Grace Enacted

This little “experiment” called Grace – A Community of Faith continues to be one of the best things of which I’ve ever been a part. We’ve managed to meet together on the Lord’s Day for four weeks now, and every gathering has been a blessing to me – and I think the others who have been there.

Today was an exceptional demonstration of why I was willing to be a part of this experiment. We met briefly and sang a few songs, looked briefly at a crucial biblical text that spoke to what we were about to do, participated together in the Lord’s Supper, and were out the door! Out the door not to rush home or head to a restaurant – but out the door to serve the Newnan/Coweta community in the name of Christ.

Two of our group had made arrangements for us to go to One Roof, a ministry supported by churches in Coweta County that is doing some amazing work in the name of Christ. Derenda, the ministry leader, gave us a quick tour of the place and passionately told us about the kinds of ministry they do and the outreach they have all over the county.  She also told us about some of the difficult moments when they have to say no to those in need. Among the things that stood out to me in her tour was that they were out of diapers and nearly out of breakfast foods.

Our group brought toiletries – deodorant, tooth paste, tooth brushes, and other similar things – because we were told how low their supplies for those items were. Friday afternoon, they ran out of tooth paste – the last two clients didn’t get any – but thankfully that won’t happen Monday morning!

We spent several hours separating and arranging a huge pile of food donated through a recent food drive in Coweta County. That isn’t a particularly glamorous task – but it is an important one. Volunteers on Monday and for the next several months will have easy access to food that can help people in need have a decent meal. I’m pretty confident that’s the kind of thing Jesus had in mind when, after washing the disciples feet (John 13), He pointed out that what He had just done for them was a paradigm for kingdom people.

Two things stand out to me tonight as I think about today’s experience. One of them is what a great resource Coweta County has in One Roof. They have figured out ways to do much with little and are doing it well. Derenda’s prayer at the end of our service time today reminded me of the mission of the church “to the least of these” in ways that encourage and challenge.

The second thing that stands out is what a great experience it is to be a part of a group that is so willing to step outside of the normal way of doing things and find a way to be Jesus to the world. I’m not in any way discounting the importance of the church being together in fellowship to worship, to learn, to pray, to give, to . . . But I am convinced that few things have done more for my own spirit than what I saw today.

If you’re interested in the experiment, all I can say is we would welcome your presence!

Our Hearts

Olin Hay, who taught homiletics at Atlanta Christian College for many years, often said to his preaching students, “you need a pastor’s heart.” No student could possibly have taken one of his classes without knowing that, as a preacher, “you need a pastor’s heart.”

While I certainly don’t disagree with that sentiment, I would take it a step further and say that we all need such a heart – not just pastors, preachers, missionaries, youth ministers, and the whole list of those who make ministry vocational in their lives.

I never took one of Olin Hay’s classes so I can’t say exactly how he would have defined such a heart, but for me, no text in the New Testament speaks more forcefully to that idea than 2 Corinthians 11:28. “And, besides other things, I am under daily pressure because of my anxiety for all the churches.” (NRSV)

What “other things?” If you read the words that precede this verse, you find Paul very uncharacteristically listing a whole host of rather dreadful “things” that have happened to him. Everything from having been stoned to ship wrecked is in the list. It’s a list that it is unlikely that anyone reading this would ever experience. 

But his heart is so devoted to the church – that he can say “besides these things” – seemingly in the sense of “even more than the awful, physical persecutions I have experienced in my walk with Christ, is my concern for the wellbeing of the church.” And it isn’t just “a church” but “all the churches.” Nothing parochial here – he seems to have this global passion for the church and its ministry.

If that isn’t a “pastor’s heart,” then I’m not sure one could be defined. Apparently Paul wasn’t one of those “evangelists” who assumed that winning people to Christ was all there was to do, and once done, to move on to something else.  He certainly is an example of an evangelist with no equal – but it didn’t stop there.

In a world where church mission ministries are often focused on finding support for those missions which are primarily evangelistic, we should rejoice because of such passion “to make disciples.” But at the same time, we can forget that the other half of the great commission is “to teach them to observe . . .” That ingredient can’t be missing if our hearts and the hearts of churches we serve are to have a “pastor’s heart.”

May God continue to use His church to not only “to win the lost,” but “to nurture the saved” so that the work of the church might continue to have an impact on the world.

Almost Bible

For a number of years after his retirement, Fred Craddock led preaching seminars up in Blue Ridge, Georgia at Cherry Log Christian Church twice a year. Along with several of my preaching friends, I tried to attend as many of those Monday morning preaching seminars as possible. They were never disappointing.

Among the more memorable lectures I heard addressed the topic of “the challenge of preaching today.” At the top of Dr. Craddock’s list that day was what he called “almost Bible.” Simply put, he suggested that one of the real challenges preachers in our age must face is to be sensitive to the fact that there is a lot of “almost Bible” out there in the public understanding of Scripture.

I remember thinking that morning that one of the places where that is certainly true is in the “almost Bible’s” civic Jesus, as compared to the Bible’s Jesus.  There often is a little truth attached to the civic Jesus, but by and large he is a creature made in our own image and tends to think that our way of life is pretty much what God had in mind when He made Adam and Eve.

On the other hand, the Bible’s Jesus is not a Jesus we would likely have made up. He calls us to live “in the world, but not of the world.” He thinks that “denying self, taking up a cross, and following after Him” is the ideal way to act as a disciple. And, in shocking ways, He seems to think that the most appropriate response to Him when we meet Him is summarized in one word – Repent! And He seems to enjoy saying “repent” to the very religious.

