The Ancient Future Church

 A while back a dear friend and brother in Christ recommended two movies, Gran Torino and Taken. I had not heard of either but trusted my friend. So Kristen and I watched them reasonably soon thereafter on pay per view. The first is a drama and the second a drama/action film. Both were right up my alley, Cussler and Ludlum fan that I am.  Immediately both movies engaged me.

 Taken involved a father rescuing his daughter from mistakes of growing up too quickly born of an environment where growing up too quickly is allowed if not encouraged. The star is Liam Neeson. He is apparently a retired covert agent who “prevents” bad things from happening by eliminating bad guys before they do bad things His daughter is unsure of his former profession. She has not asked because she is not sure she wants to know. Believe me, she does by the end of the movie.

 As she is kidnapped abroad, Neeson gives his daughter advice on what to shout out as she sees her sex slave trade kidnappers approach. Why? Because she is about to be “taken.” She provides her dad enough details for him to arrive less than 24 hours later and track her and the villains down, taking out every obstacle that stands in the way. And the obstacles are many.

 His fear is every father’s, that evil will befall his beautiful but naïve daughter. To save her, he is willing to die. Easily understood. He is also willing to kill. Sadly, it is understood just as easily.

 Gran Torino is about an aging decorated Vietnam Vet who, while increasingly alienated from his family, befriends the Asian family next door. The teenage youth of the family are under assault continually by an Asian gang that wants the teenage boy within the gang’s grip. The gang provokes by raping the teenage girl. The response of a loyal vet is predictable. Take the enemies out. Otherwise, bondage is the foreseeable future.

 But the Vet, Clint Eastwood, is haunted by memories of war and growing awareness of guilt before God. Like Liam Neeson, he wants to liberate but considers how liberation might be achieved by a means other than violence, other than killing. The time is ripe. He confronts the gang members who immediately bear arms. Many neighbors look on. While truly unarmed, Eastwood reaches for his lighter as if reaching for a gun. The gang takes him out. But this time there are many witnesses to the crime, the slaying of an unarmed man. The bad guys go away. Eastwood took the hit. Others go free.

 The movies capture the great chasm between our best love and God’s. They highlight the tension between who we are and who God wants us to be, the image into which we Christians are being transformed.

 Our best love lays down life to save another. But our love does it with defense, even violence if necessary. His best lays down life without defense, without response, silent as a sheep before the shearer, a lamb led to slaughter.

 By no means do I want to diminish the selfless love that will give up life to liberate. While some others disagree, I believe the defense of life and even freedom are cause enough for us to bear arms morally. Unlike God in Christ we cannot defeat villains without defense. That is a power reserved for God alone.  

 But Jesus sets a higher standard meant to be reflected in every other part of our lives. Why not instead be wronged the Apostle Paul asked. I wonder if the selflessness that leads to life would not, ultimately, if achieved in us, eliminate a need for arms. It could certainly go a long way.

 Alas, it could not completely because we are not perfected in this life and regardless of our levels of sanctification, there are far more unbelievers. And for some, genocide is a totally acceptable way to accrue power.

 But what if we didn’t fight back in lesser matters? How much damage is done in having to win? How much pain is caused by our need to be right, have things our way?

 As the father of a beautiful adult daughter who is still naïve in many matters, I am keenly aware of my fatherly duty to disciple and communicate truth. I am also aware that insisting on winning, my wisdom being heard and acted upon, leaves me at the precipice of destroying the relationship with the person I am so anxious to save.

 And here other attributes of God’s love are instructive. He is slow to anger. He is abounding in steadfast love. We grow weary. We give up when he doesn’t. We yield to our own needs, our own defense. God loves without having to win.

 Let us have before us always the love that takes a hit in hopes of others being set free. It is the image of love into which we are being transformed. Perhaps if before us continually, the Holy Spirit will have an easier way of making it real in this life even as we await its fullness in the life to come.

Down to Joppa. Down to the bottom of a ship. Down to the bottom of the sea. Down to depths of a whale’s belly. Down, down, down, down!

Fleeing the presence of the Lord and the command of the Lord is self-destructive. It causes one to go down. Flight from the presence of God and the will of God has a downward trajectory.

Why do it? Why did Jonah do it? Why do I?

Because, human that I am, I’m rocked by anything that challenges my place at the center of the universe. How many times in my forty-eight years have I been frustrated (albeit quietly for the most part in accordance with the norms of southern politeness or general political correctness) by the waiter who shows an inordinate amount of time and attention to another customer to the neglect of me and my party?

Why, God, would you spend time and energy seeking repentance (note repentance is required of both Nineveh and Jonah – might this express an inherent equality of Ninevites and Israelites?) from a bunch of derelicts and reprobates like the Ninevites? “It displeased Jonah exceedingly.” Surely your time could be filled tending to me and my people, the Israelites!

