reimaginings

We pray, we plead, we recommit our lives, we make restitution, we do loving things for our ex-wives and dysfunctional bosses, we ask for forgiveness from our children, and we give our time - money - and effort to help the poor - making sure that we have done everything ‘we’ can possibly do to move God to fairly act on our behalf.  We give more money, more time, and more effort.  But God does not act as we think God should. 

We then elicit the prayers of others.  We fast.  We fast for 40 days.  We reclaim a more humble posture as we petition heaven.  We pray more.  We pray all night.  We gather all the scriptural promises the scriptures assure us are the believers legitimate claim.  We review our creed and confirm that our faith is explicitly taught by the prophets.  We’ve covered all the known religious bases.  But God doesn’t act as we think God should.

We weep, we curse, we yell, and we - like David - accuse heaven of neglect, forgetfulness and evil intention.  We repent.  We passionately direct our supplications up towards heaven - trying to get a sign that God has at least heard us, hasn’t totally forsaken us and will surely do something on our behalf.  We solicit the simplest token of God’s personal good will toward us - a telltale breeze on an otherwise still day, a dove flying right near our face, a roar of thunder that seems to say our name, or even a warm feeling embracing us from the inside out.  But God doesn’t act as we think God should.

We recognize our foolishness. We re-surrender to the God of grace.   We accept that we must simply place all on the altar and trust God to do what God knows is best for us.  We put our faith in God’s loving wisdom.  We confess our inability to know the mind of God or to control his hand.  We determine to be joyful and to rest in Him.  But God doesn’t act as we think God should.

Why?

Is the prayer of faith no longer effective?  Are the corporate prayers of believers ineffectual in moving heaven?  Are the ’good works’ of believers insufficiently weighty to move God in compassionate, earth-directed action?  Is the imminent loss of a loved one before he/she has come to faith of no meaningful concern to heaven? Has God given up caring about those who suffer on earth apart from a knowledge of God?  Has heaven abandoned earth?  Have we gone too far in sin to deserve a responsive deity? Are the biblical promises simply the well-wishes of a more superstitious era?  Is faith no longer effectual in moving God to work miracles?  Have we missed and thus unwittingly neglected to say some secret phrase in our prayers that - if known - would immediately open up the windows of heaven? 

What does it take to move heaven to act on our behalf?

What if heaven is acting.  What if heaven has anticipated every outcome of every moment in the life of every human being - and has a plan that will not fail?  What if God’s solutions are so ‘elegant’ that we simply miss them though false expectations derived out of literal, linear, and traditionally biased mis-readings of scripture? 

What if the paradox of the cross actually was the ’gospel’ for today?  What if we considered inhumane torture, cruel suffering, evil taunting, tragic losses, unfair judgments, untimely death, and even genocide - victories like the cross?  What if unanswered prayers - the seeming unresponsiveness of heaven - was, in actuality, divine action?  What if we are already victorious?  What if we got the proverbial ‘candy before the meal’, the ‘last chapter outcome before the beginning of the book was read’?  What if what appears as heaven’s inaction is actually earthly inattention?  What if God’s seeming inaction is simply an indication that everything designed for our eternal bliss is actually ‘going as planned’?  What if our view of life now is totally myopic and from the calmness of the eternal perspective God truly does faultlessly order that which he sees as best?

I’ve often wrestled with the observation that God’s ‘obvious’ interventions in our world are few and far apart.

Chapter one of Matthew’s gospel illustrates this point.  There is no evidence, and no reason to assume otherwise, for God ever speaking to Joseph prior to the event of Mary’s pregnancy.  Even then, God continued to allow Joseph to deal with his situation the best he could, to arrive at a conclusion, and then - only when Joseph is just about to act - does God intervene with a dream to direct him otherwise.

Why hadn’t God intervened earlier in Joseph’s life? Hadn’t there been many incidents in which the audible voice of God - declaring the ‘best’ choice - would have been helpful to Joseph?  Couldn’t earlier interventions have saved Joseph from many agonizing difficulties?  Why did he allow Joseph to wrestle with life issues on his own most of the time? Why did God intervene in this particular incident and not in all incidents in his (and in all our lives) - so that those who love God could always make the ‘right’ decision?

