The Ancient Future Church

Wesley Graham Richardson was born Saturday evening the 24^that 11:35 pm. He weighed 6 pounds and 11 ounces. He was 19¼ inches long. He is healthy and handsome and mom is only a little worse for the wear and tear. The delivery was uneventful as deliveries go. You might even say it was classic.

Classic in that the first words spoken to Wesley Graham were the first works spoken to three other children in years past. “Jesus is Lord Wesley Graham. May He walk with and you with Him all the days of your life.” With emphasis upon the first three, ‘Jesus is Lord.” Mary Elizabeth, Dow and Whit (unfortunately I was not there for Madison’s birth – though I blessed her within hours) all heard these three words just as Graham did Saturday night. In each case they were the first words they heard me speak, the first words from anyone for the boys (Mary Elizabeth is adopted. I spoke these words to her as I picked her up out of a bassinette at Lifeline). And they are the last three words each is meant to speak to me.

Mary Elizabeth is well versed in what she should do. The boys and Madison will be told as they develop. As I am laid to rest, many years hence I pray, they are to speak over me “Jesus is Lord.” These three words are the literal farewell after all other farewells. They mark the beginning and end of each temporal life.

The tradition is not mine, or least it was not originally. It came to me by way of a kindly old Episcopal priest. He impacted me greatly in my 20’s and I never forgot that tradition he had begun with his kids. He also had a dog named Otey which suffered from selective deafness. Otey always heard the dog food hit the bowl but he never heard “get off the couch.” Funny it is how Otey mirrors human existence. We hear what we want.

And thus is why it is so helpful to enter life and leave life being reminded that “Jesus is Lord.” It is not as if hearing or not hearing, compliance or rebellion, living under your father’s roof or squandering your inheritance will ever change that reality. The kindly priest never gave his own biblical underpinning for the tradition. Romans 10:9 is most likely. However, I find it developed fully in the great Christ hymn Colossians 1 beginning at verse 15 as follows:

¹⁵ The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. ¹⁶ For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. ¹⁷ He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. ¹⁸ And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. ¹⁹ For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, ²⁰ and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.

“So that in everything he might have the supremacy.” In everything supreme! How often we live Godly lives and yet do not yield to this reality, Jesus is Lord. Let me say it again, “How often we live Godly lives and yet do not yield to this reality, Jesus is Lord.” We might be great missionaries, used powerfully to win the lost. But had we listened we might have been country doctors providing healthcare for those who would otherwise drive a hundred miles for it. We might be renowned doctors who practiced medicine skillfully and with unparalleled integrity. Had we listened and yielded to the one who is Lord we might have played professional golf and given 90% of our earnings to Kingdom work.

If it means anything, Jesus is Lord means asking God what he would have us do with our lives. Routinely I meet people living lives scripted for them as if they were Truman in the Truman Show. My youth was like that. I wore generally what others wore. I broke out occasionally. I wish I could excise the memories of the red and kelly green painter’s pants with topsiders. Fashion is risky. I pursued accounting because accounting was valued and therefore lucrative. The world taught me that and I was happy to comply. Honestly, I didn’t think about it much. I certainly didn’t run my plans by Jesus. I did however ask him to bless my plans quite boldly when I took time to pray.

And all the while, Jesus is Lord. My failure to consult didn’t change his supremacy. Had I consulted there may have been a different path for me, but likewise it would not have altered this objective reality, Jesus is Lord.

So we should begin life and end life acknowledging the reality with the hope we might be aided by the Holy Spirit to consult more often and listen a bit more. Mary Elizabeth wants to be discovered, the Lizzie Mcguire of her day. Madison a vet. Dow wants to fight fires (only yesterday he was content to be Buzz). All of these things are fine things. And one can follow Jesus within each field. However, they will not know the abundance of life meant for them if they don’t begin in the desired field, the field desired by Jesus. We choose good, maybe even better, but without thinking sacrifice best, His best. And he has some thoughts about it. After all, Jesus is Lord, in all things supreme.

