Cup of Grace

I have some pretty incredible friends. In fact, I think I underestimate them a lot of the time because I don't expect much of myself so, naturally, I find no reason to expect too much of them. But then there are those times that I'm floored by what occurs when we're together and I marvel at the ability God has given us to be His hands and feet when He needs people to be His hands and feet the most.

A few mornings ago I met some friends at a coffee shop in downtown Wichita. I really like the little utopia it is for me so I find myself going in there every day. Sometimes I feel really pathetic because I spend hours there, but it isn't usually until later in the day. This happened to be a very early morning visit for me so I was still quite sleepy and found myself rubbing dreams out of my eyes when I sat down.

We exchanged morning pleasantries and smiled as best as one can smile in the morning. Next thing I knew, we were talking about the most ridiculous things. My friends and I tend to do that but because it was so early and my brain still wasn't functioning and I had no idea what we were really talking about. I just remember what happened next and I'm still trying to process it.

They started talking about this homeless man that comes into the coffee shop. Apparently he comes in there once in awhile, orders something, and then stays for a very long time. But after awhile, hotel management decides that he is a nuisance or something ridiculous like that and has him kicked out. I guess the baristas are told that if when he comes in, if they don't ask him to leave, their jobs are on the line. Fortunately, they're not that heartless and will let him stay as long as they can, then they escort him outside and bog him down with love.

As they were talking about this guy I wanted to walk up to hotel management and punch them in the face. Being tired and thinking slowly, it gradually dawned on me that this wasn't a very Christian thing to do, so I started planning a protest in my head where we throw rocks and cause havoc outside. I think that's what Jesus would do…

The reason they were talking about this guy was because he had walked into the shop. And before I really knew what was going on, another chair was pulled up to our table, this man was invited over, drowned with coffee, and flooded with questions.

His name was Butch. He had an awesome beard (thought I'd throw that in there). He spoke very slowly, but with great concentration. Butch had traveled a lot up and down the middle of the country working. His favorite state was Utah because he made the most money there. My friends continued to bother him with questions until finally they stopped and normal conversation around the whole table presented itself again.

And Butch just sat there… beaming. He laughed. He smiled. He reverberated with a joy that I've yet to see even on my own face that early in the morning.

I couldn't help but think of how amazing my friends are, how amazing those employees in the coffee shop are, how marvelous the presence of Grace is and the intrinsic good dwelling in us all. I can honestly say that I didn't do anything that morning. I didn't invite Butch over to the table, I didn't talk to him outside of introducing myself, I didn't invite him to Church on the Street, I didn't pray for him - I didn't do much of anything. I just sat and stared at him, something that the church is really good at doing with the poor.

Staring tends to be safe. It keeps us at a distance and keeps us from investing ourselves into issues and problems greater than what we are. If something challenges us, then we like to run from it - at least I do. I'm beginning to learn that this is no longer an option. I have to stare myself in the face and decide what I'm going to do that challenges me to live outside of myself.

My friends did a tremendous job of being the Church to Butch that morning. They enabled him to live 30 minutes of one day as a normal human being, infusing him with a freedom to just be. I did a tremendous job of being the Church, too, of remaining distant and watching people be Jesus with skin on while I dreamed of the courage to be the same way.

Maybe I was tired and maybe my brain wasn't functioning, but my heart definitely knew what was occurring. Once again I'm astounded by Grace… by it's unfathomable splendor… and by it's attendance in a man with a really sweet beard.

Parting Ways

I leave in 16 days and it seems so unreal that though this will remain the place that I call home, it will no longer be the place that I feel like I fit. As each day presses on, I grow more eager to push the edges of where God is taking me. Strangely, I'm not even sure where all that is but I like to think of that as part of the adventure.

Everyone has asked me at some point as to whether I'm excited to leave or not. Of course I am but I have an incredible fear in leaving behind all that I call 'normal' for something that's completely out of the ordinary... and then knowing full well that the un-ordinary is going to become the ordinary and I'll come back and expect even greater things.

It's amazing the transformation that God has done on my heart in the last three weeks. I feel like He's preparing me for what's going to occur, but in a very vague sense - in a way that I cannot even put into words what I'm feeling at this point.