What if God’s plan is so relatively immune to whatever decisions man makes that he simply allows us our ways? What if God only intervenes when a decision would truly interfere with his divine and eternal plan?  If so, then, there are precious few decisions made by man that can alter God’s ultimate will.  

God may not like our decisions.  He knows that many of our decisions are not best for us.  But, in his overall purpose for human history, few decisions made by man require correction from Him.  God accomplishes his will.  He remains in control, despite our misguided conclusions to the contrary.  He accomplishes his will not only in the larger, historical sense, but also in our individual lives - despite our errors. 

Such is the power of God and the awesomeness of grace.

Grace assumes belonging before believing.

Thus, wouldn’t it make so much more sense to live out kingdom principles among those who don’t believe - accepting them as they are, where they are, gifting them with the experience of being loved before telling them why you love them?

When people think about kindness, patience, goodness, and peace shouldn’t they immediately think of their neighbor - you and me?  Wouldn’t the Spirit faithfully invite them to - at some point - as why we are so different?  Isn’t the best foundation of a disciple a Spirit-prompted search for God rather than an other-initiated telling about God?

Why are we so apt to zero in upon and unwittingly conclude that the various miracles accomplished by Jesus and his disciples should be expected today in response to a ‘true’ believers prayer of faith? 

Christians today can not and do not work miracles on demand - as did the apostles.  We try.  We pray.  We believe.  But life continues to happen as if a miracle working God doesn’t exist.  Yet the God of grace does exist - according to the testimony of the scriptures - and he loves us.  So what gives?  Is our faith so measureably less than the faith of the apostles?  No.  Has God forgotten us?  No.  Are we wrong about who God is or even if he exists at all?  No.   

Our desire for a miracle working God at our beck and call simply for being his faithful worshippers obstructs our understanding of the testimony of scripture.  We neglect the more abundant evidence, to the contrary, that far more of the circumstances faced by Jesus and his apostles were immune to prayers requesting alternative outcomes.    Miracles - at that time - merely confirmed God’s existence and power to accomplish his will.  God can and did work awesome miracles.  He established beyond doubt - for the first century church - his nature in both the life of his Son and in the power of his interventions.  Yet God also allowed his son and his apostles to suffer.  The key theme of the New Testament in not ‘expect a miracle’, but ‘persevere as the miraculous child of God’s grace whatever your circumstances’. 

That which God is trying to perfect in his people is not elicited through miracles that deliver us from suffering, but through the miracle of faith that born in the heart of a believer which bouys his/her spirit come whatever may.  Faith must not be linked to whether or not God acts as we believe he should, but upon God already having acted at the cross in the gift of his son. 

God certainly can intervene and - in our human minds - ought to be intervening in so many circumstances around the world.  But he does not.  Yet the question isn’t, ‘doesn’t God really care’, but ‘will we allow God to live through our lives despite our sufferings and losses?  For what purpose, we might ask?  Why does a loving God allow so many innocent people to suffer - old, young, male, female, rich and poor?  If he has the power to intervene and doesn’t, isn’t that evidence that he isn’t loving or that there really isn’t a God?  Good question.

The answer lies at the cross.  God is love.   God is grace.  Death, loss and/or abuse have no power over ones eternity.  Time, space and mortality have no meaning to God.  We cannot judge God by our frames of reference.  He asks us to judge him on the basis of his Son. 

“I have loved you with an everlasting love” - says all I need to know.  Come what may, let me never outlive my love for You.

Isn’t it rather naughty when a politician from one side of the mouth correctly condemns our rush to war in Iraq even though there was a lack of evidence for doing so, yet from the other side of the mouth declares ‘belief’ in the ‘theory’ of evolution - despite an equal paucity of evidence?

An observation:  It sometimes seems as if preachers unwittingly (intentionally?) use their congregations as a type of support group/cheerleader/sounding board as they wrestles through their own personal demons & calling. 

Do congregations learn more about the pastor’s spiritual journey than they do about God or do they learn more about God as they receive weekly installments of how He works in and through the life of their pastor?