So here I am blessed with another boy, Wesley Graham. God is restoring the years the locusts have consumed. I would like to think the quiver is full.  After all, my life is now filled with praying behind the pronouncement. May “Jesus is Lord” become reality for them that their lives would be ordered in harmony with the unchanging truth, that in all things He is Supreme. Whatever best is that is where it is found. In Him!

Time for Candor: I’m a Church Planter and I Don’t Believe in the Church!

Tower of Babel

I’ve said it quietly to friends. I’ve suggested it in small groups. I have hinted at it from the pulpit and in my blog postings. It is time forcomplete candor. I don’t believe in the church any longer. At least not what most of us have experienced as church in the western world, specifically the American scene. For more than a decade I have been fond of quoting the poet laureate Robert Southey when he said, “I could believe in this Jesus if it weren’t for that leprous bride the church he drags behind him.” I believe deeply in Jesus. But not the leprous bride. Not any longer! And while I will love her people, I will not invest an iota of energy in her ever again.

Recently, the writings of Paul Zahl and others (Willard, Stott, James Bryan Smith and Addison) have allowed me to articulate theologically what I have believed in a pedestrian way all along: church as institution and/or business is an obstacle to if not an enemy of a grace that saves and sanctifies. Church organized in a way that allows tradition and/or money to control its destiny hinders the Kingdom and advancing the life of Jesus in His followers.

“Emil Brunner’s little-read book The Misunderstanding of the Church (1953) is a devastating critique of the idea of church. Brunner can find almost no evidence in the New Testament for anything like what many Christians consider to be the church. For Brunner, The New Testament describes a fluid and Holy Spirit-filled movement of people gathered together within an experience of God that involves massive individual changes of plan. There is a collective dimension to this: all the early Christians experienced the same thing. Like alien abductees, the first Christians had a shattering experience in common. This brought them together. But this experience was not an institution.”[1]

Not an institution! The church is overly organized. So much so that it often quenches enthusiasm if not the Holy Spirit Himself. I think it was Tozer who said something like that if you take the Holy Spirit out of the church today, 95% of what we do would continue. If you took the Holy Spirit out of the first century church 95% of what they did would come to an end.  Too often the church is consumed with perpetuating itself rather than advancing the Kingdom.

What makes us Anglican? Our liturgy? Our theology? Our English history? Shouldn’t “saved and transformed lives” be always and forever at the top of the list? In fact, the question is wrong. It should be “what makes us Christian?” I am happily Anglican. I am thoroughly Anglican. However, I would like to think I am a saved sinner walking in the footsteps of Jesus, by grace and grace alone. And that is what should make any Christian a Christian.

Institutions, including the church, require allegiance and some times that challenges our higher allegiance to the King and His Kingdom. We have heritage to protect and perhaps inadvertently but consistent with our depravity we are consumed by that (protecting heritage) instead of witnessing and disciple making. Or we have a place in the community to maintain. Our choral program is second to none. It is to be maintained to the detriment of missions. Or building is ages old and must be maintained consistent with best principles of architecture and standards of the beautification board. Dare we ask if the building investment will have an ROI for Jesus? Will it advance the Kingdom?

I knew a pastor in England who couldn’t permission from building preservation commission to install modern loo in his 800 year old church at Heathersett. And his overseers wondered why young people wouldn’t come to the church. Again and again, elements of the institution or the institution itself Kingdom work demand our allegiance and divert our attention and resources. The church advances while the Kingdom hobbles along.

Listen to Dallas Willard’s criticism in The Great Omission. We have exceled in baptizing members into church membership (Church) but failed
miserably at making disciples of Jesus (ekklesia).

In my own Anglican stream of Christian life, we place much emphasis on the liturgical seasons of the church year and church history. I’ve
sat through enough membership classes to know. Meanwhile, we fail to communicate what our best, in Whitefield (for whom our second boy is named) and Wesley (for whom our third boy is about to be named) preached so loudly and clearly, that left to our own devices and desires we are hopelessly bound by sin and we are released from our bondage by the meritorious sacrifice of Jesus and that alone.

