As Park Street Brethren Church seeks new horizons and depths, it’s more important than ever for young adults to intentionally reverse misperceptions and engage in the change process with passion and honesty. Much of the future is yours to own and shape.

If you are a young adult who cares about the future of Park Street Church, I want to challenge you to make time to participate in one of the several ”town hall meetings“  being held at the church this week. In particular, could we try to turn out a large crowd of yound adults tomorrow night, Wednesday, Oct. 28, from 8:30-10 pm? This meeting, as well as the others, is being held in the Senior High Room (403/404 of Family Life Center – enter through glass door on alley south of building).

It might be tempting to find other ways to spend your Wednesday night. Or it might be easier for you to just passively trust that this process will work itself out without you. But, the church needs your head and heart in this process.  We need you who will own the future to speak into it. Please consider this a challenge to put aside your other plans to help our church be what it needs to be.

If you need a ride to the Wednesday meeting, or any of the other meetings that work for your schedule, please feel free to call me.  If you have any questions or comments about your contribution to the process, feel free to contact me by phone or email.

I hope to see you soon!

Doug

419-606-1621
luminus@zoominternet.net

“Dear Yada, I am sending you my resume to see if yada, yada, yada… I am looking to transition to a church where there is as high a value on relationships as there is on accomplishing tasks and objectives, a church where people are not seen as fodder to accomplish corporate mission statements, a church where people are enjoyed as precious in God’s sight… I’m at a point in my life where my goal is not to find a job, but to find a community that loves God and each other and loves so naturally and so well that others are caught up in that love to want to know Jesus and to be more like Him… It just seems like it’s time to stop counting success by butts in seats and bucks in baskets. What about love and joy and peace and self control and grace and patience and gentleness and kindness? I don’t mind measuring effectiveness (I actually like good qualitative data on church ministry), but my question is “What would Jesus measure?”

I may have lost out on getting some interviews with churches, but it sure felt good to lay it on the line. At some point we need to wrestle with how committed we are to transformational ministry versus settling for transactional ministry. Are those butts in the seats becoming more like Jesus? Or are they just more like the culture around us? Are we simply making church goers or are we making disciples? And how do we assess this?

The data is in (if there has been any doubt about other studies, just look at the results from the Willow Creek Reveal study). Church going does not correlate to greater love for God and others. Church activity does not correlate to more joyful lives. And as painful as it is to acknowledge, church going doesn’t seem to correlate to growing the fruit of the Spirit of God in the people of God. Doesn’t it seem like it is time to think about doing church differently.

When we want to be like someone, eventually we will need to do the kinds of things that person does. If we want to be a great swimmer like Michael Phelps eventually we will need to stop watching him and reading about him and start to jump into some swimming pools. If we want to like Tiger Woods, we will need to swing some golf clubs eventually. If we want to be like Yo Yo Ma, eventually we will have to do the kinds of things he does with the bow. If we want to be more like Jesus, eventually don’t we need to do what Jesus did? And do you remember anything about Jesus proposing that church going was his central strategy for transformation?

If you are reading this article, you’re probably already committed to the place of community and group life for transforming discipleship. But have you considered the kind of group life to which Jesus was dedicated? If we want to be like Him and if we want our ministries to produce disciples like Him, perhaps it is time to assess the role of community in his transforming disciple-making. When I look Jesus’ life, I see he was committed to at least 6 concentric circles of friendships. Is this perhaps a model of disciple-making for today?

What were the circles of friendship in the life of Jesus?

Many of us have become more and more convinced we cannot grow like Jesus apart from committed interdependent community in a way that we share our lives together (koinonia). Jesus modeled and the Scriptures teach that we belong to one another as family in the Body of Christ (Philippians 2:3-5). We are invited to meet together and to encourage each other daily (Hebrews 10:24-25). If we want to model our disciple-making on the practices of Jesus, it seems clear that commitment to community is essential to growth in the Christian life!

Healthy growing followers of Christ can be intentional about nurturing each of the “circles of friendship” Jesus nurtured. And the reason to do so is because we see each one uniquely contributes to Christ-likeness. To miss any of these circles of friendship impoverishes a dimension of the Christ-like life. And each circle of friendship is a unique gift to the believer from the Lord.

