CONFESSION: I PROCLAIM A DIFFERENT JESUS!

There has been a lot of talking about missional church folk presenting a different Jesus. Well I want to make a confession, as someone deeply committed to the missional church movement I do indeed present a different Jesus and will continue to do so. I present and try and follow a different Jesus from the one that the evangelical church in Christendom Europe (and I suspect America) shaped by modernism proclaimed. That Jesus was a Saviour but in practice little else. I affirm wholly and completely that Jesus is the Saviour of the world and outside Him there is no salvation. The problem is that the Christendom church presented Jesus as a Saviour but in practice ignored Him as an example and as a teacher. They wanted to be saved by Jesus but not shaped by Him. He was a Jesus who offered a heavenly reward devoid of real earthly change or challenge.

One of the things that attracted me to the missional movement was its emphasis on Jesus. There was an emphasis on Jesus as Saviour but also as teacher and example, in other words a commitment to being saved AND shaped by Christ. Stuart Murray in a book called POST-CHRISTENDOM puts the issue like this:

“Our greatest resource in post-Christendom is Jesus. … Our priority must be to rediscover how to tell the story of Jesus and present His life, teaching, death and resurrection – recognising past attempts have seriously missed the mark. We cannot continue to present Jesus only as the Saviour from guilt few feel in post-Christendom. Nor can we invite people to follow a Jesus who merely guarantees life after death to those who are otherwise comfortable or a Jesus whose Lordship affects only a limited range of personal moral decisions. We can no longer present a safe establishment Jesus who represents order and stability rather than justice, who appeals to the powerful and privileged for all the wrong reasons. Nor can we reduce Jesus to dogmatic statements in simplistic evangelistic courses or perpetuate the overemphasis on his divinity at the expense of his humanity that Christendom required.

Instead, we must present Jesus as (amongst much else) friend of sinners, good news for the poor, defender of the powerless, reconciler of communities, pioneer of a new age, freedom fighter, breaker of chains, liberator and peacemaker, the one who unmasks systems of oppression, identifies with the vulnerable and brings hope.

But if we would present Jesus in such ways to others we must encounter Jesus afresh ourselves” p316

 For years I wondered how “evangelical” Christians could be involved in the Klan in the States, protestant para-militaries in Ulster and in the security forces of apartheid South Africa. I wondered how saved people’s underlying values reflected Western consumer culture so clearly. Then it struck me they had been present by Jesus whom they had been told had to save them but they had never heard about a Jesus whose shaping was equally necessary. This idea that we can be saved and remain unchanged should get an allergic reaction from those of us who are part of the Wesleyan Holiness movement who have always believed that salvation necessitated real progress in sanctification. The problem was that we defined holiness in legalistic terms, in terms of what we didn’t do instead of positively in terms of listening to and follow Jesus.

Surely the God given definition and demonstration of Holiness is Jesus? In Jesus teaching on the Sermon on the Mount we hear holiness defined and in His actions in the Gospels, embracing the least, the lonely and left out we see holiness demonstrated. This Jesus establishes the Kingdom of God by his passion and resurrection but calls on us to serve it in the here and now as well as wait for its consummation. His teaching and his actions show us what it means to live and serve that Kingdom. Yet all too often we have been content to be saved by Jesus but have resisted being shaped by Him. I call a that a different Jesus, a Jesus different from the one who I encounter in the Gospel who embraces his cross to save me but calls on me to embrace the cross to serve Him.

So I am committed to another Jesus, the Jesus who saves me but also has the right to shape me. This is the Jesus I want to proclaim and follow in word and deed. This is the Jesus I want to unleash in my life, in my church and in this world. This is the Jesus that the missional church movement has helped me rediscover if someone considers that heretical I wonder what Jesus they follow? (I would highly recommend Alan Hirsch’s RE-Jesus: A Wild Messiah for a Missional Church, on this subject)

RENEWAL MOVEMENTS AND REACTIONARY MOVEMENTS

I am working my way through a well written and thought provoking book at the moment called MISSION SHAPED QUESTIONS edited by Steven Croft. It’s a collection of essays which are looking at critical questions surrounding mission in post-modern and post-Christendom Britain.

