Real Church is Revolutionary, not Attractional

Sunset in Monroe County, 7/14/18

This morning at Redeemer our friends Jeff and Annie Dieselberg from Bangkok, Thailand, are with us. (Click here to see what they do.) This Sunday morning, and next Sunday morning as well. What a blessing for us! Especially since our focus since January has been on being a missional people. 

We are interested in developing a Missional People, a people that moves out, rather than investing in being attractional.

Followers of Jesus have joined The Revolution. If church doesn't feel and look like a revolutionary movement to you, something is not right. It could be something in you that has lost its way.

When I became a follower of Jesus, the year was 1970. One of my campus ministry leaders handed me a book to read. It was by someone named Bill Bright. The title was Revolution Now. 

Revolution?

Now, not later?

Me?

We've been privileged to have Greg Boyd speak at Redeemer twice. Once, Greg was with us for an entire weekend. Greg talks a lot about the Real Jesus as a Revolutionary, and his followers as revolting against the kingdom-of-darkness-world-systems. A few years ago I was reading Tomas Sedlacek's Economics of Good and Evil. I emailed Greg the link to this book. I thought he would enjoy reading it. 

He responded with a book recommendation for me. Greg told me that, next to the Bible, there is a book that has had great influence on him. It is Christian Anarchism, by Alexandre Christoyannopolis. I purchased it, opened to chapter one, and began reading "The Sermon on the Mount: A Manifesto for Christian Anarchism."

The sermon on the mount?

Anarchism? 

Christian anarchism is the belief that there is only one source of authority to which Christians are ultimately answerable—the authority of God as embodied in the teachings of Jesus.  (You DO know why Jesus was crucified, right? NOT for being just another nice guy who served coffee after he preached.)

That DOES sound like the sermon on the Mount. So I re-read, as if for the first time, Matthew chapters 5-7. Don't you know, Jesus is talking about a revolution?

I, as one of his followers, am a revolutionary. I am on a mission, empowered (anointed) by the Spirit of the Sovereign God. I am engaged in, as the gentle, bearded Eugene Peterson writes, a Subversive Spirituality. 

Peterson writes: 

"Most of us [pastors] are known by name only to our congregations and, except for ceremonial appearances at weddings, funerals, and bullroasts, are not in the public eye. 

In general, people treat us with respect, but we are not considered important in any social, cultural, or economic way. In parody we are usually treated as harmless innocents, in satire as shiftless parasites.

This is not what most of us had in mind when we signed on. We had not counted on anything either so benign or so marginal. The images forming our pastoral expectations had a good deal more fierceness to them: Moses' bearding the Pharaoh; Jeremiah with fire in his mouth; Peter swashbucklingly reckless as the lead apostle; Paul's careering through prison and ecstasy, shipwreck and kerygma. The kingdom of God in which we had apprenticed ourselves was presented to us as revolutionary, a dangerously unwelcome intruder in the Old Boy Club of thrones, dominions, principalities, and powers." (Peterson, "The Subversive Pastor")

Dangerous?

Fierce?

The Bible seems to think we are in a war.

The Bible. Still on lists of the most feared, most banned books ever written. Why? Because it is a subversive document. Eric Metaxas writes: 

"In the meantime — unless you’re scared — you might put the Bible on your personal reading list. Find out why it scares the pantaloons off tyrants and dictators but has inspired others to change the world. It’s truly fascinating. If you’re not a dictator or tyrant, you’ve really got nothing to fear. But if you are, go ahead and be afraid. Be very, very afraid."

The Church.

The Real Church.

Revolutionary. Threatening. Anarchic. Feared. A Movement. Scary. Supplanting, Usurping, Overthrowing. Kingdom toppling. Subversive. Warring. 


***
My two subversive books are:

Leading the Presence-Driven Church

Praying: Reflections on 40 Years of Solitary Conversations with God

Jeff & Annie Dieselberg at Redeemer this Sunday Morning

For more information 

go to NightLight International, Bangkok.

