Understanding, using, and interpreting the Bible is going to be one of the big issues of the emerging church in the coming decades. This is a short piece I wrote as a letter to the editor of 'Missionary Church Today.' The letter was later published on the denominational website.
The topic of the recent edition of Missionary Church Today that dealt with biblical authority and especially the doctrine of inerrancy was of special interest to me. This is a crucial issue for those of us involved in cross-cultural ministry. In the decade I spent doing church planting among Palestinians, I noticed that Muslims have a very rigid and mechanical understanding of written revelation. Over the last five years I have lived with postmodern Europeans – a group much more difficult to reach than Muslims – and I have had to deal with the predominant view that truth is relative. The nature of divine revelation is a topic that must be addressed at both the theological and missiological level. It is good to see the Missionary Church tackling such subjects in its publication.
I share the concern of some of the contributors that students entering into seminary or Christian colleges have a low repository of biblical knowledge. However, the greater concern that I have is that students leaving these institutions are still unable to use the Bible as a tool for the kingdom. They may be able to teach the scriptures, but they often do so in such a way that merely targets the mind rather than transforming the heart. At worst, I have witnessed some with a high view of scripture use it as a tool to manipulate, control, or even wound others. The negative fallout I have seen from this has led me to believe that teaching inerrancy is secondary to teaching future ministers to use God’s word in the ways He intended. I do not believe that holding to a strict doctrine of inerrancy protects from spiritual deadness. Biblical malpractice not only results from teaching false doctrine, but also from neglecting to minister the truth in redemptive ways that respect the humanity of others.
The problem with the doctrine of inerrancy as it is currently taught in fundamentalist circles is that it appeals to the same methods and criteria that the liberals use to reject inerrancy.[i] Both evangelical fundamentalism and Protestant liberalism are often grounded in the worldview of Modernity and Enlightment thinking, at least in regards to biblical authority. Both appeal to human reason in support of their conclusions. The liberals may mockingly ask, “Do you really believe that a big fish swallowed some guy and then spit him out three days later?” The fundamentalists will quote urban legends about people who have been swallowed by fish only to be spit out alive and well (though partially digested!) as support that the story of Jonah is scientifically viable.[ii] Both appeal to rationalism to bolster their position. But rather than trying to defend the scriptures on the shaky grounds of Modernity, I would submit that the scriptures will prove themselves infallible when used as they were intended. So what factors should shape our approach and use of the scriptures? I suggest three.
First, our understanding of the scriptures must be within the context of our spirituality. The Fathers of the Eastern Church rightly emphasize that theologians are made in the prayer closet rather than the study. More in keeping with our own tradition, the Continental Pietists recognized that the ultimate goal of Bible study is spiritual formation.[iii] Unfortunately, few Bible colleges or seminaries offer courses on spirituality, though that is the main business of the church and the purpose of biblical revelation. The Bible must be studied from the heart and minister to the heart, and we must keep in mind that the goal is to cultivate a relationship with God.
Second, the Bible must be studied in the context of community. Most of the Bible was addressed to the people of God as community. Even those few books that were written to individuals quickly became community property. The nature of biblical revelation itself is that it is the record of God’s acts in history among His people. Interacting with the truth, therefore, needs to be a community activity. The tendency of fundamentalists has always been to separate themselves off from others in the effort to remain doctrinally and morally pure, but this puts them in the danger of living with serious biblical blind spots. We must not be like the unwise steward of Matthew 25 whose fear caused him to cut himself off from others and hide his resources. Defensive cultural walls will not protect us from compromise. Rather, it is passionate love for Jesus and his truth that will keep us on the straight and narrow (Psalm 119:165). Pastors, missionaries, and theologians must not only be able to debate issues of biblical importance in a public forum, but they must also be able to sit down with those on the other side of the fence to drink coffee and talk about their children. Do our seminaries teach future leaders how to do this? Do our denominations encourage this? Do we create room for spiritual growth and doctrinal development among our people, or do we foster a defensive or confrontational posture aimed at protecting our particular worldview?
Third, the Bible must always be understood in the context of mission. It is a tool of the Holy Spirit to facilitate God’s redemptive work in the world. The Bible must always be interpreted “on the move” as we seek to engage the world and be the people of God in the world. For example, we must be able to think about theological anthropology in the context of stem cell research and human sexuality. These are not merely academic or political issues, but issues pastors are going to face with real people who find themselves in real messes. Brian MacLaren likens this type of biblical exegesis to riding a bicycle. If you are standing still you will fall over. In order to balance correctly, you must be moving. Occasionally you will lean to the left, and occasionally to the right, but you must always be in motion.[iv] As scripture itself testifies, the purpose of God’s word is to make the man of God complete for every good work. The Bible must be interpreted in the context of promoting “good works” in the real world.
Latin American missiologist Samuel Escobar says that postmoderns will not be convinced of the Christian faith by our apologetics or morality. Rather, it is our spirituality and community that will demonstrate to them the reality of biblical truth.[v] Our focus as Christian leaders must not be merely to defend the Bible against its critics, but to study, believe, and obey the Bible as God’s tool for spiritual, communal, and missional formation. Unfortunately, while graduates of Bible colleges and seminaries have greatly improved their biblical knowledge, many are still not prepared to utilize the Bible for the kingdom purposes for which it was intended.
[i] I am indebted to Leslie Newbigin’s Proper Confidence: Faith, Doubt, and Certainty in Christian Discipleship (Grand Rapids: Eerdmann’s Publishing Company, 1995) for stimulating my thinking on this.
[ii] “Making History: The Modern Jonah,” Beyond the Broadcast: BBC Radio 4 (http://www.bbc.co.uk/education/beyond/factsheets/makhist_prog6d.shtml); and Edward B. Davis, “A Whale of a Tale: Fundamentalist Fish Stories,” Perspectives on Science and the Christian Faith 43:224-237 (1991), http://www.asa3.org/asa/PSCF/1991/PSCF12-91Davis.html.ori
[iii] Stanley Grenz, Revisioning Evangelical Theology: A Fresh Agenda for the 21st Century (Downer’s Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1993), 112.
[iv] Brian MacLaren, A Generous Orthodoxy (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2004), 163.
[v] Samuel Escobar “The Global Scenario at the Turn of the Century,” Global Missiology for the 21st Century: The Iguassa Dialogue, ed. William Taylor (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 2000), 45.
Friday, April 14, 2006
Tuesday, April 11, 2006
Levi's House - A Metaphor for Postmodern Missions
I Don’t Care
Everyone is so full of s--t
Born and raised by hypocrites
Hearts recycled, but never saved
From the cradle to the grave
We are the kids of war and peace
From Anaheim to the Middle East
We are the stories and disciples
Of the Jesus of suburbia
Land of make believe
And it don’t believe in me
And I don’t care!
Green Day, from the song ‘I Don’t Care’ on the American Idiot album, 2004.
Part 1: Tales of Another Broken Home[1]
To run, to run away to find what to believe
And I leave behind this hurricane of f---ing lies
I lost my faith to this, this town that don’t exist[2]
‘I could never follow Jesus in your church.’
The comment took me by surprise. George, a Top 40 radio DJ in the city where I live, had been on a spiritual search for a few years. After requesting the address of my denomination’s webpage, he had spent some time exploring it. I might have expected him to say that he didn’t agree with the theology, but the admission that he did not think he could be a follower of Jesus as part of my denomination made me curious, so I probed him a bit further.
‘They seem to know exactly what they believe. I didn’t see much room to grow or explore. For me, following Jesus is a process. I’ve already changed a lot, and I know I will change some more. But everything is black and white for them. They also have pretty clear political stands that are different from mine. But I guess the world needs people who are certain about what they believe. I’m just not one of them.’
Though Georgewas trying to be polite, I could hear his postmodern tendencies loud and clear: suspicion of theological certainty,[3] a relational and experiential rather than cognitive approach to spirituality,[4] and – while longing to be a part of a community – feeling alien to institutional religion.[5] The impression he received from the webpage was that this was not a community of people who invited others to join them on a spiritual journey. Rather, it was a group that clearly defines and distinguishes between who is in and who is out, and George was clearly ‘out.’ The sense I got was not that George rejected the my church, but that he believed they would reject him.
A few weeks later I was drinking coffee with Dave, a college student preparing for full-time cross cultural ministry. Since he had grown up in a denominational church I asked if he was planning to serve with their mission agency. ‘I don’t think so,’ he answered. ‘Too controlling.’
I didn’t pursue the conversation further, but I recognized that while George was the type of postmodern European that mission agencies hoped to reach with the gospel and Dave was the type of postmodern American that they hoped to facilitate in mission, neither saw their future in the institutional church for much the same reasons. It dawned on me that the cultures mission agencies needed to cross were not only east and west or north and south, but modern and postmodern. Though not necessarily wrong, the strategies, structures, leadership styles and objectives of most contemporary agencies all reflect the modern worldview in which the organizations were birthed.[6] Such organizations value administration, a technical approach to church growth, and universality in regards to mission management, strategy, and theology. My thesis is that effective mobilization of and witness to westerners influenced by postmodernity requires mission and church leadership to create space for mission as the outgrowth of authentic, Christian community in a postmodern context and not merely the function of an organization.
