Counterculture

The Curse of Monasticism Reborn

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No sooner do I get done writing a far-between post noting how my posts have been far-between while I work on finishing up my novel, and offering up a link elsewhere to ponder just to prove the point, God grabs ahold of me and makes me write this.

I wonder if we are creating a new monasticism.

The Reformation drove a stake into the separatist mentality that is the core of monasticism, proving that the Gospel belongs out among the people, out in our communities, villages, towns, and cities. It was a call to leave the ivory towers and get one's hand dirty out in the "real" world. And not only that, it called Christians to be pillars in their communities, villages, towns, and cities, to have a real presence that brought Christ into the marketplace of ideas.

The True Light cannot be hid in us who cherish Him, so the Reformers told us to get out from under our bushels and shine. They taught that Christianity was not to be a religion of disconnection, but a relationship with Christ who gathers us in a Body and dwells amid that Body—a Body centered in our local communities.

This is why I wonder about the current moves going on in the American Church. There is a gung-ho attitude toward small groups, house churches, and select meetings of a few outside the large church assemblies. It is good that we think about those types of groups and consider their impact.

However, in a day and age when fractionalization and withdrawing from community are the norm are we Christians missing the bigger picture by de-emphasizing large assemblies while heaping praise on smaller groups?

My wife and I spent much of this year searching for a new church. More than three years ago, we moved an hour's drive away from our old church while continuing to go there. The outcome of this was that we did not plug into the village we lived in because our church was fifty miles away. Having one foot in the community we lived in and one in our community of faith many miles away meant that neither found a connection to the other. In the end, both were diminished.

Yet it is more than just a distance issue. It may also be a numbers issue. The church that we have landed in near our home has about four hundred people in it. That winds up being four hundred connections into our local village. That's four hundred reinforcements to a presence in town AND four hundred reinforcements to our community of faith.

A small group cannot do that. A house church cannot do that, either. When we wonder why we feel disconnected in our own communities, perhaps this is why. Neglecting our presence in our towns and villages in numbers that reinforce rather than divide is ushering in a new monasticism. We find ourselves cut off from the world at large and also cut off from the Church at large. Dwelling in this limbo, we gut our effectiveness not only to reach new people with the Gospel, but to enjoy relationships with a wide variety of people, relationships that have Kingdom potential ranging from a simple "God bless you!" to the clerk at the local grocery store to a deep discipleship relationship with a new believer at our church.

Synergy is also lost. It is one thing to cast the seed everywhere we go, but how much more effective can we be when we repeatedly cast it right where we live? The compounding of this synergy repeated four hundred times every day by the folks in our new church can also not be overlooked. A new monasticism cripples this kind of synergy, diluting its effectiveness.

One of the first verses I ever felt God illumined in me is this one:

As the rain and the snow
come down from heaven,
and do not return to it
without watering the earth
and making it bud and flourish,
so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater,
so is my word that goes out from my mouth:
It will not return to me empty,
but will accomplish what I desire
and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.
—Isaiah 55:10

God's word does not return void. In some people it is like rain, soaking into the soil of a barren heart, that rain finally giving nourishment to the seed there. In others, it is like snow, piling up and up until something warms it, causing it to melt and seep into the soil.

When we Christians spread ourselves thin or withdraw into little groups, the storm is lost, and the blizzard is reduced to a mere frost.

There is something to be said for churches between two hundred and a thousand people. A church that size allows us to know the ones with whom we fellowship. It also can take a people of one mind and cause a storm in the towns and villages in which we live. And lastly, it affords us connections into those same towns and villages that allow us to be a vital part of their livelihood rather than just listing them as a place where we get our mail.

People wonder why we feel disconnected from the people who live right next door to us. They ask why our churches seem to be so ineffective, too. Perhaps our monastic mentality is the cause.

God helps us break out of our ivory towers and get out among the people, both those who know the Lord and those who hope one day to know. Let us be a vital presence in our local communities, bringing the Gospel Light into all we do. And let us also be the beneficiaries of the connections we forge immediately around us, to our neighbors, and to the community at large. Always for Your glory and Your Kingdom. Amen.

Keith Green: the Prophet Still Speaks

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I will readily admit that I do not do a good enough job of promoting other Christian blogs. I have a few links at the right, but Cerulean Sanctum has pretty much just been my views.

Hoping to make this blog a better portal to excellent Christian material (while also—hopefully—keeping my own discourse here sharp), I want to direct people to one of the best blogs I know of, Paradoxology, run by Chris Monroe, better known as Desert Pastor. The topics he posts are routinely hot potatoes within the Christian world and in need of good analysis. The dialog that results is almost always thought-provoking and all over the map of belief. I always come away from Paradoxology better than I went in.

Today, the topic is the nature of prophetic ministries, specifically taking a look at Keith Green’s: Paradoxology: Prophetic Aftershocks, part 1 (will pop a new window.)

Keith Green has had a huge impact on my life even though I was unimpressed with him before his death. Only after that fateful plane crash twenty-two years ago did Green’s ministry start to hit me between the eyes. I know it’s odd, but his death completely changed my perspective on his life and music. I now wish I had had the opportunity to see him in concert before he was taken away from us.