One of the interesting things about preaching is that what is intended to be conveyed from the pulpit is often rather diversely interpreted in the pew.

What skills will emerging leaders need in the years to come?  Howard Gardner, in his recent book - Five Minds for the Future, elaborates on several essential cognitive abilities we will expect in tomorrows leaders.

The disciplinary mind-taking the time and making the effort to be proficient informationally and in the application of at least one profession.  Usually, writes Gardner, this takes about 10 years.  Real leaders aren’t lazy.  They are  disciplined lifelong students of their profession.  Yet, the disciplinary mind is not merely one that is chock full of facts about a particular field, rather it has learned to examine that field from a plurality of approaches. 

The synthesizing mind- we live in a age with an incredible amount of data.  Effective leaders need to be able to glean the essentials from diverse sources,  arranging it in some organized manner and then efficiently communicate it to others in a way that makes sense to them.  Our own ‘frame of mind’ will incline our synthesis preference - using story, a heuristic, aphorisms, metaphors and/or theories.  The proclivity to connect also involves pulling ‘experts’ from difference disciplines together to reach a commonly agreed upon goal - valuing multiperspectivalism.

The creating mind- an almost prophetic anticipation of and moving beyond what is known.   A penchant for re-imagining things, asking new questions, looking for the unexpected and/or novel approach, yet doing so out of a disciplinary and synthesizing mind - thereby avoiding pseudo creativity.

The respectful mind- all the above abilities fall short of true usefulness without a concrete love for and a valuing of diverse perspectives among different people groups.  This requires a humble acceptance of our own inability to see all that needs to be seen and the will to understand others on their own terms.  We are, by nature, prejudicial towards those who are different - yet that kind of thinking dooms the modern world. The respectful mind doesn’t merely ’kisses up and then kicks down’ - pseudo-respect.   There is a time to censure those who truly deserve it.

The ethical mind- the passion to think abstractly and consistently about each person’s responsibility toward the larger community - beginning at home.  It is the ability to closely examine and reflect upon ones own efforts to make sure that it can be put to constructive use and not merely earn an unscrupulous quick buck at the expense of others.  An ethical mind necessarily arises out of the respectful mind and lives out personal and professional core values in all places and times.

How well are our schools preparing students with this type of thinking?  How carefully are we looking for leaders who have developed these abilities?  What will the church lose by ignoring these ideas in the world we live today - and will live in tomorrow?  Gardner posits that the world has and continues to change rapidly.  The focus of education in the past cannot produce the kind of thinking (mind) that is needed in our time.  What are we willing to do to rightly prepare our young people for the challenges of tomorrow?

Though most of us cherish moments of quiet, even solitary time, we all strive to know that we are accepted someplace.  We need to know that we belong.  Yet, what does it mean to truly belong?  Could ones implicit notion of belonging serve as his/her most formidable obstacle in the search to belong?  Joe Myers book, The Search to Belong, challenges common church-think in this arena in ways that, if seriously considered, would alter many current teaching and praxis.

 

Meyers begins by exposing various myths of belonging.  First, lots of time spent together doesn’t guarantee belonging.  Second, commitment isn’t equivalent to feeling connected.  Third, having a common purpose and passion doesn’t automatically lead to a sense of belonging.  Fourth, extroverted people do not experience belonging more often than introverts.  Fifth, geographical proximity does not necessitate a sense of community. Sixth, joining a small group - though helpful for some - should never be promised as the only route to true belonging.

 

Meyers refers back to Edward Hall’s notion of proxemics, suggesting that belonging must actually be experienced multi-dimensionally - meaning that to fully and healthfully belong we need to develop the competencies of harmonious engagement in the public, social, personal as well as in intimate spaces.  Though the church often provides for all four spaces, it subtly weights one or two spaces as more important than others.

 

The church has always set itself to the task of defining who is neighbor - i.e. who should be invited to belong.  Interestingly, Jesus invited many to belong who were disallowed from the institutional church of his day, and are often excluded today as well.  He, curiously, permitted belonging in all four spaces.  In fact, Jesus never insisted that those he accepted in the public space make their way into a closer space in order to retain his acceptance. 

