Category: Gedanken zu Religion

Reimagining church

I’ve just finished reading Frank Viola’s book “Reimagining church“. I find it a good introduction to the reasoning and desires behind the organic church movement. His thoughts about the Lord’s supper opened my eyes to some aspects which I cannot remember having heard before. To quote him (Chapter 3, p. 78):

It is a reproclamation of the Lord’s sacrificial death for us in the past. It’s a redeclaration of his ever-abiding nearness with us in the present. And it’s a repronouncement of our hope of glory – His coming in the future.

He continues:

The Lord’s supper is a living testimony to the three chief virtues: faith, hope, and love. Through the supper, we reground ourselves in that glorious salvation which is ours by faith. We reexpress our love for the brethren as we reflect on the one body. And we rejoice in the hope of our Lord’s soon return.

I find both aspects touching and significant.
His thoughts on church unity and the reasons for the great disunity often seen in the local church are also well worth reading.

The second half of the book deals with leadership, structure, and existing renewal movements. On first reading, I found some of his critiques somewhat harsh and arrogant; after  a break of several weeks, I was able to approach the passages differently, and found his comments justified and tone more factual.

He doesn’t say anything about the organic church which you won’t find in other books, but provides a lot of food for thought and helpful criteria for judging our own ideas and actions. The appendix dealing with common objections and misunderstandings of Biblical texts is valuable reading.

Systems, power, repression

The church has been (rightly) accused of abuse of its power in the past. How much of this is a particular failing of the church, and how much is due to other factors?

After its founding around 30AD, the church suffered persecution for some time, but grew in influence, finally becoming the state religion of the Roman Empire. Its influence continued to grow, and outlasted the Roman Empire itself; in the Middle Ages, the Catholic Church was probably the most influential force in Europe. As its power and influence grew, so did the abuse of that power; the Inquisition and Counter-Reformation are prime examples, as is the practise of the Indulgences.

The Catholic Church persecuted the Reformers, but these, after successfully establishing their teaching and structures, in turn persecuted subsequent groups such as the Anabaptists.

That’s truly a poor record, and it is quite understandable that it led to increasing secularisation. Even after increasing separation of the church and state, the church retained a strong influence on local levels; the prevailing views and behaviours are today often viewed as hypocrisy and proof of a negative influence from Christianity or religion in general.

Let’s look at more recent developments in the secular West:

  • in Britain, it is increasingly difficult to do anything in an inhabited area without being filmed by a surveillance camera, and it was recently divulged that the Border Agency has been testing a database aimed to capture all travel to and from the UK since 2004, and plans to register 95% of travel by  December 2010. The Government is also working on tracking mobile phone calls, e-mails and web sessions.
  • the German Government has similar plans for mobile phone calls and web sessions (based on EU legislation), and is currently proposing enforcing filtering of web content, currently targeting paedophilia.
  • the US has been registering foreigners entering and leaving the country for several years, and has increased its efforts since September 11th 2001, now requiring fingerprint and iris scans on entry, and details (name, credit card, dietary preferences etc.) of all passengers travelling to the US before they arrive. The Customs officials may confiscate electronic equipment including laptops and mobile phones without prior reason, and travellers are legally required to provide access to all information contained on the device.
  • the current economic/bank crisis is giving rise to calls for more regulation and state control of the financial system – although the US had access to all transfers in the SWIFT interbank network for several years.

Those are only the first examples which come to mind. The reasoning behind the surveillance and legislation is always increased security and crime prevention, both legitimate concerns for a state system. However, the developments all point in the direction of repression of non-conformist activity, much as the church is accused of doing in the past. Dictatorships do the same, but generally in a much shorter period; the rise of a dictator is generally coupled with widespread dissatisfaction with the existing system, but the dictator then cements his power through repression of dissenting opinions.

I’m beginning to think that the criticism of the church’s role in the past is both justified and misdirected! Misdirected, because the criticised behaviour is apparently endemic in an established and generally accepted system; justified, because the behaviour is basically evil, and the church is called to be different. (Of course, in order to be different, the church must effectively disciple new believers. But that’s another story.)

Forum Gemeindeinnovation

FGI panel discussionWe’ve just returned from Romanshorn, where we attended (and helped at) the Forum Gemeindeinnovation (Forum for Church Innovation). It was an interesting three days, hearing Alan Hirsch (author of “The Shaping of Things to Come”, which I read recently) explaining his most recent thoughts about church and the changes we need to see. The main value for me was meeting a number of people, including Stefan and Evelyn Peter, Christoph Schalk and Jonathan Brutchin. Jonathan lives about 45 minutes from us, but we never found time to meet here, so met 2 1/2 hours away…
The main message I took away from the conference was the same thing I’ve been sensing for the past several months: get out and do it. We’ve decided what our next steps are going to be – now we just have to take them 😉

The central message

It’s Easter. People are eating Easter eggs and chocolate Easter bunnies, and some are going to church for the first time this year. (The second time will be Christmas.) In Europe, Friday and Monday are national holidays in most nations. But why?