The Circle of Communion (you and the Trinity)

This is Jesus in harmony with the Father and the Spirit. Here we meet our triune God at the very center of who we are in His presence. Commitment to friendship within the Trinity has been and will go on forever. When we came to Christ, the Trinity actually invited us to enter their circle of friendship. This is a moment by moment daily abiding commitment in the life of a Christ-follower.

The Core Circle (2-4 people)

The core friends for Jesus were Peter, James, and John. Our core circle consists of our closest spiritual friends with whom we partner for support, nurture, and accountability. Hopefully it includes our spouse and family! But it should also include prayer and accountability partners who love us enough and are bold enough to ask us anything about our lives. Where two or three gather in His name Christ is there. Core friendships experience Christ together in unique ways. I encourage every Christ follower to intentionally and prayerfully develop devoted core spiritual friendships.

The Cell Circle (5-15 people)

Jesus’ cell was his 12 disciples. Here we meet in small groups, usually in each other’s homes, for prayer and deep, profound life change. The small group circle will be the friends you will turn to in times of need, sadness, and joy. They will know your children’s names and will be the ones your children will come to see as extended “aunts” and “uncles.” They will be your friends for the rest of your life. This circle is about fun and deep friendship. And when it is healthy, it intentionally touches lives beyond itself – just like Jesus did with his disciples’ small group.

The Congregation Circle (25-75 people)

Jesus’ ‘congregation’ (mid-size) circle consisted of the 70 disciples he sent out two by two on ministry trips. In many churches this is Adult Bible Fellowships, generation groups (20 Somethings, Seniors, etc.), and sometimes men’s and women’s ministries. It also consists of seminar and ongoing teaching settings that include the element of authentic community together. This circle is about learning together the truths of our faith in ordered and sequential ways, it is about serving one another in love, it is about the ‘one anothers’ in Scripture and it is about reaching into and serving a needy world.

The Celebration Circle (usually 75+ people)

Here we gather to hear God’s Word preached, to pray, to worship, and to be inspired to be Christ-like change agents in the world. This was where Jesus gathered in the temple and synagogues. This circle is about being awed by God greatness, surrendering to Him, and being inspired to live worthy of our calling in Christ Jesus. This circle reminds us that we are part of something far bigger than us – we are part of the Kingdom of God as it marches across cultures and across centuries.

The Crowds (the unconverted)

The Scriptures also invite us to be authentic living witnesses to those who don’t yet trust Christ. We are to be models of integrity, faith, hope and love before a watching world. Jesus ministered to the unconverted crowds. To be like Him, every Christian is also invited to intentionally form redemptive relationships with those who don’t know Christ as the Forgiver and Leader of their lives. This circle is about having a Kingdom of God mindset for the unsaved across the street and around the world.

What might our lives, our disciples. and our ministries look like if we encouraged intentional devotion to not just one or two of Jesus’ circles of friendship, but to all six? And how do we do that well?

This is what we will explore in the series of sermons over the next month and a half at Park Street Church.

Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.  Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age” (18-20, NIV).

Right now, you may be asking, where is he going with this post?  The reality is that this message is foundational to the life of many churches, especially evangelical churches, and rightfully so I would argue!

I just feel that many times the church is not fully obedient to the words of Jesus.  We read the “go” and announce that people need to get out of their spiritual laziness and hit the streets sharing the good news.  But, if you’re like me, you may have felt like the messengers of this glorious news need a little work?

This little slice of Matthew’s Gospel has a lot to teach us about what it truly means to be a missional follower (read disciple) of Jesus, one whose life is captured by the mission of God.

1. Jesus messianic authority. The verb translated “given” is understood as divine action in which God placed authority over all existence into the hands of Christ.  Jesus is the King and we are His subjects.  It’s not about what can the church do for me or whiny attitudes about whether the church is feeding me.  It is about the Kingship of Jesus and announcing that to the world!