Here’s my comments on Green over at Paradoxology:

…and still no one today is making the kind of music Keith Green was blessing us with 25 years ago.

Keith GreenI am the Christian I am today largely because of Keith Green and the band of people he ran with. He was Emergent before there was such a thing. He was an ordained Vineyard pastor back in the early days of that influential movement, but he kept one foot rooted in the great preachers of the faded past. Green introduced me to Leonard Ravenhill’s writings and preachings, and Ravenhill pointed me to A.W. Tozer and the history and wealth of the Welsh Revival.

Green has always been a “love him or leave him” figure in the Church. While his voice is definitely prophetic, if you read his biography you realize that much of Green’s prophetic ire was directed back at himself. He never lashed out at the complacency of the sleeping church without a keen sense that he was just as asleep as everyone else. Call him a prophet with feet of clay, but his stern call to something better than what we were/are experiencing in the life of the Church in America is unmitigated, nonetheless. We would do well to wake up, just as he said.

Green brought streams of Christianity together, too. He incorporated the holiness movement, the charismatic movement, the Jesus People movement, the missionary movement, the worship movement, and old-fashioned tent revivalism into one foundation. I can’t think of anyone in recent memory who was able to pull off this feat so well. That we lost him at so young an age, and eventually watched the ministry he founded go adrift, is a loss that has not been overcome yet.

Lastly, and this is almost a minor aside, but Green wrote music for adults. He and Rich Mullins, also tragically lost too young, wrote music for people who wrestled with life and faith, not for popsters and teenyboppers. I heard “Asleep in the Light” played on the local Christian radio station at 3AM a couple days ago, 3AM being the only time they could get away with playing it without offending anyone. What a sad comment on where Christianity is today. Oh that our music was more offensive and less pancreas-destroying!

Thanks for noticing how important Green still is. Hopefully this generation will look up his works and take them to heart.

Desert Pastor’s singling out of Green as the start of a series on modern-day prophets is a good beginning. I hope you will all surf over to Paradoxology and not only check out this new series of posts but the rest of the conversation, too.

We Are Not Ready

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Can you feel the tsunami beginning to form? It will be crashing on our shores soon enough.

And we are not ready.

From Sweden we get the story of a pastor (now jailed) who spoke out on a loaded topic, one that has also resulted in legal wrangling in our neighbor to the north. Christianity Today notes the fallout in “No Free Speech in Preaching”. This is only one topic. What others will become verboten? “Jesus is the only way to Heaven?” “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God?” Will popular opinion and unpopular politics render the message of the Gospel nothing more than a trailer for a Care Bears movie?

We have made no preparations in the Church in this country to withstand the onslaught when it occurs. We are too preoccupied with thinking that politics is the sole solution, but we have ignored the fact that politics has made all this possible, even on our watch. We can hold off the social upheaval for a while, but the rising tidal wave spawned by a far away earthquake will not relent; we have no other defense but to be prepared. Yet still, we sleep on.

The Church in America learned nothing from the last recession. The second a few jobs came back and consumer confidence rose a few ticks, we plunged back into our stupor. When a greater recession comes, one that lasts for longer and puts more out of work, what will be the response of churches around this country? How will they care for their congregations? How have they built a network among their congregants and with other churches to keep people—both inside and outside the Church—employed, housed, and fed? When the government decides its ever-expanding coffers must be filled during a downturn by taking away the tax exemption for churches, how will your average multi-acre megachurch survive a million dollar tax burden no one expected when the cornerstone was laid?

We are not ready.

With pollster George Barna’s statistics showing a downward spiral in biblical knowledge, solid doctrine, and plain old right thinking, how will we be able to face any future wrath the world unleashes against the Church? People who do not know who or what they believe will find nothing to undergird them when the time of testing comes. Some would argue that a great falling away would only skim the dross from the Church, but the way we run our church infrastructures today would leave us even more vulnerable.

We who worship Jesus are unprepared to become a dwindling minority in our culture. Our beliefs are such that we know we are losing the battle, but we are unwilling to do what is necessary to shore up our own vessels. We have not trimmed the sails and now the mast is creaking while we sleep down in the hold of the good ship Blissful Unawareness. The Bible shows us our error:

“Then the kingdom of heaven will be like ten virgins who took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom. Five of them were foolish, and five were wise. For when the foolish took their lamps, they took no oil with them, but the wise took flasks of oil with their lamps. As the bridegroom was delayed, they all became drowsy and slept. But at midnight there was a cry, ‘Here is the bridegroom! Come out to meet him.’ Then all those virgins rose and trimmed their lamps. And the foolish said to the wise, ‘Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out.’ But the wise answered, saying, ‘Since there will not be enough for us and for you, go rather to the dealers and buy for yourselves.’ And while they were going to buy, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went in with him to the marriage feast, and the door was shut. Afterward the other virgins came also, saying, ‘Lord, lord, open to us.’ But he answered, ‘Truly, I say to you, I do not know you.’ Watch therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour.”
—Matthew 25:1-13

We are not ready.