It was reading the blog of Franklin Pyles, President of the Christian & Missionary Alliance in Canada, that prompted not only a response to his blog but the motivation to finish setting up this blog,
So now, as one of the first posts to my blog, let me jump from some thoughts in Franklin’s post, “A Tipping Point for Christianity,” (http://rebirthingsimpsonsvision.blogspot.com/) where he stated: “The program church has many advantages, but one of its disadvantages is that it totally absorbs the life of its key workers leaving little time or energy for them to coach or play kids sports, to sit on school councils, or to join in meaningful community activities. Thus, those who could be connectors are unplugged from the wider populace.”
Now I don’t dispute that balanced statement or the many other statements Franklin made in his blog. However the reality is for a lot of folk in most of our evangelical churches, that even if our churches were structured so that the average person in our congregations had time to be more involved in the lives of our sparsely churched neighbours and join with the people of our city in meaningful community activities, we have unfortunately discipled many in such a way, so as to strip them of the ability to truly enter into the lives of those apart from Christ. Our interpretations of holiness and separation even in these less legalistic days, still makes it hard for most of us to give ourselves permission to party, dance and just enjoy average everyday people. The old adage, “we don’t drink, dance, smoke or chew or go around with girls that do,” still holds a grip on us, more than we care to admit.
Living incarnational lives, being Jesus to the people of our city and world is met head on by a code of personal holiness that somehow has come to exclude normal interactions with our neighbours. (Hugh Halter & Matt Smay make this point well in their book, “The Tangible Kingdom.”)
And it’s so opposite to the way of Jesus. Think of how many folk we know who would be so uncomfortable to attend the kind of event where Jesus conducted his inaugural miracle, where Jesus turned water into wine. Why the miracle? Because they had already, imagine this, finished all the wine far earlier than the hosts had anticipated. Why did Jesus chose to turn water into wine at a party where in all likelihood, if you’re at all honest with the context, some had already had a bit too much? Why is this his inaugural miracle? I suspect it’s very intentional.
So while it’s easy to point the finger at how structure and programs rob us of time needed to interact with average non-church attending Canadians, we really have a much deeper systemic problem that needs to be addressed long before making church “simpler,” will have any kingdom impact.
The family of churches Redwood is a part of, the Christian & Missionary Alliance, are a part of what historically has been called the holiness movement. My hunch is, we really need to wrestle far more deeply with what true holiness is all about. Perhaps we would do well to learn and teach more intentionally that holiness is more about who we become and what we can do instead of defining holiness as those things we don’t do. It’s not that holiness doesn’t bring limitations, it’s that holiness is so much more than that, and so often the limitations we list may not be consistent with the way of Jesus.
Further I would think after looking more closely at Jesus in the Gospels, that what holiness looks like more than anything else is love and that true holiness expresses itself by loving God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength and loving our neighbour as ourselves.
I suspect if we could learn to be holy even as Jesus was holy, if we would look and act and hang out in culture a lot more like Jesus, then program church versus non-program church, versus sticky church, versus creating a plausibility context and so on would really become non-issues.
Maybe I’m too simplistic, but I suspect that if those of us who follow Christ would just start to look and love a little more like Christ, and if our churches began to act a bit more like how we see Jesus in the Gospels, we would see spiritual transformation sweep across our cities, regions and nation and beyond.