Them? Really? What about Us? What about Me? O how short the walk to a quiet and veiled bigotry!

This challenges the individual believer, anyone donning the name Christian. Where won’t I go even at the Lord’s command? Five Points? Loveman Village? Rwanda? An Auburn game?

More subtly, how have I so ordered my life around the” American Dream” that asking God where I might go for His purpose is inconceivable? Too often it is not a matter of hearing and rebelling. It is ordering my life in such a way that I cannot hear. It is ordering my life in such a way that I cannot listen. It is hard to hear the Lord’s desire for me to plant a church in Bolivia when I am certain He intends for me to live in the Virgin Islands. He does, doesn’t He? In the slip next to Buffet, right?

This challenges the church. Most churches do not decide, consciously at least, to ignore God, to care little for those beyond us He ALSO seeks to redeem. No, we rightly justify the wrong bunker mentality with scripture and reasonable interpretation. Discipleship is exalted over evangelism. Among the depraved, whether Ninevites or Israelites, the logical conclusion is maintenance over mission. Ever downward, “customer” satisfaction becomes the norm, fat sheep the evidence of a successful ministry. My oh my, the capacity of attention to the starving to displease the fat and happy!

I wish I was creating a straw man in order to write the reflection. I am not. There has not been a time in which the age old tension so aptly described in the life of Jonah has not been present in the church. I wish I could say it has never lived within me. And tragically, at times, it wins the day.

And downward we go! The Church shrinks, not engaging a Gaga enthralled generation and the Bieber enthralled one right behind it. After all who wants to hang out with the Gaga and Bieber enthralled? I mean do they have any appreciation for my caramel macchiato? Churches shrink for the same reason. Or alternately, when members inclined to maintenance are challenged to life beyond themselves . . . fill in the blank of what happens next. We limp onward toward the precipice of spiraling downward.

In response God suggests a modicum of perspective. You care about plants you didn’t sow or nourish? How then could I not care for those I’ve created in my own image? Won’t you care with me Jonah?

Won’t you get outside of yourselves you so called disciples of Jesus and care with me?

Quit consuming. Start slimming, Feed my other sheep.

Rise instead!

A member of a mega-church here in Birmingham recently argued that there was no need for a missionary church presence here in the Unites States as the nation is Christian. It’s been won to Christ.

These numbers are off the top of my head but I think Barna’s research reveals that 92% of Americans believe in God but when pressed with the particularity of God in Jesus Christ and things like virgin birth, sinless lamb, raised from the dead, the numbers are more like 7, 8 or 9% over more than a decade. Hardly Christian! There is some credible research out there that less than half the clergy hold the faith once delivered to the Apostles. It’s hard to give away what you do not have.

An Ancient Future Church will take seriously these tension-filled truths. There is no need to ponder how we will reach unbelieving people until we admit they are out there. This is where individualism has a powerful grip on the church. There are an infinite number of caricatures of Jesus within American belief. The poor believe Jesus is a champion of the poor. Our oppressed in the US, hmmm, believe Jesus is a liberator. Too often the affluent believe Jesus is the perpetuator of an old covenant in which they will be blessed with land and livestock (read health and wealth). John Stott says, “The truth is that there are many Jesuses on offer in the world’s religious supermarket, and many of them are false Christs, distorted Christs, caricatures of the authentic Jesus.”

Individualism has belief within it but belief in what? An Ancient Future Church will take seriously its burden to challenge false belief even if it means being a smaller leaner church without all those who insist on a Jesus and a church (and a pastor) that affirms their caricature, even if it means not being able to pay the bills.

Much of church in the modern day, whether traditional or contemporary, has been reduced to what we do on Sunday morning. I think at times that I could start a comparative religion class equating Islam, Judaism and Christianity without much fuss. But let the praise team wear jeans or shorten the Eucharistic prayer to accommodate a guest preacher or personal testimony and folks begin amassing the pitchforks (once the battle was literally over the consumption of cookies). The mall of worship is where the vast majority of consumers have their most frequent experience of church. Too often worship is about personal preference and that contributes more and more to shallowness, exercising it and affirming it alternatively. If we further consumerism in the way we worship, will not the people shaped by it be consumers in the areas of theology and ethics and even things like evangelism and discipleship.

The ancient future church has an intense interest in neutralizing the worship wars so that the church can get back to its purpose. I long for the day when the Body, not just the pastor and/or staff but every member, is as passionate about a transformed life as they are the length of service and the attire of people leading or attending. In my experience, both ancient and future churches lose sight of reaching the lost, discipling the found and loving those on the margins when they make the form of worship (insisting on traditional or contemporary only) the perpetual center of the debate.