2. The charge to make disciples. The controlling imperative of the Great Commission is the simple charge to make disciples.  This is the only verb in the entire commission that is actually a command.  The central motif of this commission is disciplemaking.  In fact, the rest is merely three participles that explain how the making of disciples is to be carried out – going, baptizing, and teaching.  What do I mean?  Where we read “go”, the Greek is actually saying, “while going“.  While we are going we are to make disciples.  Large numbers at a church service does not equate with discipleship.  Disciplemaking takes time, a commodity that is in scarce resource in our culture.

3. The charge to go.  The word apostle implies one who is sent or commissioned to go on behalf of the sender.  The tendency for a Jew during this period would be to stay in Jerusalem where it is safe.  That tendency still resonates with us today.  But apostleship transforms one’s identity.  These disciples were no longer just living life for themselves.  The radical call of the Messiah mandated that they go to all nations.  Just because followers of Jesus don’t like something doesn’t mean that they must stay away.  We may not like drug addicts, crack moms, drunkards, porn lookers, etc, but God does and we’re called to show His love to even “the least of these”.

4. The charge to baptize them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Disciples become disciples by being united with Jesus.  In the Christian community, we join, are united to, Jesus through baptism.  Baptism is the public declaration of our allegiance to the kingdom of God.  Baptism has been trivialized to simply become a membership development issue in some churches and denominations; I join the church through being baptized.  In the ancient world, and much of the world today, baptism could, and does, mean physical death.  When a believer is baptized they announce to the gathering that they have truly counted the cost of their discipleship with Jesus.  Do the waters of baptism signify to us to count the cost of our allegiance to Christ?

5. The charge to teach them to observe all that Jesus had commanded. Disciples need to be taught what the life of a disciple is all about: the character of the disciple, the ministry of the disciple, the meaning of kingdom membership, how to live as disciples in a Christian community, and where to fix their hope.  This teaching and training are ongoing and unending.  There are always new challenges for disciples.  In the context of Matthew’s Gospel, the expression translated “all that I have commanded you” refers to the teaching/training Jesus did with His group of disciples.  My fear for Christianity in America is that it has become a head game. Theology, Bible, and faith have all become things to study. Orthodoxy and orthopraxy have been forced to stand alone in separate corners while denominations bicker about why the other is wrong for their choice.

6. “I am with you always, to the very end of the age” (28:20). This mission is ongoing.  Even with high times and low times, tragedy and triumph, event or no event…the mission of God moves on.  The hope through it all is that the rabbi, Jesus Himself, journeys with us every step along the way.

In the end, I’m left with a question, how am I, how are we, doing in this mission of disciplemaking?  Are we picking and choosing which parts of the Great Commission we desire to follow?

We’re not called to effectiveness, we’re called to obedience.  Paul declares that we’re not even called to win the race but to finish it.  My fear is that we’ve learned to associate big numbers, events, worship services, and buildings with how we live out the life of a disciple.  We wait for the church to create a program or event so we can plug and play into whatever we want.  This week the church is having a community outreach project, I’ll plug into that and check community service off my list.

The life of a disciple is more involved than that.  It’s more beautiful and more heart-wrenching, all at the same time.  In the delicate tension of already and not yet, Spirit and flesh, Word and Spirit, sacred and secular, big and small, deep and wide, in the world and not of the world, we find the pathway to which God has called His disciples.

We can bring the gospel to the world!  I hope that we never lose this missional impulse in the Body of Christ.  But, as we encounter people and as we examine the churches in which we find ourselves, are we also bringing people to the gospel.  Simultaneous to our evangelistic stream should be one of sanctification.  As people are reached for the gospel of Christ, are people meeting the gospel in a transformative way?  As the good news goes forth is it also going within and manifesting lives of purity and holiness.  As we follow the Rabbi are we getting some of the dust kicked up by His sandals on our face?

