Leadership

Ministry, Decomplexified

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Over in another forum, I was reading a lament about starting an affinity group for Christians. For those who don’t know that term affinity, it means people in the group share something in common. Harley Davidson riders, parents who had a child die, board gamers, survivors of sexual assault, fans of the TV show Firefly—get two people together who share a commonality, and you can have the start of an affinity group.

Except the writer of that forum post was in full lament. In his case, he had a hard time getting groups to work. There was prayer time to consider, worship to plan, Bible study…

Now hold on there!

I don’t know what it is about Evangelical Christianity, but there’s this rampant thinking—perhaps a remnant of the sacred/secular split mentality—that for something to be fully Christian, Christians MUST add layers of obvious Christian practice over the top. There must be the sanctification of the secular.

Just stop.

Look, no matter where Christians go, we are the Church. By definition. Also, it’s almost always the case that when Christians get together, we act like Christians organically. (If we must be cajoled into being Christians, then a deeper problem exists.)

I know this sounds antispiritual on the surface, but nothing kills real practice of the Faith deader than dead than forcing it on people. An overweening sense of duty doth not a vibrant faith make.

Which is why so many Christians’ efforts to launch affinity groups fail. We try to Christianize the hell out of them.

But there’s only a need to Christianize an assembly if one goes into it with a mentality that there’s nothing inherently spiritual about a half dozen people getting together to do something they enjoy or that brings them comfort.

That thinking is lunkheaded, though. It not only drives away people, it explains why something as simple as a half dozen people getting together to share an enjoyment of comic books suddenly feels burdened by all the Christianese that must be added so as to make it a Christian comic book fan group.

My experience is this: If you want to run an affinity group as a ministry, don’t. Your thinking is wrong from the start. Don’t treat it as a ministry, even if it is. Thinking about the group as a ministry will only taint it.Escher, Stairs, Complexity

The only factor you must include is to let the group breathe. Let it do that thing for which it exists. If prayer happens because someone wants it, then pray. If you need to anchor a holy moment in Scripture, then do it when that need arises and the timing is right, but don’t ramrod it.

The more we feel compelled to do such and such spiritual activity during a simple get-together of likeminded people, the more we run the risk of driving that get-together into the ground.

Where Christians are, Christ is. We don’t need more than that. And it’s high time we believe that to be the truth.

Let’s stop “complexifying” the Christian life and adding millstones around people’s necks. Christ’s yoke is easy and His burden light. C’mon, folks, let’s cut the endless burdens we keep adding to life. Or else we may wake up one day and find we are not living at all.

Onward, Christian Hermits?

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And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.
—Acts 2:46-47 ESV

After church yesterday, a friend and I discussed the reality that for many people, their primary source of human contact is Facebook. Alone at duskIn truth, the discussion was more of a lament for what has been lost.

All the small groups my friend and I were a part of are defunct.

I’ll let that sentence stand by itself because it serves as a testament to where we are in our society today. Social media have been a boon for connecting people who are distant, but it seems to have become detrimental to relationships within driving distance. We no longer meet face to face but instead enjoy the distancing mechanisms of technology. Our high-tech gizmoes help us keep up with others to the level we feel comfortable, and they give us the ability to walk away on our time schedule without feeling bad about disconnecting.

Our time schedule.

The early Church decided that meeting together every day mattered. We envy their closeness to the Holy Spirit. I wonder if there is a connection. Hmm.

The Acts passage above said that the number saved grew rapidly. You wouldn’t think that hanging out together would be evangelistic, but some synergistic sharing of Christ happened nonetheless.

The Acts passage notes that people thought positively about the Church because of its strong emphasis on connecting with others and being obviously friendly and social. How different from the PR the Church in America “enjoys” today.

Of course, there was also that “iron sharpens iron” thing. I guess the modern replacement is flaming each other in an online post’s comment thread. Less a sharpening and more a tempering, I guess. Temper, temper…

I think if you really pressed Christians today, few would be able to give a spiritual reasons why getting together daily is worthwhile. I think most see wisdom only in meeting once a week, twice at most. Wouldn’t want to overdo a good thing.

That reticence makes me wonder, though.

For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love. For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.
—2 Peter 1:5-8 ESV

If God is love, and love is the highest expression of a complete Christian life—as noted in the Peter passage above—how is it we can barely stand to be together once a week? What does it say about our effectiveness and fruitfulness in Jesus if meeting together once a week is all we can muster?

Perhaps for all our talk of community and brotherly love and affection, we don’t really like each other all that much. If we truly do, wouldn’t getting together more often be a priority?

