Church Detox part 5

Sunday Morning is just one of many expressions of following Jesus.This is one of the more important ideas that I came away with this past year. For most of the time that I have been following Jesus I have been a part of a modern Evangelical church. Here are a few assumptions about the modern evangelical church:
They are usually event driven.
They are usually motivated to saving entire city’s.
They are usually large, min 150-200 people.
They place great importance on evangelism

For many years this is all that I new. But in the last couple of years I have had the chance to expand my understanding of ways to follow Jesus. Below are three other models that I know of, I am sure there are more.

Parish Church: The catholic tradition has been to meet as a parish church. This may look a lot like the typical church model, but there is one major difference. The parish church is created to serve the needs of a particular community. That community may be geographical or cultural. What I love about this model is that is more likely to actually love the neighborhood that it is in. Many Evangelical churches try to “win” entire city’s or entire countries in the case of missions, and forget about the people that live next door to them.

House Church: There is a growing underground movement of house churches in the US right now. People are beginning to see simple expressions with limited structure as a great way of following Jesus. Without the need of a building or paid staff, the community is freed to give there money to causes they support, usually the poor. And without the complicated logistics of putting on a service every week, they have the time to actually get involved in their communities.

Intentional Community: In most churches our shared experience is through events. What if that shared experience didn’t have to stop when the event was over. Intentional Communities offer the chance to share life together in a way that can not be done through weekly meetings. A chance to know each other and help process the journey of following Jesus.

So one might me compelled to ask “Brian, what’s next for you?” My next step after my church detox is to join up with some friend in East Boston. (Click) We hope to set up a sort of intentional community, the details are a little sketchy at the moment, but one thing is clear, we want to share life together and make an impact in our neighborhood.

Photo Credit Hackintosh (Click)

Church Detox Part 4

It’s hard to follow Jesus outside of a community. Although I believe that they past year of not attending church has been a great experience I have found that it has one side effect. It’s lonely. The past year has been marked wth many great expierences but few people to share them with.

I didn't completely cut all ties to communitity this past year. I have kept in touch with several friends, and even concisoulsy chose to meet with two fellow followers of Jesus roughly one a week. Even when I did Kingdom work in my neighborhood, it was with other people, although they were not followers of Jesus.

The pastor from my old church would put it this way, It’s better to do things in groups. With a group of people, you get friendship, community, and with a common common cause anything is possible.

Photo Credit Residualsignal (Click)

Church Detox Part 3

Worship is kind of strange. In choosing not to attend Sunday morning, I have not worshiped corporately for a while. Recently I visited some friends in Portland and attended their church. For the first time ever worship struck me as kind of strange. Where else in American culture do we gather together and sing songs? Again not that there is anything wrong with this but lets face is it’s kinda weird. I say this even after having been a worship leader myself.

In reflecting on my 15 years of church experience I come away with this question in regards to worship; “Do the Mountain top experiences that we seek after in cooperate worship really lead us to be more like Jesus?” It’s hard to say, but sometimes I feel we are seeking after more and more “experiential” worship. A friend of mine would call this spiritual masturbation. (snicker, snicker) I fear that many of us (myself included) have turned worship into a self indulgent act, instead of, an act of reverence towards God. It's a fine line that we don't discuss very often.

One more thought in closing. Having been a member of worship team for 9 years, as I look back I can’t really say that that investment of time, money, and energy, made me anymore like Jesus. Yes it was great to worship and I learned a lot about worship. But, I can’t honestly say that it made me more like Jesus? I didn’t perform any miraculous healings after having been supercharged with the Holy Spirit. I didn’t feed crowds of people with little to no food. And I don’t think I loved my neighbor more after a worship service than before.

Photo Credit Magbug (Click)

Church Detox Part 2

Does a service format make the best disciples? If we are honest with ourselves church is a bit of a spectator sport. Sure there are a few parts that have to be played, but for the most part people are sitting in seats. At it’s heart Sunday morning is an event that attempts to get those who are outsiders to become insiders. To do this we give a nice talk, play popular music, even take care of your kids while you are in the service. Is this what Paul meant when he encouraged us to not neglect meeting together?

I would argue that Sunday morning services do not product good disciples. For example I have had the same conversation with many people. It starts a couple of years after they have been attending a church, they begin to say things like; I am not being fed anymore, the preaching is getting old, I want more “meat” in the sermons or my personal favorite they want to go “deeper”. What I gather from conversations like these are that people have handed their spiritual formation over to the professionals, the pastors. Who can blame them, if you look most evangelical churches they have all sorts of classes that are intended for spiritual formation. If you need to know something or want to experience something new chances are you just have to plug yourself into the right place.