Book Recommendations for Deep Reading

Hands of one of our church kids

I am currently reading or have recently read...

Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business, and Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology, by former New York University communications professor Neil Postman. These are well-known books. I finally got them this summer, and could not put them down. Anyone interested in the Romans 12:2 idea of not being shaped by world culture should read Postman, learn much from it, and shudder.

At the Existentialist Cafe: Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails with Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Albert Camus, Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Others, by Sarah Bakewell. Finally, I've been able to sit down with this book! An excellent, deeply contextual telling of the story of how Husserl's phenomenology led to the existentialism of Sartre and Heidegger, which helps us better understand Postmodernism and Deconstruction.

The Case for Miracles: A Journalist Investigates Evidence for the Supernatural, by Lee Strobel. Linda and I could not put this book down. Includes (another) through debunking of Hume's argument against miracles; several credible, moving testimonies of miracles; and a hard, beautiful interview with theistic philosopher Doug Groothuis.

Even in Our Darkness: A Story of Beauty in a Broken Life, by Jack Deere. We could not put this book down either.

Understanding Sexual Identity: A Resource for Youth Ministry, and Understanding Gender Dysphoria: Navigating Transgender Issues in a Changing Culture, by Robert Yarhouse. Yarhouse is perhaps the best resource for understanding and responding out of a Christian framework. Our staff is read the first book together and discussing. For a taste, see Scot McKnight's recent interview with Yarhouse. 

The Meaning of Life: A Very Short Introduction, by Terry Eagelton. For those of us who collect resources on the "meaning of life" issue, this book is a must-read.

Costly Love: The Way to True Unity for All the Followers of Jesus, by John Armstrong. In John 17 Jesus prayed that his followers would be one, in unity, and like the Trinitarian being of God. John Armstrong powerfully calls us to go after this, and gives us a path to walk on. John graciously introduced himself to me, and we met up last summer at a Starbucks in the Chicago area. 

We Are Data: Algorithms and the Making of Our Digital Selves, by John Cheney-Lippold. I got a hard copy of this for Father's Day. Algorithmically, there is no enduring, Platonic-type self.
Other recommendations...

The Faith of Christopher Hitchens: The Restless Soul of the World's Most Notorious Atheist, by Larry Taunton. Once I began this book I could not put it down (again). I read the entire thing while crossing Lake Michigan on The Badger. Hitchens was one of the notorious "Four Horsemen" of the new atheism (now old and fading, by the way). When Hitchens died I felt sad. After reading this book I now understand why I felt that way.

Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk In a Digital Age, by Sherry Turkle. Few people know more about the effect social media is having on culture. I learned so much from reading her book. Every Christian leader needs to read it. Her chapter on "Solitude" as the entrée to authentic communication re-confirmed what I am writing about in my phenomenology of spiritual transformation.

Existential Reasons for Belief in God: A Defense of Desires and Emotions for Faith, by Clifford Williams. While it is true that I have taught logic at our local college for many years, it is also true that I have never believed that reality could be fully captured in the steel nets of logic. Williams's book is a needed antidote for all of us who over-focus on evidential reasons for belief.

The Unnecessary Pastor: Rediscovering the Call, by Eugene Peterson and Marva Dawn. Linda and I are currently reading everything by Eugene Peterson. He is a prophet for our times, to the church. The first chapter in this book will be enough to do you in.

The Apologetics of Joy: A Case for the Existence of God from C.S. Lewis's Argument from Desire, by Joe Puckett. If you want to understand what is going on behind the scenes in Lewis's writings, then this book is for you. Lewis's argument from desire for God's existence is resurrected. Years ago I read literature debunking Lewis, such as John Beversluis's book. Puckett handles all objections, and makes sense of the idea that our deepest longings and desires only make sense if there is the possibility of their fulfillment.

