Church Marketing Sucks

Found this quote by Rob Bell, pastor of Mars Hill Bible Church in Grand Rapids:

"Remember what Jesus always wanted to know?" he asked. "What's the fruit we're producing? Is justice being done? Are people sharing their possessions? Are the oppressed being set free? Are relationships being healed? To me, that's the point. Everything else is just chatter." ...

"My theory of church growth is simple," said Bell, leaning across the table to deliver the coup de grace. "People drive a long way to see a fire."

Found the quote on a cool blog—Church Marketing Sucks run by the communications director for the Foursquare denomination (started by Jack hayford, I think).

Alas my reason for searching for Rob Bell was to find his great sermon called the "Theology of Breathing" for my friend Paul, but the Mars Hill website appears to be out of commission.

More tidbits from Kierkegaard

I found this quote particularly poignant ...

Christendom and Counterfeit Christianity by Soren Kierkegaard: "No one can be the truth; only the God-man is the truth. Then comes the next: the ones whose lives express what they proclaim. These are witnesses to the truth. Then come those who disclose what truth is and what it demands but admit that their lives do not express it, but to that extent still are striving. There it ends. Now comes the sophistry. First of all come those who teach the truth but do not live it. Then come those who even alter the truth, its requirement, cut it down, make omissions in order that their lives can correspond to the requirement. These are the real deceivers."

Bottom Up vs. Top Down

Following is an email I sent in response to a prophetic call for prayer. I had no problem with the contents of the call, per se, but there seemed to be something missing. I have received positive feedback from several people who received the mail so I decided to post my comments here. At the end I've also appended some further thoughts.

It does appear that troubled times are ahead, yet I am struck by the lack of focus on what I see clearly as the primary focus of God throughout his dealings with Israel and the church—justice for the poor and oppressed.

We need to open our eyes to the real sore that Katrina revealed—a city in America where 1 out of 4 people were impoverished, mostly women, children and elderly! This has nothing to do with the Supreme Court or the political government. It has to do with the church!

Here's what Ezekiel told Israel led to the destruction of Sodom:

Ezek. 16:49 “‘Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy. 50 They were haughty and did detestable things before me. Therefore I did away with them as you have seen."

For too long the enemy has seduced us into thinking that we need to change our government to bring about revival. THIS IDOLATRY! Only God can bring about revival and he's not interested in the federal government nearly as much as our self-government. When this inward change happens, the changes we hope for in the outward expression (political government) will fall naturally into place.

This inward change, though is NOT primarily focused on external issues such as homosexuality and same-sex marriage. Homosexuality is a symptom of internal brokenness in our society. It is a sign that the moral order of creation is breaking down. We can prune the tree all we want, but until we GET TO THE ROOT, nothing will change.

For too long the enemy has blinded us to the simple message God has given us:

Micah 8 He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God. 9 Listen! The LORD is calling to the city— and to fear your name is wisdom— “Heed the rod and the One who appointed it. 10 Am I still to forget, O wicked house, your ill-gotten treasures and the short ephah, which is accursed? 11 Shall I acquit a man with dishonest scales, with a bag of false weights? 12 Her rich men are violent; her people are liars and their tongues speak deceitfully. 13 Therefore, I have begun to destroy you, to ruin you because of your sins.”

Act justly, love mercy and walk humbly with your God...If the church will focus on this statement and all its myriad implications, then revival will come. Jesus did not spend his time railing against the injustice of the Roman government. He challenged the Jewish leadership, yes, but He did not bring about the downfall of the Roman empire through political action, he did it by becoming "obedient to death—even death on a cross!"

Hallelujah! He will complete the work He has begun. Let's pray for revival in our hearts that we may apply His simple call to take up our cross and consider other more highly than ourselves. This is what turned the world upside down in the early church and it will do it again.

Maranatha

The feedback I got was not all positive. In particular my pointing out the risk of political activism sliding into idolatry was offensive to some. My intent was not to accuse anyone in particular of this, but to warn us all against something that I, myself, have fallen into in the past (indeed, since anytime we shift our focus away from God we border on, if not commit idolatry, I am sure I still fall into it in various areas of my life...Praise be to God that He has sent His Son to free me from this bondage!).

As I pondered this further, I came to the following conclusion: God works from the inside out, from the bottom up, but we try to reverse this. Jesus did not try to overthrow the Romans or the Herodians by direct confrontation (top down), but by reconstituting Israel around Himself, one disciple at a time (bottom up). Throughout the gospels and the rest of the New Testament the focus is on how we treat each other on an individual basis. We start in Jerusalem and spread to Samaria and then to the outer parts of the world. This is not nearly as rewarding as the sense of power one feels when standing with a group of 500,000 other chanting for a change at the top, but as HisStory proves, it is far more effective over the long term.

This is not an anabaptist call for withdrawal from political involvement (at least not yet). You should vote. You should engage with the world and make your views known. You should pray fervently for political leaders!