 

Meyers suggests that he church permit people to belong in the space(s) they find most comfortable rather than trying to compel them into a space they are not ready for.  Pushing for a closer space unwittingly distances people from community, the antithesis of our objective.  Our goal is to invite the stranger in without inferring that true belonging can only be found within the intimate zone.  All this, of course, requires re-thinking our rules for belonging.  Increasingly we hear that folks belong before they believe, yet we tend to herd them too quickly into inappropriate spaces.  Rather than valuing their belonging, we overvalue our cultural integrity. 

The sense of belonging is a rather subjective feeling.  This means that bi-directionality is not requisite to having a sense of belonging.  A person in the public space may desire anonymity, yet no longer think of himself as a stranger.  Another may feel like he belongs without others feeling the same way about that individual.  A sense of belonging is more apt to develop naturally, even spontaneously, in all four spaces when we facilitating a healthy environment or, better yet, when we mingle with them in their space - the third place - without prejudice.  Belonging isn’t derived through coercion, through a list of rules or even through education.  It emerges best out of a nurturing environment.  Caring for others is an invitation to the stranger to belong.  

Social belonging is the space where we can share snapshots of who we are, allowing us to be neighborly.  Personal space is where we feel safe to share private experiences, feelings, and thoughts.  Very few relationships are intimate - where we share the naked truth about ourselves without feeling ashamed. (Shame is the intimate self being shared in inappropriate, non-intimate spaces.)  Each space has its own set of competencies, meaning that adequacy in one arena does not guarantee an instinct for another. Nor, writes Meyers, should the four spaces be perceived as a linear progression wherein we meet the stranger in the public space and push him through social, personal then into the private space as the one and only arena of successful belonging.

 

No relationship survives in one space for its entire life.  We will find ourselves changing spaces through the different seasons of our life - most often unconsciously and even unexpectedly.  We not only change spaces, but often must trade spaces with someone else as needs change - for that season of life.  Additionally, the lines between these spaces are somewhat fluid with many relationships existing in the in-between.

 

Distress in relationships occur when we childishly assume that once formed they must always function within the same space.  Our false, culturally derived expectations for certain relationships, especially marital, set us up for needless agonizing. A marriage relationship, for example, cannot persistently operate in the intimate space without burning out.  A healthy marriage transitions regularly between spaces.  Healthy belonging within the intimate space of marriage requires competencies in supportive relationships in formed in alternative spaces. 

 

Myers challenges us to think about all the varied spaces we inhabit and then to reflect upon the rules we have created that define competent belonging within each space.  Rather than allowing all this to exist mindlessly, we can create more healthy environments through thoughtful assessment. 

Alan Hirsch begins his new book with a challenging question: why do some Christian movements grow so incredibly fast absent professional clergy, official leadership structures, central organization, and the ability to gather together in large group meetings?  And what should this observation mean to us today?  His answer is that they live out a radically different paradigm of ‘church’ - a missional-incarnational model, which he contends is the organic people movement Jesus initiated, rather than the hierarchical, religious, institutional model we have pursued during the last 17 hundred years.

This new paradigm of church cannot, in Hirsch’s opinion, be merely a tag-on to what already exists.  The system forces of church-as-usual disallow the co-existence of the emerging paradigm - when it is implemented as just another program to attract the younger generation. New wine has never performed well in old wineskins.  A revival of the movement Jesus gave life insists on change at the very core of today’s Christianity.  Our systems story must be re-imagined - i.e. the very basis for how we feel, think and behave.

Hirsch believes that the key to fulfilling God’s call to His church is based upon whether or not missional DNA is the basis of their re-creation in Christ.  In the current church paradigm, religious institutions hold the template for what church ought to look like.  Man is in control, measuring other men & women by their own interpretations of what is deemed sacred. Alternatively, when the Spirit dwells within a new born Christian, it is the God Himself who moves the individual, not a creed or institutional handbook.  Fear of heresy has compelled centuries of church leadership to usurp the role of guide from the Spirit, thus installing clones of a man-made religion throughout the world, rather than reproducing a Spirit-led movement built on mDNA.