I guess the point of this is: I'm ready to leave. I'm ready to chase Jesus to new places that are outside of my senses and what I can comprehend so that I can come back here to the States and infuse others here. My problem is knowing that I already have this itch that I'm getting ready to scratch - only it's going to itch even worst after I scratch it, so I don't know how long I'll remain here when I come home. Fortunately, that's not for me to decide but that's something that I daily turn over into God's hands.

At this point, I'm fighting the desire to return to school and work on my Masters. I would love to be able to teach, do urban ministry, but continue mission work overseas. Yet that may not be what God wants for me. I know that I have the freedom to dream big and I'm taking advantage of that right now. I can't wait to see what He has in store for me over the course of the next year or two.

My prayer is that I don't limit God or myself, but take advantage of the liberation that I have through Christ to take the passions He's given me to the places most out of the ordinary.

Oh... and I still need $7000. Support me here.

"LEEEEEEROY JEEEENKINS!"

Prodigal Brother

"Meanwhile, the older son was in the field. When he came near the house, he heard music and dancing. So he called one of the servants and asked him what was going on. ‘Your brother has come,' he replied, ‘and your father has killed the fattened calf because he has him back safe and sound.' The older brother became angry and refused to go in…" - Luke 15.25-28a

We hear a lot about the prodigal son growing up in churches. We even hear a lot about the brother, maybe about how big of a prick he was. And we're often told that the older brother often times gets ignored because, well, he had it all together and stuff. In a lot of ways, I think most people relate more to the prodigal son than the brother, but I think I share more similarities with the brother than the guy who ran away…maybe.

I get jealous pretty easily. It's something that I've always struggled with when it comes to most of everything. If you're more athletic than I am, I probably envy your abilities. If you sound smarter than me, I hate you. And if you get more attention from the girl that I like than me, the passion in me grows beyond my control. I get bitter. Sometimes I secretly hate you. Sometimes it's bad. It doesn't usually happen that often but… okay, it may not be passion… passionate jealousy.

And I grew up in the church. I grew up in a Christian home - as Christian as it was able to get. I wore the t-shirts. I toted around my Bible in high school though I didn't have a hard enough heart to actually beat people with it. I went to youth ‘group'. I even spoke Christianese, throwing around words like: Jesus, salvation, Easter, and eternal torment. When I got to college I was able to draw out the Trinitarian-Incarnational paradigm. It was sweet. So you can only imagine that my testimony is, well, not that powerful…

That's right - I didn't come off of any incredible sexual addictions, seven years of life embedded in detestable sin, drug dealing, etc. I wasn't a runaway although there were times I probably would have wanted to. I didn't struggle with depression. I'm not an orphan. I didn't even run from God. So I used to get really jealous of all these people that went through crap like this. They had amazing stories to tell about how they came to Christ, about how God called them out of all their mess.

I grew up with God, at least thinking I knew Him. How boring, right?

As the older brother you find yourself pleading with your father, "All these years I've been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him!"

It's situations like these that, as the older brother, you want to intentionally create problems for yourself. You want to put yourself in a situation where you leave God with no other choice than to pull you out. Why? Because you want the attention… you want people to see how ‘changed' you really are… you want your Father to notice you. The only thing is…

It doesn't work.

Instead of turning yourself into a prodigal, you turn yourself into a fool. You look like an idiot. At least that's what I do. You realize that the people you never knew looked up to you actually look up to you and so you fall and as a result become a stumbling block to them. It's not humbling… it's humiliating.

Maybe we're all prodigals in one way or another. We all run from what the Father has given us, is offering us, because even though we're like the brother - we still get jealous and want what the younger son now has… and then we fall into sin. The father says to us, "you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found."

And so grace continues to astound us… or me at least. I can only sit and marvel. There's so many times in my life, even though I was a goody-goody, that I intentionally tried to create problems for myself because, well, I wanted a ‘powerful' testimony. I just succeeded in making myself look stupid and like every other sinner, which is probably a good thing. I think the point is that we're all lost whether we want to admit it or not and our Father is desiring for our hearts to be ‘found'. Even though the brother was always with the Father, maybe he just didn't realize it until his brother came home. Seems to me he took advantage of it, much like myself.

Maybe I really don't know what I'm talking about. I'm still a prodigal. I'm still the prodigal brother I was seven years ago. And I'm still searching desperately to find myself.