The essay which is particularly exercising my grey matter this morning is one by renowned New Testament scholar James Dunn. In his essay “Is there evidence of fresh expressions of Church in the New Testament” he looks at the character of NT Christianity and how it freshly expressed the faith of Israel. Of course this area of Christian and Jewish divergence is Dunn’s particular area of interest and expertise so what he says comes with real understanding and authority.

He sees the New Testament Christianity as having five characteristics and goes on to draw out these implications based on those characteristics:

• A Christianity that has lost all sense of newness, of what had only been hoped for being now realized, is no longer Christianity as defined by the NT.

• A Christianity that cherishes no sense of intimate relation with God through Christ, that regards the Spirit as effectively shut up in the bible or confined to the church, and that treats experience of the Spirit as essentially threatening, is no longer Christianity as defined by the NT.

• A Christianity that regards the maintenance of and faithfulness to tradition as its highest responsibility is no longer Christianity as defined by the NT.

• A Christianity that can think of Church only as building and not as people and that is not seeking new ways to be the people of God, to be church, is no longer Christianity as defined by the New Testament.

• A Christianity that defines itself less in terms of Christ and more in terms of ecclesiastical hierarchy and liturgically correct forms is no longer Christianity as defined by the NT.

Dunn goes to described early Methodism as a renewal movement within Anglicanism seeking to restore these characteristics to the church, to express them freshly, to be a fresh expression of church to use the current British term. He goes on to say “Methodism reminds us that fresh expressions are not the only way in which Christianity began but also the way in which Christianity will be revived.”

 As part of my doctoral course we did a huge survey of church history and what struck me was the regularity with which revival/reforming movements emerged in the church to “freshly express” these characteristics Dunn is talking about. There were the Montantists and Dontatists in the Early Church. In the Catholic Church the Franciscans and the Brethren of the Common Life. Then of course the Reformers themselves and the Annabaptists. When the reformed tradition was established along came Pietists and Moravians. Of course we have mentioned the Methodists but when Methodism became institutional the Free Methodists, Wesleyans, Nazarenes and Salvation Army emerged as “fresh expressions.”

But sadly that is only half the story because in each of those cases the renewal movements were met by reactionary movements within the church that tried to defend the ecclesiastical “status quo” as they understood. Wesley clung onto the Church of England but most Anglicans wrote him off as an “enthusiast” of the worst kind. William Booth was forced out of the Methodist Reform Church and Phinees Bresee was forced out of the United Methodist Church. Renewal movements inevitably are met by reactionary movements in the Church. I think in general these people’s hearts are in the right place, to start with, but they end up defending the status quo which they fail to realise was once a fresh expression of the church opposed by a previous reactionary movement.

I think this gives me some perspective of the current controversy between those of us who want a fresh missional incarnational expression of NT and Wesleyan Christian within the Church of the Nazarene for our 21^st culture and the so called “concerned Nazarenes” who claim that such a movement is seeking to destroy the church just as those who forced the early Nazarenes out of the Methodist Church claimed. Its only to be expected. As I currently work part time for an Episcopal Diocese in Scotland I am encouraged by the determination of the Anglican Church in the UK to encourage and enable fresh expressions of church, protect them from reactionaries and keep them within the Anglican communion. My prayer is that my own church would exhbit the same nurturing and protective attitude to those of  uswho want to freshly express our faith and heritage incarnationally in our communities.

MISSIONAL: What’s in a Word?

Ann and I laughed a bit when we lived in the States at words which it seemed to us our American friends had made up, like “Winningest.” Now one of these recently created American words is making waves in the church in general and in my own denomination in particular and its no laughing matter. That word is “MISSIONAL.”

