Evangelism: Our Common Cause

For the past five years, the orthodox Christian (Anglican) leaders of our church have fought to protect orthodox believers in churches all over the US. Because they are doing their job, I have felt confident that I can focus on the mission and vision that God has set before me- to reach the lost, care for the found, and worship God from week to week in the church and out of the church. It has been an amazing ride over the past four years and God has brought forth a ton of fruit. I believe that one of the reasons God has been able to use me in His work is that I have fought to make the main thing the main thing. As a pastor, the main thing for me needs to be proclaiming the Gospel to the lost and the found. I must be about the mission that Jesus commanded me to be about. I rarely engage with the affairs of the heretical Episcopal Church in the United States (I am an ordained Episcopal Priest) not because I am a coward, or want to put my head int he sand, but because I can give to the cause of God's Kingdom best by allowing called leaders to engage in the ecclesiastical fight while I engage in the missional fight. I am profoundly grateful for men like, Bob Duncan, Ed Salmon, Henry Scriven, and Martyn Minns who have personally held back a torrent of evil by providing godly leadership to me and my flock. The result of their sacrifice has meant many new births into the family of God.

On Thursday, orthodox Anglican Bishops from around the US will gather in Pittsburgh for a common cause meeting. part of their work together will be to hear of the work that they have allowed to happen in mission by doing the work that bishops do- the work of keeping the gate secure, keeping the wolves out, and allowing fellow shepherds to do the work of gathering sheep. I will be talking on Thursday about how to reach postmoderns in the city. Here is the outline:

reaching postmoderns

who are the postmoderns?

longing to belong. a generation living in a post christian world longing to belong.
“we are the first generation raised without God. we are creatures with strong religious impulses, yet they have nowhere to flow in this world of malls and tv, kraft dinners and jets. how do we cope with loneliness? anxiety? the collapse of relationships? douglas coupland. life after god

living without belief. a generation living without the Bible.
and yet, they are constantly reminded of God whenever they encounter truth, beauty, justice, intimacy, and the offer of eternal life.

behaving amorally. a generation addicted to having the freedom to choose anything it desires and living with the horrible consequences of desiring that which is killing them.

how to reach postmoderns with the gospel?

religious approach: behaving, believing, and then belonging

liberal approach: belonging, and then… well

gospel approach: belonging, believing, and then behaving

belonging
from observing sacred worship to participating in sacred worship (city, crowd, congregation, committed, core)

believing
subverting the ‘man without the bible’ with truth beauty, justice, intimacy, and eternal life

behaving
for the religious self righteous
the gospel couples the hideousness of man’s sin with the splendor of God’s love.
for the amoral
we all must conform to the pattern that God has established for the order of life. 2+2 =…
Jonah 4:11

An Acts Church

I really don't think we get to choose our mission as Christians. In fact, I think the mission of every church is the same. The reason for this is that Jesus told us what to do. He gave us a mission. Because he told us what our mission is, there is not a lot of wiggle room. It's like the ten commandments. They are not sudtle suggestions, they are authoritative commands. Likewise, The Great Commandment- to love the Lord our God with all our hearst, sould mind and strength, and to love our neighbors as ourselves. And, the Great commission- to go into the whole world making disciples and baptizing them in the name of the Father na dof the Son and of the Holy Spirit. These things pretty much give us a lifetime of work that initiated by God. His mission is to save men and women and our is to follow after that movement. So, ever church has the same mission- Love God- Up, Love the Church-in, Love the World-out. We go Up, In, and Out. Now, how that expresses itself is going to be diverse. Some of us will do this with hymns, others with rap songs. SOme of us will do this in city churches and others in the suburbs. Some of us will reachout to really smart kids in private schools and others of us will reach club kids in Urban centers. This is where vision comes in. I beleive that, though our mission is set, our visions are varied- extremely varied. It is a unty diversity thing.

The vision that god has given me and my wife and our kids is to reach postmoderns from within the context of a modern church. Sunday morning, I lead an adult ed hour along with my new friend and colleague, Jonathan Millard, Rector of Church of the Ascension, about what a new service congrgation might look like here in the East End of Pittsburgh. I beleive that this church will encompass the mission that Jesus gave us. But, the vision will look something like this:

An ACTS Church

Attractive Worship
A commitment to excellence and beauty in worship and the arts will attract the unchurched in our city to come and see Christians worship God. The church setting (no matter where we are) and the service will be beautiful because beauty is one of the main ways that non-Christians connect with the goodness of God. They may not know Him, but they can recognize his work when they see it.