I am reminded of a quip. Ushers found a man quite exuberant in the local church one Sunday morning. The ushers told the man he would have to calm down or be escorted out. He said, “But you don’t understand, I foun Jesus.” To which the chief usher responded, “Well, you didn’t find him here.”

It is as if the core of what we believe is embarrassing to the established or institutional church. We hooted down Wesley for preaching in mines and open fields. It is vulgar. It is undignified. Unlike King David, we Anglicans (and often Christians in general) don’t dance.

Case in point, in the early 80’s at the ATO house, we swayed. Dancing was for non-Greeks. All the new boys fell in line. The fraternity had a reputation to uphold. Most institutions do.

And when you organize with hope of not becoming an institution, there remains in our way of church life the question of who will be in charge. Even if keenly aware of and committed to a more organic existence, far too much church life is controlled by money or controlling people or the deadly combination of controlling people who have the ability to control with their money. Controlling people have their agenda. We want to fill the church with people like us. Or we want the best choral program. Or we want to defeat the Episcopal Church. We want to be large. We want to be small (easier to control). You name it. Lots of things compete for the space, the chief value, which should be occupied by “saved and transformed lives.”

This should be no surprise. “The observation of churches, from Orthodox to Roman Catholic to mainline Protestant to evangelical and Pentecostal protestant, always ends in disappointment. I repeat: the observation of churches always ends in disappointment.”[2]

Why? To state the utterly obvious again – the church is at best led by justified sinners, saved but not fully sanctified people. At best. I believe it is at times led by unjustified people, folks who know church life well but have not a saving relationship with Jesus. It is both easy and hard to make that statement. Hard because it is not my place to judge someone’s heart. Easy because knowing depravity as I do, best in myself, it is impossible to imagine the church has escaped the sin of the unredeemed and suffers only and always at the hands of its own.

Always end in disappointment? I take exception to Zahl’s universal statement here. I think many are rarely disappointed and for reasons not directly associated with a low anthropology that makes sense of it in the end. Some have abandoned any expectations of the church lest it be in conflict with all other expectations. If you don’t believe in anything you cannot be disappointed. Denial precludes disappointment.

OK. I talked myself out of it. I take it back. Zahl is correct. Every examination of “the church” ends in disappointment.

A neighbor once told me of his father’s last straw with the church. It was over a Habitat for Humanity home. He was sickened by the politics involved. For me, it was one of those aha moments. A light went on. An alarm went off. His father’s frustration came at the point of trying to organize Christians as opposed liberating Christians to be Christian. I suggested his father would find great fulfillment in keeping his tool belt handy and simply stopping at homes as the Holy Spirit led. No target. No rules. Just Spirit inspired love and service.

Here is the thing. If we are to disappoint, let’s disappoint in being what Jesus started and not what evolved from those early days. So let us move beyond a critique of what has shaped us, the Church, to an affirmation of that which we want to be a part, the ekklesia.

Let us first affirm the church of which Jesus spoke, the ekklesia or called out community of faith that was realized at Pentecost. The church was a fellowship of believers (Acts 2:42-47), a Body of those led to by the Holy Spirit to deem Christ as head, head of everything that matters (Col. 1:15-20).

It resisted regulations. See the minimalist approach of Acts 15. No circumcision! Even here one wonders if they did not go too far in standard setting in an effort to reconcile Christianity to Judaism. Here we yield to the Holy Spirit as inspirer of the Scriptures and trust the apostolic leaders got it right.

It resisted institutional authority (Acts 3:1-10). The New Testament church, ekklesia or called out community “was an astonishingly well-ordered whole without such a formal hierarchy, without such delimitation of competence and regulation of rank. And not only a well-ordered but also a coherent whole. The unity of the Christian fellowship flowed from the living Word and Spirit of Christ dwelling within it.”[3]

The church or community of faith in Jesus sought unity among believers (1 Cor. 1:10-17, Romans 12:16) but with an unsurpassed awareness that depravity would be a perennial challenge to it. Think about Romans 12. Our individual response to the Gospel is be transformed and offer ourselves as sacrifices. First words that follow when Paul turns (at verse 3) to the communal experience of saving faith? “Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought.” So necessary to be the church is the absence of any abiding distinctions. See also Romans 12:16 and 1 Cor. 12.