In some ways, the most glaring “almost Bible” stuff we hear in our culture is that the whole Jesus story is simply designed to mean that when we die, we go to heaven! Certainly it can’t be overlooked that the coming of Jesus did deal with the fact that we were alienated from God in ways that we can’t correct on our own. But all of that is only part of the story – not the whole story.

He not only rescues us from our hopeless situation before God – he transfers us into the kingdom of God’s beloved Son. In Colossians 1:13,14, Paul encourages the believers in Colossae to give thanks to God the Father because “He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.” (ESV) We haven’t exhausted the Jesus story when we celebrate that we have been rescued from the power of sin and death – as huge a story as that actually is. We are a “rescued and transferred” people who are called to live out the implications of our rescue – and it is that reality, rescue and transfer, that Paul describes as “redemption, the forgiveness of sin.”

As I think about what I want my own life to look like in this new year we have been given, I’m thinking that I ought to commit myself to living a “transferred life” before God. I won’t let the “almost Bible” I hear lead me astray into thinking that the Christian gospel is only about dying and going to heaven. 

Actually – it ought to be obvious from the way Jesus taught us to pray – “your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” “Transferred people” are working to fulfill that prayer every day!

Experiments!

Experiments – they can fascinate us, disappoint us, and either provide great new insights or prove to be dangerous! But what a different world ours would be were it not for the willingness of all sorts of people to experiment.

That being said, may I take a moment of your time to tell you about what I sometimes refer to as “the Newnan experiment?”

Starting on the first Sunday of 2013 – January 6 at 10:00 a.m. to be precise – a “community of faith” will begin meeting at the Newnan Community Theater (24 First Avenue, Newnan) for worship, fellowship, and prayer. We’ve chosen to describe ourselves with this idea: Grace: A Community of Faith. I’d like to call it “a kingdom outpost” (the phrase I use to describe the church and its ministries) but in our culture, that phase would not likely be understood in the way I mean it – so we are, simply put, a community of faith characterized by grace.

About five years ago, I read a phrase from Reggie McNeil that continues to haunt me. In his book, Missional Renaissance, he describes the church in western culture as “on life support.” That’s a bit frightening for one who has spent his entire adult life either preaching in a local church or helping to educate young believers in a Christian educational setting. To make matters more compelling, the Pew Research  Group (Pew 2012) says that 34% of our youngest adults (18-22 year olds) say they have no interest in religion at all. Then there is the Barna Group (Barna 2011) telling us that 84% of Christians 18-29 years old admit that they have no idea how the Bible applies to their field of professional interests. 

What I believe to be true is that the research being done by people like Reggie McNeil, Dave Kinnamon, Gabe Lyons, and others should get the attention of people like me. My conversations with a lot of 18-29 year olds sounds a lot like Kinnamon’s statistics. And, to add but another layer of concern, I’ve discovered that you don’t have to be 18-29 years old to feel some of those same frustrations.

Before anyone reminds me, I know there are some notable exceptions when it comes to whether or not the church can attract 18-29 year olds. The Georgia Dome is currently filled with young adults who are in love with Jesus and have made the Passion Conference a “must go” event. There are also some impressive churches in the Atlanta area – where young adults are involved. There isn’t one bone in my body that thinks those mega-churches are bad or not worthwhile. But not every young adult has access to those kinds of ministries or is even comfortable in those kinds of ministries. And, if the answer to our culture’s need for “renewal and restoration” could be accomplished by a few great mega-churches scattered about over town, then why does today’s AJC read like it does?

At some level, experiments seek to discover new ways to make “two plus two equal four.” This particular experiment is designed, at some level, to see if there is a way to help young adults (and any others, there is no age limit!) feel better about the idea of “church” and to discover that the Jesus story actually does apply to their place in life – regardless of what that place might be. Hopefully the product will be either a level of engagement in the kingdom of God that is new, or a re-engagement in the kingdom of God that is refreshing!

As a community of faith characterized by grace, we recognize that we meet together as sinners who desire the power of the gospel to make us into what God has called us to be – which means we have in common with every human alive the fact that we are sinners. Grace implies that you come to Jesus for cleansing, not that you clean your act up and then come to Jesus. For some, the cleaning thing happens pretty easily – but for others, it is a long-term project. Whichever the case – grace continues its pursuit of us and communities of faith who allow the gospel to set the agenda, never quit pursuing either.

For decades, “church” as we know it was able to make “two plus two equal four” for lots and lots of us in our culture. But that may not be true any longer for young adults, and quite a few older adults who have simply drifted away from any meaningful relationship with Jesus that leads to redeeming and restoring the world. 

Experiments are just that – experiments. There is no guarantee at the end that the desired result will be achieved. But one thing for sure can be known – unless you experiment, you never know whether the idea works. 

On our first Sunday together, worship will focus on the idea that the church, as the body of Christ, should view itself as incarnational – and we are called “to be Jesus to the world.” From there we will look at ourselves as peacemaking people who have discovered meaning to life that transcends all of the issues that surround us daily. On the last Sunday of January, after a brief worship time – we will go out and find a place to be peacemaking servants of Christ. 

But, it is simply an experiment – one I hope and pray (and have been hoping and praying for a long time) will work. My prayer is that it will become a kind of “kingdom outpost” that will help expand the kingdom of God in a way that renews and restores the world in which we have been called to live!

If you’re not currently engaged in a meaningful way in the life of God’s church – we would love to have you visit with us this Sunday.