But I make this proviso: while I suggest a modest attempt to suggest characteristics of mission agencies in a postmodern context, the goal is not merely to replace modern agencies with postmodern ones, but to make disciples of Jesus in a postmodern world. If there is any ‘replacing’ that must be done, it is the replacing of man-made projects with Spirit-born ministries (Galatians 5:16). It is God – not postmodernism – that must lead us into the future. 2 Timothy 2:4 is an appropriate word for those of us who would seek to be ambassadors of reconciliation in the west: ‘No one engaged in warfare entangles himself with the affairs of this life, that he may please him who enlisted him as a soldier.’
As Green Day laments throughout their album ‘American Idiot,’ modernity is a broken home that leaves us distrustful, fragmented, and cynical. They speak for a world in crisis. Postmodernity is simply the anguished admission that modernity doesn’t work. Into this situation comes Jesus who offers us an alternative way of living that may provide a meaningful metaphor for contemporary mission agencies. The model of mission that Jesus gives us is not one of co-workers in a board room, but friends at a dinner table. It is to this dinner table and the Guest of Honor that we look for cues into the missio Dei – mission of God – and what it means to be a missional church rather than merely a church with a missions program.[7]
‘Now it happened, as He [Jesus] was dining in Levi’s house, that many tax collectors and sinners also sat together with Jesus and His disciples; for there were many, and they followed Him.’ Mark 2:15
Part 2: Jesus of Suburbia
Jesus filling out paperwork now
At the facility on East 12th Street
He’s not listening to a word now
He’s in his own world and he’s daydreaming
He’d rather be doing something else now
Like cigarettes and coffee with the underbelly
His life on the line with anxiety now[8]
Green Day paints a portrait of Jesus that is unexpected at best. Some may even call it blasphemous. But as they sing elsewhere, ‘The Jesus of suburbia is a lie.’[9] It isn’t really Jesus that Green Day and all those they speak for are rejecting. In fact, they imply that Jesus himself is frustrated with the bureaucracies, systems, and empty promises of modernity and its religious institutions. They are rejecting the modern worldview that promised – but failed to deliver – meaningful answers to the questions of life through organized religion, science, technology, economics, and politics. But as Middleton and Walsh point out, ‘Modernity is in radical decline. Its legitimating myths are no longer believed with any conviction.’[10] The religious themes throughout the ‘American Idiot’ album reflect their belief that religion merely supports the lies of modernity. Rather than providing an alternate way of living under the reign of God, postmoderns believe that organized (suburban) Christianity has become the High Priest of modernity. Have the values of modernity infiltrated mission organizations and churches, and will these values hinder the Church in reaching and facilitating postmodern people? I will address these questions by looking at three characteristics of modernity – institutionalism, rational empiricism, and universalism, how they are evident within contemporary mission agencies, and the response of postmodern people to them.
Institutionalism
One of the first pillars of modernity is the concept of the ‘autonomous self.’ Modernity has sought ‘a new basis for individual identity as the key to increasing personal freedom.’[11] ‘Humans are independent, self-reliant, self-centering and self-integrating rational subjects.’[12] Modernity rejects tradition, revelation, and group identity as a basis for ordering the life of the individual. Individuals live together by entering into social contracts where choices are made to enter into temporary relationships that fulfill personal self-interests. These social contracts give birth to voluntary institutions that exist to achieve certain goals that will enhance the individual. Under modernity, churches and mission agencies have become such institutions. Because self-interest is the basis of these institutions, they merely exhibit cooperation and not real community. Within this context, postmoderns have come to see institutions and their leaders as self-serving. Concerning his frustration at not being able to find a mission agency to serve with, one college student wrote, ‘I felt like I could not sign up to such an organization that I felt might suck me dry and leave me for dead. It’s difficult but I find it hard to commit to people who I don’t feel are committed to me.’[13]
Rather than reflecting the biblical metaphors used to describe the Church (body, family, etc.), mission agencies have become voluntary associations of ‘anonymous social relations.’[14] This is especially true in the hierarchical nature of leadership characteristic of modern institutions that does not emerge from or function as a part of a missional community.
Institutions are not wrong. Institutionalism is. Structure and organization are a natural and necessary part of community. But in institutionalism they replace community. A mission agency can be a tool to help a community of believers participate in the missio Dei, but as an institution it does not do mission on behalf of the community, and it should not exist apart from a community. Postmodern Christians want to be involved in missions, but they are (rightly) more interested in being a part of a missional community than a missions institution. They don’t want to be used, but they want to participate.
Rational Empericism
Rational empiricists believe that ‘truth exists only as it can be observed and described.’[15] Modern cultures influenced by this type of worldview seek scientific, technological, or logical solutions to problem solving. This approach to life starts with the rational individual rather than the revelation of God,[16] and seeks to establish a ‘rational, objective, predictable, and manageable character of life.’[17] This value of modernity manifests itself in modern mission organizations in many ways from administrative systems to effectively manage missionary personnel to an emphasis on strategic technique. Regarding the impact of rational empiricism on evangelism, Shenk writes, ‘The gospel could be reduced to information that was to be conveyed in what was perceived to be the most efficient way possible. The key problem to be solved was to find the right methods and techniques and to organize a campaign, crusade, or drive. This put a premium on program rather than the formation of a community of disciples.’[18] (Emphasis mine.)
The empirical approach to mission is best seen in the Church Growth Movement. While the Church Growth Movement had much to do with the refocusing of the Church on missions, Gailyn Van Rheenen suggests that a dangerous syncretism has taken place. He writes,
Practitioners succumbed unintentionally to the humanistic suppositions of the Modern Era. Assuming that they could chart their way to success by their ingenuity and creativity, Church Growth practitioners focused on what humans do in missions rather than on what God is doing. (Emphasis in the original.) They saw the missional task as setting goals, developing appropriate methodologies, and evaluating what does or does not work rather than seeking God's will based upon biblical and theological reflection. Their thinking segmented the gospel and practice, the human and divine into two compartmentalized worlds, and practice was developed on the basis of “what works” rather than the will and essence of God. Christian leaders placed more emphasis on developing effective strategy than forming communities shaped in the image of God. (Emphasis mine.) Although they advocated faithfulness to God, the system they proposed was based on human intelligence and ingenuity. [19]
Postmoderns are ready to go beyond merely rethinking church growth strategy. They see the current crisis in theological and spiritual terms, they want to explore once again what it means to be the Church, and they long to reconnect with God in mission.
Universalism
By ‘universalism’ I am not referring to the theological position by that name. Rather, I am referring to the belief in universal, comprehensive and objective systems – whether they are theological systems, strategic initiatives, or management theories. A key facet of postmodern thought is the rejection of universal stories (called metanarratives) that give meaning or legitimacy to reality. At best, postmoderns claim that such universal stories simply do not exist. At worst, they claim that they are totalitarian and repressive. Middleton and Walsh write, ‘To the postmodern mind, metanarratives are mere human constructs, fictive devices through which we impose an order on history and make it subject to us (hence they may be termed “master” narratives).’[20] Epistemologically, this results in a rejection of absolute truth and a belief in pluralism: that there is no official belief system that can serve as the touchstone for all other belief systems.[21] All religions and worldviews share equal legitimacy.
Postmoderns view the world in a markedly different way than their modern predecessors. Newtonian physics have shaped the thinking of modern people ‘to accept hierarchy, certainty, cause-and-effect relationships, either-or thinking, and a universe that works as a machine – in short, mechanistic thinking.’[22] In contrast to this, postmoderns see a world that is ‘composed of energy that is patterned and spontaneous, the certainty of uncertainty, “both/and” thinking, and the connectedness of everything.’[23] Jane Vella submits that this is radically changing the way we view education, and I would argue that similar factors apply to contemporary mission agencies. Modern mission agencies operate on the assumption that they must understand and control all the variables to ensure order and progress.[24] Detailed policy manuals create virtual ‘mission compounds’ where missionaries’ lives are closely regulated and controlled in the interest of stability, equality, and accountability. But an alternative model that recognizes the local and contextual factors is provided by quantum physics. This type of organization recognizes the interrelatedness of the various people, divisions, and ministries within an organization. Nothing develops alone.[25] It encourages ‘both/and’ thinking in the context of dialogue. It is comfortable with uncertainty and ambiguity and invites participation in developing localized structures. Such a participatory environment creates energy and momentum – especially among postmoderns – that enable them to be more effective in missions.[26]
Postmodern Christians are suspicious of mission policies or strategies that are applied on a global scale. Leonard Sweet says that ‘postmodern culture is a choice culture.’[27] Kenzo Mabiala states that ‘postmodernity’s ethos wage war on totality and the hegemony of any single perspective, while encouraging and celebrating the regional, the local, the particular.’[28] Postmoderns react negatively to global mission policies and structures not only on the grounds that they are ineffective for ministry, but that they are oppressive, totalitarian, and dehumanizing. Such policies are designed to protect the institution rather than the missionaries and the mission. For postmodern Christians, this is not merely management theory. It is moral leadership.
Mission agencies that rigidly regulate the lives, behavior, and strategies of their missionaries are communicating that they trust the institution more than the missionary. Given the postmodern distrust of institutions, this is not management culture that will reach or facilitate postmoderns. In addition, such agencies are indicating their belief that it is the institution that engages in mission rather than the people.