Consequently, the ekklesia or NT church resisted formal hierarchy. While most demurred to the apostles, the apostles “never claimed this ascendancy as formal right accruing to them through their institution as apostles, but rather in everything they strive to gain the assent of the communion and submitted themselves to the test of authentication by signs and wonders in the power of the Holy Ghost.”[4] See 2 Cor. 12:12.

Rather, the community of faith lives inspired by the Holy Spirit in an environment where no one person, regardless of role, is of greater value than another. Being a Benjaminite or Pharisee elevates no one. Nor does being a Mellon or published theologian! Think of the implications within. Think of the implications without. No more reserved parking spaces for the rector or headmaster. The beloved of God who is coming is FINALLY as critical to the equation as to the beloved already here.

And here is where a return to the beginning yields a more favorable result in the end. No founders and latecomers. Jesus is the only founder worthy of a privileged position. And those subsequent founders real and perceived, henceforth preserve primarily their own life in Jesus, loving as He first loved us.

We have so far to go to return to the original vision. We have been almost irreversibly shaped by something that Jesus didn’t start. We
are loathed to sacrifice what we believe church to be. Here is where grace serves. Grace, and grace alone, has the power to transform us into the likeness of the Son. Let us ask the Holy Spirit to cause us first to relinquish our image of church in order to make room for the image to come. This image emptied himself and died that others might live fully and to boot, he never bothered counting the cost. A church shaped by that image would be worthy of our devotion and allegiance, always, of course, subordinated to the King and Kingdom.

It was my pleasure to gather with fellow Beta Delta ATO’s this past weekend for a few rounds of golf and a lot of fellowship. The group of men spanned some five or six pledge classes from 1976 to 1981. Interest in the golf gathering waned a decade ago but has been renewed in the last few years.

The gathering is in its 21^st year. I religiously avoided the gathering for the first eighteen years. It was sure to be filled with debauchery and foul language that marked my own days at the University of Alabama. While I cannot avoid sin any more than the next guy, those things are at least not hallmarks in my life. Sadly, they once were.

But the truth be told, my insecurities kept me away. Wanting to think I am personally confident in my call, I was not sure others would be. People were sure to wonder if the dramatic change in course was real. Heck, I am fairly certain members of my own family of origin wonder the same though I am 23 years down this path of ministry including a year of mission work in Bolivia.

What did I find? What had I missed? What did I rob myself of for 18 years? An incredibly strong fellowship! You might not know it from the outside. The ribbing is incessant and none of it is new. I am convinced boys wrestle to show their appropriate affection for their male friends. Attend any junior high church function to confirm that. Men, on the other hand beat the crap out of each other verbally, with insults. About the best you can do at Divot Masters, especially after making the turn and the beers consumed before the turn set in] is “your drive didn’t suck nearly as bad as his.” I was reminded again and again I would be a good golfer if I could only aim. Thanks Shane.

When you get beyond the belched draught, the occasional course language, and foot wedges on steroids, you find fellowship, true community. One finds a group of men willing to meet you where you are. Success in life doesn’t give you a leg up. And a failure to meet expectations does not hinder your participation. I think it not hyperbole to say most, if not all, of those men would take a bullet for me, at least a proverbial bullet, and I would like to think I would do the same for them.

So I have been in the business of building such community or fellowship for more than a couple of decades with varying degrees of success. I am not sure I’ve seen better. I am quite sure I have experienced less. So where do the Taus get it right? It begins with a Creed. One of my pledge brothers tried to recite the Creed Friday night. He was jovially hooted down. Typical of males, the brothers didn’t want to get serious or go deep. After all, the golf retreat is an escape from the weight of real life. But Rob was trying to get out something profound. It has indelibly shaped and molded these men. It goes like this:

To bind men together

In a brotherhood based on eternal and immutable principles

With a bond as strong as right itself and as lasting as humanity,

To know no North, no South, no East or no West, but to know man as man,

To teach that true men the world over should stand TOGETHER AND CONTEND FOR SUMPREMECY OF [for] good over evil;

To teach, not politics, but morals;

To foster not partisanship but the recognition of true merit wherever found;

To have no narrower limits within which to work together for the elevation of man than the outlines of the world:

These were the thoughts and hopes uppermost in the minds of the founders of the Alpha Tau Omega Fraternity.

