Monthly Archives: April 2010

“Go and make disciples of all nations.” – the commission of Jesus to his church

“The only obstacle that church leadership faces in better organizing itself around Christ’s commission is their love for the church members.” – Yours Truly

“Love never stopped Jesus from progression toward his mission. Love fueled it.” – Yours Truly

I love the church. Always have for as long as I can remember.

Interestingly, as I survey my life, I can identify different stages and expressions of that love. By doing that, I can better see what stage I am in now, and then maybe even predict (or is it imagine?, or is it create?) how I will express it in my old age.

In the beginning, I looked to the church with excitement. By beginning, I really do mean it, because I was born into a church-going family. In my earliest memories, church represented a welcome and fun interruption to my otherwise somewhat ordinary week. There were other excitements in my life, but none as reliable and steadfast as “going to church” regularly as a kid. I remember loving nursery care, fun classes, loud singing, energetic puppet shows, new friends, and along with all of it, a sense of importance behind everything we were doing that went beyond what we were doing.

At some point, I began to look to the church with comfort.  It was what I was used to and could depend on. It became a friend, and I’m not just talking about the people. I could rely and anchor something deep in my soul to the rituals that my church used in their services. Two songs, a prayer, a song, a scripture reading, a song, a sermon, and song with an invitation to walk to the front, and then dismissal. It became a rhythm that was so normal and assumed, like breathing or mealtimes, that any interruption or variation was at a minimum very noticeable, and at a maximum, unacceptable.

It’s a blurry boundary that I can’t pinpoint, but I began to look to the church with satisfaction. It was home. This “home” was not so much with the people there, but with the people who were satisfied with the same things I was. And all of us were satisfied with how we did church and equating how we did it with true Christianity. I guess that our church hit the balance of calling for enough sacrifice, while not calling for so much, that as long as I did what the church called for, I felt like a fully developed Christian. Which made me feel satisfaction.

But slowly and surely, and in pretty dramatic fashion, I started looking to the church with longing. This switch came through a combination of factors that conspired to make me into someone who wanted “more” from church. My own personal study of scripture was one of those factors (the life it called for didn’t seem to match up with what I was experiencing). A traumatic family event was another (my family moved outside the scope of functioning that the church was trained to handle). A third factor was the surfacing of some deep need within me for authentic, real relationships (the church said it was the community where I should find them, but I didn’t). Another was the awakening of a desire to make an actual difference in the world to actual people (the message of Jesus seemed to be the best way to do that, and I thought his message belonged to the church, but it often carried a slight but significant distortion of that message). All of this, and probably more, combined to make me look to the church as if it should deliver all this to me.

Having lost my satisfaction, and thinking the church should meet these longings, I began to look to the church with responsibility. The church is me, after all, and if the church isn’t meeting some of the many valid human longings that Jesus says he meets, then it is at least partially on me to transition the church into doing so. It sounds quite noble, empowering, and self-responsible, I know. But I think I’m currently shedding the last bit of residue of this stage, still feeling some of it, but it is quickly giving way to to something that looks the same outwardly, but is much healthier inwardly.

That is, I now look to the church with opportunity. The church is my opportunity to be a part of the community of people who relate with God and each other and the world in a way that delivers the most abundant life available to people.

All of these stages have been valid, useful, and shaping for me. All of these companions of mine, different expressions of my love for the church, have actually been necessary for the church to do with me what Jesus commissioned it to do… shape me more and more into the image of Jesus Christ. In this beautiful way, the church has fulfilled (and is fulfilling) it’s great commission…to make a disciple of me.

It’s interesting to look back and observe that as I was experiencing each one, each stage seemed to be the pinnacle of love for the church.

And in a way, I guess each one was…for me…at the time.

I hope you can see as clearly as I the thread of God’s activity in and through all of these stages. I’m grateful for and honor each one.