My friend Steve has been asking the question; “What is a disciple?” He came up with this answer; A disciple is a person who loves God and loves other people. Pretty simple isn’t it. If I am a leader how am what am I doing to get everyone I know to love God and other people? I wonder if we are we are short-changing peoples spiritual lives, by sending them to a class instead of sending them out into their neighborhood to love their neighbors?

Photo Credit Van Der Mouche (Click)

Chruch Detox Part 1

For the past year I have been detoxing from church as an expression of my faith. This was an experiment that was meant to enable me to spend more time in my neighborhood loving my neighbors. Now I am reflecting a bit on the past year and trying to figure out what I want to do next. Over the next couple of days I will be posting some thoughts on Church from my detox.

Theology is best learned through conversation rather than a lecture. The Christian Church uses the Guru model tell people about God. By that I mean that we set aside those people who have gained special knowledge of God, usually through a rigorous academic process, to tell us what we need to know about God. Not that there is anything wrong with this, the church has been doing that for over 2000 years. But is it the only way or even the best way to learn about God?

As a result of my experiment I have not had the ability to listen to preaching on a regular basis. Through my own reading of the Bible, Christian books, blogs, and most importantly conversations with friends I have been able to keep learning more about God while not attending church. If I am honest with myself conversations with friends have had a bigger impact in my life than than preachers have. Friends have incite into my life and the ability to follow through on a conversation, two things that a preacher can not do.

Even when I look at Jesus Life I see the important role conversations play. Jesus not only preached to the crowds, but he also told stories, parables, that drew people in to ask more questions. One could say that the point of a parable is not so much the theological point that it is trying to communicate but opportunity for conversation that it creates by needing to be explained further.

Photo Credit dtes.people (Click)

What if Jesus didn't rise from the grave?

There is an article in Time about a stone tablet that was found that dates to when Jesus was born. (Click) In it there is possible evidence of the resurrection story. Some are implying that the early church stole the resurrection story and made it there own.

We could debate endlessly if the stone is true but I think a better question is this.
If it were true and Jesus didn't rise from the grave would you still follow him?

Discuss!

Christian License Plates?

I can think of a lot better ways to express my faith. (Click)

Streets of Hope Book Review

Last week, while on vacation, I started reading the book Streets of Hope. It is the true story about a section of Boston called Dudley Street, and there battle for community control over there neighborhood.

In the 1980's there was a concern that the City of Boston was developing a "revitalization" plan for Dudley. A decade earlier Bostons South End was "revitalized". By this I mean that the old abandoned building were bought up by land speculators, apartment building were transformed into condominiums, and the a predominantly poor neighborhood was replaced with an affluent neighborhood in a short time. Another word for this in gentrification. Upon hearing rumors of the city's plans the neighborhood quickly organized and the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative (DNSI) was born. A community group with complete community control, funding from Bostons largest philanthropic organizations, that would stand up for the communities rights sometimes in partnership and sometimes in opposition with the city government. Over the next several years, DSNI put together there own revitalization plan that allowed the hundreds of parcels of abandoned land to be developed into new housing (apartments and private homes) at a cost that was in line with the income level of the neighborhood.

There are several things that were important to me in this book. First DSNI was a community based organization, not an organization in a community. It was run by the community, with a strong commitment from neighbors. Many times there meeting would have 200 + people in attendance. They listened to peoples concerns and reflected them in there actions. Many times we call in the experts to "fix" the problems in our society, who often times make broad sweeping changes without input from the people who will have to live with the consequences of those decisions.

Secondly there relationship with the City was a cautious association. The authors talk about politicking as usual, getting the mayor to back what they want in order to get the rest of the city officials and employees to act on there requests. But what they understood was that they were setting the terms and if the mayor was not responsive they would act. One great story was how they were able to get the hundreds of abandoned cars removed from the streets. During an election year they took bumper stickers from the Mayors re-election campaign and plastered the all over the abandoned cars to draw attention to them. The cars were removed shortly there after.

Lastly, I am utterly amazed at how they were able to get so many people involved. Having been part of an organization that labeled itself as a grass roots organization, and having done a lot of work in my neighborhood, I am all to familiar with doing a lot of work and getting the same 4 people to turn out to a meeting. I believe there success was in there ability to create a broad organization. If the community started talking about an issue they would respond. There was not any discussion about weather or not it was part of there "mission". When a need was pointed out they organized people to meet that need. Over the years DSNI has not only created and implicated there own neighborhood revitalization plan, but have worked on a number of issues including; a trash dumping campaign, jobs, teen empowerment, Multi-cultural festivals, Anti red-lining coalition, daycare, food project, ext. (See time line) No issue was to small or to difficult to be addressed. I believe this was a key to there success. No one would be turned away. If you had an issue that you were passionate about most likely there were working on that issue.