The author presents six elegant features of a healthy Jesus Movement:

1. Jesus Is Lord - Everything having to do with life here on earth must be brought under the rule of God.  When we live out a dualistic notion of existence - i.e. separating sacred space where God is found from secular space where God is considered absent - we end up with operational polytheism.  God must rule in every aspect of life as the Alpha and Omega.  Christians must continually assess whether other gods are leading in their lives - the god of consumerism, of power, of popularity, of financial security, etc.  Be loyal to the One true God.

2. Disciple Making - Disciple making is one non-negotiable of any genuine expression of Christianity.  Today’s church has bought into the consumerism model which has unwittingly made 90% of our members passive spectators, thus - for all intents and purposes - pagans in sheep clothing.  Jesus must be embodied within us enabling each one of us to become the gospel to those around us 24/7 - as living love letters.  The notion that right ideas alone will transform people is erroneous.  Discipleship is about living out kingdom principles on a daily basis, as spiritual practitioners, among those we seek to disciple.

3. Missional-Incarnational Impulse - This is the practical, centrifugal, seed-spreading, de-churchifying, contextualizing, outworking of the missio Dei. There are four dimensions to this:  Presence - as God lives within us, we must be living in authentic relationship with others; Proximity - God, having brought us into various relationships, calls us to be regularly accessible to folks in the place where they live out their lives; Powerlessness - we live to serve with humility, not to rule or to pontificate; Proclamation - we are to invite others to follow Jesus. We are called, as the Christ incarnation archetypically exemplified, to exercise a genuine identification and affinity for all others.

4. Apostolic Environment - If we really want missional church, then we must have a missional leadership system to drive it. Apostolic ministry is a function, not an office; a calling and a gifting, not an earned DMin.  Biblically, this is not about having a charismatic personality, CEO acumen, or the appropriate denominational pedigree.  It is about having a persistent, Spirit-led influence that awakens the church to its true calling and identity.  Apostolic environments are enticingly visionary, persevering stubborn despite opposition, alliance building among those of similar convictions, consistent mentors of the next generation, and tireless in their efforts to restructure church structure so that it can remain a dynamic movement rather than a static institution.

5. Organic Systems - God is both beyond his creation as well as fully present in even the smallest subatomic particle.  Therein lies the basis of our confidence in organic systems - it is must always and entirely be seen as a God thing.  When the Spirit indwells a believer, that person can be confidently sent out without the need of hierarchical control.  Instead, the believer is networked with other believers while engaging in relationship building with non-believers. Movements are structure-lite and authority de-centralized because God is trusted to do as promised - to teach and guide each believer.  Some have labeled this liquid church, meaning it is more immediately adaptive and responsive to the surrounding context because it takes seriously being both in Christ as well as part of the body of Christ. Christ is the undisputed, trusted head.  Simultaneously we remain vitally and dependently connected to one another within the body.  As in nature, organic systems intentionally reproduce (not clone) so that they maximize diversity, which - contrary to the thinking of the hierarchical model - actually decreases vulnerability.

6. Communitas, Not Community - Could middle-class culture actually be contrary to authentic gospel values? If our culture is preoccupied with safety and security, for ourselves and particularly for our children; if we are obsessed with comfort and convenience and thus the penchant for consumerism - then the pejorative and proverbial bourgeois shoe probably fits.  How might this change? Hirsch posits that by leaving the context of security and entering the context of liminality (the initially disorienting arena at the margins of our expected community of comfort and safety) we are driven to develop bonds of communality - communitas - among others suffering similar life difficulties.  Throughout history liminality and communitas have been the more normative existence of God’s people when they were living at their spiritual best.  Against this is the tendency of all living systems toward equilibrium, with a concurrent loss of adaptability and diversity.  Stasis actually diminishes the possibility of survival because we become reluctant, even resistant, to change which is the one constant of life in this world.   The Spirit is wisely and continuously moving the church to the edge of chaos where we must take risks and creatively rethink every aspect of being in order to continue as kingdom people.  

I wholeheartedly invite you all to raid your piggy-banks in order to purchase this book.  Alan is the co-author of The Shaping of Things to Come.