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Author, pastor, and academic Leonard Sweet asked, “Do we know God well
enough to know what God is up to in the world?”
This question was directed
to the folks attending “Clearwater 2008:
Rebooting the Church for the 21st Century,”
April 18-20 at Presbyterian Clearwater Forest, a group that included 13
elders, pastors (and me) from the Presbytery of the Northern Plains.
That question has haunted me since the
conference ended. Do I know God well enough to know what God is up to in the
part of the world in which God has placed me? Do we, the Presbytery of the
Northern Plains, know what God is doing in our midst?
Sweet, author of The Gospel According to
Starbucks, posed this question because, in his estimation, the
Church of Jesus Christ, like a virus-contaminated computer, needs to be
“de-fragmented” and “rebooted” so that it can be restored to God’s “default”
operating system, a system that allows the Church to know what God is up to
in its midst. Sweet argued that the Church has been stuck in an “alien”
operating system that is largely, if not totally, disconnected from God.
Therefore, the Church doesn’t know what God is up to in the world.
According to Sweet, God’s default operating
system for the Church is one that is Missional, Relational,
and Incarnational. These three characteristics of God’s
operating system are all identified for the Church in Jesus’ Great
Commission of Matthew 28:16-20. To my mind, the Great Commission reflects
these three dynamics in the following way:
Missional “Go therefore and make
disciples of all nations…”
Relational “…teaching them to
obey everything I have commanded you…”
Incarnational “…I am with you
always…”
We must always remember that our mission as the
Body of Christ is not to remain safely in the sanctuaries of our
church buildings. Rather our mission is to be so empowered by the worship
that takes place in our sanctuaries that we receive the faith and courage to
take the risk of going to make disciples. The risk involved stems
from the fact that our commission is to make disciples of all nations.
Sweet points out that the word translated “nations” in the New Revised
Standard Version of the Bible, laos, is to be understood more than
just “people.” He argues that the command to make disciples means universal
discipleship and includes all cultures and world views. The
risk here is that the Church must be willing to move outside its own culture
and world view and meet people of other cultures and world views where
they are, and to present the Gospel to them in the context of
their culture and world view and not the Church’s.
For much of the Church’s history, and I am
going to focus on the Church in the United States of America, since that is
the primary context that I know, the command to go and make disciples has
meant to convert people of different cultures to the Church’s existing
culture. The mission has been to homogenize the church, dismissing the gifts
that people of different cultures can bring to the Church. The saddest
examples of this in American history were the assimilation of Native
Americans into a European-derived culture, and later the attempt to
segregate African Americans from the life of the “white” church.
This distortion of the Church’s mission ignores
the witness of the earliest Church that the gift of the Holy Spirit opened
the door for the evangelization of the world, when the Galilean disciples
were able to proclaim the Gospel in the languages of many different people
(Acts 2:5-11). Even the early Church, as with all succeeding generations of
the Church, attempted to remain safe in the sanctuary of “folks like us,”
but was not allowed to by the Holy Spirit. Remember that the Holy Spirit
used the persecution of the believers following the stoning of Stephen to
“scatter” the Church to different places and to different people (Acts 8:4;
11:19; et al) so that Jesus’ command to make disciples of all nations would
be obeyed.
Sweet says that the Church’s mission is always
outside the safety of the church community, and that faithful disciples must
be GOOD, “Getting Out, Out the Door” of the church to be about Jesus’
mission in the world. Our mission must have an outward, not an
inward focus.
The relational piece of God’s operating system,
characterized in the part of the Church’s commission to teach people
everything Jesus commanded his disciples, is seen most fully, I think, in
the reciprocal nature of a teaching experience. For instance, I find that
when I am teaching others, I often learn as much as I teach, both from a
fresh examination of the material being taught and from what those in the
teacher/learner relationship can teach me from their own perspective and
experience.
Again, the Acts of the Apostles offers us
examples of the relational nature of the teaching enterprise: Philip and the
Ethiopian, Paul’s conversion, Peter and Cornelius, the growth of the Church
in Antioch. In each case the person who was the “teacher” learned something
about himself, and about God, from the learner.
When teaching what Jesus has commanded, both
teacher and learner find themselves in a “learning” mode, since the real
teacher is Jesus himself, speaking to us through the witness of the Bible.
Therefore, a second dynamic of the relational piece of God’s operating
system is for both teacher and learner to have a deeper, more intimate
relationship with God’s Word. Ideally, this developing and strengthening of
a relationship with God’s Word will take place in the context of a community
– a Bible study group, a lectionary group consisting of pastors, pastor and
elders gathered at Session meetings, the gathered Presbytery, etc.
The value of a relationship with God’s Word in
the context of community, I believe, stems from the fact that each
participant in the community can begin to see God’s Word through the
perspective and faith experience of others. In community we have the
opportunity to, on a smaller scale anyway, engage the “nations” with the
Gospel, and to be engaged by the Gospel as understood by the “nations.”
The third piece of God’s operating system, the
incarnational piece, is a reminder to us that the Church belongs to Jesus
Christ and not to us. Jesus is “Emmanuel,” God with us, both in history and
in the present through the Holy Spirit, and he is THE LORD of HIS Church.
