I’m so pumped up about all I’m learning through our church’s journey. Finally, after many years, Christianity makes sense and the gospel makes sense. It’s exciting, but overwhelming to think about trying to explain this shift in thinking to others. It sounds subtle, and in some ways it is, but it’s also a hugely and amazingly revolutionary shift for me and Corey. So, I’ll just try to explain what the shift is and how it came about, as simply as possible.
And, just as a caveat, obviously this kind of thing is best explained in person (and not on a blog) and I’m sure I’ll butcher this, but oh well. Also, this really is a shift over several years which started with me and a few others just seeing that church as we were “doing it” didn’t line up with what we saw in the Bible. God graciously brought us on a journey which started with the Total Church conference and has woven its way through relationships with Acts 29 network and Soma Communities. This is a shift which is still in process, but, as I said before, I’m pumped about it. So, on to my story...
Our past:
In the past, this is what Christianity has been for us. This is speaking in large generalizations, and represents (as I said before) a bit further back in our past, but it’s helpful to see where we’ve come from. I hope this isn’t offensive, but it’s been our experience and our observation of many other Christians. Much of this may have not been what we’d say we believed, but it is functionally what we believed.
We’d say we believed the gospel, but what that really meant was that we believed Jesus died for our sins. The practical implications of this were virtually non-existent. It was like a one-time transaction and, after that, we were to do our best to make God happy and to look the part. We were expected to have everything together and to display some kind of “victorious” Christian life of conquering sin and growing in faith.
This belief was especially important because, at our core, we still believed that we needed to do something and that God expected it. Being caught sinning was awful because it was PROOF that we weren’t doing enough... that we weren’t as good as we pretended to be. Admitting weakness, or lack of knowledge, was unacceptable. Inadequacy, and failure, was crushingly depressing because it was evidence that we weren’t good enough.
Our view of the Bible was, practically speaking, that it was a book of rules for how to please God. Answers to our children as to why they shouldn’t commit a certain sin might have involved the tell-tale “because God doesn’t like it”. Our free time and money was spent according to the rules. So, Bible studies and Sunday attendance were mandatory for godly folk and involved gathering with Christians for delving deep into the scriptures and praying for one another. Generally, money was part of the “tithing” plan... you enjoy most of your money and the rest you “happily” give to God.
Love of others was one of the things you do, among others, but certainly held no place of prominence. Additionally, this “love” was either viewed as “live and let live” or as “doing nice things for others”... in some circles this included the occasional rebuke “in love”.
Free time was spent doing service projects for other Christians, feeling guilty about watching TV (it’s so sinful!) or maybe dropping a few hours at the homeless shelter.
Evangelism was the guilt-driven, effort of trying to shoehorn Jesus into a conversation with an unbeliever, or sharing the “Four spiritual laws” with them. The gospel was, as we applied it to ourselves, that Jesus died for your sins. No context was generally needed, or understood, for this. One very prominent method was to invite unbelievers to the Sunday worship service (church) so that they could hear the preacher and, hopefully, find Jesus.
The world was a place to be avoided. It was believed to be best to spend time and money supporting other Christians, hanging out at Christian coffee shops, listening to Christian radio, etc.
How things have shifted:
Most of what we’ve learned centers around the gospel. This all started a couple of years ago with a little booklet called “The gospel centered church”.
We now believe the gospel to be much more than simply "Jesus died for your sins" and yet, not more. What I mean is that the gospel is all about Jesus' work on the cross in order to bring a rebellious humanity to Himself, but the implications are more far reaching than we had initially realized. God knows that we need His help and that we are broken people and will need Jesus going forward, constantly. I love the idea that many churches have now of being "an okay place to be not okay" (I think that one is from the Village Church in Dallas). We now recognize that WE are not victorious… Jesus is. And any hope of being victorious without Him is a joke. Sounds like common sense, but maybe not in practice…
The ramifications of this are that our pride is crushed. We can no longer pretend that we're good enough. We know that we can't do enough or be enough. We fully embrace, both intellectually and emotionally, that only Jesus can do enough. Our salvation is 100 percent Jesus and we can do nothing to "help out". Again, this is what we'd SAY we believed, but practically we lived to look godly and to impress others with our righteousness.
Our view of the Bible is that it's a wrestling mat (as Sharad would say) that is intended to help us to grow in our love of God and man. Every rule set forth in the Bible is set forth to foster love of God and love of others. We now teach our children that we are, and they are, just as sinful as every other "bad guy" in the world. We all need Jesus. We tell them that we don't commit certain sins because God loves us and knows that it's not good for us or for the world (we're obviously more specific dependent on which sin it is).