Part 3: Wake Me Up When September Ends
Summer has come and passed
The innocent can never last
Wake me up when September ends[29]
Douglas John Hall poignantly describes the context the contemporary Church finds itself in: ‘The extremity within which the disciple community in North America finds itself today is not only the end of an age, it is also the end of a long and deeply entrenched form of church.’[30] September has ended, and it is time to wake up. As western culture transitions from modernity to postmodernity, the Church is also transitioning from the center to the margins of society. These changes demand a new way of thinking, but no more so than in the area of leadership. In this final section, I will attempt to describe missional rather than administrative leadership in a denominational mission agency.
Biblical Models for Organizational Leadership in a Postmodern Era
Prophet
‘Missional leadership is shaped by the revelation of Jesus Christ.’[31] The actions of a missional leaders are not shaped by organizational development theory as much as they are shaped by ‘a spirituality that lives in close relationship with and reliance on the directions of the Father through the Spirit.’[32] The prophetic leader brings the organization in line with the missio Dei and points the community toward dependency on God. He or she is able to discern what God is doing and point the community toward practical participation in God’s mission. This is primarily spiritual work.
Apostle
The title apostle refers to ‘one who is sent.’ Apostolic leaders are defined by their mission. More than ever, contemporary mission agencies are in need of leaders who are on a mission themselves. They do evangelism, they engage cultures, they are the tip of the arrow as it is shot into the dark corners of the earth. In the current model, mission agency leaders service and manage the missionaries and the donors. In the missional model, agency ‘leaders themselves must … become noviate[s], embark on a missional apprenticeship, in order to give the kind of direction needed by the emerging missional community.’[33]
Environmentalist
In addition to calling believers to participate in the missio Dei (prophet) and leading the way (apostle), agency leaders must encourage the organization to become a covenant community rather than merely an institution. They cannot create such a community, but they can create an environment where such a community may be birthed by God. Guder suggests three ways a leader may help the people become a covenant community. Rather than focusing on administration, policies, and funding, top level leaders would be cultivating community by introducing spiritual disciplines, educational disciplines, and missional disciplines which they themselves participate in.[34] Administration would exist on the peripheral.
Differences Between Modern and Postmodern Leadership
While the biblical models provide the basis for leadership in a missional community, postmodernity itself demands a style of leadership that is distinct from the leadership in a modern organization. The following chart compares modern forms of leadership with a biblically informed postmodern leadership style.[35]
Modern mission organizations had leaders who …
Everyone is so full of s--t
Born and raised by hypocrites
Hearts recycled, but never saved
From the cradle to the grave
We are the kids of war and peace
From Anaheim to the Middle East
We are the stories and disciples
Of the Jesus of suburbia
Land of make believe
And it don’t believe in me
And I don’t care!
Green Day, from the song ‘I Don’t Care’ on the American Idiot album, 2004.
Part 1: Tales of Another Broken Home[1]
To run, to run away to find what to believe
And I leave behind this hurricane of f---ing lies
I lost my faith to this, this town that don’t exist[2]
‘I could never follow Jesus in your church.’
The comment took me by surprise. George, a Top 40 radio DJ in the city where I live, had been on a spiritual search for a few years. After requesting the address of my denomination’s webpage, he had spent some time exploring it. I might have expected him to say that he didn’t agree with the theology, but the admission that he did not think he could be a follower of Jesus as part of my denomination made me curious, so I probed him a bit further.
‘They seem to know exactly what they believe. I didn’t see much room to grow or explore. For me, following Jesus is a process. I’ve already changed a lot, and I know I will change some more. But everything is black and white for them. They also have pretty clear political stands that are different from mine. But I guess the world needs people who are certain about what they believe. I’m just not one of them.’
Though Georgewas trying to be polite, I could hear his postmodern tendencies loud and clear: suspicion of theological certainty,[3] a relational and experiential rather than cognitive approach to spirituality,[4] and – while longing to be a part of a community – feeling alien to institutional religion.[5] The impression he received from the webpage was that this was not a community of people who invited others to join them on a spiritual journey. Rather, it was a group that clearly defines and distinguishes between who is in and who is out, and George was clearly ‘out.’ The sense I got was not that George rejected the my church, but that he believed they would reject him.
A few weeks later I was drinking coffee with Dave, a college student preparing for full-time cross cultural ministry. Since he had grown up in a denominational church I asked if he was planning to serve with their mission agency. ‘I don’t think so,’ he answered. ‘Too controlling.’
I didn’t pursue the conversation further, but I recognized that while George was the type of postmodern European that mission agencies hoped to reach with the gospel and Dave was the type of postmodern American that they hoped to facilitate in mission, neither saw their future in the institutional church for much the same reasons. It dawned on me that the cultures mission agencies needed to cross were not only east and west or north and south, but modern and postmodern. Though not necessarily wrong, the strategies, structures, leadership styles and objectives of most contemporary agencies all reflect the modern worldview in which the organizations were birthed.[6] Such organizations value administration, a technical approach to church growth, and universality in regards to mission management, strategy, and theology. My thesis is that effective mobilization of and witness to westerners influenced by postmodernity requires mission and church leadership to create space for mission as the outgrowth of authentic, Christian community in a postmodern context and not merely the function of an organization.
But I make this proviso: while I suggest a modest attempt to suggest characteristics of mission agencies in a postmodern context, the goal is not merely to replace modern agencies with postmodern ones, but to make disciples of Jesus in a postmodern world. If there is any ‘replacing’ that must be done, it is the replacing of man-made projects with Spirit-born ministries (Galatians 5:16). It is God – not postmodernism – that must lead us into the future. 2 Timothy 2:4 is an appropriate word for those of us who would seek to be ambassadors of reconciliation in the west: ‘No one engaged in warfare entangles himself with the affairs of this life, that he may please him who enlisted him as a soldier.’
As Green Day laments throughout their album ‘American Idiot,’ modernity is a broken home that leaves us distrustful, fragmented, and cynical. They speak for a world in crisis. Postmodernity is simply the anguished admission that modernity doesn’t work. Into this situation comes Jesus who offers us an alternative way of living that may provide a meaningful metaphor for contemporary mission agencies. The model of mission that Jesus gives us is not one of co-workers in a board room, but friends at a dinner table. It is to this dinner table and the Guest of Honor that we look for cues into the missio Dei – mission of God – and what it means to be a missional church rather than merely a church with a missions program.[7]
‘Now it happened, as He [Jesus] was dining in Levi’s house, that many tax collectors and sinners also sat together with Jesus and His disciples; for there were many, and they followed Him.’ Mark 2:15
Part 2: Jesus of Suburbia
Jesus filling out paperwork now
At the facility on East 12th Street
He’s not listening to a word now
He’s in his own world and he’s daydreaming
He’d rather be doing something else now
Like cigarettes and coffee with the underbelly
His life on the line with anxiety now[8]
Green Day paints a portrait of Jesus that is unexpected at best. Some may even call it blasphemous. But as they sing elsewhere, ‘The Jesus of suburbia is a lie.’[9] It isn’t really Jesus that Green Day and all those they speak for are rejecting. In fact, they imply that Jesus himself is frustrated with the bureaucracies, systems, and empty promises of modernity and its religious institutions. They are rejecting the modern worldview that promised – but failed to deliver – meaningful answers to the questions of life through organized religion, science, technology, economics, and politics. But as Middleton and Walsh point out, ‘Modernity is in radical decline. Its legitimating myths are no longer believed with any conviction.’[10] The religious themes throughout the ‘American Idiot’ album reflect their belief that religion merely supports the lies of modernity. Rather than providing an alternate way of living under the reign of God, postmoderns believe that organized (suburban) Christianity has become the High Priest of modernity. Have the values of modernity infiltrated mission organizations and churches, and will these values hinder the Church in reaching and facilitating postmodern people? I will address these questions by looking at three characteristics of modernity – institutionalism, rational empiricism, and universalism, how they are evident within contemporary mission agencies, and the response of postmodern people to them.
Institutionalism
One of the first pillars of modernity is the concept of the ‘autonomous self.’ Modernity has sought ‘a new basis for individual identity as the key to increasing personal freedom.’[11] ‘Humans are independent, self-reliant, self-centering and self-integrating rational subjects.’[12] Modernity rejects tradition, revelation, and group identity as a basis for ordering the life of the individual. Individuals live together by entering into social contracts where choices are made to enter into temporary relationships that fulfill personal self-interests. These social contracts give birth to voluntary institutions that exist to achieve certain goals that will enhance the individual. Under modernity, churches and mission agencies have become such institutions. Because self-interest is the basis of these institutions, they merely exhibit cooperation and not real community. Within this context, postmoderns have come to see institutions and their leaders as self-serving. Concerning his frustration at not being able to find a mission agency to serve with, one college student wrote, ‘I felt like I could not sign up to such an organization that I felt might suck me dry and leave me for dead. It’s difficult but I find it hard to commit to people who I don’t feel are committed to me.’[13]
Rather than reflecting the biblical metaphors used to describe the Church (body, family, etc.), mission agencies have become voluntary associations of ‘anonymous social relations.’[14] This is especially true in the hierarchical nature of leadership characteristic of modern institutions that does not emerge from or function as a part of a missional community.
Institutions are not wrong. Institutionalism is. Structure and organization are a natural and necessary part of community. But in institutionalism they replace community. A mission agency can be a tool to help a community of believers participate in the missio Dei, but as an institution it does not do mission on behalf of the community, and it should not exist apart from a community. Postmodern Christians want to be involved in missions, but they are (rightly) more interested in being a part of a missional community than a missions institution. They don’t want to be used, but they want to participate.