If you have not read David Platt’s book “Radical: Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream,” it is worth your time. It caught David Brooks’ attention as you will see below. It impacted Brooks enough to make the book central to a recent op-ed piece in The New York Times.

The article led me to the book. I finished it two weeks ago. It is spot on in most places especially in challenging one to see how, unfortunately, the discipled life has become almost inextricably intertwined with the American Dream. The principles are sound but need balance. If Americans move to Rwanda where do Rwandans go to fulfill what must be a universal call?

For balance pick up what will likely be famed Anglican John Stott’s last work, “The Radical Disciple: Some Neglected Aspects of our Calling.” The work is just as compelling but lacks the depth balance of someone who has lived the faith for nearly ninety years. What has Stott ever written that was not worth the time to read it?

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From “The Gospel of Wealth” by David Brooks
See the entire article here: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/07/opinion/07brooks.html

[Church of Brook Hills Pastor David] Platt grew uneasy with the role he had fallen into and wrote about it in a recent book called “Radical: Taking Back Your Faith From the American Dream.” It encapsulates many of the themes that have been floating around 20-something evangelical circles the past several years.

Platt’s first target is the megachurch itself. Americans have built themselves multimillion-dollar worship palaces, he argues. These have become like corporations, competing for market share by offering social centers, child-care programs, first-class entertainment and comfortable, consumer Christianity.

Jesus, Platt notes, made it hard on his followers. He created a minichurch, not a mega one. Today, however, building budgets dwarf charitable budgets, and Jesus is portrayed as a genial suburban dude. “When we gather in our church building to sing and lift up our hands in worship, we may not actually be worshipping the Jesus of the Bible. Instead, we may be worshipping ourselves.”

Next, Platt takes aim at the American dream. When Europeans first settled this continent, they saw the natural abundance and came to two conclusions: that God’s plan for humanity could be realized here, and that they could get really rich while helping Him do it. This perception evolved into the notion that we have two interdependent callings: to build in this world and prepare for the next.

Has the tyranny of the urgent prevented you from making decisions of substance, ones that are life altering? Take a look. Then let us know. Any decisions? Any therefores?

Decisions that Define Us by Graham Cooke

We’ve decided that teaching the Gospel without demonstrating the gospel in not enough. Good preaching, good doctrine, being good people is not enough.

We’ve decided that having a good church club is not enough. Good fellowship is not enough. And just being a member of that club is not enough.

We’ve decided that having good Bible studies is good, but not good enough. That just making it to heaven is not our goal, and that knowing about God without truly knowing and experiencing God is meaningless.

We’ve decided that having good programs is not enough; that change without transformation is intolerable. And that staying the same is not an option.

We’ve decided that gifting without character is futile.
We’ve decided that singing songs without worshiping is hollow and having meetings without God showing up is pointless.

We’ve decided that having faith without works is not enough and having works without love is not acceptable – that our function comes out of our relationship first with the Father and second with each other.

We’ve decided that reading about the book of Acts without living the book of Acts is unthinkable.

We’ve decided that confident faith is good…..bold faith is better.

We’ve decided that hearing about the Holy Spirit without experiencing Him….. is silly. That believing in His presence without seeing it manifested in signs and wonders……is hypocrisy. That believing in healing without seeing people healed……is absurd. And that believing in deliverance without people being delivered………is absolutely ridiculous.

We’ve decided to be Holy Spirit filled, Holy Spirit led, and Holy Spirit empowered – anything less doesn’t work for us.

We’ve decided to be the ones telling the stories of God’s power – not the ones hearing about them.

We’ve decided that living saved, but not supernatural is living below our privilege and short of what Christ died for.

We’ve decided we’re a battleship not a cruise-ship! An Army not an audience! Special Forces not spectators! Missionaries not club members!

We’ve decided to value both pioneers and settlers – pioneers to expand our territory and settlers to build on those territories – but we are not people who take up space others have fought for without improving it … we are not squatters.

We’ve decided to be infectious instead of innocuous. Contagious instead of quarantined! Deadly instead of benign!

We’ve decided to be radical lovers and outrageous givers.
We’ve decided that we are a mission station not a museum.

Therefore:

We honor the past but we don’t live in it.
We live in the present with our eyes on the future.
We see past events – the successes and failures – as stepping stones not stop signs.

We pursue learning in order to be transformed, not learning in order to know.

We are people of engagement not observation.

We focus on what could be – not on what is or has been.

We are not limited to the four walls of this building – our influence is not restricted by location. Not even the nations are out of bounds.

We are more concerned about how many we send out into the world then how many we convince to come into the building. This building is meant to be filled and it will be – but it will NOT be the measure of who we are or the measure of our effectiveness.