Edit: I might clear things up a little bit. I'm very thankful for the upbringing that I had. I couldn't thank God enough for it. I'm rather glad that I wasn't a 'bad' kid or anything like that. I know a lot of the 'bad' people regret being bad... or wished they had had someone like I did to show them the right way. And, for my sister, I know that my testimony is powerful. It really is. In fact... my sister's a big part of it whether she realizes it or not. I'll probably follow up with a post of my actual 'coming to Jesus'.

When I say that my testimony isn't powerful, I realize I'm limiting God in a lot of ways. I'm limiting myself as well...

And I guess I do sort of want a "cool" testimony to glorify myself in a lot of ways. I really wrestle with that. The change in the 'bad to good' people is so night and day. I often forget how many people aren't like that - including myself. My testimony often speaks to a different crowd. It doesn't ring volumes with the guys on the street. It doesn't make kids in the skate park jump up and down. It doesn't even cause old people to flinch in their pews. But it does speak directly to those who grew up like we did. They often wrestle with the same things, or so I've come to find. A lot of kids that grow up in the church I've noticed struggle with the same feeling: they don't have a CRAZY testimony. God didn't necessarily 'clean them up'. They've always been like the older brother. Always there. Always taking it all in without even realizing what they have.

So yeah, I do get jealous when people pat others on the back and say, "good job! Welcome to the fam." I struggle with inviting them in because, well, how come I never had that attention? I frequently forget the role that I have in the kingdom. I'm not as hospitable as I would like to be, you know? It's something I'm trying to change, but it's often times hard to fight. I'm still so into myself and I'm trying to find my way out of it. I want to challenge people to live outside themselves and I can't even do it myself. I don't understand why it's a battle I'm always in.

AIDS in Africa

Interesting video to watch. It may seem slow, but it's powerful...

what now

I've reached this point where I'm not even sure. I feel like I'm sitting on a fence, completely unbalanced. On one side is the World Race and on the other is Wichita. And I feel like I can't balance it anymore.

It's getting more and more difficult as time draws nearer that I think to myself: is this really the right decision? A friend and I were talking about running - like running away from life, from problems, from things when they get hard. Yeah. That's me. I feel like I'm running away from home because, well, home has gotten difficult. But I feel like I'm trying to run toward something else that I don't even know if it's me or not. I guess I don't even know who I really am in some ways, yet I do I'm just afraid to own up to it - that requires commitment, which is something I might struggle with in some ways.

There's so much here that I like though, people that I love, people that maybe I'm not even sure how to love. There's a whiff of a future but it's still distant. I know I'll be back here, I just don't know for how long. I have such a restless spirit. I don't know that I could be tied down to one place for a long time. I think that's why I like traveling. It's always nice to have a place to come back to though. And I desire so much to share that with somebody.

I guess there's unfamiliarity with me and being obedient to God, especially to this degree. Him telling me to leave the country and me actually doing it is huge. I'm leaving so much behind, which maybe doesn't seem that much to you, but it is to me. And I'm not talking about things. I have things. It's easy to leave 'things' for a time. I'm talking about people. It's going to be so hard leaving the people in my life behind.

And you would think that after 23 years I would have 100s of people to leave behind. I probably do, but I only have a handful that I'm going to truly miss. I wrote a blog at one point about my 'five or less'. It's still true. I'm going to miss my five or less. These are the persons that I'm HIGHLY invested in. One of them wasn't even supposed to be here, but returned before I left, which has really messed with me. Another I really worry about. I don't know what's going to become of him. He's a true brother to me in a lot of ways that I've never been to him. I'm rather a poor friend. And there's yet another that I wonder if she'll ever slow down and just breathe.

I just don't have the heart to leave these people behind, especially when I desire so much for them and with them.

I've never been to this point where I've completely been pissed off at God, but now is probably one of them. I just can't stand it. Why? I wish I could take them with me.

11th hour God

This is a blog post that Seth Barnes made a few days ago. It really spoke to me, convicted me, convinced me that this is the way that God moves in my life. Read it. Soak it up. Let it split open your soul to new understanding of the true Author of Life.

God loves surprise endings. He delights in unexpected plot twists that leave you saying, "I didn't see that one coming." He loves to swoop in at the end of a scene that seems destined to finish badly and pull it out of the fire.