The Theology of Dallas Willard: Discovering Protoevangelical Faith, by Gary Black. Dallas Willard exemplifies a number of things I admire. He is a passionate lover of Jesus, embraces the spiritual disciplines as ways of abiding in Christ, is a brilliant academic philosopher, and is able to write in such a way that deep, difficult ideas achieve a clarity to the common person. This is the book to read, after reading Willard himself. The first chapter was amazing for me as it situated Willard in church history in such a way that I wrote in my journal these words - "I finally see where my theological place is."

Reviving Old Scratch: Demons and the Devil for Doubters and the Disenchanted, by Richard Beck. Beck shows how the "Scooby-Doo-ification" of culture has come to rule (yes, that's what he says), and what it looks like in this culture to believe in Satan and the reality of spiritual warfare. Note again the current influence of Canadian Roman Catholic philosopher Charles Taylor.

The Language Animal: The Full Shape of the Human Linguistic Capacity, by Charles Taylor. Currently, Taylor's writing and ideas are huge. I'm use, e.g., Taylor's views on the Sapir-Whorff hypothesis in my book on the Presence-Driven Church.

Spirit Hermeneutics: Reading Scripture in Light of Pentecost, by Craig Keener. This is an amazing, one-of-a-kind book on the importance of the experience of God's Spirit in interpreting Spirit-inspired Scripture. 

Mystics, by William Harmless. I've done research on Christian mysticism for decades, dating back to doctoral work I did at Northwestern University with Richard Kieckhefer (Meister Eckhart, Medieval mystical theology, et. al.). This is a very good, readable book that begins with a nice section on Thomas Merton. I'll be including material on non-discursive experience and the presence of God in my forthcoming book on church leadership. ($1.99 for your Kindle!)

The Christian Imagination: Theology and the Origins of Race, by Willie James Jennings. My friend Vernon Mason teaches a course entitled "Black Lives Matter" at New York Theological Seminary. This is one of his required readings. This is a deep book that aims at nothing less than gaining understanding and awareness for the sake of transforming Christian communities.

Cross Vision: How the Crucifixion of Jesus Makes Sense of Old Testament Violence, by Greg Boyd. My suggestion: Read this before you read Greg's two-volume The Crucifixion of the Warrior God.

NIV Cultural Studies Background Bible, by Craig Keener and John Walton. This is the buy of the year - only $3.99 (today) for your Kindle. Keener (New Testament) and Walton (Old Testament) are two of our greatest scholars. N. T. Wright says, "How I wish someone had put a book like this into my hands 50 years ago." 

Advancing Your Photography: Secrets to Amazing Photos from the Masters, and The Secrets to Creating Amazing Photos: 83 Composition Tools from the Masters, both by Marc Silber. The best book on photography may be The Art of Photography: An Approach to Personal Expression, by Bruce Barnbaum. I've got a hard copy of this amazing, deep book, and peridodically read brief sections. My go-to website is photographer Ken Rockwell.

Good Night Loon, by Abe Sauer and Nathaniel Davauer. Good Night Moon was one of my favorites to read to my boys when they were little. When I saw this book in a store and read it I knew I needed to buy it, since I come from the loon country of Michigan's Upper Peninsula. A quick read, a quick re-read, just before bed time.  


Two more....

Praying: Reflections on 40 Years of Solitary Conversations with God, by John Piippo.

Leading the Presence-Driven Church, by John Piippo.

How to Live in Constant Revival

JULY 12

God Is the Plan (The Presence-Driven Church)

@ Redeemer, 7/8/18
(Photo by David Ferrell)

Last Sunday morning at Redeemer God was speaking to some of our people, leading us through them. One of them was one of our teens. She came to me and shared what she felt God was saying to her. I agreed. This shifted what we were doing.

In a presence-driven church the people lead by being led. God leads us. That is enough.