We will make our worship attractive by preaching through books of the Bible. This strategy will be attractive because it will allow the people of our city to hear God’s word proclaimed in a clear way and coherent way. This Biblical expository preaching will combine with multi media technologies that will allow our image based culture to hear and see the Word in a way that will make sense to them and connect with every aspect of their lives (work, family and society, eternity).

Our worship will be highly participatory and will be seen as an experience worth setting aside a few hours for on a Sunday. Communion, expressed in the Anglican Tradition, will be an essential part of this experience though it may not fit the present patterns scene in many churches today. We will further encourage participation by creating teams of people who will work and serve together to make each Sunday a powerful expression of Christian worship.

Our worship will honor young people and encourage their involvement and leadership in all areas of worship. This service will also honor families and make children a dynamic part of our life and worship.

We will make our worship service a communal experience that exists as an extension of our lives. People will stick around after church to talk, connect, and continue their Sabbath day in community with one another.

Our worship will attract both believers and non-believers through worship evangelism. Worship evangelism uses the worship experience as a tool to reach unbelievers. In a church that emphasizes worship evangelism, we assume that postmodern unbelievers are not afraid of the sacred but curious about Christianity (which is foreign to them). Worship evangelism attracts the “seeker” by emphasizing the sacred and allowing unbelievers to observe Christian worship in a way that is not threatening. They will see Christians making powerful connections to the Creator whom they have yet to surrender to; the cumulative effect of this will be to move them from curiosity to surrender. Worship evangelism will also attract believers. The assumption about worship is that it is primarily for Christians. Christians bow the knee to the Creator and are the only ones capable of offering Him worship that pleases Him. Worship evangelism provides a venue for Christians to hear sermons, eat a communion meal, and offer contemporary worship that will give glory to God and feed their souls.

Connecting (the found, the lost).
We will be a church that connects the lost to the saved through living in Christian community. Our worship will be an attractive doorway for the lost to connect with God. It will also afford them an opportunity to connect to Christians who are intentionally living as missionaries to the city. The folks in our church who are saved will constantly be looking for opportunities to invite unbelievers into our community. But, Sunday morning will not be enough. We will need to create medium sized and small group experiences for unbelievers and believers to become friends and to love one another. Thus, our church will need to encompass the whole life of our members and to allow room for those who have never experienced Christian community. We will need to eat together, play together, work together and learn together.

Belonging will proceed believing. The people that our church will attract will be in various stages of belief. Our leadership will have to be fully committed to Jesus Christ and to Christian orthodoxy. But, our “fellowship” will need time to understand the Gospel. They will be coming in empty handed and will already be predisposed to being pragmatic and experience based in how they approach life and make decisions. We will need to give people lots of room and lots of time in order to come to a place where they can be saved (born again). Hence, having dinner with unbelievers and hanging out with unbelievers will be as important as helping an unbeliever to make the decision to follow Christ. In fact, in many instances, many of our new believers will “find themselves” believing and will have a hard time pinning down the exact moment of their new birth. Our church will embrace that postmoderns, living without the benefit of a Christian framework, will need time to make a decision to follow Christ and will need believers in their lives to model Christianity for them both by what they say and by what they do.

Transforming Lives
We will be a church that assumes that everyone who enters our “doors” is in need of transformation. We embrace that our hearts, minds, and souls have been poisoned by the Fall and we will spend the rest of our lives being made into the image of Jesus and seeing our “old man” die. Thus, we will be a Gospel Church and will be wholly dependant on the Good News that Jesus delivered to us. That Good news says that we are saved by shear and total grace. We are desperately sinful and deserve hell. Yet, God, in his incredibly beautiful mercy has seen fit to pursue us and to soften our hearts so that we can hear the Good News- that he loves us and is willing to pay the price to rescue us from death and hell. This Gospel message will demand that we live as people who are both incredibly forgiving and at the same time incredibly demanding. We are people who sin and need God’s grace. Yet, once saved we are people who can finally live in freedom from the bonds of sin and the chains of addiction.