I don't know if you've ever experienced what I'm talking about, but it happens to me all the time. We had sold our house in Florida and couldn't find a place in Georgia. At the last second, we found it. I was driving a load of wood across the border to Mexico. My lawyer never showed up with the permit. As my heart was beating out of control, God showed up in the form of a border guard.

I was in love with Karen when she got engaged to another man. It seemed impossible that she'd break the engagement and fall for me, but she did. It was one of a hundred instances where it seemed my life was going over a cliff and at the last second God reached down from heaven and saved me. And beyond that, while my heart was still beating from fear and my mind still playing slow-motion replays of what could have happened, he seemed to want me to delight in our adventure together.

And all of us who have trusted God in these extreme ways are left to ask ourselves, "Why does he do that? It would be so much less stressful if he would not wait till the last possible second."

My best guess is that whatever is in us that thrills to see a surprise, that loves a happy ending, is in God too. I think he's a hopeless romantic. He loves to be trusted so much that we'll do anything for him.

It's Abraham and Isaac on the mountain. It's Moses before the Red Sea with Pharaoh bearing down. It's Elijah dramatically calling fire down on the prophets of Baal. It's Jesus rising from the dead and promising us we'll do the same.

Too many of us love a jolly old grandfather of a God. If you're such a person, I long to introduce you to my overwhelming and terrifyingly unpredictable 11^th hour God. What a life he has for those who will trust him radically.

humility

It amazes me how the simplest thing can humble us. Sometimes it's one compliment from a stranger, other times it's a meaningful conversation with the closest of friends. And it seems like there's different degrees of humility that typically go unnoticed. There's humility that breaks us to our core and challenges the very soul of who we are. There's humility that breaks only the surface, but it's the humility that though a scratch, still has the potential of ruining us.

Yet there's also humility that doesn't do either. It just stares us in the eye. For me, this kind of humility does the most damage to who I am. It haunts me for not one fleeting moment, but even for years on end. But it is this simplicity that wrecks me for the better.

I have the blessing of sharing my life with dozens of men that I don't even know much of every week. These men are phenomenal and endure so much. Their resilience and their faith astound me. It makes me look like a wuss - probably because I am. But I find it interesting that the spiritual giants of the world aren't who we would typically expect, they're the ones who live their lives in the gutters, in the dirt, in the temp-jobs, bars, and most unlikely of places. They're the ones who go completely unnoticed week-in and week-out.

A few Sundays ago I was sitting on a park bench talking with a few of these ‘spiritual giants'. It just happened to be freezing outside. I just happened to complain about it. Then I received a response that was almost like a whisper because I chose to not hear as much of it as I could. One of these guys said, "yeah, it got pretty cold last night," and he just stared at me.

Ouch.

Last night I had another unlikely experience. I was asked by one of my good friends to help him lead worship at his youth group. I love having the opportunity to lead others in such an amazing thing that's more than words can even express, so I jumped at the offer. After worship, the high schoolers started asking me all kinds of questions about this crazy mission trip I'm going on. I answered them as best as I could with a 15-minute monologue and heresy. I guess I like the sound of my voice too much.

But Parker did the unexpected. This, what I've learned to be not-so-average-18-year-old, had everyone surround me, lay their hands on me, and pray.

Talk about powerful.

Talk about humbling.

I don't know if you've ever had 40-some teenagers laying their hands on you and praying for you, but it's an experience that I cannot even put into words. It's merely one that humbles a person. Imagine having 40 of society's biggest nuisances lifting you into God's care and protection, praying that you're enabled to do His ministry successfully. To have the blessing of such a rag-tag bunch of youth merely makes me smile. It makes my heart rejoice.

And it makes me think that we run into Jesus in the most unexpected places. Sometimes it's on the street, sometimes it's in a troubled youth, sometimes it's our own reflection in the mirror. But I think that each time we run into Christ, we're somehow reminded of our need to make ourselves humble. I'm one of the most proud people I know, but this is one of the things that God's been teaching me a lot lately. Sometimes it hurts. Sometimes it just stares me in the face.

The Remedy (2 of 2)

This is the last post in the blog series "A Gospel Stripped of Power". Read the intro., part one, part two, and part three.