This means we do not need to know where we are going. We don't have to have a plan. God has a plan. We listen. We follow. We're not always right, but it's better than our plans.  This is what faith is. It is Abraham, who was called to a place where he would receive an inheritance. He obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going. (Hebrews 11:8) 

Richard Foster says our choice is either to trust our plans with all our heart, or trust our God. "Not only do the best-laid plans fall to pieces, but often enough God prompts us to act without any plans in place and with no guarantee that everything will come together as it should." (Foster, Year with God: Living Out the Spiritual Disciplines, Kindle Locations 501-503.)

As the Hebrews were being pursued by the Egyptians, they could only trust that God was going to do sometjhing. Foster writes:

"Suppose they had insisted that, before they left Egypt, scouts sent in advance report back that the route was clear, the Red Sea parted and waiting? They would have remained slaves. The water was only parted once they had acted in faith and followed God. They could not count on any plans, because God gave them none. He only gave them himself. God was the plan." (Ib., Kindle Locations 504-507)

What is the plan? We will place our trust in God.

***

My two books are...

Praying: Reflections on 40 Years of Solitary Conversations with God (May 2016)

Leading the Presence-Driven Church (January 2018)

The Rat-Race As the Race Towards Nothing

Amish youth riding bicycles in central Ohio

Decades ago Thomas Merton wrote:

"Let us start from one admitted fact: if prayer, meditation, and contemplation were once taken for granted as central realities in human life everywhere, they are so no longer. They are regarded, even by believers, as somehow marginal and secondary. What counts is getting things done." (Contemplation in a World of Action)

"Getting things done" - that is the quantitative life; discerning what one ought to do and what should get done - that's the qualitative life. The former is the "doing" life, the latter is the "being" life. 

Merton says that the Jesus-life "aims at a certain quality of life, a level of awareness, a depth of consciousness, an area of transcendence and adoration which are not usually possible in an active secular existence." The authentic Jesus-follower seeks to be free from what William Faulkner called "the same frantic steeplechase toward nothing which is the essence of "worldliness" everywhere." (Ib., 9)

In the qualitative life there is awareness and perspective, "an authentic understanding of God's presence in the world and his intentions for man. A merely fictitious and abstract isolation does not provide this awareness." (Ib.) In such a life we "escape in some measure from the senseless tyranny of quantity." (Ib., 10) Relate this to the metricization of the Church.

To live this way is not to escape from the world or be against the world. It is to be for the world in ways the world cannot understand.

Reading Merton is breathing fresh woodland air in a polluted, quantitative, doing-culture. 

What is most needed today for lovers and embracers of Jesus is to discover the inner life in such as a way as to make all of life something that is lived out of a solid, deep, aware, discerning center, which is the human heart morphed into greater Christlikeness.

***

My two books are...

Praying: Reflections on 40 Years of Solitary Conversations with God (May 2016)

Leading the Presence-Driven Church (January 2018)

All the Diamonds - Bruce Cockburn (The greatest conversion song ever?)

I listened this morning... again... to Bruce Cockburn's "All the Diamonds." To me, it is the greatest conversion-to-Jesus song ever written.

I covered it many times in concerts.

Close your eyes. Listen closely. Of how God, in Christ, became human, and came to rescue you.


Lyrics: 

All the diamonds in this world
That mean anything to me
Are conjured up by wind and sunlight
Sparkling on the sea

I ran aground in a harbour town
Lost the taste for being free
Thank God He sent some gull-chased ship
To carry me to sea

Two thousand years and half a world away
Dying trees still grow greener when you pray

Silver scales flash bright and fade
In reeds along the shore
Like a pearl in sea of liquid jade
His ship comes shining
Like a crystal swan in a sky of suns
His ship comes shining. 

The Difference Between Virtue and the Law

Conference Center outside of NYC

I was meeting in the office of one of the Muslim leaders at the Islamic Center of America in Dearborn, when he pulled out a Koran. Opening it, he told me,

"John, I am thankful God gave us this book of rules. The Koran is a rule book. If I didn't have a rule to pray, I would not pray. If I didn't have a rule not to lust after women, I would lust after women."