Christmas is good news: God born as a man, God with us. Easter, though, is the Good News: the central message of the Gospel. We all know that we have done wrong in our lives: lied (I ‘ve done that), stolen (that too), hit our sisters (and that) and our wives (that too). And those are just the first things that come to mind. God’s standards are easily summarized: love God with all your heart, mind and strength, and love your neighbour as yourself. But we fail, time and time again. The penalty for that failure is permanent death; not the simple, physical death which we all face, but that which Revelation calls ‘the second death’: permanent cessation of our existence. At Easter, Jesus took that punishment on himself, dying in our place.
Easter originally coincided with the Jewish Passover; Jesus was crucified during the Passover celebrations. Passover is the celebration of the Jews’ exodus from slavery in Egypt. The last of the ten plagues sent against Pharaoh for refusing to release the Jews from slavery was that every firstborn in Egypt died in a single night. Only those who paid attention to Moses’ warning, slaughtering a lamb and spreading some of its blood on their doorposts, were spared. That was a foreshadowing of Jesus’ death on the cross; everyone will die the second death, because we’ve all fallen short of God’s standards. Only those are exempted who “spread the lamb’s blood on their doorposts”: claim Jesus’ death on the cross as the sign of desiring to live with God.
Jesus rose from the dead because he did keep God’s standards. The good news of Easter is that death has been overcome, and if we pay attention to God’s warning, we will live with him.

Make disciples or plant churches?

Over at simplychurch.com, Jeff Gilbertson asks “What do missionaries do?”. He lists a number of activities which people mention when asked this question, but concludes that what they really should be doing is planting churches. I attended one of Neil Cole’s Greenhouse sessions last week (as did Mike Bischoff, who wrote a good summary (in German)). One of the things which I noticed – for the first time, as far as I can remember – is that the Great Commission does not even mention churches. Our job is to make disciples, and churches are the natural consequence of that. Now, we may spend quite some time making sure churches function well as support systems for the members, but our aim must be that those members grow in their faith.

Have I consumed too much Neil Cole recently?

The shaping of things to come

The Shaping of Things to Come coverI’ve finally got around to reading “The Shaping of Things to Come” – only just in time, because FocuSuisse is involved in organising the Forum Gemeindeinnovation, where Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch, the book’s authors, are the headline speakers. Several people had recommended the book, so I was curious to find out what they had to say. It deals with the changes in society, and changes which the authors see as necessary if the church is to fulfill its commission.
The book starts off with a brief analysis of church history, examining how the current situation – “Christendom” – arose. The authors then ask what the church is supposed to be and do, in contrast to what it is and does. They constantly ask questions to make their readers think, and suggest new approaches, both methodical and conceptual. One major and very interesting part is an analysis of Greek and Hebrew spirituality.
It is our contention that by focusing on development of the speculative doctrines, the early church lost the vital focus on the historical and practical implications of the faith. Mission and discipleship as such became marginal to theological correctness. Orthopraxy gave way to orthodoxy… Many great theologians have “thought” rightly about Christian teaching, but their lives have not necessarily mirrored their beliefs… Seminarians’ minds are filled with propositional truth for up to four years and then they are sent to ministry in local churches. And while many have found that the shift from Christian living to Christian belief is a natural one, the opposite shift from belief to action isn’t quite so natural. (pp. 120-121, my emphasis)
I think we can all relate to the advantages of learning by doing. I generally find it easier to learn theory (or, in this case, theology) by doing something and discovering the relevant questions instead of first learning a load of theory, and then having to find some way to put it into practice.
One of the observations which particularly made me question my thinking was this:
The other main form of theological dualism was fought over the issue of whether Jesus was really a man or if he only seemed to be one… These doctrines seem strange to us, but they are still very much part of Christendom in various forms. Marcionite and Docetist assumptions abound in more subtle forms and in many ways. So many Christians struggle with the humanity of Jesus. For them Jesus was above humanity; he simply could not have had to go to the toilet and undergo the same humbling task of daily defecation. He couldn’t have any sexual stirrings at all, and therefore had never experienced sexual desires.
Although I’m certainly no Docetist, I still found these thoughts somewhat foreign. Does that reveal a difference between my intellectual and practical theology? It certainly made me pause for thought, and is something I need to beware of – perhaps something of which we all need to beware?
They mention that in Greek thinking, ‘truth’ is a concept, whereas in Hebraic thinking, it is an action. That links to Jesus’ words in John 14: I am the way and the truth and the life. That equates truth with a person, not action, but how do we assess people, if not on the evidence of their actions?
Is truth visible in our actions?