Otis Allan Glazebrook

1880

I wrote (read typed) the creed above from memory. It was last required of me, under some duress I might add, in January of 1981. I then compared it to the official version. I inadvertently omitted the six words in all caps and replaced them one extra-creedal word to compensate for the omission. That word is found in [ ]. Think about it. After 30 years, I can’t get the creed out of my head! I suspect that is true for most if not all of the brothers there.

So where do Taus get it right? It begins with a creed, “a code” for a few good men. And it should be no surprise that it produces Christian community. The Creed was written by Christians for Christians. Alpha Tau Omega has been and is always, in principle at least, a Christian fraternity.

So a tribute to my brothers! Thanks for doing fellowship well and making me a part of it. VTL

A New Testament scribe, enamored with Jesus’ adroitness in handling tough questions, offered up one of his own. “Which commandment is the first of all?” To which Jesus famously replied “Love God. And BTW, love neighbor is its close second.” This is a loose contemporary language translation, the JDRV if you will.

Similarly awed by the summation, we often fail to follow the conversation to its conclusion literally and theologically. The scribe praised Jesus for the response and said of the summary of the law, this “is much more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices” to which Jesus responded “You are not far from the Kingdom of God.”

Jesus was pointing out, rather effusively albeit subtly, that the scribe was on to something critical. What had the scribe stumbled upon? That without love of God AND neighbor, corporate worship, read assembling together, is a non-starter.

Burnt offerings and sacrifices are a big deal in Judaism. One does not summarily dismiss them. Jesus came close. Granted Jesus did not insist they be put down, but religious offerings were put in proper perspectives. External acts, even ones intended to praise and honor, were made secondary to relationships, loving God and loving neighbor. Jesus suggested elsewhere that all the abstaining from unclean foods and ablutions in the world will not get to the root of the problem which is always a matter of the heart. Paul nails this in Romans, when he says that our reasonable or spiritual worship is to do as Jesus did, live and die for the welfare of others, to be living sacrifices.

Implications for us? What does this say about the image into which we are being transformed? How would the Holy Spirit shape us?

A disciple maintains a loose grip on his burnt offerings and sacrifices. Our assemblies (worship services) often draw the greatest critiques and an inordinate amount our energy. From “hymns are boring” to “contemporary music is a tool of the devil.” From “robes are antiquated” to “is there any natural fiber in that suit?” From “the presence of the American flag is offensive” to “if the flag is not in the procession, I am out of this church.” If you are in this business long enough, you will hear them all.

More important, as we are transformed by the Holy Spirit our hearts will be inclined to relationships, first ours with God and then with one another. Are we talking at God or talking with him? And is it mutual? Are we listening? A simple question may reveal the actual mutuality of our relationship. When did we last ask, “God, where is it that you want me to be more like you in Jesus?

And what of the care and concern for those the Lord Himself is assembling? Is the first in equal to the last in? Poor equal to rich? Black equal to white? Single equal to married? All sinners? “No one righteous, not even one?” One of ministry’s greatest disappointments is the inequality between founders and settlers, between first and last, those there at the beginning of a church and those God has later entrusted to their care. Cookies, those new people eat so many cookies. It is as if in achieving mission we encounter our greatest obstacles to obedience, to true worship.

Love first. Assemble later. Indeed don’t bother with the latter if we cannot agree the former is the basis for coming together.

On occasion we are gifted with a visual, an image, of something we are meant to grasp cognitively but struggling to see. One of my most memorable such visuals came while I was standing at 11,000 feet in the Andes assessing the trail just climbed only to observe a farmer separating wheat from chaff. I may be a redneck but I was raised in the city so understanding that passage was nearly incomprehensible without this kindly image.