And to do that today is to own and fully engage with and enjoy the stage that I am currently in. So for today, I have been given the opportunity to shape the church (which, no matter what else it includes, means to shape myself) to reflect and offer the commission of Jesus Christ to my world a little bit better than it does right now. In this looking to the church with opportunity, and acting, I honor what it is God is doing to shape me with the church, and to shape the church with me.

Like all the stages, and contrary to what it feels like when in each one, it won’t last long. Way sooner than I may be comfortable with, this opportunity will be handed down to my kids. And they, above all else, help me stay diligent and desirous of not being wasteful of this stage…inasmuch as it has to do with me.

But when this stage passes, what is next? When I’m done looking to the church with opportunity, what will be left?

Love. Just love. I will look to the church with love. My imagination says that the next stage will not be needing any more qualifiers to try to describe how it is I’m showing that love. I should be agile enough, mature enough, and Christ-like enough to need nothing from it, to feel no burdensome or guilt-producing obligation to it, but only love…which produces whatever labor from me that will be demanded in each and every moment, no matter the cost. I will show love for everyone at every stage, and hopefully be useful as a guide for anyone at any stage, personally and relationally, to help anyone (inside or outside the church) take their next step towards the point of it all…intimacy and relationship with God.

This point of the church was the point of Jesus Christ. That is why the church is called Christ’s. And we each members of not just “it”…but “him.”

God help me.

“That’s just the way I am.” – one of the saddest, laziest, and most faithless phrases that I ever hear

“Just be.” – spoken my many, followed by none

“I don’t belong anywhere.” – powerless when spoken as accusation or resignation, powerful when owned as a false perception or realization

I’ve written a couple of pieces already on being and on belonging.

As important as each of those are to me, I think that the idea of “becoming” is the one I spend most of my thought life on. Of the three, this idea contains and delivers the most hope (in me, and from me to others). It unlocks in a man the sleeping dreamer. It utilizes the most creativity, as well as the full arsenal of powers that God has given to mankind for his use. And even with that, it also depends on the power that God has reserved for Himself in order for a person to enter into it, let alone achieve it.

Becoming

One of the countless things that my teacher has said on this subject is that unless I change and become like a little child, I will not live in the ways of God.

I’ve spent some time dwelling on that. I respect my teacher a lot, and believe him to be brilliant, and often ponder his every word for meaning, value, and direction (I wonder if sometimes he laughs at me because I may “miss the forest for the trees”).

Now, I know the heart of my teacher, and so even though a glance at these words on paper can be interpreted as a warning and condemnation, I know him to be communicating a message of hope and desire and possibility. A message of life that he wants me to have.

With this teaching, he is telling me that I can change. He is also giving me the very good news that living in the ways of God is available to me. Not only that, but he is informing me that there are some qualities or characteristics, observable or inherent in a child, that he thinks necessary and good for me. On a side note, since I was a child once myself, this teaching proves to me that I am capable of change, since I now have lost these qualities and need them back.

I meet so many people who do not believe they can become something that they are now not. I meet another large set of people that believe they can become something else, but can not connect to the desire to do so, or a picture of what that should be, in a way that fuels them to enter it. Watching these folks makes me really tired.

Tired, because usually these folks want to talk the language of becoming, love the idea of becoming, want to be seen as people who are becoming, and even set aside time to be in community with others who are becoming, but never enter into the process of becoming themselves.

Why? Because becoming something other than you are, no matter how small the change, is nothing short of revolution.

And revolution, by definition, is the overthrowing of the old with the new.

And we, dear friends, for the most part, do not want to overthrow the old. Not really. It’s easy to focus on the negative of how we (or things) are when we have no intention of or belief that we will change. But, when our talk of revolution and becoming gets discussed as a real possibility, and the cliff from which we must jump is right before us, we all quickly realize the many perks that we enjoy from how we (or things), and we find out whether or not we really want to throw it all away for something new. 

Most do not. Including me, I sadly confess. But I am healing from this…and becoming.

