Conversion and Discipleship

For the last 200 years or so, the evangelical church has been primarily concerned with converting souls. When Europe was a Christian civilization, this was expressed through missionaries sent to parts of the world where the western version of the gospel had not been adopted. In the American colonies and then in the United States this took place through first and second great awakenings that produced a slew of denominational churches across the nation. The primary idea that demands this priority of conversion has been that thousands of people live in perilous danger of eternal damnation and it is the church’s task to offer them the good news of salvation from such a terrible end. The goal is mostly achieved once a person puts their faith in Jesus because they are now "saved" from hell. Conversion can be roughly described as the moment when an individual comes to believe in Jesus Christ as Savior and puts his or her trust in Him as Lord.

While this primary thrust of evangelism created a nation full of people who call themselves Christians, it has not maintained a church or a society that is Christ centered and Kingdom building. Rather, what we observe is a great quantity of people who have converted to Christianity (or been born to people who converted) that still function in ways in their daily lives that are completely inconsistent with a Christ-like life.

Furthermore, conversion is not the task of the church biblically speaking. The great commission is to “Go and make disciples” not to “convert and save souls”. I challange someone to make a biblical case that our mission as the church is to save the world from eternal damnation. And while “making disciples” certainly includes a conversion of heart and life, such an experience is at best the very beginning of the Christian life.

To elaborate further, let me use the analogy of baseball. For centuries our goal and aim has been to recruit people to be on the right baseball team. We've done all we can to get them in the right dugout and put the right uniform on their backs. But this is not what God commands us to do. God commands us to train and develop persons into hardworking and effective baseball players. In fact, God is more concerned that we play the game well and play it right than that we have the right uniform and are in the right dugout. To put things another way, we have prioritized orthodoxy (right belief) over orthopraxy (right practice). As the church we are charged not only to rescue souls from eternal death but to utterly recast their worldview, behavior, and attitudes so that they may become world-changing agents for the Kingdom of God.

If the modern church is to shift its mission from converting souls to making disciples, we will have to make some major changes in the way we approach worship, Christian formation, youth and children's ministries, and even our outreach to the greater community.

The Church Transforming: Attractional and Missional

Can you believe that only a couple hundred years ago (equivalent of 5-6 generations) if you were born in Western Europe you were automatically considered a member of some institutional/national church?  For example, during the American Revolution, if you were born in England, you were Anglican. Today, only a tiny number of those people’s great, great grandchildren consider themselves Christian. That’s because the church in Europe really didn’t change after the enlightenment.  Unfortunately the church we know today in the US was also largely built upon the premise of Christendom (Christian Civilization). The primary place to do any evangelical mission work was to those civilizations that had not yet been Christianized. Even the great growth of the church going westward during the 1800s was due in large part to a Christian culture that was imbedded into the imagination of the pioneers. 

This kind of church is the one that the mainstream institution still basically follows today. We stand on the assumption that if we put up a sign and build a structure, people will naturally come. In some sub-cultures, people will. If you are more traditional and carry on the practices of your grandparents, church may inherently be a part of your life. But if you're the majority of the people in our western context, you won't. We've responded to a culture that is post-Christian by ramping up our attractional efforts (better programs, more publicity, free coffee and donuts) rather than adapting our whole paradigm. In fact, the mainstream church in America is several decades behind the culture in this awareness of Christianity’s diminishing role in society. Folks in church lament the fact that society is no longer centered on "Christian values" and the obligation/duty of church attendance. But rather than adapt we complain and pray that things would return to the way they were. Even worse, we cling to a way of doing church that is comfortable to us but is no longer relevant or applicable to the majority of people (who by the way are disproportionately young).

The primary shift that must be made in our local churches is our strategies for growth. Most churches are almost entirely attractional in the way they gain new people. In other words, the non-churched have the burden of coming to us. We must move to a greatly increased focus on missional outreach, where we have the burden of going to them. This burden is not simply going outside the walls of the church to invite people back into the walls where we are comfortable. It is learning to do church in a new way that speaks the language of the people who otherwise will never come to Sunday morning worship.

The Church Transforming: Part 4

Since I began this series "The Church Transforming" at the beginning of the year, I've begun reading a book that was recommended by a friend. This book has shed tremendous insight on my adventure. The Forgotten Ways by Alan Hirsch is a book committed to discussing the church in the western world (Europe, USA, and Australia) as one of the most crucial mission fields on earth. Without going into detail about this book I want to make sure and give it credit for many of the ideas that are swirling around in my head concerning the need to transform the mainstream institutional church into a new kind of body.

