pragmatic evangelicals aren’t really that evangelical

I was chatting to my friend in the UK the other week about why Jesus loving,  ESV thumping, gospel good guys ( their code for the only guys) like having small groups in their preaching centers (they would call them churches but we know what they mean). He said they call themselves evangelical but really that are just pragmatics. They are into what works even more then they are into Jesus and his word centering and shaping them and God’s people. 

a bit harsh I thought – but then he said - ask them why they have small groups in their churches- and better still ask them if they are in one. 

it seems that for all their theological high ground often evangelicals use small groups for fundamentally pragmatic reasons like pastoral care, bible learning and fellowship – that is because it makes church work – not because they inherently value them as fundamental for what it means to be a gospel community. 

but they’re good things you say – why wouldn’t you want them? of course we want them – but not because they are complimentary to my preaching ministry and somehow beef it up where it is lacking –  but because they are the very essence of what it means to be a gospel community- dare I say you can lose your preacher and whatever events he like to be the centre of and still be a church if you have a genuine word community operating. 

we don’t do small church, or community groups or bible study studies or whatever you call them because it assists the building up of the church – we do community groups because thats what it means for us to be the church! 

John Stott said recently in his 50th book that there is “something unnatural and subhuman about large crowds…. they tend to be aggregations rather than congregations – aggregations of unrelated people”.  

Now I like a big gatherings and preaching , and I want to work out how we grow to be a bigger church, but if the heart of the church is the dual fidelities of gospel and community - or put another the community of related people living in and through the word, then we can’t be a church with community groups – we must be a church of  community groups.( indeed if you are in a gospel community you are in church.) 

so here’s some diagnostics to work out how pragmatic or evangelical you really are:

1. is the big gatheirng the main event or a good event 

2. are community groups optional or essential to membership 

3. is your pastor and his wife in a communitygroup or are they too busy 

4. when the pastors/ elders/ leadership  of the church meet – is it primarily an exercise of fellowship or organization - does it look like a family gathering  or a business meeting.

5. when c groups are promoted in your church, is it marketed to meet a need, hit a niche  or to drive the whole  mission. 

6. is the community group or the sunday event spoken of as the primary locus of believing and belonging? 

7. is mission a vital aspect of your community group – or is that another department in the organisation? 

8. do you see church as an event you go to or a community you belong to and serve in

9. when you or others speak of your church, is it defined primarily by the experience of he  preacher or by the impact of the community that loves Jesus. 

 

i am sure there is more. I know dichotomies are terrible charactertures  but they can be helpful diagnostics. sure you have both – but what is primary and principle as opposed to secondary and pragmatic? that’s the real question.

 wouldn’t  it be a terrible deception if in our efforts to be big and have impact that  we stopped being and thinking and doing things without the gospel centering shaping and directing us. to think we are evangelical when at heart we are just pragmatists with gospel sympathies.

are you missioning in the ‘third places’?

Tim has a really helpful understanding of missional or apostolic church planting. Unilke so many models which have a ‘you come to us’ mode of operation, he is suggesting a move toward ‘third’ space model of planting. Whilst his models prefer the home as the locus of community, the ‘third space’ is not necessarily where people live or work, but place in their life  where relationships are facilitated – like pubs, cafes, parks etc. 

And importantly he has delineated the difference in what it means to be truly attractional as a community of grace – it is not so much the programs or the place we inhabit as the relationships we demonstrate. It is our salt and light – the blessings of the covenant – that must truly attract AS WE GO in mission to those to whom we are sent.

When God speaks on mountains

Matthew 5:1 -16

King Jesus is speaking about what will characterise the people of his Kingdom.
It is one of the most famous pieces of literature as the teacher sits on the mountain and cast a radical vision of righteousness and a new community. Yet the righteousness he speaks of is grounded in grace and the state of blessedness that only he has authority to confer.
He opens his mouth and speaks – here is God’s great prophet – God himself revealing the character of his end time community. His powerful agent for the earth.

The life of this community is potent to say the least and radically counter cultural.
They are the blessed ones, actively engaging as members of the community, with a future orientation. Yet their active participation does not gain them a righteousness of their own. This is not a new law of works to replace the old. This righteousness is fundamentally on account of King Jesus. There are empty handed yet active participants.

Poverty of spirit, morning over the ruin of sin, humble assessment of self, being cleansed, showing mercy as recipents of mercy, extending the minstry of reconcilitation – waging peace – these are the fundamental marks of the righteous King’s people. It is such a radical counter culture that pitches us at odds with the world that we might expect persecution from those who love death and darkenss and hate God.

The King’s blessed ones are the salt and light blessing ‘of the earth’, ‘of the world’- the church is God’s radical agent of blessing.

If we lose our radical counter cultural potency we are useless.
If we lose our preserving and life giving proximity we are useless.
Here is part of Jesus mandate for his community in missionary – letting light shine, good deeds both spoken and enacted with maximum impact. . And it must point beyong itself. Our goal is God’s glory.

The Blogging Parson flogging Total Church

A good little blurb on Total Church by The Blogging Parson. When will we be liberated from the success syndcrome and embrace gospel centred leadership in community? And when will I learn to type and spell?

Thinking Church and Mission part 3

Community – when God calls us into relationship with himself he also brings us into the fellowship of his people. In his mercy God has created us as persons in community. To be made in his image and likeness is to not only rule over creation but to rule as relational beings.
Christian community is central to Christian identity. If we are to take seriously the implications of Christ creating a new humanity, we need to release the ‘one anotherness’ of being a Christian. Our relationship with God is and must be expressed in the context of the body of Christ. We belong to each other if we belong to Christ. This will challenge prevailing individualism in our culture. At the centre of the Christian life is not an individual juggling a set of responsibilities alone but rather a person in community sharing responsibilities together. This will have implications for not only how we view ourselves but also how we relate and seek reconciliation, how we make decisions and use our resources for the common good etc. It will also have implications for how we approach mission.
Just as our salvation is enjoyed in the context of community, likewise Christian community is central to Christian mission. The church is not only the end point of God’s mission but also the agent through which his mission is accomplished. This means we need to identify ourselves as a missional community, which does mission through community. God’s saving purposes for the culture in which we live come about through a people not a person. As the word of God dwells amongst us, and as we love God and love one another, we are to together engage and embrace those outside God’s kingdom, show them what the Kingdom is like and call them into the fellowship of his people through the gospel.

Christian community is central to Christian identity

Christian community is central to Christian mission

Thinking Church and Mission part 1

What kind of church are we going to be?

I have been reading a stimulating book by Tim Chester and Steve Timmis called Total Church. In its introduction it raises some very probing questions about how effective faithful and loving churches are being in impacting the culture in which they live.

Two issues I found to be particularly acute.
First, despite how faithfully we might give ourselves to proclaiming Christ, in reality how many unbelievers have the opportunity to hear and respond the word of Grace?
Second, despite how loving we might be as a believing community, how much are unbelievers exposed to it?

This raises the whole question of how we do church and therefore what it means to be a church. The book has been helpful for me in articulating what lies at the centre of our spirituality and reminds us that we need to think about church as a body of relationships rather than a place or an event. Church is an identity that is shaped by two key aspects, Gospel and community.