Mike Bishop - West Palm Beach, Florida, USA
1.  Asking questions is a better teacher than looking for answers. If you want to learn something about church in a postmodern context, don't go reading a bunch of books and articles looking for someone to tell you what to do.  Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of wise men and women you need to listen to, but there will be no greater opportunity for learning than creating a safe place to ask hard questions amongst a few friends and fellow seekers.  My "answers" or the few conclusions I've come to have grown out of an almost three year journey with our small community of faith in West Palm Beach. These are not conclusions I could have come up with myself or by reading the right books. Over the Rhine sums it up best:

You need questions, forget about the answers.
Do you really want to die this way?


2. If you need to, fast from church. Some of us have been so burned out working in the evangelical salvation machine, or were suffering under poor leadership, or were ostracized for our difficult problems or questions, that a little break from church was a healthy and needed discipline. What does fasting from church look like? Well, certainly not isolation where we stand on the sidelines and throw rocks. For us it was removing ourselves from patterns (countless meetings, programs, and other busy religious activities) that had become destructive and were causing us to lose touch with our souls. During that time we still worshipped with other believers, just in simple, organic ways that were healthy and not draining. We are now beginning to pick up more disciplined ways of being with each other, but with a totally different flavor.


3. Fight segregated spirituality through integration. The Gospel of the Kingdom of God naturally confronts the brands of self-help spirituality being offered throughout the religious marketplace. These consumer spiritualities might be attractive for their low-cost quick-fixes, but they are incapable of producing lasting change, particularly the kind of living-from-the-heart change Jesus describes in the Sermon on the Mount. We must refuse to accept spiritual programs that promise the world in 40 days or a new level of inner peace but cannot address why we continue to view pornography on a regular basis or gossip about a co-worker to make them look bad. The first step in our community has been allowing ourselves to see our entire lives as the context for our transformation. Not just during "spiritual" activities, but all the time and in everything we do. I have learned more about the state of my soul dealing with my 2-year-old son than I ever did in a Bible study. But that's just me.


4. Redefine the role of organization and leader. In order to stay faithful to our process together, we have had to continually reimagine what part corporate structure and leadership will play in our life as a community of faith.  Up until now, we have been able to keep the organization subject to the needs of the community. However, that is a constant battle as organizations seem to have a habit of quickly getting too big for their britches.  A helpful image I keep in my mind is that of the upside-down umbrella. Instead of attempting to bring all activities of our community under our corporate  "umbrella", we flip it around to where the umbrella serves the activities of our flesh-and-blood community. Leaders take a similar path, naturally giving their prophetic and directive guidance to the ongoing life of real people as they live out their real lives.


5. Being "authentic" sounds cool, but it's not. It's really hard to be honest, vulnerable, respectful, patient, loving, etc. especially when all you're trying to do is be cool and  "reach postmodern people". It's hard enough doing all those things when you're just trying to live your life and not reach anybody. By the way, I'd like to turn in my  "cool postmodern church planter" badge wherever you do something like that. Can I just become a good person, a really good person that loves God and fumbles around trying to help a few other people do the same? Over the past few years, we've become less and less enamored with the idea of doing something ground-breaking and have become more interested in just learning how to survive and grow as human beings. Why can't our innovation be love?  What a headline that would be: "Church Actually Loves One Another". Imagine that.



Jason Evans - San Diego, California, USA
1. Church is God’s people, not an event. When I was in junior high I remember looking at depictions of Civil War scenes in our history books. It seemed so odd to see military leaders, gentleman and ladies standing on hillsides watching the battle below. Safe. Removed. Above the chaos. That was me when I first entered into church leadership. But now, I see the role of church leader more like William Wallace in the movie Braveheart. We are the humble servants, the encouragers, one out of many, and maybe just the first to run out in front of danger’s way… nothing more. For Wallace it wasn’t about that battle alone but about what that battle produced for the people he lived life with.