Rational Empericism
Rational empiricists believe that ‘truth exists only as it can be observed and described.’[15] Modern cultures influenced by this type of worldview seek scientific, technological, or logical solutions to problem solving. This approach to life starts with the rational individual rather than the revelation of God,[16] and seeks to establish a ‘rational, objective, predictable, and manageable character of life.’[17] This value of modernity manifests itself in modern mission organizations in many ways from administrative systems to effectively manage missionary personnel to an emphasis on strategic technique. Regarding the impact of rational empiricism on evangelism, Shenk writes, ‘The gospel could be reduced to information that was to be conveyed in what was perceived to be the most efficient way possible. The key problem to be solved was to find the right methods and techniques and to organize a campaign, crusade, or drive. This put a premium on program rather than the formation of a community of disciples.’[18] (Emphasis mine.)
The empirical approach to mission is best seen in the Church Growth Movement. While the Church Growth Movement had much to do with the refocusing of the Church on missions, Gailyn Van Rheenen suggests that a dangerous syncretism has taken place. He writes,
Practitioners succumbed unintentionally to the humanistic suppositions of the Modern Era. Assuming that they could chart their way to success by their ingenuity and creativity, Church Growth practitioners focused on what humans do in missions rather than on what God is doing. (Emphasis in the original.) They saw the missional task as setting goals, developing appropriate methodologies, and evaluating what does or does not work rather than seeking God's will based upon biblical and theological reflection. Their thinking segmented the gospel and practice, the human and divine into two compartmentalized worlds, and practice was developed on the basis of “what works” rather than the will and essence of God. Christian leaders placed more emphasis on developing effective strategy than forming communities shaped in the image of God. (Emphasis mine.) Although they advocated faithfulness to God, the system they proposed was based on human intelligence and ingenuity. [19]
Postmoderns are ready to go beyond merely rethinking church growth strategy. They see the current crisis in theological and spiritual terms, they want to explore once again what it means to be the Church, and they long to reconnect with God in mission.
Universalism
By ‘universalism’ I am not referring to the theological position by that name. Rather, I am referring to the belief in universal, comprehensive and objective systems – whether they are theological systems, strategic initiatives, or management theories. A key facet of postmodern thought is the rejection of universal stories (called metanarratives) that give meaning or legitimacy to reality. At best, postmoderns claim that such universal stories simply do not exist. At worst, they claim that they are totalitarian and repressive. Middleton and Walsh write, ‘To the postmodern mind, metanarratives are mere human constructs, fictive devices through which we impose an order on history and make it subject to us (hence they may be termed “master” narratives).’[20] Epistemologically, this results in a rejection of absolute truth and a belief in pluralism: that there is no official belief system that can serve as the touchstone for all other belief systems.[21] All religions and worldviews share equal legitimacy.
Postmoderns view the world in a markedly different way than their modern predecessors. Newtonian physics have shaped the thinking of modern people ‘to accept hierarchy, certainty, cause-and-effect relationships, either-or thinking, and a universe that works as a machine – in short, mechanistic thinking.’[22] In contrast to this, postmoderns see a world that is ‘composed of energy that is patterned and spontaneous, the certainty of uncertainty, “both/and” thinking, and the connectedness of everything.’[23] Jane Vella submits that this is radically changing the way we view education, and I would argue that similar factors apply to contemporary mission agencies. Modern mission agencies operate on the assumption that they must understand and control all the variables to ensure order and progress.[24] Detailed policy manuals create virtual ‘mission compounds’ where missionaries’ lives are closely regulated and controlled in the interest of stability, equality, and accountability. But an alternative model that recognizes the local and contextual factors is provided by quantum physics. This type of organization recognizes the interrelatedness of the various people, divisions, and ministries within an organization. Nothing develops alone.[25] It encourages ‘both/and’ thinking in the context of dialogue. It is comfortable with uncertainty and ambiguity and invites participation in developing localized structures. Such a participatory environment creates energy and momentum – especially among postmoderns – that enable them to be more effective in missions.[26]
Postmodern Christians are suspicious of mission policies or strategies that are applied on a global scale. Leonard Sweet says that ‘postmodern culture is a choice culture.’[27] Kenzo Mabiala states that ‘postmodernity’s ethos wage war on totality and the hegemony of any single perspective, while encouraging and celebrating the regional, the local, the particular.’[28] Postmoderns react negatively to global mission policies and structures not only on the grounds that they are ineffective for ministry, but that they are oppressive, totalitarian, and dehumanizing. Such policies are designed to protect the institution rather than the missionaries and the mission. For postmodern Christians, this is not merely management theory. It is moral leadership.
Mission agencies that rigidly regulate the lives, behavior, and strategies of their missionaries are communicating that they trust the institution more than the missionary. Given the postmodern distrust of institutions, this is not management culture that will reach or facilitate postmoderns. In addition, such agencies are indicating their belief that it is the institution that engages in mission rather than the people.
Part 3: Wake Me Up When September Ends
Summer has come and passed
The innocent can never last
Wake me up when September ends[29]
Douglas John Hall poignantly describes the context the contemporary Church finds itself in: ‘The extremity within which the disciple community in North America finds itself today is not only the end of an age, it is also the end of a long and deeply entrenched form of church.’[30] September has ended, and it is time to wake up. As western culture transitions from modernity to postmodernity, the Church is also transitioning from the center to the margins of society. These changes demand a new way of thinking, but no more so than in the area of leadership. In this final section, I will attempt to describe missional rather than administrative leadership in a denominational mission agency.
Biblical Models for Organizational Leadership in a Postmodern Era
Prophet
‘Missional leadership is shaped by the revelation of Jesus Christ.’[31] The actions of a missional leaders are not shaped by organizational development theory as much as they are shaped by ‘a spirituality that lives in close relationship with and reliance on the directions of the Father through the Spirit.’[32] The prophetic leader brings the organization in line with the missio Dei and points the community toward dependency on God. He or she is able to discern what God is doing and point the community toward practical participation in God’s mission. This is primarily spiritual work.
Apostle
The title apostle refers to ‘one who is sent.’ Apostolic leaders are defined by their mission. More than ever, contemporary mission agencies are in need of leaders who are on a mission themselves. They do evangelism, they engage cultures, they are the tip of the arrow as it is shot into the dark corners of the earth. In the current model, mission agency leaders service and manage the missionaries and the donors. In the missional model, agency ‘leaders themselves must … become noviate[s], embark on a missional apprenticeship, in order to give the kind of direction needed by the emerging missional community.’[33]
Environmentalist
In addition to calling believers to participate in the missio Dei (prophet) and leading the way (apostle), agency leaders must encourage the organization to become a covenant community rather than merely an institution. They cannot create such a community, but they can create an environment where such a community may be birthed by God. Guder suggests three ways a leader may help the people become a covenant community. Rather than focusing on administration, policies, and funding, top level leaders would be cultivating community by introducing spiritual disciplines, educational disciplines, and missional disciplines which they themselves participate in.[34] Administration would exist on the peripheral.
Differences Between Modern and Postmodern Leadership
While the biblical models provide the basis for leadership in a missional community, postmodernity itself demands a style of leadership that is distinct from the leadership in a modern organization. The following chart compares modern forms of leadership with a biblically informed postmodern leadership style.[35]
Modern mission organizations had leaders who …
- Reacted to mistakes of the past.
Built efficient organizations. - Managed globally (standardized policies)
- Communicated from the top down.
- Viewed themselves as CEOs.
- Cultivated uniformity.
- Fostered dependency.
Valued static structures that created stability and management coherence. - Made decisions according to a hierarchichal process.
Viewed themselves as guardians. - Based authority on skill and knowledge.
- Defined people’s roles.
- Appointed leaders.
- Thought of themselves as administrators.
- Set direction for others.
Postmodern mission organizations need leaders who ...
- Anticipate opportunities in the future.
- Develop effective missionaries.
- Think locally (adapt the organization to local contexts)
- Facilitate conversation
- View themselves as prophets and poets
- Cultivate unity
- Encourage interdependency
- Value dynamic, fluid structures that change often and rapidly
- Facilitate decentralized, participatory decision making
- View themselves as guides
- Base authority on character and wisdom
- Give people space to discover their role
- Recognize leaders
- Think of themselves as environmentalists
- Help others discover meaning
Biblical leadership in a postmodern, missional context is people oriented rather than project and policy oriented. As Sarah Hay writes in Postmission, postmodern Christians ‘do not appreciate a directive style and want a manager who is approachable, willing to listen and willing to involve others in their decision making.’[36] In a postmodern mission agency leaders are mentors rather than bosses.
Specific Suggestions for Mission Agency Leaders
Taking seriously the cultural influences of postmodernity and seeking to employ biblical understandings of mission and leadership, let me offer four concrete suggestions that leaders of contemporary mission agencies can make to foster a covenant community that participates in the missio Dei. I recognize that implementing such suggestions would require a major restructing in most organizations, but maybe the time has come.
1. Leadership must be a missional rather than administrative function within the agency.
· In the organizational structure, administrative functions and positions must be made peripheral to the central leadership, which is focused on developing a missional community.
· The primary activity of the missional leaders is to cultivate spiritual, educational, and missional disciplines throughout the mission community.
· Missional leaders help define, communicate, and implement the agencies vision among its constituencies.
· Missional leaders facilitate dialogue between the sending churches, the missionaries, the administrators and managers, and even the target groups.