I do worry that the word Missional is being devalued into a sales a gimmick by the Christian publishing industry, every second book I see coming out at the moment seems to have it in its title. There is a whiff of bandwagon around the word with some organisations simply changing “evangelistic” for “missional” in their literature without fully understanding the nuanced differences.  All the publicity surrounding “Missional” has brought the heresy hunters out of the cyber wood work. Numerous “discernment” ministry web sites are claiming that “Missional” is the key word for new agey, emergent Christians whom the Holy Spirit has revealed to them are actually pagans trying to help the Devil take over the Church. One of these groups in my own denomination, the Church of the Nazarene, says on its website that “Missional is a term of the Emerging Church, not of Biblical Christian churches.”  Right now at our 4 year Nazarene international get together in the States this self styled “Concerned Nazarene” group (I am certainly concerned they are Nazarenes) are handing out thousands of DVDs to delegates which claim among other things that anyone using the term “missional” or is open to any teaching they say is characteristic of the “Emerging Church” is heretical and is trying to lead the denomination into an apostate future. The inference is that such people, and I would include myself in their number, should be shown the proverbial denominational door.

Normally I would ignore these people but I now feel I can’t and must be clear about where I stand on the issue. The “Concerned Nazarenes” are a strange group led by someone who proudly announces he was a former drummer in several rock bands (????) I am not quite sure what he thinks this information does for him.  In fact this guy is relatively new to the Nazarene Church and I actually think he has fundamentally misunderstood our church. Our Church stands in the Wesleyan tradition and many of the issues he seems to have to me at least stem from our Wesleyan theology rather than the “emerging church” theology. His agenda seems to be to call us back to some American Baptist reformed fundamentalist past we never had! What worries is that some of these DVD’s might make their way back to the UK and take some people in with their talk about defending biblical Christianity.

That’s why I want to make clear why I am passionately committed not to the word MISSIONAL in itself but to the understanding of Christianity and the Church that it expresses. As my denomination has MISSIONAL as one of its core values I also want to take a stand against these people who are trying to suggest that it somehow endangers the church. In my view it is those of who passionately committed to the Church of the Nazarene being a Missional Church who are being true to our church’s values, heritage and theology. I take great comfort from the fact that despite the theological opinion of a former rock drummer most of our theologians take the same position.

So where did this word “Missional” come from?  Well I would argue for reasons that should be come clear that the concept has always existed but it was first used in an American book called “Missional Church” published in 1998. This book reflecting on mission in America drew on the work of UK missionary leader Lesslie Newbiggin and other mission thinkers and theologians in the 20^th century who had been rediscovering the importance and relevance of the doctrine of the Trinity for amongst other things, mission.

 Theologically speaking the concept of “missio” (ltn for sent) or mission was used first to describe the eternal sending which went on within our Trinitarian God, before it was used to describe the sending of the Church or missionaries. Within the Trinity the Father, Son and Holy Spirit have eternally been reaching out and giving themselves to one another in love. The important point to grasp from this is that mission is rooted in the very nature of God, mission then overflows into the world. Anglican theologian Michael Moynagh expresses it like this, “God engaged in a missionary act when he created the universe. Creation was the outward movement of God. It was an overflowing of the Trinity’s life as something new was brought into existence. God continues in mission as he sustains the universe, a flow of non-stop love towards creation. God also engages in mission by redeeming the world. This redemption is made possible through the death and resurrection of Christ. It continues through Christ, in the Spirit. God’s purpose is to restore and perfect the whole of creation. Mission, therefore, is no add on for the church. The Church becomes like God when it engages in mission. It falls away from God when it neglects mission.”