One of my major questions is "can the mainstream church as it is co-exist and function alongside a new kind of church, one that is more missional and organic?" The longer I contemplate this question, the more I believe it IS possible for an institutional church and a missional one to work together side-by-side. Let me paint a picture of the kind of scenario I'm imagining. For this post, I will simply try and point out some primary assumptions that the church will have to transform if they have a chance at reaching new people.

Think of a larger mainstream church (between 2500-3000 members) that is steeped in institutional norms (large physical campus, large full and part-time staff, countless programs and ministries) that is trying to reach a largely "unchurched" population. This "unchurched" population is defined more by the church's imagination than by its true form. In other words, the church doesn't really know who they are trying to reach. By and large, there is an assumption that the people who are not involved in the church are like those who are, but they just haven't found the right invitation or opportunity by which to come. I would argue that the fundamental problem is that most of the people who are not coming to church (more than half) actually have much different worldviews, cultural assumptions, and attitudes about life than the people who are at church. More invitations and opportunities to engage will not be enough to cross the many chasms that exist between those "inside" and those "outside" the church. This mainstream church has a choice to make. It either needs to be honest about the modest percentage of "church-friendly" folks that are out there who are potential attendees (this does not include the "church-shoppers" and "church-hoppers" who are not "unchurched" but are looking for a church), or they need to be honest that something fundamentally different must be offered to a much larger group of people who are currently "out-of-touch" with the church's very heart. The deeper truth here is that the mainstream church needs to forsake the assumption that the way they are presenting the gospel is the best or only way for all people. This church either needs to stop acting like they have "something for everybody" or start finding out what that "something" actually is.
  

Invitational AND Expectational

"Now when Jesus saw great crowds around him, he gave orders to go over to the other side. A scribe then approached and said, 'Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.' And Jesus said to him, 'Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man has nowhere to lay his head.' Another of his disciples said to him, 'Lord, first let me go and bury my father.' But Jesus said to him, 'Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead.' (Matthew 8:18-22)

It is disastrous to develop a recruitment process that is invitational without being expectational. To invite someone on a life changing journey without giving them some idea of what that journey will do to them and require of them is not only a set-up for horrible retention, it's cruel. And yet that is exactly what many mainstream churches have opted to be: invitational but not expectational. Perhaps because of an overall decline in attendance, membership, and general participation in our local churches we feel that we will scare people off if we have high standards. So we choose instead to invite everyone (which is very Biblical) and only express the positive possibilities of being a disciple without being honest about any aspects of Christ's calling that are very difficult (which is unbiblical). Perhaps we figure that if we can get new people to keep coming to our churches and get involved in our ministries and programs, they will naturally become disciplined, faithful, and trustworthy servants of the Kingdom of God. Unfortunately we see that this is not at all the case. In most of our congregations the back door that lets people out of engagement in the church is wider than the invitational one that people enter into at the front. We experience high turnover, a lack of committed leaders, and slipping sense of responsibility among most members.

I believe a big part of our problem happens at the moment of invitation. Jesus did not use marketing strategies or persuasive techniques to gain disciples. He invited them to a full commitment to his own person and if they asked what the conditions were, he was clear that the relationship with Him must be primary to all other concerns. He did not compete with the folks who had major allegiance elsewhere. Instead his market was those who had nowhere to go at all, or those who were desperately seeking for a new way of life. There simply was not a group that was invited to be moderately engaged in the life of discipleship, to have Jesus as one of many Lords. That is not to say that there were not moderately engaged people. As the opening of this passage in Matthew points out, there were crowds that followed Jesus and he would accommodate their relationship to himself. But these crowds are distinguished from disciples. As far as we can tell there is little difference between the crowd that listened intently to Jesus' teachings and the crowd that shouted "Crucify Him!"

It is time that our local churches are more honest about what Christ calls his disciples to be and become. To do this we must first seek an earnest understanding of what that is. What does it mean to be a disciple? What are we really inviting people to? Moderate participation in a religious organization? Or life changing commitment to a savior and community that was designed by God to transform the world?