2. Agencies must be restructured to be fluid (able to change quickly) and led according to vision, values, and principles rather than policies and rules.
· The postmodern world is a world without rules. In such an environment, leaders must lead through principles rather than policies.[37]
· This fluidity may appear to be chaotic and unstable to leaders shaped by modernity, but as Tiplady points out in Postmission, ‘Great leaders drive away from stability into chaos. Regular innovation comes through instability. Any sense of arrival will be dangerous to complacency. Rather than simply seeking one ‘unifying paradigm’ that will help us to organize the future, critically drawing on postmodern thought allows us to embrace multiple ideas about the future.’[38] Such organizations are ‘designed for evolution.’[39] Stability is not found in the policies, structures, activities, or even theology of the organization. Stability is found in the continuity of relationships and simple trust in God; in other words, the community of faith. Moderns ask the question, ‘What is the most efficient way to do this?’ Postmoderns ask, ‘Will you be there for me?’[40]
3. Stimulate dialogue within the community and invite participation in decision making and goal setting.
· Facilitate communication through online threaded discussions regionally and globally.
· Share experiences by encouraging missionaries to research and write on issues they are facing.
· Decision-making should be participatory with deference given to those actively involved in mission (sending churches and missionary personnel).
4. Restructure the organization for local rather than global administration.
· Decentralize.
· Organize regional conferences.
· Assist local teams in developing policies related to finances, lifestyle, recruitment, and strategy while holding them accountable to the broader organizational goals and values.
Conclusion: We’re Coming Home Again
Here they come marching down the street
Like a desperation murmur of a heart beat
Coming back from the edge of town
Underneath their feet, the time has come …[41]
Now we return to the home of Levi – tax collector and marginal Jew. In this setting we see Jesus exemplifying mission and leadership for a postmodern world. For Jesus, ministry often took place in the context of relationships. Rather than a multiple staff, He had friends and disciples. Rather than marketing, there was hospitality. Rather than a program, He shared a meal. He brought the kingdom of God into the homes and workplaces where real life happened.
Second, Jesus demonstrated that leaders themselves must engage the communities around them. As a leader, He entered the home of someone that the religious professionals would have avoided. But not only did he visit tax collectors and sinners, he led his disciples there as well. No doubt the disciples felt uncomfortable as they sat with people that the religious establishment rejected, but they trusted the leadership of their rabbi. They were willing to follow him into dangerous territory. Today we need leaders who think like missionaries and lead their congregations in mission.
Third, Jesus invested His time in making disciples. His concern was never to draw a crowd, but to call people to follow him. We need churches willing to abandon the world’s standards for success by becoming intentional about ministering to those outside religious community and helping them become followers of Jesus.
More important than engaging our culture, we must reengage with the mission of God. Darrel Guder rightly says, “The answer to the crisis of the North American church will not be found at the level of method and problem solving. The real issues in the current crisis of the Christian church are spiritual and theological.”[42] To overcome the effects of modernity and to minister once again from the margins of society, we must become worshiping communities participating in God’s mission.
Like the apostle Paul, we must conduct our ministries in ‘simplicity and godly sincerity, not with fleshly wisdom but by the grace of God’ (2 Corinthians 1:12). We must not be ashamed to tell the story of Jesus and clearly state its implications for the world in which we live. Finally, as Christian communities and mission agencies we must allow our life together to be formed and regulated by simple obedience to the scriptures and the Spirit of God. It is the people of God living according to the Bible, following the leading of the Spirit, and loving one another in a Christ-centered community. This is our greatest witness.
[1] Section titles are taken from the Green Day album American Idiot (Reprise Records: 2004).
[2] Ibid, ‘Tales of Another Broken Home.’
[3] Postmodernity is not a generational category, but a worldview category. However, it has been said that Generation X is the first truly postmodern generation in that they have been shaped by a postmodern worldview. Beaudoin’s book is a description of the spiritual tendencies of Generation X, but it also reflects a generally postmodern worldview. Concerning religious ambiguity he writes, ‘Offending the canons of religion and psychology, posing as infidels, Xers practice a type of religiousity that experiments with heresies as new forms of faith. Trusting in betrayal as much as in a benevolent God, we erode stringent dichotomies between the orthodox and the heterodox. We search for faith in the midst of profound theological, social, personal, and sexual ambiguities … Experimentation with heresy – even outright blasphemy – is a key part of GenX religiosity.’ Tom Beaudoin, Virtual Faith: The irreverent Spiritual Quest of Generation X (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1998), pages 121-122.
[4] ‘Sacramantality and personal experience both imply that Xers feel a sense of freedom and personal responsibility in regard to their spiritual lives. Xers will not simply receive religious truth paternalistically from a religious authority. What counts as religious must meet the ultimate test: Xers’ own personal experience.’ Ibid, 74.
[5] ‘Xers find their more specific marks by deriding the Catholic Church, in particular, and reclaiming Jesus against Christian Churches. Although this theme could be stated more positively as an “embrace of the noninstitutional,” the “deconstruction” of religious institutions precedes the “reconstruction” of religious alternatives.’ Ibid, 52.
[6] ‘modernity: the cultural worldview of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, inherited from the Enlightment and reflective of its values and belief systems. Modernity is epitomized by the belief that through the exercise of reason alone we are capable of attaining knowledge, even knowledge of the divine, and that with such knowledge humans can progress, even to the point of creating a utopian (or ideal) human order.’ Stanley Grenz, Guretzki, and Nordling, Pocket Dictionary of Theological Terms (Downers’ Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press: 1999), 79-80.
[7] Darrell Guder, editor. Missional Church: A Vision for the Sending of the Church in North America (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 6.
[8] Green Day; ‘East 12th St.’
[9] Ibid, ‘We Are the Waiting.’
[10] Richard Middleton and Brian Walsh. Truth is Stranger Than It Used to Be: Biblical Faith in a Postmodern Age (Downers’ Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1995), 25.
[11] Guder, 23.
[12] Middleton and Walsh, 47.
[13] Richard Tiplady, editor. Postmission: World Mission by a Postmodern Generation (Waynesboro, GA: Paternoster Press, 2002), 15.
[14] Wilbert Shenk. Write the Vision: The Church Renewed (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 1995), 63.
[15] Guder, 22.
[16] Craig Van Gelder, editor. The Church Between Gospel and Culture: The Emerging Mission in North America (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996), 117.
[17] Ibid, 119.
[18] Shenk, 62.
[19] Gailyn Van Rheenen. ‘Contrasting Missional and Church Growth Perspectives’ on http://www.missiology.org/. Copyright 2004.
[20] Middleton and Walsh, 71.
[21] Leslie Newbegin. The Gospel in a Pluralist Society (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1989), 1.
[22] Jane Vella. Learning to Listen, Learning to Teach: The Power of Dialogue in Educating Adults (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2002), 29.
[23] Ibid, 29.
[24] Leonard Hjalmarson. ‘Kingdom Leadership in the Postmodern Era’ at www.christianity.ca.
[25] Vella, 23.
[26] Vella, 30-31.
[27] Leonard Sweet. Postmodern Pilgrims: First Century Passion for the 21st Century World (Nashville: Broadman and Holman Publishers, 2000), 60. Sweet is not referring to a self-oriented focus, but to the postmodern belief that there is always more than one option, always more than one way to do things.
[28] Kenzo Mabiala. ‘Evangelical Faith and (Postmodern) Others,’ on ‘A New Kind of Conversation,’ September 15, 2005.
[29] Green Day, ‘Wake Me Up When September Ends.’
[30] Douglas John Hall. Thinking the Faith, 1989. Quoted in the course lecture notes.
[31] Guder, 185.
[32] Guder, 186.
[33] Guder, 211.
[34] Guder, 208.
[35] The chart consists of my own observations as well as descriptions of postmodern leadership taken from resources mentioned throughout this paper. Though I cannot take credit for all the comparisons, I cannot remember the specific sources that stimulated my thinking.
[36] Tiplady, 97.
[37] See Leadership in A Postmodern World by Henry Schmidt at http://www.mbseminary.edu/main/articles/schmidt1.htm
[38] Tiplady, 84.
[39] Wenger, McDermott, and Snyer. Cultivating Communities of Practice: A Guide to Managing Knowledge (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2002), 51-54.)
[40] Beaudoin, 140.
[41] Green Day, ‘We’re Coming Home Again.’
[42] Darrel Guder, editer, The Missional Church: A Vision for the Sending of the North American Church (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998) p. 3.
Saturday, April 08, 2006
Beautiful Sermons
“Speak into the heart of Jerusalem,” said the Lord to the prophet (Isaiah 40:2). Like a song that makes us unafraid to dance or unashamed to cry, a good sermon speaks into our hearts. It moves us in our souls. It can make us breathe easier, or it can make us blush. It may literally scare the hell out of us, but it always shows us the way home and gives us the hope that maybe we’ll be welcomed back in spite of everything we’ve done. Like a familiar smell in an unexpected place, it reminds us of something that used to be that we hope will be again. Unfortunately, few sermons ever get to this point. But some of Jesus’ sermons, like the Sermon on the Mount or the Parable of Sower, have had such an impact on the human heart that it might be worth it for us to try better with our own.
