In Christ...So What?

As we continue to wrestle with what it means to be on mission and how our mission is shaped and determined by our theology we looked briefly at the reality of being "in Christ". We left off with a simple question, "So what?" So what, if we as followers of Jesus, are in him?  What bearing does that have on any aspect of our daily reality? What does that have to do with our mission? The ramifications are significant.  A good friend makes that clear in a recent post (which got me kickstarted to write again). I really like what Alan Hirsch says here, httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jePGylrJWhM&feature=player_embedded You see Alan is making the point that we must be where Jesus is, this is obvious because we are in Christ, if those of us who say that we are "in Christ" are moving in mission then we necessarily must be doing it together. Did you catch that? To be on mission necessarily means doing it together. If one is in Christ then she must be on mission with someone else, a community of people.  I prefer the term (from Hirsch) Communitas.  This is an understanding that the community of Jesus is necessarily a people on mission. I like this definition,
Community is a ship in port.  Communitas is a ship at sea. The ship is not designed for port. The ship is designed for the sea. The church is not designed for community.  It is designed at its core DNA to be communitas.
I find it interesting that much of the Christian West is seeking to find "community" when it needs to be looking for communitas. However, we don't really believe the necessary outworking of the fact that to be a Christian is to be "in Christ" with all the other Christians. We seek holy huddles. We seek comfort. So, what happens if we instead begin to seek communitas? We will get really uncomfortable, we will have to enter into the lives of others, we will have set aside ourselves, it will be inconvenient. To be "in Christ" means to be unified with the whole of the body of Christ and the local expression of that body particularly.  Here are some questions that have been bouncing around in my head as far as evaluation goes:
  • How often are you spending time with people from your particular church outside of church sanctioned meetings or events?
  • How many close friends do you have within your particular church? Do you spend time with them outside of official church meetings or events?
  • Would you vacation with anyone from your particular church?
  • Who in your particular church would you call in a time of crisis (besides your pastor or deacon)?
  • Is there anyone from your particular church that you do mission with?
I would love to know if you have any questions to add to this list.  Just throw them in the comments section. In summary, to be "in Christ" means to be on mission together, communitas.

Community and Christmas

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What is the meaning of Christmas? That was the question that NBC's Community asked last week in an incredibly creative stop motion animation episode that left me laughing. The episode was full of hat tips to great Christmas specials of the past and a few nice shots at the Christian faith. Shots at Christianity in a Christmas special? Yes. Are you offended? The shots that they took weren't the kinds that you might expect.  The most crushing one came from Shirley, whose character is an outspoken Christian. She said, "I am a modern day Christian, I have learned sensitivity and so I say Happy Holidays not wanting anyone else's religion to feel inferior to mine." I laughed. Then, I cried. Not really. But, I have been thinking about this for the last few days. Christmas has lost something in the post-modern malaise of mutual worldview affirmations. Then I remembered last Friday, my son sang in a "Holiday Concert" at his school.  They sang Happy Hannukah, Mud Slide, and Up on the Housetop. Silent Night was played on the piano, no singing. Something manifestly changed. A hush came over the crowded cafeteria. You could have heard a pin drop. Christmas, the moment when God split time one passover many years ago and entered into history. Even today with all of our sensitivity and complacency humanity still becomes silent before the reality that took place when God moved into the neighborhood. Everyone in that cafeteria experienced something different in that moment than all that had come before. That moment was thick with the holy. I wish I could sit down with Abed and over a peppermint mocha just talk about the meaning of Christmas. Maybe I can, maybe there are people all around me looking for the real meaning if I would just open my eyes to see and have ears to hear.

I am good enough, smart enough, and...oh, never mind!

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Do you want to know what I really hate? I really hate coming to the realization that I do not know what to do. I can not stand that feeling of helplessness that comes over me when I am out of my depths. I had that feeling this past weekend.  I was driving home from a youth retreat and pulled off the highway to get a tank of gas.  After filling the tank the car would not start.  I had someone with me and I just wanted to be able to get this guy home.  We were stuck.  I could not fix it because I know nothing about cars.  Then I had to enter into the process of asking people for help.  It's embarrassing because most of the times the issue that is causing my car problems is some "easy" fix. That feeling is horrible. I had a conversation that Sunday with a man I deeply respect named Jim, he was taking me to buy a battery and to help me install it.  He said, "Dan, you spend your whole life serving others, why do you have such a hard time letting other people serve you?"  That has been the question that has stuck in my mind since.  Why? I don't like letting people serve me because I believe I live an amazing life.  I believe that God has so graciously given me all I need to provide for my family.  I see the body of Christ constantly meeting any need my family has and it is an honor to serve them. It seems that it is not fair to keep asking. Yet, this is what being in a community is all about.  It is about people with differing gifts and skills serving one another.  Helping one another.  Caring for one another.  Consider what Paul says in 1 Corinthians:
14 For the body does not consist of one member but of many.15 If the foot should say, Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body, that would not make it any less a part of the body.16 And if the ear should say, Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body, that would not make it any less a part of the body.17 If the whole body were an eye, where would be the sense of hearing? If the whole body were an ear, where would be the sense of smell?18 But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose.19 If all were a single member, where would the body be?20 As it is, there are many parts, yet one body.
God has, in his goodness and grace, given me gifts of leadership and teaching.  I am not a mechanic.  I can barely change a light bulb.  According to Paul this is God's intention for us.  I think this is so that we will never be able to "know ourselves by ourselves" as Wendell Berry says.  We are designed to be in a community and we can only be who we are in a community. It must be time to embrace this reality. What holds you back from entering into community?