The Church Transforming: Part 3

The last two weeks, I've been writing about a paradigm shift in the way that the church exists and operates to perform its mission.  Keep in mind as you read that I'm learning as I ponder along.  I don't have an idea where my thoughts and research will lead, but I hope it brings us to a better understanding of what the church can and should be for the future.
One primary question I'm seeking to answer is to what extent the mainline institutional church can coexist alongside or with a church model that is more organic and missional.  To answer this question we must first recognize that these two types of community structures have often co-existed in different forms and to different degrees.  For instance, within many mainline institutional churches there are gatherings and groups that may function in missional and organic ways.  Examples of this can be groups that go on mission trips together, certain small groups that operate and function without much structure and embody certain theological priorities.  My observation is that the mainstream institutional community tends to accommodate larger, more anonymous, and more loosely connected gatherings of individuals.  The extent to which these communities maintain a sense of closeness, mission, intimacy, and urgency usually depends on the strength of missional organic communities within the institution.  Depending on the nature and size of a gathering, there are natural tendencies that help determine whether a community becomes more institutionalized or organic.  There are of course major exceptions.
Take for example the Wesleyan societies in 18th century England.  These gatherings were institutional in their function but missional in their orientation.  They were interpersonal, but not in a fluid and flexible sense.  The content of the relationships was predictable and repeatable for the sake of the mission.  People came to meetings and answered the same list of questions each week, performed the same tasks for holy living each week and had their sharing and actions recorded to evaluate growth.  Many large churches today have programs with a strong mission of "disciple making" that is done in a very organized and institutional way.
The reason I point this out is to acknowledge that a strong mission can be supported by institutional means.  But the biblical mission, as I see it, is not only missional, it is missional in an organic way.  In other words, what matters is not just what we're doing, but how we're doing it.  It must also be stated that most instances of missional church that are carried out by institutional means that I find are alternative communities - meaning they are not mainstream.  I'll talk more about that in subsequent posts.      

The Church Transforming: Part 2

Last week I briefly defined two concepts of church, Mainline Institutional and Missional Organic.  Now, I want to explore further the value and necessity of each.  The scriptures themselves came into being through a combination of these two distinct kinds of community.  There were moments in Israel's history and in the history of the church where community was more organic, alternative, and radical in its way of thinking and way of life.  These were moments of great creativity, risk taking, and discovery theologically and they found voice mainly through rich narrative and story telling, mostly oral.  This is where stories like those in Genesis, Exodus, and the accounts of Jesus' ministry were originally shared before they were written down.   But at other moments, the biblical communities of faith became more organized, established, and grounded in belief and practice.  The life of faith became more orderly and disciplined and was expressed in carefully written versions of the oral traditions that gave them birth.  Our bible represents these oral traditions from an organic time of community being written down and organized by a institutional time of community.  So the question is not which type of community of faith is best - they are both necessary for the faith to remain fresh and relevant and for it to have consistency and longevity.  Rather, the question that needs to be answered is when and in what place are these types of communities most valuable and appropriate.  It should also be observed that the ebb and flow between more organic and more institutionalized communities of faith through the ages seems to happen because it has to - not because someone wants it do.  Like the protestant reformation, the Davidic Monarchy or the Methodist movement, each shift happens because the time is ripe for change, there is a powerful tide that demands a transformation.  I believe we may be in the beginnings of one of those tides in the life of the church today.  And our task is knowing whether we are to fight it, or join it.  

The Church Transforming: Part 1

Several months ago, I compared the institutional mainstream (IM) church to the Jews of Paul's missionary journeys in the book of Acts (Go to the Gentiles). I've been thinking more about the radical disconnect that exists between today's IM church and a truly missional organic church. First, let me define what I mean by those two categories. The IM church, is institutional because its structure and operation is based on a business-level organizational model. Hallmarks of the institutional church are that they depend on buildings, highly qualified staffs, procedures for assimilation, and program-based ministries. By mainstream, I am generally referring to a category of denominations that reached their climax of effectivity in the United States between the middle of the 19th to the middle of the 20th centuries. This includes Episcopalian, Congregationalist, Presbyterian, Lutheran, Baptist and United Methodist. Mainstream protestant churches are distinguished by their worship style (around an hour, once a week on Sunday Morning), their wide appeal theology, and their local church organizational structure. What I mean by the "missional organic" church is something entirely different. By missional I mean that the aim of this church effort is to fulfill a dynamic mission rather than to sustain and institutionalize a cultural practice. The participants in a missional movement are unified first and foremost not by affiliation (dogmatic, cultural, socio-economic) to an organization but by a common aim and cause. By "organic" I mean that the structure and support of the gathering grows and adapts to the dynamics of the mission. An organic church is more dependent upon inter-relationships than upon buildings, staff and programs. It relies on the flexible and strong bonds between its individual members to sustain its mission. Now, these definitions can certainly overlap. There are IM churches that depend heavily upon a mission and relationships and there or missional organic churches that may have some level of structural support. The question that I want to pursue is how the Missional organic church and the IM church can and should relate and interact. Can they coexist in active partnership? How do they support one another? What other historical examples do we see of similar relationships existing (i.e. The establishment of special orders of monks and nuns within the Easter and Roman churches, the Wesleyan Methodist movement and the Anglican church in 18th century England, the Base Ecclesial communities of Latin America and the Catholic church).