We will offer multiple opportunities for transformation. As a culture living in a Post Christian era, we are seeing the complete breakdown of the family and of society. Social problems abound because sin is rampant. Our church will need to be loving yet clear about the addictive nature of sin and offer our members opportunities to be released from the addictions of pornography, drugs and alcohol, entertainment, relationships, and work. This transformation will occur when we preach and teach the folks of our city about the design that God has for the family (man, woman, child), society (we must live for a purpose greater than ourselves), and eternity (we were made to worship God and not idols). Our church will be able to see the entire city transform by offering the transformational power of the Gospel to take root in people’s lives.

Serving the City
Our church will exist to make the city a great place to work, live, and raise a family. We will not expect the city to come to us and seek our blessing. Instead, we will be a church full of people who reach out the city and serve it with our whole hearts. We will feed the poor, care for the widow, shelter the lonely, and take care of the earth that our city rests on.

We will seek to have an impact on the whole life of the city. We will seek to be godly workers and give to our city not just through being “church people” but through being great businessmen and women. We will seek to produce great minds that can create positive change in the life and polity of the city.

We will have a bold and attractive witness that will allow us to partner with the media, befriend local civic groups, and have a presence in the overall market place through our engagement with people living in the East End. In essence, the city of Pittsburgh will be proud to have us living with them because of how kind and helpful we are to our neighbors.

One Piece at a Time at Ikea

I am setting up a new office. I have a limited budget and a local IKEA. That is a good mix. So, along with wiring and websites, I have been designing office space and putting together what I am calling, "Drive through Furniture." Anyway, I really do love starting things from scratch and watching the pieces slowly getting put together- pun intended. Just for fun, here is the office, in peices. I will post a pick as soon as I am in a new office space. For this time, I am living on "someone else's couch" so to speak.

Beauty

Beauty is, I am convinced, the reflection of the face of God. The more we can expose the world to true beauty, the more we can soften people to the heart of God.

Those Jars In Cana

Jesus' first day on the job was not effeciating at a wedding, but helping out the catering company. Jesus was there with his mom and his new friends who had left a high profile prophet named John the Baptist, to follow him, a carpenter's son. They ran out of wine in the middle of the celebration. No more toasts, no more party... everything was in jeapordy. It was there on that day that Jesus performed his first miracle. He changed six very big jugs used for ceremonial washing into wine.

The miracle at the wedding at Cana of Galilee- it's a great account of Jesus and his intentions for the world. I guess this becomes clear when we realize two things. First, that the jugs were used for ceremonial cleansings and second that wine is a powerful symbol of joy and freedom. You see the jugs were used so that religious people could stay pure. The Jewish elite had developed all kinds of extra rules, based around the Mosaic laws, that would allow them to stay ritually clean. It was a lot of work. For some a full time job. In order to stay pure, they had to work really hard. The effect, like all religions, was to cause folks to either think that they were blowing it with God (by trying to keep man made rules), or that they were actually better than everyone one else (because they kept man made rules). Obviously, this left out a lot of people. Namely, weak, broken, poor, crippled, and marginal people. Tons of people just didn't have the discipline, knowledge, opportunity, or resources to stay clean. The strong and well connected did and their self righteousness became a serious source of irritation for Jesus (just read the book of John).

Now, enter Jesus. It is just so cool that he chose to ruin a bunch of jugs by making them ritually unclean by filling them with wine. Insight number two. Wine is the Jewish symbol for joy. It is used throughout the Old Testament to describe the joy of God and the joy of His people when they have been reconciled to Him. Wine equals joy and delight that comes from God and those ceremonial jugs, though they were originally designed to allow men and woman to establish a holy relationship with God, had come to be equated with slavish rule keeping reserved for the elite and the strong. Jesus' miracle is this amazing sign. It is like a huge billboard that is saying to the world, follow me and beleive in me and trust in me and I will show you what it means to be pure. I will destroy the outward works of men that demand that we attempt to reach God through religious rituals and our own invented ways of being holy. I will instead fill these vessels with joy- a free gift that I will pay for and that will cause men and women to dance and be free and to realize the power of my Father's love for them. Yah, Jesus' first day on the job was a radical act of telling the world that some new things were going to happen with him around. he was going to offer the world a free gift of Grace that would help them to be truly holy by having their hearts won over by the Love of God. Pretty cool first day, huh?

On Saturday, September 1st, I started work at The Church of the Ascension. Believe me, I kept thinking all about Jesus' miracle at Cana of Galilee because the first time I showed up for work, there was a huge wedding going on. There, at the wedding, I witnessed Marilyn and Ron being wed. It was beautiful, redemptive and a time of joy and freedom. You just have to love miraculous beginnings.