Several years ago, on staff at a growing church, I was sitting in my cubicle one morning estimating where my time was spent all week. About 90% of my resources and energy were going towards what would happen on one day of the week for a little over an hour. It suddenly struck me that if the Church is not an event but Christ manifested in the lives of his people than something was terribly wrong. I began to see how I had to move from asking, “What do I want from this community?” to “What do I want for this community?” It may seem only a slight difference but with this shift the focus of the Church meeting, no matter where or when, moves from what is happening now, to how this really helps us live life the rest of the week. Which leads me to my next point…


2. Worship is a lifestyle, not a style of music. With the millions of dollars being made off of CD’s and events across the civilized world you might think differently but in the book of Romans St. Paul defined worship as being a “living sacrifice”. In our faith community, Matthew’s House, we started unpacking worship by asking ourselves, what is a living sacrifice? Take a look at the book of Leviticus and you see that sacrifices are a bloody mess. In his book, Leap Over a Wall, Eugene Peterson equates temple priests to meat butchers with their white aprons stained red. Our lives are messy too and when we model worship as simply a music set or a set of rituals we aren’t lending much help to those struggling in the junk they find themselves in every week.

If true worship is birthed out of the mess we call our lives put before God day in and day out we begin to move away from going to church and towards learning how to be the Church. The end result for us was that when we gathered together worship sprang forth naturally and practices that had seemed dead for far too long began to have new fullness and meaning. Which, again, leads me to my next point…


3. Not all new things are good, not all old things are bad. In a culture of constant change, addicted to quick fixes, the Christian community can easily get convinced that we too must participate in the insanity of ever-changing fads and trends. Far too often this rears its head in our practices as a community. Now, let me pause to say that in all I’ve put before the reader so far, I’m talking primarily about internal re-alignment rather than external adjustments, although I think that the latter does happen many times and rightly so. That said, one of the greatest lessons we’ve learned is that our desire to always try new tricks to accomplish the Great Commission are often pointless. The reason for this is based on the kind of results the different gimmicks are pointing us towards. We are too easily result-oriented at the expense of process.

The writer of Acts paints a beautiful picture of the birth of the Church. I think that for many of us, we read those passages, see those numbers and forget about the lengthy, consuming work Jesus laid out for three years before that… and the Father throughout all time for that matter. Many of the practices being introduced daily can only be measured by what many half-jokingly refer to as “nickels and noses” results. Author and professor, Dallas Willard, explained to a roomful of listeners once that there may be many Christians in North America but few are disciples of Jesus. On the other hand, we have found that many of the ancient practices of the Church, when looked at through the proper lens, are geared towards assisting people in the process of spiritual transformation. Not everything works in every context. But before we write off disciplines that saints past have embraced we should evaluate their purpose and if they open each of us up to more grace or just require more seating. Speaking of ancient practices…


4. The ancient spiritual discipline of partying. Okay, so maybe this is a bit unorthodox but, man, we’ve got to lighten up a bit! Don’t call it a “Celebration Service” unless it looks like it! People that are to be “known by their love” ought to have some fun with life. We should learn from the Jewish heritage of our faith that there’s always a good reason for a celebration. We’ve been liberated, folks! Let’s act like it. St. Irenaeus said, “The glory of God is man fully alive.” My friends and authors of the book, Four Souls, always talk about living an “epic life.” Enjoy the life Christ has given us together.

Some of the most growing moments for those that were a part of our community in the early stages were the vacations, barbecues and late nights over coffee together. When people who don’t follow Jesus see that you enjoy life this much sober, trust me, they’ll want in on it.


5. Sometimes not having the answer is the answer. This is a hard one for me to define (which is kind of the point I guess) but it’s okay to not have all the answers. This is part of what draws me towards conversation with our Eastern Orthodox brothers and sisters. They whole-heartedly embrace the mystery of our faith. That mystery says that there are some things beyond our understanding. For most of the history of the Church we’ve been okay with this. In the last several decades, though, we seem to have become convinced that the more we know, the more God loves us. Uh… no. I don’t think this takes away from the importance of discipleship - which is what most of what I’m talking about leads towards. In fact, I think admitting this is one of the first steps towards becoming a student of Jesus.