1. Did we lift the name of Jesus up as a centerpiece of why we gathered? (See Revelation 5:6 and 5:13-14, Colossians 3:17, and Philippians 2:9-11.)
2. Did we have a time in the Scriptures learning the story of God and humanity?  Did we invite everyone to be part of his story today in Kingdom living? (See 2 Timothy 3:14-4:4.)
3. Did we pray together and have enough time to slow down and quiet our hearts to hear God’s voice and yield to his Spirit? (See Acts 1:14 and John 4:23-24.)
4. Did we experience the joy, love, and encouragement of being together as a church? (See Hebrews 10:25 and John 13:34-35.)
5. Did we take the Lord’s Supper together as a church regularly  OR call people to an awareness of the implications of the Elements upon our gathering? (See 1 Corinthians 11:20-32.)
6. Did we somehow remind everyone of the mission of the church and why we exist? (See Matthew 28:18-20.)
7. Did we enable people to individually contribute something as part of the body of Christ? (See 1 Corinthians 12:27 and 14:26.)

But, you’ve probably felt it…maybe when you’ve tried to hook up with a church small group that promises real friendship and support, but all you find is emotional and spiritual barbed wire. Maybe you’ve sensed it when you’ve shown up in a worship service and all of the words that are being sung and spoken are transparent and empty and thin, especially your own. Maybe you are aware of it when it occurs to you that you don’t even know these people you are supposed to be loving unconditionally, and you’re not sure you want to. Maybe it buzzes around your soul when you realize that everything you’re involved in feels flat and meaningless. You’ve felt it too, right? Please tell me you have.

Sunday, our new pastor, Bill Johnson, talked about the reasons why the Church is still worth loving. And I totally agree. I can’t say that I have always agreed or that I agree every second, or that I will always agree, but I think I have seen the alternatives enough to know that the Church is pretty lovable and upstanding and meaningful compared to other things that bring people together. We, the Church, are noble and genuine at heart, but there are some stiff addictions that we need to call out and slap down before we start looking like Jesus.

To detox, a body has to go through some things that seem radical and even unreasonable.  I wonder if we, as Jesus’ Body, might not need to do some rehab before we can start to be the enticing, refreshing, restoring groups we were made to be. Maybe we need to lose ourselves a bit to find ourselves.  I have some possible rehab-plan suggestions that are totally not in the “ministry plan” of any church I know of, which might be just what the therapist ordered for our many churches that make up The Church:

• What if we’d stop our obsession with church attendance for one year? Don’t publish attendance figures in the bulletin. Don’t post attendance on the website. Don’t talk about it between churches as a comparison. Don’t use it in any way that suggests that attendance is a accurate measure of success. If the crutch of attendance was kicked out from under our churches, what other things would we start paying attention to? What sensitivities would come alive that are now blind? How would it change our mission and our strategy? How would it change our willingness to risk?
• Could we declare a season of Spiritual Amnesty that gives people the chance to be pruned spiritually so new growth can appear and flourish? Could we permit each other to admit our doubts and questions and weariness, in private and public ways, without any threat of easy answers, prescriptive plans, rebuke or shame? Could we have “Doubt Services” that give people a chance to publicly admit and process their lack of faith in a safe, prayerful environment so that the process of growth and restoration and encouragement-in-the-faith could occur.
• As part of that Spiritual Amnesty season, could we encourage each other, corporately, to simultaneously wave the white flag of surrender to living behind sterile, opaque, proud facades? What if we’d invite confession in a way that lets people off-load their heavy guilt, not so that a “priest” can suggest penance, but so that together we can find the freedom of admission and the common ground of sin (See Donald Miller’s book Blue Like Jazz for evidence of this idea’s power). We all need the chance to say “I’m Doug, and I’m a sinner.” We all need to see that we’re in this together and that our sins shouldn’t keep us from living free, open,vibrant lives.
• Could we try to schedule at least half of all church activities somewhere other than the church facilities? We keep saying that the Church is not the building, but we seem rather naked without it.
• Could we do a lot of hard work to seek out those who have dropped out of church and go to them and apologize for our indifference, our inflexibility and our lack of humanity? Maybe we could ask them how we could help them grow closer to Jesus and then shut up and listen and not be defensive. Maybe we could invite them back and help them see that we need people who can’t stomach church, the way it is, in order to make it what it should be. We need them to influence “church” back to a place of honesty and warmth and spiritual purity. Those of us who are left in church right now will never be able to do that.