With Christ leading the church, we can no longer begin our evangelism with the thing that separates a man from God. Christ himself is within himself the answer of why we cannot. In Christ, we see that God confronted man in his heathenism, in his folly, darkness, and separation from him. But also in Christ, we see that God himself took the initiative to look past these things. God views this man to whom we are speaking from the perspective of what he has already accomplished in Christ.[1] In other words, we cannot obscure the "yes" of God in Jesus Christ, with a "yes-but".[2] We must consider our fellow man on the same ground on which we stand, delivered from the wages of sin and reconciled back to God because of Christ. We cannot start with condemnation, Jesus doesn't.

Therefore our message in no way can be condemning. The word that comes from Jesus' lips are God's "yes" in the face of the mankind's "no".[3] And so should our message be. We view this man as one that Jesus died for, who has ownership of the freedom found in Christ, but does not yet know it. Our work is the joyful proclaiming of this paradox of man, that he be awakened of his freedom in Christ, that he lives as he now can, and find his true individuality in finding Jesus Christ. In his awakening he embraces God, a God of flesh and blood that meets him where he stands. He meets this God in Jesus Christ.[4]

Thus is the reality of the Christian within the Church. And how much more joyful is this message, a message carrying the hope of truly experiencing life by experiencing the fullness of all reality in God. This life is the witness of the members of the Church to the world. The world, blind to the freedom they have in Christ confronts him when they confront the church. This confrontation with Christ is the thing that will lead the lost to repentance, for in confronting the holiness of Christ, one can only see what is wrong within himself. Only in this way can we understand the missional nature of the Church. Anderson puts it this way:

"The Church's mission is not to build up an empire or kingdom that it controls but to experience and express the kingdom of God through the lives of its members as well as the various groups and organizations that they form."[5]

When we gather in worship, when we celebrate Christmas and Easter, when we live life, we are in fact witnessing to the truth of Christ.

It seems to me that when considering the good news of Christ, the idea of spreading the word is all the more exciting; the way that we understand the Gospel of Christ will affect the way that we view those that we outreach to. The conversion of an individual into Christianity is not just a change of mind or simply a prayer for eternal security. No, this conversion is an awakening. It is a complete renewal. Becoming who you are as a child of God isn't just gaining the power to do better and sin less. Rather, what is gained is completely new life.[6]

This conversion is the Spirit, guiding the person into a place where he or she sees and understands what God has done for him. This conversion takes place in the entire being of the person; it is life, as Paul said, apart from the vice of sin. It is truly life, because life is only truly life when it is life with God. And how beautiful is it to witness this work of Christ! Sin's power is broken; this life made new is life in the sense that it need not be influenced by sin. In other words, this life is life as it was meant to be, restored to God, in communion with him, and finding its identity in him. In this new life, we are free to worship as we never could. This new life is empowering. We have been given the privilege to take part in this awakening in others; this is how we are to understand evangelism.

With the understanding of the gospel as we have just discovered it, we experience perhaps a new sensation. It is liberation. It is liberation at not feeling as though we need to carry the weight of Christ's work on our shoulders. It is liberation at participating with him in his work. It is liberation at being in communion with a dynamic living savior in a vibrant and progressive faith.

More so, we do not have to worry as much about the question of pluralism in the modern age. In fact, we may embrace it. The gospel of Christ we have learned meets man on their own level. This is the crux of the gospel, God became man. The solidarity he shown is the same solidarity that we show our fellow man, understanding them in the framework of both our own humanity and the lens that God views them. The fear of pluralism is that the truth of the gospel is compromised. But as we have learned, the Church does not carry Christ and his news around in a briefcase, confronting people and opening its contents. The Gospel of Christ is not boxed in. Instead it seeks out man, on their own level. The story of redemption seeks to permeate time, age, and race. [7] With Christ at the helm we need not fear this confrontation of cultures. [8] In the True Church, under the Lordship of Christ, Christ takes our briefcase from us and invites us to follow him.

