Drunken Mystic

As some of you know, I’m getting a Master’s degree online in church planting.  Both getting a Master’s and the subject matter have been on my mind for a while, so I just stuck them together to see what happens.

So far so good.  Some interesting material, but of course you have to wade through a lot of it to find the nuggets.  There is a lot of reading, and I found a gem.

There is a short list of books that I would recommend to Christians to read.  Most of the books out there might be good, but not necessarily in this category.  In fact, I wouldn’t even put my own book in this category yet.  Maybe I’ll write one of those one day.

For example, I would recommend any Christian read Mere Christianity (CS Lewis), Knowledge of the Holy (Tozer), Cost of Discipleship (Bonhoeffer), and then we get into Watchman Nee’s Glorious Church, Andrew Murray’s Humility, Kempis’ Imitation of Christ, etc.

It is rare that I read something and put it in those categories.  And I read.  A lot.  Roland Allen’s Missionary Methods: St. Paul’s or Ours? is one of those books.

It is full of insight and applicable to any Christian on the subject of evangelism or church planting, or basic ecclesiology for that matter.  Ironically, this book wasn’t required reading for one of my courses, but God nudged me to buy it and I’ve underlined half of it.  It is mercilessly short, but like some of the books mentioned above, so deep and full of meaning that rambling would have ruined it.

Roland Allen, an Anglican, knows the scriptures and history.  His scholarship is sound without being about his scholarship.  He makes his point.  Well.  The book is beautifully simple and full of life.

Most Christian ministers will have a problem giving this book its due.  It tells them that if they want to do their job well, they have to work themselves out of a job.  Other church planting books call this one “revolutionary” but then dismiss it as unrealistic.  I couldn’t agree with Allen more.  Also, in light of the current shift away from any notion of a “mean” God, Allen’s description of Paul’s gospel would offend a modern conscience.  So there’s a little in here for everyone that will make you uncomfortable.  That just means it is full of truth.

I don’t say this often, and I make fun of people who do, but anyone serious about church planting, evangelism, or the nature of the church should read this book.  It affirms biblical principles in those areas, gives a sound and needed look at Paul’s ministry, and is flexible enough to be applicable to anyone seeking to really do church in a biblical way.

And guess what.  It’s free on the internet.  I bought it before I realized this, and I’m glad I did, but here’s the link to read it if you can handle reading stuff on a computer screen.  Roland Allen, Missionary Methods: St. Paul’s or Ours?

Peace.

Culture changes.  This is normal.  People move and grow or things decline.  Not all things progress.  Some problems arise, persist, or grow epidemic.

One change I have been meditating on recently is the change from the front porch to the back deck.  As our American culture has grown, more people build and use a deck in the back of the house as a place to congregate than a front porch visible by the street.

I blame this in part on the suburbanization of our culture.  This is shifting again, which has its pros and cons, back to more urbanization, but for decades people moved from the city out to the suburbs.  In doing so, part of the shift has been a thinking that separated us from our neighbors.  We can see this visibly in the difference between a front porch and a deck.

The front porch is visible by the street and other houses on the street.  The house we recently lived while in Lawrenceville had a front porch.  These were older houses so they still had them.  I loved the front deck.  You could sit on the deck and talk and simultaneously observe the neighborhood and they could observe you.  It communicates more a more welcome attitude and people use the front door to enter the house way more often.

The back deck is different.  The activities on a back deck are hidden from public view.  Some people even build high fences or plant trees to further obstruct visibility.  The front door in many of these homes is not the main entry point of the house.  Day to day, people go in through the garage or another entrance.  The front door becomes more decorative than functional.

When we moved into that neighborhood in Lawrenceville, we went around to meet our neighbors.  We probably knocked on the doors of fifty or sixty houses.  We spoke to, total, maybe eight or ten.  Many times people would be home and would not answer the door.  A couple people that I spoke with would only open the door enough to speak in cautious tones … then one person said, essentially slamming the door in my face, “Let us know if you need anything.”  Hard to believe him.

At the same time, we have a growing number of people that truly feel connected … over email and Facebook.  On the one had I thank God for the connectivity we can have over the internet.  This makes some level of communication with close brothers and sisters of mine in Selmer, Teneesese; Sante Fe, New Mexico; Ohio, or Key West that I wouldn’t normally have.  But if you live five minutes away from me and think that an occasional email with me is a satisfying or intimate relationship, something is broken in our thinking.

What is the point of all my rambling?  I can’t do that much to change culture, and the church has to be careful in its criticism therein, but it is difficult to learn how to love your neighbor when you continue to erect barriers to even come into contact with them.  The culture can do what it wants, but the church is called to something higher.

The Kingdom of God is an invasive thing.  We are invaders on enemy territory, to a degree, so believers need to rethink and re-engage ways to do something very basic in the teachings of Christ, love our neighbor.  We have to find ways to remove those barriers in our own lives, as examples first, and then compassionately use the “all power in heaven and earth given to Me” authority to navigate and even break through those barriers that our neighbors have erected before us.  They may not be New Creations, but they are still His creation and we should learn to love them as our neighbor.

Have a “front porch” mentality, even if you don’t physically have one.  Invite people into your lives.  Don’t hide from the world.  Be vulnerable.  For believers, this begins with other believers and should entail the most intimate relationships we have, but we must also do the same with our neighbors, the humanity all around us worthy of acceptance and basic kindness.

More on this to say later, but that is a start.

Peace.

In our Western culture, we’ve done a great job studying certain topics without any practical application or hands on experience.  Generally speaking, we then move those who have been educated in a classroom to then go on and educate others in a classroom.  Then we send people out to actually do something and then wonder why they fail.

The bibilical model of discipleship is very different.  No one learned what it meant to be a Christian in a classroom.  They were given real world, powerful and evident examples of what it meant to be a Christian … first in the person of Jesus Himself, of  course, then on to the apostles and so on.  Then Christianity was explained to them, and it made perfect sense because there was a real live model staring them in the face.  This is the biblical model.

Somewhere along the way the Western church adopted the Western culture and missed biblical truth.  Not surprising that we have the problems in the church that we do.  We’re the best at exegesis but some of the worst at believing and doing what the Bible actually says.  However, it is the latter that truly changes lives and teaches anything.

We were reading through the Sermon on the Mount as men last week, and one statement really stuck with me.  Jesus warns those that teach people to sin, to not follow the commandments or to ignore them, that they will be least in the kingdom … but those that DO the commandments and TEACH others to observe them will be great in the Kingdom.

This is of course connected with the Great Commission as written down by Matthew in chapter 28, to make disciples by “teaching them to observe ALL that I have commanded you.”

Of course our modern theology has made us so gun shy of anything that even suggests “works” that our great biblical scholars just find a way to explain all this away.  Here’s a warning: any doctrine that causes you to explain away things clearly stated and taught in scripture is probably dangerous.

Ultimately, we should be “doers” and not “hearers” only.  I think that is written somewhere, too …  And it is the doers that become the greatest teachers because there is integrity in the whole message of testimony and spoken truth.

Peace.