The all important implication of this reflection of God’s missionary nature is that the essence of the Church is “missional” that is that the church exists for mission. As the Father, sent the Son and the Father and Son sent the Spirit on mission, our Trinitarian God now sends the Church to join Him in his mission, the continuing Missio Dei, the Mission of God. When we use the word Missional we are trying to capture this concept that mission is not just an activity of the church it is the very nature of the church. Or put another way, its not that the Church of God has a mission but that the Mission of God has a church.

Speaking personally for me to be “Missional”  is to understand and live in the light of the fact that as a member of God’s people, individually and collectively, we exist to join God in his transforming mission to our world. This is explosive when it comes to our understanding of what Church is and what it means to be the Church. I grew up in the church and I grew up with the understanding church was a place where things happened. Going to church meant going to a worship service in a building. Moreover in general what happened during that service was designed to suit those who were already members. The word Missional has now inspired a paradigm shift in how I understand what it means to be the people of God. I now understand the church and my life as being Missional. Therefore Church doesn’t exist for my benefit and I don’t exist for my own selfish fulfillment. In famous words of Archbishop Temple, “The Church is the only society on earth that exists for the benefit of non-members.”   Church isn’t there to make me happy. Church exists for mission, it exists for God and those he is reaching out to in love. For me Church isn’t an institution I belong to but a revolution I am giving my life to. Reggie McNeal puts it like this “Our job is not to do “church” well but to be the people of God in an unmistakable way in the world. We are to be the aroma of Jesus in the cemetery of decaying flesh. We are to be different in the hope we offer, in the grace we exhibit, and in the obvious sacrifice of love we display in dealing with others.”  

To be missional then is to root our understanding of, and living as, God’s people in the very nature of God Himself. It’s about creating a community of that embodies serves and extends the Kingdom of God in this world as Jesus did. That’s why I am passionate about the word Missional because I believe in what that word summaries; I aspire and am committed to giving my life to it. That’s why I won’t be told by the “concerned Nazarenes” I am New Age Emergent Church heretic seeking to lead my church into apostasy. As far as I can see “missional” sums up the Apostolic understanding of the Church, it describes Wesley’s practice of Church and Bresee’s reason for founding the Church of the Nazarene. Above all Missional for me means being obedient to Jesus’ words, “As the Father has sent me, I am sending you." ^{John 20:21} in the committed company of other Christ followers. Those who advocate the Church of Nazarene being a “missional church” are not leading the church away from God but seeking to reconnect the Church to the God who is and has ever been, missional.

SUSAN BOYLE ECCLESIOLOGY

Every time I head along the M8 motorway I see more TV crews heading for the small village of Blackburn which is about 5 miles from me here in Edinburgh. Blackburn has become an unlikely focus of attention for the world’s media because of Britain’s Got Talent’s You-Tube singing sensation, Susan Boyle. You must all know the story by now. Susan walks on to the stage and everyone sniggers because she is a bit of an ugly duckling, dressed in frumpy clothes and even worse for British audience admits she goes to church! Then she opens her mouth and everyone else’s jaw drops as she sings with the voice of an angel. I think Susan Boyle has been such a sensation because she is at one and the same time sort of “odd,” and yet attractive. She just doesn’t fit into our culture’s view of what “successful” should like. Yet at the same time there is something compulsively attractive about her when she sings.

I wonder what comes into your mind when you think about this slightly strange Scottish singer?  It’s probably because I have spent too much of my life in bible colleges and seminaries but when I think about Susan Boyle I can’t help but think about 1 Peter. I hear an echo of Susan Boyle in Peter’s opening words “Greetings from Peter.  This letter is from Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ. I am writing to God’s chosen people who are living as foreigners in the provinces of Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia. 2 God the Father knew you and chose you long ago, and his Spirit has made you holy. As a result, you have obeyed him and have been cleansed by the blood of Jesus Christ.” ^{1 Peter 1:1-2 NLT}.  