And we follow him to the corners of the world. We can escape the religious exclusivism created out of fear for reaching the people of the globe with the redemptive love of God. [9] We are already familiar with Christ's command, "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations."[10] Jesus Christ could have left the believers of the world as just that, simply believers. But he didn't. Instead, he defines the church with this great task; we are not left as bumbling beings wandering around in a meaningless euphoria. Rather, we are unified in our belief, set apart for the purpose of the spreading of the Good News. So in essence, this task defines us a collective unit under Christ. And this church, not being able to be separated from it, can only be measured by it.[11] But now we understand the fullness of our message, "He, Jesus Christ…in totality and fullness [is] the content of this task. His person, His work, His revealed name, the prophetic Word by which he proclaims himself within it, is the matter at issue in its task."[12] We proclaim the name of Jesus, not because he is the means to an end, but because within him only we are made righteous and reconciled to God.

I cannot help but feel, with all of the joy that the Gospel brings to me, that this reveals a certain failure within the church. This essay should have never had to be written. It reveals in some sense a misuse of the great joy that we carry, a misuse that extinguishes the joy for most. It shows us our effort to contain and steal the gospel of Christ from Christ. And a gospel without Christ is an idol. It becomes minimized, trivialized. People loose interest, and get bored. The hope in sanctification is lost, reduced to "trying harder". Philippians tells us that the gospel, even when presented not in its proper way will still hold power; indeed, I saw grace even in the version I was presented. But how empowering would it be to truly understand the Gospel as new life, in daily communion with God? How empowering would it be to a congregation?

May we begin to see the Gospel of Christ as a living powerful gospel. May we seek his face when we wake and pray our thanksgiving when we sleep. Let us begin to see the world, man and nature as one bound to God in Jesus Christ and may we continue to worship, discover, and share God as we now can.

---

[1] Barth. CD. IV, 3.2. Pg. 805

[2] Ibid. Pg. 801

[3] See Barth. CD. IV, 2. Pg. 580

[4] See Anderson, Ray. (2004). The Soul Of God. Eugene, Oregon. Wipf and Stock. Pg. 74

[5] Anderson, Ray. An Emerging Theology for an Emerging Church. Pg. 99

[6] Barth. CD. IV, 2. Pgs 553-560

[7] See Barth. CD. IV, 3.2 Pg. 822

[8] Ibid. Pg. 819-823. This is far from synchretism as Barth will point out. Indeed the truth of the Gospel is not and should not be a truth that is compromised. This is far from a form of liberalism that conforms the doctrine to a place or time. Rather this truth of the Gospel confronts the time and place, not in a mode of western assimilation or destruction, but permeates the culture with the reality of the redemption and freedom found in Christ. Christ himself, and his message in this way will critique the culture in whatever follies it may have the same way that when he confronts the individual, the individual can do nothing but see the unholyness in his life in contrast to the holiness of the Son. The reaction from a culture must respond to this, not to our attempts at assimilation.

[9] See Anderson. An Emerging Theology for an Emerging Church. Pg 149-150. Anderson relates the work that we are blessed to do as the "law of love." I would add, if he didn't already implicitly, that Christ's solidarity is found most prominently in this fashion.

[10] Matthew 28:19

[11] Barth. CD. IV, 3.2 Pg. 795. Although Barth here doesn't spend much time on this one fact, he emphasizes the fact that the church, by definition is set apart for the sake of the world. The "task" as he calls it, the work of Jesus Christ and the presentation of the gospel seems to me to become the measuring stick to show the life of the church, not in the sense of a number of people, but the life, livelihood, and contagiousness. And likewise, these attributes display the evangelical effectiveness of a given church.

[12] Ibid. Pg. 797

The Remedy (1 of 2)

This is part three in a blog series titled, "A Gospel Stripped of Power" by my friend, Michael Dean Beardslee. Read the introduction, part one, and part two if you haven't already. If you have questions, feel free to ask.

What is required of a community that holds this dichotomy is nothing short of repentance. The repentance that is required is not a form of shame or apology; our apology will be in our action. This repentance is the change of the self and a humbling of the spirit. In submission it recognizes the holiness of God. It is a dying of the self and taking part in the work of the Christ whom we serve.

We as a church die to ourselves, and hand over the control of the church to the lordship of Christ. The Church by nature is now, by nature, evangelical. It is not merely a gathering place for believers, a stronghold against the evils of the world. It can do nothing else but testify the good news. This doesn't mean that every church, Baptist or Orthodox needs to send all of their members on worldwide mission. Rather, we need to recognize what the Church really is. The Church is the body of Christ.[1] The Christ who is the head of the Church is the living Christ who walked among men in the first century. We serve a resurrected Lord, one who is living, present, and continues to work among us.