Another such visual came Sunday. The Richardsons were in route to church Sunday morning on sparsely populated roads when we came upon a full parking lot in front of a week old LA Fitness. It was 8:50 on a Sunday morning. Wow, all those people out on Sunday morning willfully pursuing health. And, at least for the moment, not in church.

I could not help but wonder why fewer and fewer people each year look to the church for health when health is obviously a concern. Is it because we can’t bring ourselves to diagnose? Liberals have eliminated sin and judgment from the discourse, well apart from epithets for the oppressors of the masses and perpetrators of social injustice. Oddly enough, more conservative churches sold out to church growth have done the same thing. The cross becomes a stumbling block to the seeker or unbeliever so it is removed from the wall. We need not offend. Everywhere we say “all is well.” Then why go to the hospital? Are we failing to diagnose the most universal of afflictions?

Or perhaps we are failing on behalf of the Great Physician to communicate the remedy so abundant in supply we have no fear rationing? Paul Zahl, in “Grace in Practice,” rightly makes soteriology one of four pillars of a theology of grace. Soteriology is the realm of salvation or rescue. “The problem, our human nature that requires rescue if it is not to become suicidal, exists whether rescue comes or not.” “But,” Zahl continues, “everything changes if there is this hope of deliverance.” Our futile efforts to change ourselves are overcome in Jesus. We need not be shackled to the same old same old. We need not be plagued by the universal affliction. The physician has a remedy. Indeed the physician himself is the remedy. And the supply of this remedy is not bound by our delivery systems past or present.

So muse with me. People are pursuing health. But fewer are pursuing health in the church. Why? Have we failed to diagnose. Or failed to prescribe? It is likely some combination of the two.

From James Bryan Smith’s The Good and Beautiful Community:

Communities become others-centered when they are steeped in the narrative of the kingdom of God. They know their community is an outpost of the kingdom of God, a place where grace is spoken and lived for as long as is needed. The value of the church is not in its longevity but in its love. The success of a church is not in its size but in its service to the people and community. We are a people founded by a person who never established a church or built a building or led a finance campaign to build impressive buildings. Our leader just came and served and then died for the good of others. I suppose that would be a pretty good mission statement for a church, but one I am not likely to see: “We exist to serve others and then die, just like our founder.”

 ___________________

This kind of sacrificial living (and dying) is so biblically sound and yet so absent from my experience of American church life. Leadership enables one to pull a community in that direction but at the end of the day, when push comes to shove, too often what some individual wants or some group of individuals wants wins the day. Some even find it difficult to celebrate when the unchurched are drawn into kingdom life. Just more mouths to feed and a greater strain on the supply with which we satisfy ourselves.

“You mean pastor you want me to give up Bach to reach my daughter’s generation?” Yes. “Sorry. I haven’t “died” to self that much. I am not that other centered.”

At least here in this example there is an awareness of the shallowness and selfishness. In other cases, folks are so rooted it the false narrative of consumerism (and at the church’s leading) it never occurs to them that William Temple had it right when he said something like, the church is the only society that exists primarily for the welfare of folks who have never darkened its doors.

Don’t get me wrong. I’ve been blessed to labor with many “others-centered” people over the years, just not whole communities. What Smith longs for is possible. But only by the Grace of God! And it is hard to imagine what he longs for emerging from something old and established. I am biased of course but that kind of church has to be planted!

From James Bryan Smith:

Not all Christians are, but all Christians ought to be maladjusted toward things like injustice, greed, materialism and racism. Too often we easily become well-adjusted to these things. I know I have. It is easy to become well-adjusted to the culture we live in, the one that uses hate and violence to gain control, the one that treats people as objects for personal gain, the one that winks at immorality.

Dr. West says elsewhere: “It takes courage to ask—how did I become so well adjusted to injustice? It takes courage to cut against the grain and become non-conformist. It takes courage to wake up and stay awake instead of engaging in complacent slumber. It takes courage to shatter conformity and cowardice.” I agree. It takes courage to live like our peculiar God, to love and forgive the unlovely and unforgivable. The only way we will ever find this courage is when we discover that we are a community of people who are rooted in another world.