Our free time and money is much looser. The Sunday worship service is simply one more gathering of the church and we can freely skip it anytime without guilt. Bible studies are also good, but optional and not required to be a "good" Christian. It’s not that we want to skip these events (though occasionally we might), but it’s just that we understand that this isn’t required for us to be “good Christians”. We also now recognize that all of our money is God's and we have to figure out how to use it all for Him (not just 10 percent).
Love of others is, as the Bible says, not just one thing to do… it's THE thing to do. Love of God and love of man are all that matter. Love is not "doing nice things" alone, but doing the hard things… sacrificing and loving in ways that sometimes don't even look loving to everyone. Loving means caring enough to say the hard thing, but only if you know the person enough to actually love them.
We believe that free time should all be for the Kingdom. That doesn't mean that all our time is spent going door to door or that we're always at the homeless shelter. It means that we view ourselves as missionaries and our lives as the mission field. Every relationship, Christian or not, is an opportunity for Christ to reign supreme.
Evangelism is, we believe, best done through committed relationships that don't care only about another notch in the belt. Jesus is not shoehorned in, but is naturally part of natural conversation. We don't change who we are between believers and unbelievers. We believe the Sunday worship service is a place for worshipping, not a place your bring your unsaved friends so they can get saved.. that should be happening at the store, and on walks, and while doing the dishes. I love the phrase "everyday living with gospel intentionality". We believe in bringing the gospel to bear on the mundane.
We now believe that we have wonderful gospel opportunities by supporting NON-Christians and hanging out and NON-Christian coffee shops and sharing common interests by listening to NON-Christian radio. This is what Jesus did… He plugged himself into the world of sinners around Him. He didn't cloister Himself away among the religious alone.
Basically, in a nutshell, we now realize that our failures and needs are designed to be met perfectly with the gospel... Maybe it sounds corny, but simple statements like “Sorry my house is such a mess...” can be met with “Your identity is not found in the cleanliness of your house, but in Jesus”. Statements like “I just feel like a failure and like I’m not doing enough” are met with “Jesus lived the perfect life, knowing that you’d fail and not do enough and His death is sufficient to cover your sins”. We believe that God is not glorified by our ability to overcome sin, but instead is glorified by admitting our weakness and our need of Him (2 Corinthians 12:9) and that our attempts to look good rob Him of glory. The gospel is ongoing, relevant, and perfectly sufficient for our needs and failures.
For a good, slightly more professional, take on all this... read Soma Communities’ story. They very much represent our thoughts and beliefs on what Christianity is about. Oh, and as you read what they believe, understand that they are very good at doing it and not just talking about it. And if you want to hear more about how they practically do it, and what we want our lives to look like, you might check out their “rhythms”.
And, just as a caveat, obviously this kind of thing is best explained in person (and not on a blog) and I’m sure I’ll butcher this, but oh well. Also, this really is a shift over several years which started with me and a few others just seeing that church as we were “doing it” didn’t line up with what we saw in the Bible. God graciously brought us on a journey which started with the Total Church conference and has woven its way through relationships with Acts 29 network and Soma Communities. This is a shift which is still in process, but, as I said before, I’m pumped about it. So, on to my story...
Our past:
In the past, this is what Christianity has been for us. This is speaking in large generalizations, and represents (as I said before) a bit further back in our past, but it’s helpful to see where we’ve come from. I hope this isn’t offensive, but it’s been our experience and our observation of many other Christians. Much of this may have not been what we’d say we believed, but it is functionally what we believed.
We’d say we believed the gospel, but what that really meant was that we believed Jesus died for our sins. The practical implications of this were virtually non-existent. It was like a one-time transaction and, after that, we were to do our best to make God happy and to look the part. We were expected to have everything together and to display some kind of “victorious” Christian life of conquering sin and growing in faith.
This belief was especially important because, at our core, we still believed that we needed to do something and that God expected it. Being caught sinning was awful because it was PROOF that we weren’t doing enough... that we weren’t as good as we pretended to be. Admitting weakness, or lack of knowledge, was unacceptable. Inadequacy, and failure, was crushingly depressing because it was evidence that we weren’t good enough.
Our view of the Bible was, practically speaking, that it was a book of rules for how to please God. Answers to our children as to why they shouldn’t commit a certain sin might have involved the tell-tale “because God doesn’t like it”. Our free time and money was spent according to the rules. So, Bible studies and Sunday attendance were mandatory for godly folk and involved gathering with Christians for delving deep into the scriptures and praying for one another. Generally, money was part of the “tithing” plan... you enjoy most of your money and the rest you “happily” give to God.
Love of others was one of the things you do, among others, but certainly held no place of prominence. Additionally, this “love” was either viewed as “live and let live” or as “doing nice things for others”... in some circles this included the occasional rebuke “in love”.
Free time was spent doing service projects for other Christians, feeling guilty about watching TV (it’s so sinful!) or maybe dropping a few hours at the homeless shelter.