The work of the True Church, the work that we are a part of, is primarily the work of the risen Lord. The Church universal is the earthly-historical form of the living Christ.[2] We are the hands and feet of Christ involved with the redemption of the world. The true Church is the church that views itself in this way, not in that God gave us this mandate and left us to it. The true church recognizes that it is under the guiding spirit of God. His movements are our movements. His words are our words. Jesus' message to the world is our message to the world.

Under this understanding of the Church and the Gospel, our message takes a different complexion. First, we are sent into the world with the message of the Good News of what Christ has done. What then has he done, it may be more of a discovery than one might think. Paul explains.

"Therefore since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand."[3]

Jesus took our place. God himself looked upon our sin, our disobedience, our lack of faith. He looked upon our folly and our separation from him and decided not too hold it against us. Instead, he became man, taking on our humanity with all of its finiteness and limits. He took all of that sin, disobedience, faithlessness, folly, and separation and put them to death on the cross. In other words, "While we were still sinners, Christ died for us."[4] The life of Christ is the story of God overlooking our folly and grabbing us out of the pit of despair himself. Our hope is the life of Christ, the very "Yes" of God.

Therefore the life we live, we live as life should be. In other words, Jesus, by taking on our sin, and imparting to us his life, has reconciled us to God. We have been brought back into the fold; the folly of man has been overlooked by God, or better yet, undone by God. We live in the reality of the resurrection; as we are dead to sin we now live in the present reality of the resurrection.

Paul understands the Gospel in two ways that we could look at. First is the idea of salvation. The word, which appears often in his letters almost always are in the future tense, the concept seems eschatological. The fullness of salvation is something that is not yet. Furthermore, this concept of salvation is presented to us in light of the death and resurrection of Christ. The locus is the work of Christ, and the eternal destination is the byproduct of what he accomplished. So, in typical pragmatic fashion, the church collectively asks, "What did he accomplish?"[5]

Paul shows us that there is a present reality about the work of Christ. This is the language of deliverance. Because of Christ's work, our spirit is alive in Christ, presently! This deliverance is not to be understood in the future tense; hell is not the object that we are delivered from. Rather, we have been freed from the very thing that condemns us in the first place. There is where our freedom lies. He tells us, "But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves to God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life."[6] Paul can only ask his brothers and sisters to live a life of holiness if he believes there has been a change. To Paul, living life is not a just waiting game for either death or Christ's return in order that we experience the fruit of what Christ did. Not at all, we are to live life as we are only now able to, in the deliverance from sin.

Consider the idea of adoption. Romans tells us that we have "received the Spirit of sonship." This is no arbitrary description of our present status with God. No, we are co-heirs with Christ. In Christ, God has adopted us as sons and daughters into his family. The hope that we have in Christ is one where we share in Christ's humanity. We share in his death, dying to sin. We share in his resurrection, being raised into new life. We share in Christ's very relationship with the Father, with all the power and future glory of sitting at the right hand of the Father. Sin has been dethroned as the power of our lives. We are no longer slaves to sin; instead we are children of God drawn back into a living, active relationship with him. In summation, the good news is this: We can now live life as it was meant to be, in all of the fullness and beauty of being able to call him, "Abba, Father." The subsequent separation with the fall of man, has been undone by Christ. And this work that he did, he did at one point in history, and he did it for all man. This is the good news.[7]

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[1] Colossians 1:18

[2] Barth. CD. IV, 2. Pg. 633

[3] Romans 5:1,2 Here paul begins to expound completely on the thesis of 1:16-17. In other words, here is where we begin to see how this "righteousness has been revealed." - Jesus' work is not separated from the work of God.

[4] Romans 5:8

[5] Perhaps a more accurate, but less politically correct, but equally as sad question would have been, "What can I gain today with this work of Christ."

[6] Romans 6:22 *The word "slave" might throw some people off. The idea of slavery was not a term of taboo in the ancient world. Depending on the Greek form, a better word to use for modern English may be servant, or the idea of "servitude".

[7] See Anderson, Ray. (2006.). An Emerging Theology for an Emerging Church. Downers Grove, Illinois. Intervarsity Press. Chapter 5. He explains how salvation is both a present and future reality and includes a discussion about the fall and redemption of the created order, or creation namely, which I had to regrettably leave out.