My response was this.

"Christianity is different. God comes to transform the human heart. As this happens, I don't need rules to tell me to pray, or not to lust."

Spiritual transformation, Jesus-style, aims to transform our hearts into increasing Christlikeness. Moral virtues become us; hence, the unnecessariness of moral laws. 

James K. A. Smith writes:

"As Thomas Aquinas points out, there is an inversely proportionate relationship between virtue and the law: the more virtuous someone is— that is, the more they have an internal disposition to the good that bubbles up from their very character— the less they need the external force of the law to compel them to do the good. Conversely, the more “vicious” a person or group of people is, the more they need the “stick” of the law to compel them to do what they ought. (Smith, James K. A..You Are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of Habit, Kindle Locations 322-326)

***

My two books are...

Praying: Reflections on 40 Years of Solitary Conversations with God (May 2016)

Leading the Presence-Driven Church (January 2018)

The Passive Nihilism of the Gospel According to "Me"

 

Holland State Park (Michigan)

How shallow is American culture today? 

In "The Gospel According to 'Me,'" Simon Critchley and Jamieson Webster write about America's cult of self-worship. The more "nones" we have, expect to see more turning to "me." They write:

"Despite the frequent claim that we are living in a secular age defined by the death of God, many citizens in rich Western democracies have merely switched one notion of God for another — abandoning their singular, omnipotent (Christian or Judaic or whatever) deity reigning over all humankind and replacing it with a weak but all-pervasive idea of spirituality tied to a personal ethic of authenticity and a liturgy of inwardness. The latter does not make the exorbitant moral demands of traditional religions, which impose bad conscience, guilt, sin, sexual inhibition and the rest."

People are moving from the idea of God to the idea of self. (See Christian Smith's helpful work on Moralistic Therapeutic Deism - see here, and here.) 

Surely Critchley and Webster are correct when they observe:

"A postwar existentialist philosophy of personal liberation and “becoming who you are” fed into a 1960s counterculture that mutated into the most selfish conformism, disguising acquisitiveness under a patina of personal growth, mindfulness and compassion. Traditional forms of morality that required extensive social cooperation in relation to a hard reality defined by scarcity have largely collapsed and been replaced with this New Age therapeutic culture of well-being that does not require obedience or even faith — and certainly not feelings of guilt. Guilt must be shed; alienation, both of body and mind, must be eliminated, most notably through yoga practice after a long day of mind-numbing work."

The goal of human life is personal well-being, rather than a collective endeavor towards a greater good. "The stroke of genius in the ideology of authenticity is that it doesn’t really require a belief in anything, and certainly not a belief in anything that might transcend the serene and contented living of one’s authentic life and baseline well-being. In this, one can claim to be beyond dogma."

The American Dream is now one of "pure psychological transformation." Critchley and Webster call this "passive nihilism." This is an ethic of personal authenticity, "at the heart of which is a profound selfishness and callous disregard of others."  

An uncritical, brainwashed "authenticity" leads to a "deep cynicism." (We see this in the self-made "Eckhart Tolle's (not his real name) silly, money-making The Power of Now (yes, I did read it... 😱).

A lot of church culture markets itself this way. Critchley and Webster write:

"When the values of Judeo-Christian morality have been given a monetary and psychological incarnation — as in credit, debt, trust, faith and fidelity — can they exist as values? Is the prosperous self the only God in which we believe in a radically inauthentic world?" (The monetization of everything, to include faith.)

The uncritical, zombielike, flesh-without-spirit, Kierkegaardian herd-like  humanity of today is becoming more and more inauthentic in its none-ish staggering towards the Oz of the false self.

Tell the Truth

"Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth,
and nothing but the truth,
even though nobody has any idea what that is anymore?"
(From The New Yorker)