Unfortunately, the word ‘sermon’ itself invokes negative images for most people. Consider the verbs that we pair with it. Teaching is still respectable in some circles, but we don’t teach sermons, we preach them. And who likes to be preached at? Occasionally we ‘deliver’ sermons like a cosmic pizza boy who brings God’s product to our doorstep. These verbs convey the idea that the sermon is going to ‘fix’ us. We know we’re sick, but most of us don’t trust the pizza boy to perform the surgery. We sense intuitively – and far too often we are right – that he has an ulterior motive. Has he knocked on our door because Someone Out There thinks we need the pizza of eternal life or because he wants our cash?
Many fear preaching like assault with a blunt instrument. Some preachers will try to put us at ease by speaking but never saying anything. For 20 minutes (plus or minus) we endure talk about Advent and what this means for the Palestinians or we ponder the link between Pentecost and Martin Luther King, Jr. It may sound prophetic – and might actually be prophetic if the people sitting in the pews were Israeli soldiers or members of the KKK – but when the audience consists of insurance salesmen, dentists, and high school basketball coaches, the Middle East crisis or AIDS in Africa are very safe subjects. What I think these preachers hope we’re hearing is, ‘Don’t worry. I’m not going to hurt you. I won’t say anything that might potentially disrupt the world you live in.’ Instead, they focus on the brokenness and sinfulness of others’ worlds.
Then there are others who don’t want to be preachers. They want to teach. Teaching is important, but it’s no substitute for a beautiful sermon. A hospital directory is full of information, but it’s as beautiful as lint. Changing metaphors, we don’t want to know how the radio works, we just want to hear the music. Too many sermons are an analysis of the machine when we should be enjoying the song.
A beautiful sermon is more than information and instruction. It is a preacher getting spiritually naked (we call it ‘bearing the soul’) in front of a crowd of people. But don’t get me wrong. This isn’t homiletic pornography. Even Jesus didn’t reveal his intimate knowledge of God to those who were just interested in a good time (John 2:23-25). He could flirt with the crowd, but he wasn’t an exhibitionist, and we don’t need to be either. Yet the sermon needs to be us to be beautiful. A beautiful sermon comes from the preacher who knows when to be ‘suggestive’ and when it is appropriate to be ‘naked and not ashamed.’
So how do we create beautiful sermons? If you’re still reading, that’s the question you want answered. Here’s a model that was initially inspired by Robert Capon’s book ‘The Foolishness of Preaching.’ It’s the paradigm that I have found most useful. So get out your canvass, brush, and pallet, and let’s see what we can do to make next Sunday’s sermon not only true but beautiful. In the beginning …
DAY 1: Choose your primary text from the lectionary.
The lectionary may not be where you expected me to start, but it’s important. It means that the sermon is originating outside of you, which is where God’s word always begins. Whether it’s Jehovah telling Abraham about an old woman who is going to have a baby or the Savior of the world being born to a virgin in a Judean village, the word of God comes from outside the realm of earthly possibility. Not that the lectionary is some type of miracle, but it does follow the pattern of allowing God’s word to begin with Him rather than us (to say nothing of the benefits of living the Christian year). Besides, you’re not as limited as you may think. You’ll still get four choices as a launching point: Psalm, Old Testament lesson, New Testament lesson, and Gospel. It will keep you preaching on the whole Bible, and it will create some links between Scriptures that you probably hadn’t previously considered. Preaching on texts that you wouldn’t naturally preach on will get the creative juices going. It will get you listening, and sermons, after all, should be a joint project of the Spirit and the preacher.
At the start of the week, print each passage off from your computer. As you read, underline the phrases that jump out at you. Highlight the words that seem to give color and depth. Make comments in the margins about what you like and dislike. Ask questions and listen. Let it speak to you. Then simply go with the text that seems to be the right one. Trust your instinct. A beautiful sermon is an art, not a science. Don’t be afraid to let the texts just sit in your head while you go out and mow the lawn or listen to the Foo Fighters. By dinner just accept the fact that you’ll be preaching on the one you couldn’t get away from. Of course if the angel Gabriel visits you and gives you utterance from another part of the Bible, go with it. I’m sure his advice is better than mine. But apart from an angelic visitation, I’d stick with the lectionary.
DAY 2: Write a few pages on why you chose the passage you did.
Don’t skip this step because it is important. This is where your inspiration is going to come. After you’ve decided which text is going to be your focus (and make sure to let the other texts have their voice as well – there is a reason these texts are put together), just start typing. Put down in words why you chose the text you did. What’s the gravitational pull to these particular verses? What is it in your life that makes this passage the passage for the week? Maybe it convicted you. Maybe it bugs you. Maybe there is comfort, or maybe there is rebuke. Maybe it’s just a challenge of preaching on some obscure Mosaic law. But whatever drew you to that passage – that’s what you want to capture in your sermon. That’s what will make the sermon authentic and from the heart, and that’s what will give it power. You have to preach what you believe. If you don’t believe it, don’t preach it. If you must preach it, at least have the decency to tell them that you don’t believe it. This is the point where ministry will happen.
So start writing. Don’t focus on commentaries or information yet. Don’t even write about what you think the passage means. Just put down on paper why you want to preach (or maybe don’t want to preach) on this lesson. What is it that causes this group of verses to attach latch onto your mind and soul? What are the questions that this passage answers? What are the unanswered questions that this passage raises? Who does this passage make you think of? Why? The more you write the better. Don’t worry. No one will see this, so you can just ramble on for three, four, five, or more pages. It doesn’t have to be pretty, it just has to be real.
In the preaching books for professionals, they tell you to reduce the main point of the sermon down to a pithy sentence or two. This will be your focus or theme. If you are able to do that and it helps, then go for it. Now is the time to do it. Personally, I find it to hard to focus on a theme this early in the sermon preparation. If I come up with a sentence theme at all, it usually isn’t until I’ve finished writing the sermon. Suddenly the light will come on and I’ll think, “So that’s what I’m trying to say!” But the pros say to do it at the beginning, and who am I to argue with them?
DAY 3: Answer the questions you raised in day two by consulting your histories, favorite commentaries, and theologies, and then write your first draft.
Don’t worry about illustrations, beginnings, and endings. Don’t worry about putting it into a three point or story format. Just get the meat out there. People come to church to eat, and it is your job to feed them. If you feed them, they will come back. If you entertain them, eventually they will get bored.
The process I follow is to list the verse numbers in my notebook with about half a page of blank paper between verses. As I go through my resources, I jot down relevant points and ideas that they stimulate in my mind. I include the thoughts I wrote down in day two. Then I start to walk around the room (that is why sermon preparation is easier for me at home than the office!) preaching to myself and thinking out loud. Sometimes I have to stop to pray because I don’t like what I’m ‘hearing’ or I’m afraid I’m getting heretical. Sometimes I have to check another verse that comes to mind. Sometimes I have to get the computer concordance and do some cross-referencing, and sometimes I have to check other books or commentaries. All the while I’m just making notes in my notebook under the appropriate verse headings. When I’m done, I take a break and then go back and cross out everything that doesn’t seem to be really important or those things that are important background information for me but don’t have to be shared with the whole congregation. What is left is my first rough draft.
DAY 4: Write your second draft adding what this passage has to say to those who don’t believe, those who fail, those who don’t fit, and those who are afraid of what they will lose if they give up their sin. Write it for outsiders.
If you write your sermons as if you are preaching to a crowd of adulterers, tax collectors, cripples, and doubting Thomases you will be preaching to the hearts of your people. They may not want you to think that is who they are (and you need to respect their masks), but trust me. That’s who’s sitting out there. Once you’ve added this material you will probably have to cut out everything you had initially addressed to the religious folks. That’s OK. They wouldn’t have listened anyway.
DAY 5: Put the sermon in final form by going through your manuscript and listing the major points (probably associated with key verses from the passage).
Jot down some trigger words or phrases, and note the other verses you want to reference. If there is time, you can think of stories, films, music or other items that may link your thoughts with contemporary culture, but I wouldn’t spend too much time on that. If you watch films, read books, listen to music, eat at interesting restaurants, and just watch the people around you, then you will have plenty of ‘real stuff’ to plug in here and there. It won’t seem programmed this way because it isn’t. You will simply be sharing things that you have observed because you like being a part of this planet, and you genuinely like the people who sit home and read the paper instead of going to church or who flirt with you at the laundromat.
Take time to preach your sermon once or twice to yourself. As new things come up and old things seem forced, make the necessary adjustments. Don’t worry about putting the changes on the computer. Just let them rest as paper and ink – all marked up.
DAY 6: Rest.
There’s not much to say here, but try not to pick up your notes on Saturday. The sermon may be on your mind, but let it stay there. If you want to scribble a few more notes on Sunday morning, that’s fine. But take a day of rest. Tell God that you’ve done your part, and that you aren’t going to do anymore. If He’s not happy, then He can fix it Himself.
DAY 7: Take a deep breath, place your hands on the pillars, and pull the hall down.
Sunday morning and it’s time to rock and roll. Say a prayer and look at your notes. Hopefully by this point the message has been embedded in your soul and it is ready to overflow into the lives of your congregants. You have something to say that will come from your heart, and you can’t wait to say it. This message has already changed you, and you pray that God will use it to change others. But even if it doesn’t, that’s OK. If you are different then the sermon has already done its work. Nothing else is needed. It is beautiful.