I know what it is to live as foreigner. My West of Scotland accent meant I stood out like a sore thumb during my year in rural Kentucky. It wasn’t just my accent. In innumerable ways, almost every day, I was reminded that I wasn’t at home and that being a Scot in Kentucky meant I was a bit odd to those around me. Peter reminds these first generation Christians he is writing to that they are a bit of an oddity too. Despite probably most of them having been born in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, he says they are strangers, foreigners in other words, oddities. What marks them out as odd is not slightly uncool clothing or last decade’s hair style. It’s their identity as a community that marks them out as distinctive. They are community whose identity is rooted in the Trinity having been chosen by the Father, made holy by the Spirit and cleansed by Christ. They are a community who are living out the values of the Kingdom of God in a foreign land, the here and now of history. At key points they live by different values from the culture that surrounds them. I love it when the old King Jimmy version describes them and us as God’s people as “a peculiar people” ^{1 Peter 2:9} That is exactly what most people in Scotland see the community of God’s people as, peculiar! Different, odd!

Now let’s be honest the church has often been marked out as peculiar for the wrong reasons. People have thought that the way Christians dress and talk has often been just a bit weird and avoided them as a result. The oddity that the churches Peter was writing to displayed didn’t alienate the people around them instead it intrigued and attracted them. We know that because Peter says “But in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect, ..” ^{1 Peter 3:15} It seems from this that the people that rub shoulders with these 1^st century Christian Susan Boyles wanted to find out why they were different.  They were drawn to ask them just what it was that inspired and motivated them to live the way they did. The lifestyle of this community provoked questions. They lived the kind of lives that could only be explained by the presence of God inspiring and empowering them. This was a provocative community; its life provoked those who came into contact with it to investigate it. Just like the world’s media flocking to Blackburn to find out more about Susan Boyle, people were drawn to these communities of faith, hope and love to find out more about what lay behind them.

There is no doubt that it is Susan’s Boyle’s voice which has drawn people to watch and listen to her performance millions of times on You Tube. But what was it exactly that provoked people to find out more about these 1^st century Christian communities? I think with a little bit of detective work we can piece together the major parts of the oddly attractive lifestyle of Peter’s churches.

“As obedient children, let yourselves be pulled into a way of life shaped by God's life, a life energetic and blazing with holiness.” … “you have sincere love for your brothers, love one another deeply, from the heart” … “Therefore, rid yourselves of all malice and all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander of every kind.” … “all of you should be of one mind. Sympathize with each other. Love each other as brothers and sisters. Be tenderhearted, and keep a humble attitude.  Don’t repay evil for evil. Don’t retaliate with insults when people insult you. Instead, pay them back with a blessing.” … “It is God's will that by doing good, you might cure the ignorance of the fools who think you're a danger to society.” … “Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling. Each one should use whatever gift he has received to serve others.” ”  

Put at its most basic they were living like Jesus. Their community was a sign post to the Kingdom of God and people will always find that attractive. Biblical Scholar Scot McKnight puts it more theologically like this, “The fellowship of the Christians created a community wherein true justice was worked out, wherein healthy, loving relationships were the norm, and where in the response to the society was one of benefaction and compassion.” However we describe it, this kind of community resonates with people’s souls because it is what we were created for and therefore have been subconsciously longing for. A community that loves God passionately and others practically in this way will always exert a magnetic influence in its culture.

Since I have been day dreaming about this every time I see and hear Susan Boyle it draws me to pray a slightly odd prayer.  “Lord let us live a Susan Boyle ecclesiology! Make us as Your people as strangely attractive to our culture as Susan is and as Peter’s churches were to their’s.”

AM I PREPARED TO BE DISTURBED?

Almost every evening a ritual plays out in our house. After we have had our evening meal and washed up we generally head for the living room with a cup of coffee to relax. As soon as Ann sits down Roxy, our dog, comes and sits in front of her and stares at her, this standard poodle language for get off your rear end and let me out. Not unnaturally Ann is often reluctant having just got herself comfortable.