From  James Bryan Smith:

I love the word peculiar. Dictionaries define it as “distinctive,” “odd,” “strange” and “weird.” In a word peculiar means different. Different from the ordinary, the common, from everyone else. Christians are peculiar in that they are different from everyone else.

But are apprentices of Jesus really so different? I believe we are, or at least we ought to be. For example, if I (by the power of the Spirit) begin telling the truth in my life, I will become an oddity. If I can learn to slow down, live without being ruled by anger and actually pray for people who try to cut me down, I will be considered weird, because this world does not work this way. Only people who are steeped in the kingdom of God can begin living this way. There are far too few.

We’ve been here less than two weeks and already we have growth, phenomenal growth by any church standard. And the growth comes from a completely unexpected place. “How’s that John?” you might ask. Well our core group of five is becoming six. The Lord is blessing us with another boy for our quiver. We discovered this week that Kristen is 26 weeks along and due October 13. God is good! All the time! We’ll keep you posted.

This is the ever present question surrounding the planting of Grace Community here in Northeast Atlanta. What is the plan, John?

The first step in the plan is to pray. This is the premier step in discerning the will of God as opposed to the will of man, even my most considered plans for launching a church. Unless the Lord builds Grace Community, my efforts and those of other men will surely be in vain.

The next step is to meet people and build relationships. The old way of doing church was to open a franchise. Demographics suggest that there is a need for a church generally and our flavor specifically. So we build a building or these days rent space in a strip center. We open for corporate gatherings. Those that were raised Anglican look for an Anglican church. Likewise, Methodists, Lutherans, and Baptists look for the corner church with their flavor.

And in many ways we continue to operate the same way, out of an aging and failing model. Churches attempt to draw a crowd to a flavor. Traditional, contemporary, formal, casual, liturgical, and free form – these are many of the ways in which we describe church. Distinctions are made in the way we worship, what happens when we gather the assembly. The distinctions in worship assume we all believe the same thing about the Lordship of Jesus Christ. That may not be an assumption we should take for granted.

Regardless, using a flavor to create a crowd (or church) makes something other than the main thing the main thing. How we worship is what unites a people (call it church or community) fashioned in this way. By design, what should be universal in scope is reduced to something very specific, and that something is fleeting. As Dean Inge said, he who marries the spirit of the age finds himself soon widowed. Flavors change. I once loved chocolate ice cream. Then it was praline almond crunch. Now, when I allow myself to indulge it is chocolate chip cookie dough or better yet, Cherry Garcia. Tastes change.

Church growth or planting should be rooted in the eternal, the one who was, and who is, and who is to come. The Body can only be built out of members who have a deep relationship with Jesus. The Body is first and foremost the assembly of people who have been called out of the world and into a relationship with Him. Believers are then drawn into a relationship with each other. We are the called out people undivided by race, gender, socioeconomic class and certainly undivided by flavor.

Don’t get me wrong. I have a personal preference for worship. This is unavoidable and perhaps should not be avoided at all. But our relationships with Jesus and with each other should transcend flavors. “I don’t like the kneeling.” “I really don’t care for the drums.” “I think the music is too loud.” I think the band members should wear khakis not jeans.” “I” and my flavor become central to the equation as opposed to Jesus and our fellowship in Him. Unfortunately I’ve experienced this often throughout the years.

The Apostle Paul helps us here. In the opening verses of Romans 12 Paul is revealing what our response to the great mercies of God should be. To offer ourselves as living sacrifices, this is our reasonable worship. Living daily as a sacrifice is a 24/7 (read “universal”) proposition and can never be captured by finite flavors.

As a planter the Lord has put it upon my heart to keep the main thing the main thing, or first things first. While the Lord will dictate where Grace Community goes, I imagine one day that one of the called out people, a people He has forged beginning with a life-giving relationship with Him, will suggest all the called out people gather corporately to worship. If so, we will have been followers, individually and together, before we pursued a means of corporately expressing that we are fans.

So pray and build relationships. That is the initial plan. Remembering all the while, that while we plant and water, it is God Himself who gives the growth.