Unfortunately, the word ‘sermon’ itself invokes negative images for most people. Consider the verbs that we pair with it. Teaching is still respectable in some circles, but we don’t teach sermons, we preach them. And who likes to be preached at? Occasionally we ‘deliver’ sermons like a cosmic pizza boy who brings God’s product to our doorstep. These verbs convey the idea that the sermon is going to ‘fix’ us. We know we’re sick, but most of us don’t trust the pizza boy to perform the surgery. We sense intuitively – and far too often we are right – that he has an ulterior motive. Has he knocked on our door because Someone Out There thinks we need the pizza of eternal life or because he wants our cash?
Many fear preaching like assault with a blunt instrument. Some preachers will try to put us at ease by speaking but never saying anything. For 20 minutes (plus or minus) we endure talk about Advent and what this means for the Palestinians or we ponder the link between Pentecost and Martin Luther King, Jr. It may sound prophetic – and might actually be prophetic if the people sitting in the pews were Israeli soldiers or members of the KKK – but when the audience consists of insurance salesmen, dentists, and high school basketball coaches, the Middle East crisis or AIDS in Africa are very safe subjects. What I think these preachers hope we’re hearing is, ‘Don’t worry. I’m not going to hurt you. I won’t say anything that might potentially disrupt the world you live in.’ Instead, they focus on the brokenness and sinfulness of others’ worlds.
Then there are others who don’t want to be preachers. They want to teach. Teaching is important, but it’s no substitute for a beautiful sermon. A hospital directory is full of information, but it’s as beautiful as lint. Changing metaphors, we don’t want to know how the radio works, we just want to hear the music. Too many sermons are an analysis of the machine when we should be enjoying the song.
A beautiful sermon is more than information and instruction. It is a preacher getting spiritually naked (we call it ‘bearing the soul’) in front of a crowd of people. But don’t get me wrong. This isn’t homiletic pornography. Even Jesus didn’t reveal his intimate knowledge of God to those who were just interested in a good time (John 2:23-25). He could flirt with the crowd, but he wasn’t an exhibitionist, and we don’t need to be either. Yet the sermon needs to be us to be beautiful. A beautiful sermon comes from the preacher who knows when to be ‘suggestive’ and when it is appropriate to be ‘naked and not ashamed.’
So how do we create beautiful sermons? If you’re still reading, that’s the question you want answered. Here’s a model that was initially inspired by Robert Capon’s book ‘The Foolishness of Preaching.’ It’s the paradigm that I have found most useful. So get out your canvass, brush, and pallet, and let’s see what we can do to make next Sunday’s sermon not only true but beautiful. In the beginning …
DAY 1: Choose your primary text from the lectionary.
The lectionary may not be where you expected me to start, but it’s important. It means that the sermon is originating outside of you, which is where God’s word always begins. Whether it’s Jehovah telling Abraham about an old woman who is going to have a baby or the Savior of the world being born to a virgin in a Judean village, the word of God comes from outside the realm of earthly possibility. Not that the lectionary is some type of miracle, but it does follow the pattern of allowing God’s word to begin with Him rather than us (to say nothing of the benefits of living the Christian year). Besides, you’re not as limited as you may think. You’ll still get four choices as a launching point: Psalm, Old Testament lesson, New Testament lesson, and Gospel. It will keep you preaching on the whole Bible, and it will create some links between Scriptures that you probably hadn’t previously considered. Preaching on texts that you wouldn’t naturally preach on will get the creative juices going. It will get you listening, and sermons, after all, should be a joint project of the Spirit and the preacher.
At the start of the week, print each passage off from your computer. As you read, underline the phrases that jump out at you. Highlight the words that seem to give color and depth. Make comments in the margins about what you like and dislike. Ask questions and listen. Let it speak to you. Then simply go with the text that seems to be the right one. Trust your instinct. A beautiful sermon is an art, not a science. Don’t be afraid to let the texts just sit in your head while you go out and mow the lawn or listen to the Foo Fighters. By dinner just accept the fact that you’ll be preaching on the one you couldn’t get away from. Of course if the angel Gabriel visits you and gives you utterance from another part of the Bible, go with it. I’m sure his advice is better than mine. But apart from an angelic visitation, I’d stick with the lectionary.
DAY 2: Write a few pages on why you chose the passage you did.
Don’t skip this step because it is important. This is where your inspiration is going to come. After you’ve decided which text is going to be your focus (and make sure to let the other texts have their voice as well – there is a reason these texts are put together), just start typing. Put down in words why you chose the text you did. What’s the gravitational pull to these particular verses? What is it in your life that makes this passage the passage for the week? Maybe it convicted you. Maybe it bugs you. Maybe there is comfort, or maybe there is rebuke. Maybe it’s just a challenge of preaching on some obscure Mosaic law. But whatever drew you to that passage – that’s what you want to capture in your sermon. That’s what will make the sermon authentic and from the heart, and that’s what will give it power. You have to preach what you believe. If you don’t believe it, don’t preach it. If you must preach it, at least have the decency to tell them that you don’t believe it. This is the point where ministry will happen.
So start writing. Don’t focus on commentaries or information yet. Don’t even write about what you think the passage means. Just put down on paper why you want to preach (or maybe don’t want to preach) on this lesson. What is it that causes this group of verses to attach latch onto your mind and soul? What are the questions that this passage answers? What are the unanswered questions that this passage raises? Who does this passage make you think of? Why? The more you write the better. Don’t worry. No one will see this, so you can just ramble on for three, four, five, or more pages. It doesn’t have to be pretty, it just has to be real.
In the preaching books for professionals, they tell you to reduce the main point of the sermon down to a pithy sentence or two. This will be your focus or theme. If you are able to do that and it helps, then go for it. Now is the time to do it. Personally, I find it to hard to focus on a theme this early in the sermon preparation. If I come up with a sentence theme at all, it usually isn’t until I’ve finished writing the sermon. Suddenly the light will come on and I’ll think, “So that’s what I’m trying to say!” But the pros say to do it at the beginning, and who am I to argue with them?
DAY 3: Answer the questions you raised in day two by consulting your histories, favorite commentaries, and theologies, and then write your first draft.
Don’t worry about illustrations, beginnings, and endings. Don’t worry about putting it into a three point or story format. Just get the meat out there. People come to church to eat, and it is your job to feed them. If you feed them, they will come back. If you entertain them, eventually they will get bored.
The process I follow is to list the verse numbers in my notebook with about half a page of blank paper between verses. As I go through my resources, I jot down relevant points and ideas that they stimulate in my mind. I include the thoughts I wrote down in day two. Then I start to walk around the room (that is why sermon preparation is easier for me at home than the office!) preaching to myself and thinking out loud. Sometimes I have to stop to pray because I don’t like what I’m ‘hearing’ or I’m afraid I’m getting heretical. Sometimes I have to check another verse that comes to mind. Sometimes I have to get the computer concordance and do some cross-referencing, and sometimes I have to check other books or commentaries. All the while I’m just making notes in my notebook under the appropriate verse headings. When I’m done, I take a break and then go back and cross out everything that doesn’t seem to be really important or those things that are important background information for me but don’t have to be shared with the whole congregation. What is left is my first rough draft.
DAY 4: Write your second draft adding what this passage has to say to those who don’t believe, those who fail, those who don’t fit, and those who are afraid of what they will lose if they give up their sin. Write it for outsiders.
If you write your sermons as if you are preaching to a crowd of adulterers, tax collectors, cripples, and doubting Thomases you will be preaching to the hearts of your people. They may not want you to think that is who they are (and you need to respect their masks), but trust me. That’s who’s sitting out there. Once you’ve added this material you will probably have to cut out everything you had initially addressed to the religious folks. That’s OK. They wouldn’t have listened anyway.
DAY 5: Put the sermon in final form by going through your manuscript and listing the major points (probably associated with key verses from the passage).
Jot down some trigger words or phrases, and note the other verses you want to reference. If there is time, you can think of stories, films, music or other items that may link your thoughts with contemporary culture, but I wouldn’t spend too much time on that. If you watch films, read books, listen to music, eat at interesting restaurants, and just watch the people around you, then you will have plenty of ‘real stuff’ to plug in here and there. It won’t seem programmed this way because it isn’t. You will simply be sharing things that you have observed because you like being a part of this planet, and you genuinely like the people who sit home and read the paper instead of going to church or who flirt with you at the laundromat.
Take time to preach your sermon once or twice to yourself. As new things come up and old things seem forced, make the necessary adjustments. Don’t worry about putting the changes on the computer. Just let them rest as paper and ink – all marked up.
DAY 6: Rest.
There’s not much to say here, but try not to pick up your notes on Saturday. The sermon may be on your mind, but let it stay there. If you want to scribble a few more notes on Sunday morning, that’s fine. But take a day of rest. Tell God that you’ve done your part, and that you aren’t going to do anymore. If He’s not happy, then He can fix it Himself.
DAY 7: Take a deep breath, place your hands on the pillars, and pull the hall down.
Sunday morning and it’s time to rock and roll. Say a prayer and look at your notes. Hopefully by this point the message has been embedded in your soul and it is ready to overflow into the lives of your congregants. You have something to say that will come from your heart, and you can’t wait to say it. This message has already changed you, and you pray that God will use it to change others. But even if it doesn’t, that’s OK. If you are different then the sermon has already done its work. Nothing else is needed. It is beautiful.
The Secular Church
We are a part of the Church at a pivotal time in history. For the last 1600 years western nations could proudly claim to be the home of ‘Christendom’ – lands and cultures where Christian values reigned and where the church wielded significant influence. But no longer. Christendom is dying. Rather than occupying a central place in society as it has since the fourth century, the Christian church is now finding itself on the margins – a situation similar to what the early church faced.