Even though I can’t explain the disconnect between our hearts and church very well, I think, at its heart, it has something in common with the Hebrew slaves’ insistance to create a golden calf and worship it instead of the living God.  We have created a very sterile, controllable, predictable faith that looks a lot more like us than it does the all-loving, all-powerful, wild God. It makes us feel in control, but it doesn’t touch the really deep issues of life any better than we can.  Deep is calling to Deep, and this golden calf that we’ve made out of church is not the Deep that satisfies. Church needs to look more like God: honest, pure, mysterious, raw, agile, energetic, open, self-less. It is going to take letting go of the comfort of control so that we can begin to look, feel and act like Jesus’ body, which is the Church.

For me, Alan Hirsch remains credible because he presents good data and because what he says makes sense. He’s not just a bunch of bluster and unsubstatiated opinion. He also has been an observer of trends in England and Down Under that seem to be pre-cursors to what is happening in America. He can predict what will happen in America by explaining what happened in those parts of the world.

So, here’s the the tough part of putting Hirsh’s wisdom to work in the Church. We like to contain things and then measure them. As long as we are using an attractional or extractional model of church, we can put our arms around those who respond and we can count them, survey them, monitor them, etc.  Since we measure success in the church by numbers and dollars (c’mon, you know I’m right) we replicate those things that look like successful outcomes.  Bringing people into the church environment, and assimilating them into our culture, look like success as we do it on greater scales, so we keep doing it.  What we can measure we can manage, and the conventional attractional/extractional church environment allows us to measure and manage people and behaviors. And so we keep doing it. If Hirsh’s ideas of missionality are correct, which I believe they are, then we are going to HAVE to divorce ourselves from the old measurements of success. Not mask them. Not rename them. Not rewarm them. We need to detox from them and send them as far as East is from West.

How in the heck do we do that?  Some people say they have made the switch from measuring numbers of people in their programs to measuring stories. Huh? What? I don’t know what that means really.  I think it sounds really good, but we’re still qualifying and quantifying to measure success. I’ve heard others say that they measure inputs instead of outputs. Like, Statistical Process Control, if  the theology, training, message, experience, commitment of the Christian community is strong, then the outcomes will be strong. What outcomes? How do you measure how well a mom loves her kids or how effectively a boss relates to his employees or how purely a missionary serves his field? My instinct says that a true missional model has to be a total clean break from dependence on metrics as measures of success. We’ll always have metrics but our confidence in their integrity is indirectly proportional to our freedom to be missional. There will be much argument on this point, but no one can ever win, because we have no way to prove the answer metrically. Some things “work” in some places. The same things “fail” other places. There’s something really important about the Fall of Man and that has to do with categorizing everything as good or bad, but that is another conversation for another time.

So…if we are to be missional, the Church has to cease conforming to the patterns of this world.  The clergy system that depends on butts and bucks is in jeopardy. The facilities system that we’ve adopted to contain the Christian community is on the chopping block. The programs that we use to direct people in tracks of proper behavior might have to go. The worship-centered experience of the faith may have to fall into equal proportion with other less pleasant components. AND…when we become missional, the very metrics that Hirsh uses to show that we’re currently failing as a church will say that we have failed miserably, because to measure how non-missional we are, we are using non-missional metrics!!!

So, on to more important things… The first night there, we ate at a place called the Hickory Street Bar & Grill. It was good in spite of all the buckets scattered around to catch water leaking through the ceiling from the recent rains. It has sort of an indoor outdoor format and a hippish, grungish vibe.

Here is what I ate… Grilled Portobello with corn-salsa, rice and black beans. It was really tasty with its zingy seasoning and freshness. Pretty guilt-free too!

In the 1950s the paradigm for society was very friendly towards the life of the church.  People found their social networking through the operations of the local church.  Close friendships and bonds were formed and held through a community’s involvement with the local church.

Fast forward now to the present time.  People do not seem to find their closest friendships and relationships through the life of the church.  The church is experiencing a push to the margins of society.  Our soceity has gotten increasingly pluralized, increasingly secularized, and increasingly individualized.  What should be the church’s response in the 21st century?  Do we roll over and play dead?  Do we continue to operate via old strategies from a paradigm, or two paradigms ago?  How will the church in the West respond?