Ann isn’t unique; we are all pretty reluctant to be disturbed when we are comfortable. Ok big confession I don’t often jump up and offer to let the dog out. I came across a reference to a character well known to me from my Sunday School days in an unexpected place recently. I was reading in 2 Kings 14 and there was a reference to “Jonah son of Amittai, the prophet from Gath Hepher.” This is the same Jonah of Jonah and the whale fame. 2 Kings tells us that Jonah had been making prophecies that Israel would grow stronger and regain her former geographic size. That must have been a pretty popular message with the King and his cronies and probably made for a pretty comfortable life for Jonah. His basic message to Israel was God loves us, we are God’s people and he is really going to bless us.

Then just like Ann with her cup of coffee something disturbed Jonah’s comfort, it wasn’t a standard poodle but an extraordinary God.   “The word of the LORD came to Jonah son of Amittai:  "Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me." Jonah ^1-2 We all know the rest, the running away, the big fish, the hissy fit etc. The more I read Jonah the more I convinced that we have seriously misunderstood its message. In fact we have probably trivialized and then ignored one of the most important messages the Old Testament has for us as God’s people.       

Jonah isn’t about a whale or a big fish; it’s not even about a reluctant prophet. The main character in Jonah is a compassionate God. The whole story is about this compassionate God who is struggling to get one of His Servants to share his compassionate heart for those who are far from him and even utterly opposed to Him. At one point Jonah blurts out the truth, ^{Jonah 3: 1}  “But Jonah was greatly displeased and became angry. ² He prayed to the LORD, "O LORD, is this not what I said when I was still at home? That is why I was so quick to flee to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity.”  I find that out burst astounding. Jonah reveals that there is nothing wrong with his theology.  He knows that Yahweh is a compassionate God the problem is he is simply not willing to share that compassionate heart. Jonah is not willing to love and care for those that God does, in this case the people of Nineveh. To him the people of Nineveh are beyond the pale and attempting to share God’s love with them would mean getting off his rear end and leaving behind not just his prejudices but his comfort zone. Jonah is not willing to be disturbed by the love of God. Like the older brother in the Prodigal Son the love and forgiveness of God doesn’t inspire him it just annoys him.

The more I think about it the more I think that Jonah isn’t simply the story of God’s struggle with one petty Jewish prophet. The story of Jonah is all too often the story of God’s struggle with His people to share His heart for the world, to join Him in His mission to the world. I know for certain Jonah’s reluctance to join God in reaching those beyond God’s people is replayed in far too many churches. Churches are happy with Jonah’s message to Israel, God loves us and is going to bless us, it’s the stable fare of our pulpits and bookshops. Its no surprise the Prayer of Jabez was so popular!

The problem is that the New Testament doesn’t hold up the Prayer of Jabez as the inspiration for the life of God’s people but the Incarnation of Christ.  The Incarnation is the great example of what it means to move beyond our comfort zone for the benefit of others. “Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant,  being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death — even death on a cross! ^{Philippians 2:5ff} Christ did all of this to share the grace of God with those who were far from God. Yet just like Jonah we say we believe this but we refuse to actually live it. Sunday by Sunday Christians gather in buildings to sing about God’s love, read about God’s love, hear sermons on God’s love and remember God’s love in the Lord’s Supper, then they leave the building and go into Jonah mode and won’t move out of their comfort zone to share God’s love.

The story of Jonah raises an important question for me and it’s not whether it was a big fish or a whale or whether someone could survive in its stomach whatever kind of fish or mammal it was. The question that confronts me is “Am I willing to be disturbed?” Am I willing to live what I say I believe? Am I willing to allow God to challenge my prejudices and move me out of my comfort zone to go to people He cars for? I know those were several questions but I am getting to the biggee. The central question, the unavoidable question from the whole of Scripture not just the book of Jonah is, “Am I willing to share His heart for this world and its people?”