We raise-up world changers, not tour guides. We train commandos, not committees.

We are a people of our destiny, not our history.
We’ve decided that it is better to fail while reaching for the impossible that God has planned for us than succeed in settling for less.

We’ve decided that nothing short of His Kingdom come and His will be done, in our world as it is in Heaven, will satisfy.

We’ve decided that we will not be satisfied until our world freaks out and cries out, “Those who have turned the world upside down have come here too.”

These are some of the decisions that define who we are as a community and how we live our lives.

These decisions are not destinations – but rather a journey – a journey along an ancient path – we’ve not found some new way – but rather rediscovered the path as old as Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. The same path followed by Moses, Joshua and Caleb – Paul, John and Peter.

The path followed by the first century church – a church that revolutionized the culture of the first century and beyond.

It’s a path that will impact the world we live in today. It’s a path of Bold Faith – believing that what God says is really true and acting on it.

It’s a path of Outrageous Generosity – giving our life away in order to demonstrate His Kingdom.

It’s a path of Radical Love – loving God with EVERYTHING in us and our neighbor as ourselves.

This is a path of liberty, freedom and healing.
On this path – you will find significance, purpose, and destiny.

It is a path less traveled however – it’s not a path only available to a select few – but to whosoever will … they may come.

It’s for people of EVERY nation, tribe and tongue – for those in any occupation or vocation.

No matter where you are in your journey – there’s room on this path for you.

The adjectives “ancient” and “future” seem to be an elusive description for something as well known as the church. But the church we see today is far cry from what Jesus started. An ancient church without future elements is mired in traditionalism and will fossilize and die like the languages of antiquity. Likewise, a contemporary church that is too closely tied to the culture around it will also pass into oblivion. In order to pursue the extraordinary and divine entity that Jesus had in mind, it is necessary to blend the best attributes of the church of old and the church of the modern era.

The church of my youth is largely irrelevant to me. It is rightly rooted in the tradition of the ancient church, but wrongly mired in the past. It seeks to communicate abiding truth in a fleeting language by an even more fleeting means.

The ancient church can’t continue to speak Latin when the vast majority of those for whom truth is intended have never read or heard it. The church can’t stay unilaterally committed to the great hymns of the sixteenth century when the pace is like that of a dirge. The texts are certainly true enough, but they were written to be played on an organ, an instrument for which you can no longer buy parts. If there were a large listening market for the organ, you could hear it on every other FM channel. A church blindly committed to the past will euthanize itself and bring about its end much faster.

Likewise, the church of my adulthood is largely irrelevant to me as well. It rightly seeks to address the modern world, but wrongly ties itself to something as fleeting as Woodstock or Lady Gaga. It, too, will fade into history, but unlike the ancient church, it will happen in days or weeks as opposed to centuries or millennia.

The contemporary church takes on the characteristics of the culture around it. In America, the prevailing culture leads the church to shallowness. It follows a narcissistic world view in which we are entertaining ourselves to death. We essentially become spectators, not the active participants that ancient liturgy required.

Modern pastors are literally hocking health and prosperity, two things to which our current culture tells us we are entitled. The contemporary church teaches that poverty and disease are not meant to be a part of the Kingdom experience and fails to acknowledge that we are called to suffer for the welfare of others, just as its founder did.

Dean William R. Inge once said that “he who marries the spirit of the age will find himself soon widowed.” Fads die. And so do churches wed to the zeitgeist, whether the spirit is ancient or future.

The goal for the church should be to strike a balance between “ancient” and “future” and   to find a way to live in the tension between the two. However, the truth is that it is much easier to be one or the other because a tensionless world is the path of least resistance.

Depravity makes it so that humans don’t seek tension and this is clearly reflected in the church. Tension is intellectually and emotionally demanding, so we resolve it in favor of one extreme or the other. The church is either legalistic or antinomian, but rarely both. It is either overly rational or overly experimental, but rarely both. 

In an effort to turn our backs on tension, we also wrongly ignore the hardships which Christians endured before the church became wed to the culture in 313 A.D. This contributes greatly to the modern church’s belief that suffering and Christ do not go hand in hand.

Clearly the church must be Ancient Future however elusive. Pressure to be easily understandable and readily marketable be damned. It must adapt without losing its core truth. It must, as John Stott says, engage without compromise. The church cannot retreat. It cannot stand still. And yet it cannot yield its truth to the moment as it moves forward! It must live into then tension of what was dubbed long ago “Christ and culture in paradox.”

This site is a forum for exploring the tension necessary to being the church Jesus started. And explore we must. For as leprous as the bride may be in any age, it remains the God chosen means by which he advances His Kingdom.