the tug away from community? That’s the time when you should be praying fervently that the Lord would show you the dark desires of your heart that are trying to isolate you from the support you need. And, is there someone in your group that is pulling away? Pursue him! Find out what’s up in a loving and encouraging way. Become a safe place for that person and offer to walk through his dark valley with him.

I have over a decade of small group experience that says that a failing marriage sees withdrawal from group attendance shortly before disaster. Connect with the couple who can’t seem to prioritize group time or who interact on a superficial level. Connect with the spouse who withdraws into self or work or hobbies. Connect with the teen who lives behind a shut door and comes out only with earbuds inserted or who sits alone at church on Sunday morning.

Read more of the 1 John 1 passage and see the importance of avoiding isolation and committing to live “in the light” and notice that the fellowship that follows is not limited to between you and the Lord, but involves other believers. It’s God’s design; seek to live it!

This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. If we claim to have fellowship with him yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin. If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word has no place in our lives. 1 John 1:5-10 (emphasis added)

Forgotten – Not Community!

Well, this one is going to sound odd coming from the guy who is continually talking about biblical community, but stick with me. The church has built its identity around community and that is wrong.

If you are trying to build community, you are defining the church according to something that feels right to us. The gospel message gets reinterpreted in a form that validates our sense of belonging. It becomes, in essence, a justification of how we interpret family. In the process, the gospel message is watered down or even perverted.

Right now, some of you are saying, “Woohoo! No more push to get into small groups!” Hold your horses. We don’t shoot for community. We shoot for mission! And a right understanding of mission brings us together as a community formed in the context of ordeal. Hirsch calls this Communitas. And while the ordeal may be a matter of survival as it was in the 1st and 2nd Centuries and for the last 60 years in China, it doesn’t have to be that ominous. It simply means community formed around a worthy cause, namely the gospel of the Kingdom.

Communitas is a longing that God has placed in us, a desire to be part of something significant and far bigger than our puny lives. But communitas has been lost from the church primarily because of the absence of the other aspects that Hirsch outlines in his book. In the end, we have a safe, predicable, comfortable faith. And that’s because we have a safe, predictable, comforting God. And while He sends us His Spirit as a comforter, He clearly is not safe and loves to bust out of our boxes of predictability. Besides, ask yourself why the Spirit would be a comforter and Jesus would say that we need Him if we’re safe and life is predictable.

Want to understand communitas better? Spend some time with CS Lewis; the beavers will tell you that Aslan is not safe, but He is good. And spend some time with Lewis’ friend, Tolkien and set out on the most amazing journey with the most unlikely and unformidable comrades as they play their ordained roles in the final destruction of evil in the kingdom.

Or, seek comfort and miss the adventure for which you were created and redeemed…

Forgotten – Structured for Growth

Hirsch calls us to implement Organic Systems within the church. He points out that this has not been the approach of the western church. Instead of a decentralized network approach, we have generally implemented a top-down, hierarchical, centralized structure. We have done this in the name of preserving doctrine. But he points out that it has historically done very little to protect from heresy in the church. Why? Because the model we implement is a power and control model. And who is attracted to that type of leadership? Men who want power!

William Pitt offered this thought in a speech in 1770 but it became famous when Lord Acton wrote about the Catholic Church to Bishop Creighton in 1887 saying, “All power corrupts, and absolute power corrupt absolutely.” But this is at the heart of the fallen human nature. We want to have God’s power and authority. So, men have taken biblical injunctions to man watchtowers and have seized the opportunity to choke the life out of God’s design for His church. To add insult to injury, we incorporated worldly business principles, forming the Church Growth Movement that grew but weakened the church.

Hirsch calls for a return to an organic model that decentralizes power and removes restrictions to growth and allows the environment that the church saw in its primal form, an environment conducive to rapid growth. He encourages you to think virus. As a humorous side note, after my leadership team created our current Connect Ministry shirts with the slogan “It’s how we roll,” I was considering the next slogan: “Connect. It’s viral and I’m contagious!” It didn’t sit well with the team. But we may revisit it! This idea is central to Hirsch’s desire to see a “sneezable” faith.