A friend of mine is a campus minister on a university campus. From time to time I get to hang out with him and some of the students during the day. It’s always interesting to watch Christian students interact with those who are not Christians. They feel like such a failure if they get stumped in a theological conversation. Not having all the answers proves what is already obvious to those that you interact with but you have failed to notice: that you’re human. The words, “I don’t know,” do not make us more or less of anything except welcome to take lessons on life from the Messiah.

---

I serve as a bivocational, part-time pastor at a United Methodist Church that split and seemed on the verge of closing just before I got there. I'm its first part-time pastor.
There are no real Sunday school "programs" ... no children's programs, because there are no children ... a few youth ... no praise and worship team ... no traditional choir ... but a real sense of community among those who are there and a desire to serve the least, the last, the lost. Just gave the remainder of the parsonage furniture to a single mom whose house burned down. We weren't using it anyway ...
There are nine UMC churches alone (including a new church startup) within a nine-mile radius. Plenty of grazing ground around for consumer Christians. ... I feel good about this church ... great things can happen on the other side of brokenness.
Am I insane? I think not ... I think we're church. ... or, at least after a little more than two years with them we are all rediscovering what it means to be The Church.
Grace and peace ...
Pastor Buzz
www.themeadow.org
--Buzz Trexler ( Ripshin at nxs dot net ) on 6/28/2004; 8:46:45 PM

Miller, I think the answer to your question is "neither". Authenticity is actually one of those words that I don't like very much because it gets thrown around like the "postmodern church planter" badge. People say, "Hey, I'm authentic!" like they should be given a medal or something. I think the real issue has to do with the kind of people we are becoming, or as Dallas Willard puts it, living our life as Jesus himself would live it.
--Mike Bishop ( bish at whatischurch dot com ) on 6/7/2004; 4:20:56 PM

It is refreshing to read the authenticity of what both of you have to say. By authenticity I mean I can tell you're not lying. You've paid the price through humility and death. I can rock to that.

One thing I'd like to add to the list if I may be so bold. Be a seeker of truth, whether we find it in scripture, a stupid sit-com, or the Dao Te Ching. Truth is truth and nothing cuts us open quicker than a two edged sword.

Hope I didn't over step my bounds, here.
--Rob King ( samiamspop at hotmail dot com ) on 6/7/2004; 2:55:59 PM

As we move toward an intentional community (church) locally I find things increasingly out of control.

On Saturday we thought we would have a quiet sunday...

We got a call sat evening that a single mom we knew had checked herself into the hospital... she has been on coke for six months..

we spent the morning conferring with another couple who have been helping her..

we went to the hospital together.. got things moving, talked to the nurse and a psychiatrist.. then spent a couple hours with our wasted friend..

on the way home we got a call from a couple who have been on a journey outside the walls.. wanted us to come visit..

i had a feeling.. wow.. this is out of control.. our day is out of control, but we can choose to go with it as the Lord puts it together..

spent four great hours of conversation about change, struggle, confusion, finding the way forward..

got home around 6:30 PM, digging around for food, another couple dropped in on us.. half an hour of conversation before I had to head out to help some other friends fix a leaking sink..

great sunday.. this is church.. connecting, caring, conversation, coffee...
--Leonard Hjalmarson ( lenhjal at telus dot net ) on 6/7/2004; 11:54:37 AM

great stuff guys, thanks so much for layin' it out. Mike, maybe its just me but i think i have plenty of questions... including at least one for you. would you say authenticity is more easily attained as a "cool postmodern church planter" or as a "cool trad-church program facilitator"???

oh, and Jason i really dig your description of church as a big party on occasion. but let me ask... what are the most growing moments now? are they different? are they as growing as the early ones? growing how, spiritually, numerically, both? how do they let you know they want in? do you think it really matters whether they want in? are we doing it wrong if they don't???

please excuse the tone, i don't mean anything by it. i only know one way to ask questions and sometimes it pisses people off... not my intent. you both really crawled out on the proverbial limb here and i for one appreciate it very much!
--miller talbot ( mtalbot at signalpeak dot net ) on 6/7/2004; 10:37:15 AM

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