More on The shaping of things to come later.

Leadership in house church or simple church movements

In the house church or simple church movement, we often hear that full-time “church workers” are unnecessary, or far less necessary than in the “established” church. How true is this? And how much of this opinion is born from frustration, dissatisfaction, envy or arrogance? Frustration and dissatisfaction because we recognise the discrepancy between the church we see in Acts and our current experience; envy, because we’d like to be in full-time ministry ourselves, but see no opportunity; arrogance because again, we see the discrepancy, and blame the visible representatives of the existing system, rejecting both them and the workings of that system. However, we all see that some things require full-time work, or are significantly more efficient if we can focus our attention on them full time. Raising children is one example: either we do it full-time ourselves, home-schooling our children, or delegate a significant part of it to paid teachers.
In the simple church movement, we have to consider how to best organise ourselves so that the entire Body of Christ grows to maturity. Ephesians 4 tells us that God has given particular gifts in order that this happen. The question, of course, is how the bearers of those gifts are organised. Some of them may be called to “full-time ministry” for the good of the Body; others may be called to employ their gifts part-time. Perhaps the “error” of traditional church structures is the institutionalisation, putting particular people in particular positions for the long term. That tends to concentrate all tasks on that one person, or small group of people, because as the need in the area of their gifting decreases, they tend to assume responsibility in other areas. Most people tend to delegate as much work as they can (a synonym for “are lazy”), so if there is a full-time pastor, for example, who can do the preaching, counselling, teaching or evangelising, the other Christians can lay back a little, relax after work, watch a little more television, or whatever.
Perhaps, instead of criticising the traditional church structures and particularly the people in them, we should repent of our past laziness. If we have already done that, either explicitly through confession or implicitly by changing our actions, wonderful. (I suspect that those who have done so are also discovering that it takes time and effort, and requires sacrifice and reordering of priorities.) As Jesus said, “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?” Let’s not be hypocrites, but remove the plank from our own eyes first.
(Of course, there are also people who tell us that we shouldn’t be evangelising, counselling, teaching and so on. If we’ve listened to them instead of the Spirit sending us, we need to repent of that instead. Is it right to obey man, or God?)

Revolution, Chapter 7

Barna’s examines why the congregational church is declining, suggesting that it is a consequence of the specialisation of the church: churches for different generations, different worship styles, outreach to specific parts of the population and so on. (Aren’t these the very things promoted by much church growth literature? It seems rather ironic that Barna is suggesting that these are factors in the decline of congregational church.) He continues by examining newer, focused ‘micro’ models of church.

Back to Barna, after some weeks of travelling!
This chapter is a cursory examination of newer expressions of church, how they affect people’s faith, and why people choose them.
“The congregational model of church … has been the dominant force in people’s spiritual life for hundreds of years. So why is it so rapidly losing ground at this moment in history?”
Barna’s first answer is that it is a consequence of the specialisation of the church: churches for different generations, different worship styles, outreach to specific parts of the population and so on. (Aren’t these the very things promoted by much church growth literature? It seems rather ironic that Barna is suggesting that these are factors in the decline of congregational church.) Continue reading “Revolution, Chapter 7”

Revolution, chapter 6

Barna writes about his observations of where and how God is working in people’s lives, identifying mini-movements as the prime source of transformation, including house churches in his list. In my opinion, most house churches do not share one of the five characteristics he attributes to these mini-movements.

Chapter 6 of Revolution is titled “God is active today”. Barna writes about his observations of where and how God is working in people’s lives. He starts out with the comment “There is nothing more affirming than knowing that God is active in the lives of those who seek His touch, and nothing more exciting than seeing the passion and enthusiasm of those people for the God who has revealed Himself in such personal and restorative ways.”. He searched for examples of such activity in local churches, but he was “stunned – and deeply disappointed – at how rare such instances were.”
He found more evidence of such examples in what he calls mini-movements, which include “simple church fellowships (house churches), biblical worldview groups, various marketplace ministries, several spiritual disciplines networks, the Christian creative arts guilds, and others.”
He describes why these mini-movements go mostly unnoticed, and in doing so starts to touch on the questioning and struggles which I missed in the earlier chapters. He then lists five aspects which make them effective in producing transformed lives: Continue reading “Revolution, chapter 6”