The question to be answered by every community of faith is, “Will we build to equip and empower or to control?” This is a question central to Small Group Theory, so I am very familiar with it. But, sadly, most churches don’t even consider the implications of their decisions in this area. And, at the end of the day, it seems more sensible, even spiritual to err on the side of control. But, what then does that say about our view of the role of the Holy Spirit in the church?

Forgotten – Fivefold Ministry

OK, if you’re still with me, or rather Hirsch, this is where we might lose you. It’s the part that has caused the most tension in my life. And when Pastor Tim and I were exposed to this idea at a conference in Indiana last year, we agreed that it was compelling but we needed to be cautious. OK, that’s all the disclaimer I’m providing.

If I asked you who leads the church, what would you say? Pastors? Elders? A denomination or council? Hirsch says that part of the problem with the church is that 1700 years of Christendom has left us with a deficiency. In an environment where Christianity was legislated, the church lost its intended form.

First, the intended form. In Ephesians 4, we find in a description of the plan of God being worked out through the church that Christ gave gifts to men (v.8). Following that verse, Paul writes,

It was He who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers, to prepare God's people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up, Ephesians 4:11-12

Now, because Paul says these were “gifts” we have identified them as Spiritual Gifts. Furthermore, our very conservative hermeneutic says that Apostles are people who spent time with Jesus and wrote the New Testament and therefore no longer exist in the church today. In fact, we’re uncomfortable with Prophets since they sound like people who tell the future and we don’t think that happens anymore, also because we already have the Bible. And Evangelists? Well, they're strange people with scary hair and belong on TV, not in the church. So that leaves us with pastors/shepherds and teachers leading the church.

Here’s the problem. The Greek word for “gifts” that Paul uses in 1 Corinthians 12 and Romans 12, and that Peter uses in 1 Peter 4 is charisma, a grace bestowed. But the words that he uses in Ephesians 4 are dowrea (v.7) – we get the word “dowry” from it – and doma. Both of these are simply a gift given.

Hirsch argues that the doma given to the church to equip her for her mission in the world are apostles (those who make sure the DNA of the faith is transmitted into other contexts), prophets (those who serves as God's truth-teller to His church), evangelists (those who call unbelievers to repentance), shepherds (those who nurture, protect, and disciple the church), and teachers (those who help God’s people develop wisdom and understanding from His Word). (Noteworthy is that the Greek construction around shepherds and teachers indicates that this may be one role, not two.)

Hirsch says that we have gone off mission because we lost A.P.E. from A.P.E.S.T in God’s design of His church’s leadership. He goes further in stating that we must return to a 5-fold Ministry, which he call’s Apostolic Environment, in order to be truly missional.

So, how do I come down on this? Honestly, I am still cautious, but I find it intriguing. It also explains why churches go through a lifecycle, lose their creative energy and eventually die. If new faith communities are created by involving APE but then blow them off in favor of ST leadership, you would expect decay to death. So, I spent $10 and took an online assessment to see how Hirsch would classify me. Interesting!

Forgotten – Missional-Incarnational Church

So, not Attractional, but what? Hirsch says that we are called to be Missional and Incarnational.

If you’re asking what that means, let’s start with where it comes from. Missional means “sent.” The people of God are sent by Him into the world as His apostles. No, not Apostles, the guys who wrote Scripture, but apostles, those who are envoys or ambassadors or messengers for the King. There will be more on apostleship in the next post, so hold off on bending your face out of shape because this sounds a little different than what you may have been taught. The bottom line is that Christians should view themselves as those who have been commissioned by the King to carry His message into the world in order to expand His Kingdom.

And Incarnational is the manner in which we are to go. It is built upon the doctrine of the Incarnation, that the second person of the Trinity, the Son, took on the form of a man. God did not come to us in all of His glory and splendor and majesty. Philippians 2 says that He “emptied” Himself, taking on the form of a man and humbling Himself, even to death on a cross. He didn’t come to overwhelm us, but to woo us. And that is the pattern we are to follow. That amazing passage in Philippians begins with the exhortation to have the same attitude (v.5).