It’s the work of my life, in me and offered to others. Let me just say that the “payoff of becoming” is so much sweeter than the “perks of the same”.

God help us all.

By the way…some more cool books for sale, going cheap currently, here.

“I don’t belong anywhere.” – powerless when spoken as accusation or resignation, powerful when owned as a false perception or realization

“That’s just the way I am.” – one of the saddest, most faithless phrases I’ve ever heard

“Just be.” – spoken my many, followed by none

Ever since I wrote part one of these three pieces, I’ve been enjoying using these three words, in my own mind, more and more as an explanation of my life and love for others…being, belonging, and becoming.

Perhaps there is more to my life and work than these three things, but if my life consisted of nothing else but these, and if my “ministry” to others gave help on nothing more than these, I would be overwhelmed with satisfaction. I will restate here that I am fairly consumed with the work of what each one means, how to practice them, and where they interact.

Belonging

It is quite amazing to watch people and see what they will do in order to feel like they “belong”. Perhaps in no one more dramatically than teenagers. I have seen students completely change their wardrobes just to belong. I have witnessed them allowing themselves to be used for sex just to belong. I have seen them scream “I hate you” to the folks that have sacrificially loved them most just to belong. I have seen them perform horrible cruelty to themselves and other living things just to belong. Much of what we do can be explained by this desire.

Of course, it is not just teenagers. I have seen adults submit to the strangest religious practices just to belong. I have seen them compromise their values just to belong. I have seen them kill themselves making money just to belong. I have seen them lord it over their kids quite harshly just to belong.

“Belonging” is something that people universally seem to be longing for (cheesy pun, there, I admit, but done quite accidentally, believe it or not. I noticed it on my proof-read!).

This idea of belonging speaks to our relational nature. Think about it. Have you ever been able to experience yourself “in relation” to something or someone else? The famous and ancient Greek challenge to “Know Thyself” can hardly be done without a context within which to do it, which demands that we find ourselves in the midst of or up against someone or something else.

Most everything can be explained in people through the lens of their desire to belong in relationship…

• to a family
• to a people group
• to a larger story
• to a movement
• to a company
• to a religion
• to a nation
• to a God
• to an ideology

I suppose one of the great human gifts that can be given from one to another is the gift of belonging. I know I fail constantly, but I do intentionally try, with everyone I meet, to assist them in feeling like they belong wherever we are at, wherever they are at, with me, and with mine. Generally speaking, I do this in two ways:

1. By looking past the superficial differences between us, as extreme and obvious as they may be, and look for myself in every person. Since I know how desperately I want to be loved, when I find myself in them (how we are just alike), I find myself loving them.
2. By looking past their humanity, as  broken and ugly as it may be, and look for Jesus Christ in every person. Since I know how desperately I want to serve Christ, when I find Christ in them (and he is always there), I find myself loving them.

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but when genuine love is inflamed inside of you for someone, you will do anything that is good for them, even at great cost or inconvenience to yourself. Our genuine love is the force that tempts the object of our love to feel belonging.

However, I have also noticed that most people who are longing for belonging usually do belong somewhere. It is not that belonging has not been intentionally offered, but something in themselves that keeps them from feeling the belong.

I know for a fact that I was accepted, warts and all, way before I felt accepted. I belonged way before I felt the confidence and security and well-being that comes from belonging.

Most, if not all, of you are, too.

The people who are able to “find their place” anywhere and with anyone are the people who already know they have one no matter what place they are at and with whom they are with.

There are those who go way too far at helping others feel like they belong because they themselves feel as if they don’t, and they are resolute in sparing others this deep pain in attempts to relieve their own.

That notwithstanding, those who have deep understanding and live in the reality that they belong to God, and their place is immovable, spend their time peacefully and patiently and painstakingly helping others feel like they belong, in order to show them that they really do.

Re-read and consider my opening quote above whenever you are tempted to blame your feelings of not belonging somewhere on someone other than yourself.