Many attribute this loss of influence to the rapid secularization of western culture. Yet statistics indicate that contemporary America is not less but more spiritual than it was in previous decades. The secular society has failed to satisfy spiritual thirst, solve the world’s problems, or provide meaningful answers to life. Now many are willing to acknowledge a divine dimension to reality. Though more open to the influence of the supernatural in their lives, Americans are increasingly less likely to look to the institutional church for spiritual guidance. The success of books and films such as The Da Vinci Code reveal how deep is the distrust of institutional religion while highlighting people’s desire for a spiritual connection through non-traditional means.
Why has this happened? Let me suggest that one cause may be the secularization of the church rather than the secularization of society. At first the idea of a secular church may appear to be a contradiction in terms. After all, the Church is a religious institution, and “secular” refers to something that is not influenced by religion. A secular worldview assumes that faith is a personal rather than public matter and that the problems of life can be addressed by science and reason. In subtle ways this worldview has permeated the church of North America.
During the era of the megachurches a strong emphasis was placed on personal application and meeting felt needs. The autonomous individualism that characterizes a secular society was encouraged as churches turned the gospel into a means of personal fulfillment. A subtle shift occurred in the interest of “relevancy” as the outward proclamation of the story of Jesus and its claims upon us was replaced with the inward application of principles to enhance our lives.
A second way that the secular worldview has influenced the body of Christ is in our approach to church growth. Many churches engaged in marketing rather than mission to help their congregations grow. As George Barna writes, “For several decades, the Church has relied upon greater sums of money, better techniques, bigger numbers and facilities, and more impressive credentials as the means to influence society at large. These elements have failed us; in our efforts to serve God, we have crowded out God Himself.”[1]
Where do we go from here? We could spend our time mourning the death of Christendom and fighting to regain our position of power, but is that what the Church is called to do? We must resist looking to our culture to provide us with the tools to minister. Instead, we need to look to Jesus. It is the incarnation that provides our model for ministry rather than Wall Street or Hollywood. In John 20:21 he said, “As the Father has sent me, I also send you.” The leaders who guide the church into the future will not be CEOs. They will be prophets and poets who look to God and point their congregations to Him.
In Mark 2:15 we see Jesus exemplifying mission and leadership in a world similar to our own. It says, ‘Now it happened, as He was dining in Levi’s house, that many tax collectors and sinners also sat together with Jesus and His disciples; for there were many, and they followed Him.’ For Jesus, mission often took place in the context of a community. Rather than a multiple staff, He had friends. Rather than marketing, we see hospitality. Rather than a program, He shared a meal. He brought the kingdom of God into the homes and workplaces where life happened.
Second, Jesus demonstrated that leaders themselves must be involved in mission. As a leader, He entered the home of someone that the religious professionals would have avoided. But not only did he visit tax collectors and sinners, he led his disciples there as well. No doubt the disciples felt uncomfortable as they sat with people that the religious establishment rejected, but they trusted the leadership of their rabbi. They were willing to follow him into dangerous territory. Today we need leaders who think like missionaries and lead their congregations in mission.
Third, Jesus invested His time in people who were followers and not just customers. His concern was never to draw a crowd, but to make disciples. We need churches willing to abandon the world’s standards for success – standards of size and budgets – by becoming intentional about ministering to those on the margins and helping them become followers of Jesus.
More important than engaging our culture, we must reengage with the mission of God. Darrel Guder rightly says, “The answer to the crisis of the North American church will not be found at the level of method and problem solving. The real issues in the current crisis of the Christian church are spiritual and theological.”[2] To overcome the effects of secularization and to minister once again from the margins of society, we must become worshiping communities participating in God’s mission.
The world doesn’t need – or want – a secular church. As secular rock group Green Day sing, “The Jesus of suburbia is a lie.”[3] They speak for a world in crisis – a world that no longer believes that science, politics, or organized religion can provide a life of hope and meaning. In this context, Christians live as an alternative community defined by our trust in Christ and participation in His work.
Overcoming our compromise with secular culture begins with repentance. We must confess we have relied on man’s wisdom to fulfill God’s purposes rather than looking to the Author and Finisher of our faith (Hebrews 12:2). Once again we must listen to the voice of the Spirit and follow the example of Jesus to become the people of God. As we live out the message of reconciliation and invite others to trust in God, our churches become the arena where He lives and where others can witness what life is like under His rule. This is our greatest witness.
[1] George Barna, The Second Coming of the Church (Nashville: Word, 1998), p. 99.
[2] Darrel Guder, editer, The Missional Church: A Vision for the Sending of the North American Church (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998) p. 3.
[3] Green Day, “We are the Waiting” American Idiot (Reprise Records, 2004).
Many attribute this loss of influence to the rapid secularization of western culture. Yet statistics indicate that contemporary America is not less but more spiritual than it was in previous decades. The secular society has failed to satisfy spiritual thirst, solve the world’s problems, or provide meaningful answers to life. Now many are willing to acknowledge a divine dimension to reality. Though more open to the influence of the supernatural in their lives, Americans are increasingly less likely to look to the institutional church for spiritual guidance. The success of books and films such as The Da Vinci Code reveal how deep is the distrust of institutional religion while highlighting people’s desire for a spiritual connection through non-traditional means.
Why has this happened? Let me suggest that one cause may be the secularization of the church rather than the secularization of society. At first the idea of a secular church may appear to be a contradiction in terms. After all, the Church is a religious institution, and “secular” refers to something that is not influenced by religion. A secular worldview assumes that faith is a personal rather than public matter and that the problems of life can be addressed by science and reason. In subtle ways this worldview has permeated the church of North America.
During the era of the megachurches a strong emphasis was placed on personal application and meeting felt needs. The autonomous individualism that characterizes a secular society was encouraged as churches turned the gospel into a means of personal fulfillment. A subtle shift occurred in the interest of “relevancy” as the outward proclamation of the story of Jesus and its claims upon us was replaced with the inward application of principles to enhance our lives.
A second way that the secular worldview has influenced the body of Christ is in our approach to church growth. Many churches engaged in marketing rather than mission to help their congregations grow. As George Barna writes, “For several decades, the Church has relied upon greater sums of money, better techniques, bigger numbers and facilities, and more impressive credentials as the means to influence society at large. These elements have failed us; in our efforts to serve God, we have crowded out God Himself.”[1]
Where do we go from here? We could spend our time mourning the death of Christendom and fighting to regain our position of power, but is that what the Church is called to do? We must resist looking to our culture to provide us with the tools to minister. Instead, we need to look to Jesus. It is the incarnation that provides our model for ministry rather than Wall Street or Hollywood. In John 20:21 he said, “As the Father has sent me, I also send you.” The leaders who guide the church into the future will not be CEOs. They will be prophets and poets who look to God and point their congregations to Him.
In Mark 2:15 we see Jesus exemplifying mission and leadership in a world similar to our own. It says, ‘Now it happened, as He was dining in Levi’s house, that many tax collectors and sinners also sat together with Jesus and His disciples; for there were many, and they followed Him.’ For Jesus, mission often took place in the context of a community. Rather than a multiple staff, He had friends. Rather than marketing, we see hospitality. Rather than a program, He shared a meal. He brought the kingdom of God into the homes and workplaces where life happened.
Second, Jesus demonstrated that leaders themselves must be involved in mission. As a leader, He entered the home of someone that the religious professionals would have avoided. But not only did he visit tax collectors and sinners, he led his disciples there as well. No doubt the disciples felt uncomfortable as they sat with people that the religious establishment rejected, but they trusted the leadership of their rabbi. They were willing to follow him into dangerous territory. Today we need leaders who think like missionaries and lead their congregations in mission.
Third, Jesus invested His time in people who were followers and not just customers. His concern was never to draw a crowd, but to make disciples. We need churches willing to abandon the world’s standards for success – standards of size and budgets – by becoming intentional about ministering to those on the margins and helping them become followers of Jesus.
More important than engaging our culture, we must reengage with the mission of God. Darrel Guder rightly says, “The answer to the crisis of the North American church will not be found at the level of method and problem solving. The real issues in the current crisis of the Christian church are spiritual and theological.”[2] To overcome the effects of secularization and to minister once again from the margins of society, we must become worshiping communities participating in God’s mission.
The world doesn’t need – or want – a secular church. As secular rock group Green Day sing, “The Jesus of suburbia is a lie.”[3] They speak for a world in crisis – a world that no longer believes that science, politics, or organized religion can provide a life of hope and meaning. In this context, Christians live as an alternative community defined by our trust in Christ and participation in His work.
Overcoming our compromise with secular culture begins with repentance. We must confess we have relied on man’s wisdom to fulfill God’s purposes rather than looking to the Author and Finisher of our faith (Hebrews 12:2). Once again we must listen to the voice of the Spirit and follow the example of Jesus to become the people of God. As we live out the message of reconciliation and invite others to trust in God, our churches become the arena where He lives and where others can witness what life is like under His rule. This is our greatest witness.
[1] George Barna, The Second Coming of the Church (Nashville: Word, 1998), p. 99.
[2] Darrel Guder, editer, The Missional Church: A Vision for the Sending of the North American Church (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998) p. 3.
[3] Green Day, “We are the Waiting” American Idiot (Reprise Records, 2004).
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