Hirsch says that we are to follow this pattern. Rather than to plant churches, he says that we should plant the gospel. And from that effort, a people will grow and form a church. And this is exactly the opposite of what we do. We plant our preferred form of church in a new context and fight to conform the context to our predetermined interpretation.

Look at the ministry of Christ and see if it resembles how “evangelism” is done in America:

Presence: Jesus left His position of power and glory and honor and made Himself very present in His mission field.

Proximity: He lived with and among people. He was accessible to people, not just certain people, but intentionally meeting those who had been marginalized by the culture.

Powerlessness: He let His authority be discovered by His words and deeds, rather than by announcing who He was and demanding subjection.

Proclamation: His message was not about his audience and their sin problem and a way for them to escape judgment. Time after time, Scripture says that He came proclaiming the Kingdom. Then, He called people to repentance and faith.

Forgotten – Discipleship

OK, so it all starts with “Jesus is Lord” but where does it go from there? Well, part of the curse of Christendom is the Attractional Church Model. If Christendom creates the motivation for going to church, then the job of any specific church is to create the most appealing church environment in order to attract the most people. If the rulers of the day say that you must be Christian or else be ostracized or even killed, your job is to find the most pleasant Christian experience. Voila! The Attractional Model and 90% of Church Growth Theory.

Church Growth Theory comes from the business world. And why not? After all, it’s all about marketing. The business community understands this too well; all you need to do is create either a product that meets a felt need in the market or create a desire for your product. If you can create both, homerun, baby! But, at the end of the day, the Attractional Model of church tends to create consumers, not disciples. It runs counter to the foundational message, “Jesus is Lord” and says, in effect, “You are Lord and we are here to serve you.” It works against building commitment to the Lord, to His people, and to His Kingdom work. Look at this parody and consider how much truth is there…



But Jesus didn’t come to make consumers. Consumers don’t change anything other than marketing tactics. When things go wrong or times get tough, consumers abandon you. They show their true colors and leave for something they believe to be better. And before you get mad at me, look at what John wrote:

Dear children, this is the last hour; and as you have heard that the antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come. This is how we know it is the last hour. They went out from us, but they did not really belong to us. For if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us; but their going showed that none of them belonged to us. 1 John 2:18-19

I know this sounds harsh, but it is God’s perfect Word. Don’t focus on any individual you may know. That is not the point. What is the point is that discipleship produces people who are being made into the image of Christ. And at the core of our Christology must be the doctrine of the Incarnation (but that is the next post). The point here is that God used 12 disciples to change the world. 12 million consumers can’t do that.

The greatest proof of Christianity for others is not how far a man can logically analyze his reasons for believing, but how far in practice he will stake his life on his belief. T. S. Eliot

Have you been discipled? Are you willing to die for your Lord? He promised that those who are willing to lose their life for His sake would find true life.

Hirsch on "Jesus is Lord"

Look at this video I found of Alan Hirsch explaining the significance of the creedal statement, "Jesus is Lord!" Do you agree?

Forgotten – “Jesus is Lord”

It seems like a silly question. Maybe that’s why it’s not so silly and needs to be asked. Jesus felt it needed to be asked.

Jesus and His disciples left Galilee and went up to the villages near Caesarea Philippi. As they were walking along, He asked them, "Who do people say I am?" "Well," they replied, "some say John the Baptist, some say Elijah, and others say you are one of the other prophets." Then He asked them, "But who do you say I am?" Peter replied, "You are the Messiah." Mark 8:27-29

So, who is Jesus? And what are the answers me might get? God? Savior? Friend? Prophet? Guru? Teacher? Rabbi? Lunatic? Myth? Where would you fall on this scale?

Hirsch argues that under intense persecution, the first Jesus people were forced to simplify their faith, even their Christology (theology of Jesus). In his words, they had to come up with the heart of their faith in “sneezable” form. What was left when everything else was stripped away? “Jesus is Lord!”

This statement was in complete alignment with their understanding of the Hebrew Scriptures. In the Shema (Deuteronomy 6:4-9), they understood that their God, Yahweh, was the God above every god and over every part of life. His dominion knew no limitations. While other gods claimed influence over areas of life, Yahweh was Lord over all. And this Jesus was and is God incarnate.