More and more Christians think we are in the last days of The Last Days. A verse that speaks to that:

And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.
—Hebrews 10:24-25 ESV

How is it then, if the Final Day is indeed drawing near, that we seem to be getting together less often rather than more? Does our reticence to meet actually reflect a willful disobedience? Have we all secretly fallen under the spell of the “powerful delusion” the Bible warns of, with our lack of meeting a physical expression of our mental dissonance?

Talk of mental health issues have dominated the Godblogosphere in the wake of the suicide of the son of noted pastor Rick Warren. I wonder how many mental health cases could be healed without medicine by the simple act of people fellowshipping more regularly.

Can we admit that something is wrong with the way we interact today?

A different friend confessed to me a couple years ago that he felt a greater kinship to the people with whom he plays board games. That affinity group bore each other’s burdens better and dispensed more grace than the Christian small groups he had been part of. What a sad indictment!

I can think of no greater distinguishing mark of the Church than the idea that no collection of individuals exhibits deeper love for its members. So, is this the case?

We wonder why people are increasingly eschewing Church. Perhaps our community and fellowship issues are ground zero for revival.

Bait & Switch, Or How People Go to Church for Jesus But Get Something Else

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I read about these churches with satellite campuses, where people watch a pastor by closed-circuit TV. I hear about these churches where the worship teams operate from iPads. I know of these churches where people fret over the brand of stage lights used or the sound systems.

And yet the cry of the human heart remains: “Show me Jesus.”

And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.
—John 17:3 ESV

All that we do in a church must go back to one reality: Knowing God and His Son. That’s it.

Authenticity has become a buzzword in Christian circles, and it’s almost humorous to witness the highly manipulative means we use to achieve authenticity. Yet the fact remains: We want a deep, abiding intimacy with God free of dross.

Our problem is that we keep erecting barriers to authenticity for the sake of creating that intimacy. I think this is because we no longer know what it takes to become intimate with God.

I’m convinced that many church leaders are out of touch, if what we see of a Sunday meeting is typical. The church meeting revolves around the mistaken assumption that people are self-feeding. I don’t believe that should be assumed. I think a lot of people come to church hoping to achieve intimacy, but church leaders assume they already have it, leaders don’t help usher people into it, and then folks go back home having not found what they came for. Then they are expected to build off a foundation they do not have.

Or worse. The church gives a foundation, but it’s all built on a show, a performance. People came looking for Jesus, but they got Ringling Brothers instead.

Church as entertainmentA life experience:

I know a pastor who is a solid man of God. He genuinely loves people and loves Jesus. One Sunday, he got up and said, “People keep asking me when we’re going to go deeper, but this is as deep as it gets!” And he said it with a broad smile on his face.

A year later, that pastor and his staff were convening a whole-church meeting to repent for the dog and pony show the church had become.

You see, the people in the seats were starving to death. The leadership assumed people were feeding themselves properly, and they weren’t. The people didn’t know where to find spiritual food, and the leaders of the church weren’t giving them any. Those people in the seats knew it too. They knew they were dying. They came to church looking for Jesus and instead got a pale imitation.

While this doesn’t excuse the people in the seats for not being more self-sufficient in their own feeding, the problem remains. Every Sunday in America, people are going to church hoping to encounter Jesus, but they get something else instead.

We Christians like to reserve the following verse for our foes:

Claiming to be wise, they became fools…
—Romans 1:22 ESV

Do we ever consider that in thinking we are wise about human nature and what people need we have instead become fools and substituted a genuine intimacy with the Lord for something else? Something that doesn’t satisfy and never can?

There is nothing so sad as a church that keeps piling on the show while people sit in the seats and wonder why it is they leave after an hour and still feel empty. Five minutes outside the church door, the entertainment’s buzz has worn off, and again the reality of life has rushed in to fill the perpetual void.

Authenticity may be a buzzword, but people are dying for it nonetheless.

What if we stripped everything we do as a church down to its core? What if we pitched the amped worship band? The PowerPoint presentation? The CCTV? The theater-like church building? The one-hour show?

What if we went back to prayer? What if we opened our services for people to stand up and share their needs? What if we ate a real communion meal together and took our time doing so? What if the people in the seats were given free reign to use their gifts to minister to others in the body during our services?

What if we talked about Jesus and not just about ourselves? What if we held Him up in such a way that awe came back to the people because of who He is and not because of the new light bar we got for the stage?

What if?

It’s not just the young believers who are dying for real food. These are tough times. Some of the people hit hardest are those who have been walking with Jesus for the longest time. Satan hates those people, and he will do everything he can to discourage them, because if he takes them down, the young in Christ will go down too.

I can think of nothing sadder than a person who comes to church desiring Jesus but who instead receives trifles.

It doesn’t have to be that way. Time to purge everything that hinders.