Alan Hirsch is an interesting presenter.  He comes from Australia.  The significance of this in global Christianity is stunning.  Europe is basically dead.  Large cathedrals and monasteries now stand as tourist attractions.  A spiritual malaise has fallen over the face of the continent.  In one word, Europe has become incredibly secularized.  What I mean by secular is a culture that is consumed with worldly rather than spiritual things; one that sees religion as an archaic system of rules and regulations.

Australia and New Zealand stand in between Europe and the United States.  Hirsch’s prophetic claim is that this secularization has infiltrated areas like Australia and New Zealand.  His warning to America, do not think your fate is any different if you continue to do things the way you’ve always done them.  An awakening of sanctified imaginations needs to happen quickly in our contexts.

Think of with this graph:

(simple)       m0     m1     m2      m3      m4        (complex)

[m= significant barrier to effective communication of the gospel]

The church, Hirsch contends, operates within a sphere around m0.  We are continuing to become incredibly isolated.  In a sense, the church exists within its own orbit around m0.  Thus, many churches operate out of an attractional paradigm.  People will come to us when they reach our orbit.

A difficulty arises.  Culture is moving more and more to the more complex end of the spectrum.  More and more people are being missed because they fail to reach our orbit.  And, when people do reach our orbit, we institutionalize them.  The same people that had tons of non-Christian friends at the bars and workplace, now fall into a Christian bubble.  We speak our own language, listen to our own music, wear different clothing with jokes/phrases/sayings that are confusing at best to the larger culture.

We draw people in through an attractional model (if they come into our orbit) and send them out through an extractional model.  These institutional clones cause culture to move further and further away.  The church becomes its own worst enemy.

Hisrch polled a group of people about four large components of religion.  He first asked participants of the survey about God, 100% said they believed.  He then asked how they viewed Jesus, most believed.  He then asked them about spirituality, all regarded it as important.  When he asked about the church, he found no positive reactions.  Keep in mind, he comes from more secularized contexts than small town Ohio.

The reality is that what is happening in the cities trickles out to the suburbs, trickles out to the small towns, and trickles down even to the countrysides.  What is happening in large cities is a moving trend that will soon afflict small town churches.  I already see it in my own context.  We need to stop arguing about whether the city is right or wrong and start realizing the catclysmic cultural shifts occuring in our country.  America is always moving more towards the secularized level.

What should be our response?  Our response should not be to run or hide or to step out and condemn.  We need to discover, once again, the sacredness of sentness.  We in the church have lost the reality that we are called to go, not to stay or come.  Thus, in a culture that is increasingly alienated from Christ, we respond with organizational insanity.  We think if we keep doing the same thing we’ll get different results.

Hirsch describes it this way.  Imagine two holes are being dug.  One is being dug by culture at large and the other is being dug by the church.  The church’s response to recent trends is likened to us saying, “If we only dig this same hole deeper we’ll tap into that hole over there.”  The illustration is ridiculous but so are some of the ways we’ve attempted to change/shape/influence our culture.

Leverage in the missional movement is found not in changing culture but in changing churches.  Churches need to step into the marketplace and point people to the healing of their deepest doubts, wounds, and confusion.  I love the church…it is God’s vessel of restoration and renewal.

We must remember that it is God’s vessel…not our soapbox or place of judgment, not our building of escape, not our list of rules, and not a religious system.  Hirsch identifies the problem as a “death of the imagination.”  We fail to think differently and fail to have the courage to let certain things die and bring to life new things that people may resist at first but so desperately need.  We cannot violate our incarnational impulses.  Jesus came and took on our flesh.  How will we live incarnationally in the flesh of culture?

Right now, 90+% of churches are seeking to become contemporary, attractional growth churches.  In a culture like our own, this is a strategic problem.  Why?  Studies show that almost 60% of people are alienated by this model because they never come into its orbit.  That is a missional problem.  May the people of God reclaim their missionary imagination and live incarnationally, missionally, and relationally in this world that God so deeply loves!