More than Savior! Certainly God! But, by claiming Him as Lord, they signified the voluntary act of placing oneself under His authority. The question is: Is Jesus our Lord today?

Why ask the question? Well, frankly, we want a Savior, one who will “save us from the mess we find ourselves in.” We even want Him to be God because that means access to His power and riches. But, if He is Lord, well, we might have to demonstrate His sovereignty, not just on Sunday morning, but every moment of every day and in every circumstance.

For Hirsch, coming from his Hebraic background which tends toward a more holistic view of life, the church has strayed too far from this core doctrinal belief and it has led to low commitment to the Lord and to His Kingdom work. It has allowed us to live compartmentalized lives and think dualistically – sacred vs. secular. Yet we claim Him and therefore trust that He claims us. We even claim eternal security in that idea. And the fruit of dualistic thinking? It leads to Christian Hutus slaughtering Christian Tutsis, husbands abusing their wives, both young and old being more worried about social acceptance than standing for what is right. It leads to the worship of other gods, like status, power, pleasure, comfort, mammon, tradition, work, and family. Before you get ticked off at me because I mentioned your favorite god, understand that all of these are “sacred” when brought under the Lordship of Jesus.

So, right out of the gate, how are you doing in this regard? How is your family doing? How about your small group or class? And how are we as a church? Are we firmly rooted in the plain, yet powerful truth that Jesus is Lord?

Future posts will look at the five elements that grow from this foundational truth to create what Hirsch calls “apostolic genius.” Want to talk about this? You know where to find me…

Ways to Forget....

OK, before I get too much further with this discussion of returning Christ's church to her roots, here's a video that David Felty sent me today. I think it demonstrates part of the issue we are facing today. Please, take it wherever the Holy Spirit would like to take you...

Forgotten Ways - Intro

I have been on a book-devouring kick ever since Thanksgiving. I realized that my quiet time wasn’t enough to keep me out of a “funk” so I added to it reading and reflection from other sources. No, not the Qur’an, although I do own it and refer to it every time some Christian nut-job goes on a Nostradamus kick and says something brilliant like 9/11 was predicted in the Qur’an. But don’t get me started on that. I’m blogging about something else today.

I have been reading books on soul care, Christian leadership, and the church. Adding this type of reading to my quiet time devotions has really helped me to focus on my particular circumstances and allowed God to speak to my soul. I’m not saying this is the approach every believer should take, but this has worked quite well for the type of person I am.

The most recent book I have finished is Alan Hirsch’s The Forgotten Ways. This has been a very heavy, laborious read, both because of Hirsch’s intellect and also because the ideas really required a lot of reflection and comparison to theology, especially ecclesiology (theology of the church) that I had been taught. I’m still wrestling with the ideas of the book and maybe that’s why I’m choosing to blog some of that content.

Today, I’ll just lay out the context of the book. Hirsch argues that the church which the Lord established upon His Ascension was radically transformed when Constantine not only legitimized the faith, but made it the official religion for the Roman Empire. In so doing, the church experienced widespread acceptance which lasted about 1,500 years, a period he calls “Christendom.” During that time, the thing we call “church” today was formed. It even flourished. However, with the French Revolution came the idea that church and state should be separate. America was born in this secularizing environment. And, for the last 200+ years, God’s people have been trying to turn the clock back so that they can continue doing church in the same manner rather than adapting to the changing world.

And this is where Hirsch suggests something new, or rather, something very old. He says that the current context of the church is more like the context within which she was created. So, he argues, we need to get back to the Forgotten Ways of the church. And in case you find yourself content with the status quo, he sites that evangelicals represent less than 9% of the US population and the number is dropping every year. By 2025, it’s estimated that the number will be closer to 5%. Worse yet, Hirsch also says that our Christendom-Christianity is appealing to less than 16% of the population. He insists that it’s time to change our thinking about church, be willing to throw out a lot of what has been done for the last 1,700 years, and get back to our roots…