Evangelism was the guilt-driven, effort of trying to shoehorn Jesus into a conversation with an unbeliever, or sharing the “Four spiritual laws” with them. The gospel was, as we applied it to ourselves, that Jesus died for your sins. No context was generally needed, or understood, for this. One very prominent method was to invite unbelievers to the Sunday worship service (church) so that they could hear the preacher and, hopefully, find Jesus.
The world was a place to be avoided. It was believed to be best to spend time and money supporting other Christians, hanging out at Christian coffee shops, listening to Christian radio, etc.
How things have shifted:
Most of what we’ve learned centers around the gospel. This all started a couple of years ago with a little booklet called “The gospel centered church”.
We now believe the gospel to be much more than simply "Jesus died for your sins" and yet, not more. What I mean is that the gospel is all about Jesus' work on the cross in order to bring a rebellious humanity to Himself, but the implications are more far reaching than we had initially realized. God knows that we need His help and that we are broken people and will need Jesus going forward, constantly. I love the idea that many churches have now of being "an okay place to be not okay" (I think that one is from the Village Church in Dallas). We now recognize that WE are not victorious… Jesus is. And any hope of being victorious without Him is a joke. Sounds like common sense, but maybe not in practice…
The ramifications of this are that our pride is crushed. We can no longer pretend that we're good enough. We know that we can't do enough or be enough. We fully embrace, both intellectually and emotionally, that only Jesus can do enough. Our salvation is 100 percent Jesus and we can do nothing to "help out". Again, this is what we'd SAY we believed, but practically we lived to look godly and to impress others with our righteousness.
Our view of the Bible is that it's a wrestling mat (as Sharad would say) that is intended to help us to grow in our love of God and man. Every rule set forth in the Bible is set forth to foster love of God and love of others. We now teach our children that we are, and they are, just as sinful as every other "bad guy" in the world. We all need Jesus. We tell them that we don't commit certain sins because God loves us and knows that it's not good for us or for the world (we're obviously more specific dependent on which sin it is).
Our free time and money is much looser. The Sunday worship service is simply one more gathering of the church and we can freely skip it anytime without guilt. Bible studies are also good, but optional and not required to be a "good" Christian. It’s not that we want to skip these events (though occasionally we might), but it’s just that we understand that this isn’t required for us to be “good Christians”. We also now recognize that all of our money is God's and we have to figure out how to use it all for Him (not just 10 percent).
Love of others is, as the Bible says, not just one thing to do… it's THE thing to do. Love of God and love of man are all that matter. Love is not "doing nice things" alone, but doing the hard things… sacrificing and loving in ways that sometimes don't even look loving to everyone. Loving means caring enough to say the hard thing, but only if you know the person enough to actually love them.
We believe that free time should all be for the Kingdom. That doesn't mean that all our time is spent going door to door or that we're always at the homeless shelter. It means that we view ourselves as missionaries and our lives as the mission field. Every relationship, Christian or not, is an opportunity for Christ to reign supreme.
Evangelism is, we believe, best done through committed relationships that don't care only about another notch in the belt. Jesus is not shoehorned in, but is naturally part of natural conversation. We don't change who we are between believers and unbelievers. We believe the Sunday worship service is a place for worshipping, not a place your bring your unsaved friends so they can get saved.. that should be happening at the store, and on walks, and while doing the dishes. I love the phrase "everyday living with gospel intentionality". We believe in bringing the gospel to bear on the mundane.
We now believe that we have wonderful gospel opportunities by supporting NON-Christians and hanging out and NON-Christian coffee shops and sharing common interests by listening to NON-Christian radio. This is what Jesus did… He plugged himself into the world of sinners around Him. He didn't cloister Himself away among the religious alone.
Basically, in a nutshell, we now realize that our failures and needs are designed to be met perfectly with the gospel... Maybe it sounds corny, but simple statements like “Sorry my house is such a mess...” can be met with “Your identity is not found in the cleanliness of your house, but in Jesus”. Statements like “I just feel like a failure and like I’m not doing enough” are met with “Jesus lived the perfect life, knowing that you’d fail and not do enough and His death is sufficient to cover your sins”. We believe that God is not glorified by our ability to overcome sin, but instead is glorified by admitting our weakness and our need of Him (2 Corinthians 12:9) and that our attempts to look good rob Him of glory. The gospel is ongoing, relevant, and perfectly sufficient for our needs and failures.
For a good, slightly more professional, take on all this... read Soma Communities’ story. They very much represent our thoughts and beliefs on what Christianity is about. Oh, and as you read what they believe, understand that they are very good at doing it and not just talking about it. And if you want to hear more about how they practically do it, and what we want our lives to look like, you might check out their “rhythms”.