But if we really want to change our political and justice system, we need to do from the inside out. If it worked in the midst of the authoritarian Roman regime, surely it will work in our democratic governement that is "of the people, by the people, for the people."

"How can you worship a homeless Man on Sunday and ignore one on Monday?"

A good article on the “The New Monasticism” in on Christianity Today’s website this week.

I’ve lived in community, of sorts, when I was younger, and Adrienne and I have always enjoyed opening our home to others (we’ve had someone else living with our family about a third of the 15 years we’ve been married). Still, our experiences are a far cry from a true “intentional community” like those discussed in the article. The challenges are many, especially for married folk with kids, but its clear that God continues to foster communities in His church and the new models that are emerging hold promise for more than monks and nuns.

Here are some excerpts to whet your appetite for reading more…

…when those of privilege can give it up to live among those in need, it mirrors Christ coming to earth. "We have lost that incarnational concept. Jesus relocated down here to become a human being so we could be touched by him."

....

A June 2004 conference officially marks the birth of the new monasticism, and participants wrote a voluntary rule for the many and diverse communities… Drawing from church tradition and borrowing the term new monasticism from Jonathan R. Wilson's book Living Faithfully in a Fragmented World (Morehouse, 1998), participants developed 12 distinctives that would mark these communities, including: submission to the larger church, living with the poor and outcast, living near community members, hospitality, nurturing a common community life and a shared economy, peacemaking, reconciliation, care for creation, celibacy or monogamous marriage, formation of new members along the lines of the old novitiate, and contemplation.

These marks connect like-minded communities, new and older, to each other. They also provide a discipline and structure some observers say communities a generation ago lacked. "The marks show the common threads that connect Christian communities that might otherwise be seen as scattered anomalies, rather than vibrant cells of a body," says Claiborne, who is becoming a spokesman for the movement.

One of the challenges any community faces is affordable housing for the group, but going to live among the poor opens up opportunities that simply don’t exist in suburbia. So for example:

For years, Claiborne says, the Simple Way tried to get the city to condemn an abandoned home at the end of their street, which had become home to drug dealers, users, and prostitutes. "It was unacceptable," Claiborne says. They petitioned the city to condemn the building and allow the Simple Way, which is registered as a nonprofit organization, to buy and rehab it. The city said it would cost $30,000 to buy it and take two years to process the paperwork.

But they weren't going to let red tape slow them down. While they worked with the city to gain ownership of the building, Simple Way members walked across the rooftops down Potter Street and entered the house through the roof. Inside, they found trash piled to the ceiling, walls and floors caving in, drug paraphernalia, and pornography. They cleaned it out, room by room.

Before their cleanup efforts made much progress, two people were murdered on the corner. The story made the evening news, and the local alderman, feeling pressure, promised to do something. The building was immediately condemned, canceling $150,000 in liens, and the house put up for auction. The Simple Way bought it for $14,000, and three days after gaining ownership, the building was clean.

The article also includes some important warnings about the imbalances that can occur:

It's always a good thing when people decide to live out their love for Jesus in radical ways, says Ron Sider, professor at Palmer Theological Seminary (formerly Eastern Baptist). Many young people, he says, "look at society and the church and see an incredibly individualistic community and, in spite of some exceptions, still largely unconcerned for the poor."

However, in intentional community movements, one sometimes senses an element of guilt that is used to manipulate suburban youths into giving their lives to work with the poor. "And the flip side of that [guilt] tends to be self-righteousness projected on everyone else," says Jenell Williams Paris, who lived in community during college and graduate school from 1991 to 1999 and now teaches anthropology at Bethel University in Minnesota.

"I heard speakers give prophetic messages, part of which I now understand as shaming messages to white, middle-class evangelicals. I heard, 'White people aren't doing anything. Evangelicals don't care," Paris says. "I took that personally, and I thought, I don't not care; I just didn't know."

A summer with Bart Campolo's ministry gave her the conviction to work on behalf of the poor and influenced her life down to the person she married. However, Paris says, "That sense of shame and guilt was driving me for eight or ten years. Now I listen closely when evangelical social justice speakers come to my university. It's important to help students engage with justice issues out of love, not just out of white guilt."

Community living is also difficult, especially for families, to sustain over the long term. "The whole [American] culture is set up for married people with careers and kids to live in houses and to be mobile as a unit," Paris says. That can cause problems for communities that include married couples and their children, who at some point feel the need to move on to create a life for their family.

This sort of rhythm "reinforces the love-them-and-leave-them pattern," says Don Stubbs, director of recruitment for Inner City Impact in Chicago. Inner-city hopelessness is so deeply rooted that ministry takes years of building one-on-one relationships before it is effective, Stubbs says. Community living can be "sexy" ministry, but Stubbs says he would rather find workers committed long term to the urban setting.

…Hmmm…