Jesus is the head of the Church, and his promise to be with us always,
foreshadowed in John’s Gospel, when Jesus promised that he would not leave
the disciples orphaned, but would come to them in the person of the Holy
Spirit, is our assurance of God’s continued presence with and in the Church.
The incarnation of Jesus is made manifest when the Holy Spirit, dwelling
within each believer, compels that believer to “get up and out the door” and
to be a teacher and a learner of God’s Word.
This also means, though, that each believer
understands himself or herself to be subject to Jesus’ Lordship. Most of you
have heard me say at one time or another that “Jesus Christ is Lord, and if
you take that seriously, then everything else is negotiable.” Following
Sweet’s lead, I have adopted an acronym for what I believe it means to take
Jesus’ Lordship seriously – Lowering one’s estimation of oneself,
Obeying God’s Word in all matters of “faith and manners,” Relating
to the world as Jesus did and as the early Church did, and Discipling
other believers.
With Adam and Eve, the builders of the Tower of
Babel, those who worshiped idols, and other examples noted in Scripture, our
greatest sin is that we have either presumed to be like God or have
attempted to fashion a god for ourselves whom we can control. Whether as a
result of Gnostic theology, or a belief that God is, as Bonhoeffer said, the
deux ex machina, the “God of the machine” (what I call “Master Card
Jesus”), we humans have a tendency to have far too high an estimation of
ourselves.
Indeed, God has created humans in God’s own
image (Genesis 1:26), and has made mortals a “little lower than God” (Psalm
8:5). But we must never forget that we are still lower than God. We
must never presume to place ourselves on an equal plane with God. Even
Jesus, “though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God
as something to be exploited…emptied himself, taking the form of a slave,
being born in human likeness” (Phil. 2:6-7). As Christians we should also
humble ourselves, and become slaves to one another, serving as Jesus himself
served. “It belongs to Christ alone to rule, to teach, to call, and to use
the Church as he wills…” (Book of Order, G-1.0100b).
The Westminster Confession, and our beloved
Book of Order, both teach that the Word of God, revealed in the
Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, is “the only rule of faith and
manners” (G-1.0307[7]), and “Insofar as Christ’s will for the Church is set
forth in Scripture, it is to be obeyed” (G-1.0100c, emphasis mine).
Obedience is not a word that we like, and which
many of the post-modern generation attempts to either ignore or redefine.
The reality, though, is that the conscience of Christians, particularly
Ministers, Elders, and Deacons in the Presbyterian Church (USA), “is captive
to the Word of God as interpreted in the standards of the church,” i.e.,
The Book of Confessions and the Form of Government of The Book of
Order (G-6.0108b). The Centurion in Matthew’s Gospel (Matt. 8:8-9),
whose servant Jesus healed, understood the authority of Jesus’ Word, and
submitted in faith to it.
To be obedient to God’s Word is not to be
burdened with a weight that none of us can bear, but rather is to experience
true freedom within the parameters of God’s will. My other mantra is, “There
is a barbed wire fence around Yahweh’s ranch; but it’s a real BIG ranch!”
Within that barbed wire fence true freedom is to be found.
Relating to the world as Jesus did is difficult
for most of us. As noted above, we much prefer to remain safe in our
“sanctuaries” rather than take the risk of meeting the world on its own
terms with the good news of the Gospel. Will it take another persecution for
the Spirit to be able to scatter us to where we need to be in service of
Jesus Christ?
Stephen dared to meet the world on its terms,
only to lose his life (Acts 7). But in losing his life he found life beyond
life. Ananias was afraid when God called him to go to Saul, for fear of his
life, but he obeyed God’s Word to him (Acts 9:10ff). Are we willing to risk
our lives for the sake of relating to the world as Jesus did?
Finally, to submit to Jesus’ Lordship means
discipling other believers. No one comes to Jesus Christ with a full
understanding of the Lord’s will for him or her. A person must be taught,
and therefore needs a teacher. The definition of a disciple is “a learner
who wants to become like the teacher.” For all those who engage in the
journey of discipleship, there will be times of learning, times of teaching,
times of learning again, and so on. But with every act of learning/teaching
or teaching/learning one takes a new step into deeper intimacy with Jesus
Christ.
In our world today, I believe the greatest
hunger people have is for intimacy. But, following the lord of this world,
we too often “look for love in all the wrong places.” The truest intimacy
can only be found in one’s relationship with Jesus Christ, and that
relationship is one that must be nurtured, strengthened, renewed, and
deepened through growth as a disciple. This means that there must be one who
is willing to act at the teacher to the disciple. Are we willing to take up
that mantle?
Do you want to know what God is up to in your
life, your church, the Presbytery of the Northern Plains? Then I encourage
you to ask yourself if you, your church, and the Presbytery are defaulting
to God’s operating system. To ask whether we, our churches, our Presbytery
are Missional, Relational, and Incarnational.
I also encourage you to ask yourself if you,
your church, and the Presbytery are taking Jesus’ Lordship seriously.
The answers will probably be, “Sort of,”
“Sometimes,” “Maybe.” If they are then I challenge all of us to begin a
program of de-fragmentation and rebooting so that we will increasingly be
the beneficiaries of the abundant life Jesus promised us in God’s operating
system.
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