What is Community?

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Community. It's a buzz-word. It's a television sit-com.  It's a longing in our hearts.  But what is it? What does community mean?  There have been books, long books, written on the subject.  There have been many sermons preached.  There have been many university seminars given.  I have to be honest with you, I have talked about community and thought about community and yet I do not think that I could define community. Community. Community. Community...

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Who leads this whole thing?

The one questiont that I have been wrestling with in conversation with a friend and as a result of reading The Forgotten Ways is the issue of authority.  What does it mean?  Who is in authority? Is there leadership anymore? What does it all look like in reality, right here, right now? Are we all to do what is right by our own personal hermeneutic? Are we simply to do what feels good?  Is it "just Jesus and me"? What is the role of the community of God's people? What are the individual roles within that body?  Are some called to lead?  Are some called to follow? What do we do with the Bible? What do we do with our heritage of the visible church? The answers are not easy in coming.  But the list of questions continues to grow. Check out our conversation here.

The Forgotten Ways, Part 8

It's hard to imagine a few weeks ago when I sat down with my friend Doug at the Bean and he encouraged me to read Allelon.org's blogs about the missional church that it would have led to a month of thinking more deeply about what it means to be the church.  The next day I walked into the library at Michigan Theological Seminary and grabbed a little book called The Forgotten Ways.  This is post eight, the last chapter of the book: Communitas, not Community. I think that the opening quote from Paulo Coelho is best summary of the chapter where he says, "The ship is safest when it is in port. But that's not what ships were made for." The quote says it all.  In recent times there has been an emphasis on "community".  This emphasis has always highlighted the church being a safe place, a retreat from the world.  The metaphor of a hospital has been used.  The community was a place where you can come and be yourself and be accepted and find rest. Hirsch argues this is the Constantinian, institutional, Christendom at its best! I agree. The difference between community and communitas is the purpose for the gathering of the people. There are many similarities but there is one key difference. That is mission. Hirsch uses a number of illustrations for communitas but the one that resonated with me the most is the Fellowship of the Ring. This radical little band of hobbits, men, an elf, a dwarf, and a wizard set out to defeat the ultimate evil.  They start as tolerating each other at best. But, by the end of the mission they are something different.  They experienced communitas. The organization that I work for has something called "Summer Project".  In the states it is a 10-12 week mission experience for college students.  They work at the local McD's or Starbucks.  They proclaim the gospel on the beach. The best summer projects are those that have communitas, where the mission of turning lost students into Christ-centered laborers is always present and being pursued. The problem with communitas is that it requires there to be conflict. The Fellowship of the Ring fought against insurmountable odds. Summer project students have to face support raising and spiritual attack. Or consider a sports team, like the Detroit Red Wings who had to face injury, horrible officiating, and a league front office that did everything they could to keep them from winning Lord Stanley's Cup. The church in the West since the time of Constatine has for the most part not faced very much conflict. Sure there have been internal struggles mut not much outward. There is no persecution.  Just a calm acceptance of the church's presence.  The church has become comfortable and lost its sense of mission (does this sound familiar? If not read parts 1-3). When a community goes on mission together it ceases to be community and becomes communitas. It experiences pain, conflict, joy, victory, defeat. It goes through something toward something. I think that's why when churches are ramping up for a program they experience something different but then the program happens and the experience is not sustained. That's because the ramp up feels like mission but in the end it is not. To experience communitas requires the radical transformation of the very reason for why we gather as a community. Will we gather as a community to sing? To pray? To hear the Bible taught? All nice things.  All things that will develop community.  But if we gather to do these apart from being on mission then we are missing something, we are missing communitas. Community is a ship in port.  Communitas is a ship at sea. The ship is not designed for port. The ship is designed for the sea. The church is not designed for community.  It is designed at its core DNA to be communitas. Th ramifications of this are so huge that I might develop carpal tunnel syndrome trying to write them. The key thing that I want to think more about though is how can we send every part of the church on mission? A week in Mexico is a nice beginning but it is barely scratching the surface. What does it look like to be on mission as a people of God everyday, from young to old? This is the core question of communitas.