The Sickness

This is part two of the blog series "A Gospel Stripped of Power". Read the intro. and part one.

What is reductionism? Barth calls it a shift in emphasis. It is an easy trap to fall into. As a church body we want to be effective as possible and in confronting different cultures and circumstances, the Gospel may be presented in a way that appeals to that different situation. The problem as Guder tells us is when these emphases become the absolute.[1] In other words, over time, the people of a church body begin to see and interpret the gospel through the lens of this emphasis. For instance, the kingdom of God which Christ brings is a kingdom displaying justice and morality. But when these things are taken out of context, from the redemptive work of Jesus Christ on the cross and his resurrection, they become an absolute within themselves.[2] The gospel narratives and Pauline epistles are then eisegetically read from the perspective solely of justice and morality, resulting in a flaky Social Gospel. But here I am concerned with a different reduction. Listen to an author trying to put the ideas of Christianity into contemporary language.

Jerry Pattengale in his new book giving "straight" answers about today's Christianity shares with us a story opening his chapter on the doctrine of salvation. He offers a couple of disillusioned teens at the beach the message of the good news of Christ. They reply in typical angst ridden rebellious fashion, "Tell us the g-oo-oo-ood newwws."

Pattengale begins, "The bible says that if you are living in sin, you are going to hell."

He would continue his conversation to the best of his ability, eventually praying with one of the recipients to receive Christ into her life. But something is very interesting about this tale.[3] Consider how he starts. The poor girl might consider anything good news after first hearing that. The book continues, it gives a model of how to "witness" to others. A Christian reader, who we will call Bob, is asked to pick two questions from a list to begin a conversation. I'll pick a few:

· What do you think that a person has to do to get into heaven?

· Do you know for sure that you will go to heaven when you die?

· Would you mind if I told you why I'm not afraid to die?

· Who do you think that Jesus is?

Afterward, Bob is told to share, if the recipient is open, the six points of the Gospel. Of which the final two, after Jesus died and rose again, focus on heaven and eternity, the fruit of Jesus' labor.[4]

This is the reductionist gospel of which I speak. The problem is that we have picked an element, a mere byproduct of what the central truth of the gospel is and stressed it to the point of making it an absolute. It has become the lens by which we view the saving grace of God. This byproduct is the subject of Heaven and Hell, and as shown by Mr. Pattengale above, the Gospel is now understood as a means of a gain, a Heaven ticket if you will. What we are left with, is a Gospel manageable but stripped of its power.

How did this happen, I'm sure it was painfully simple. Coming out of the Reformation which rightfully stressed the grace, and reacting from the collective oppression of the 16^th century church, the protestant stressed the individual care of God for each man. If this is where the problem was rooted, then perhaps it was a necessary evil. The enlightenment era of individual rationality fit well with this rising form of individualism.[5] The revivalists would adopt some form of necessary reduction to fit the mentality and appeal towards the individual. For individual appeal, it may have been easier to stress the eternal. It was moving and easy to systematize. It plainly showed the fruits of repentance and the consequences of rejection. In short, it was easy to manage.

This desire to manage is the first finger pointing towards the curse of reductionism. In trying to contain the gospel, or pigeonhole it, aren't we implying our ownership of the Gospel? Aren't we in essence telling Jesus that we have it from here? By limiting the Gospel of Jesus Christ into a subsection, aren't we claiming lordship over the task given to us?

Jesus is living. We sometimes forget that. But the truth is, that Christ is the Lord over the Church whether we say he is or not. He will not allow his Gospel to "sink into the abyss."[6] But a community of believers who take it upon themselves to fit the gospel into their box and attempt to establish its logos over Christ's will find themselves a product of their own making.

At first this problem isn't evident. Again, we find the difficulty in trying to explain what is wrong when the reduced gospel is based entirely on the True Gospel of Christ. "Formally," Barth says, "such an impartation need not be lacking in biblical foundation, biblical content, and attachment to the best traditions of the ecclesiastical past, such as, for example, those of the century of the Reformation."[7] The message might be that salvation is by grace alone, achieved only by Christ, but there is a qualitative difference. It refuses to see the Gospel as the living Word and continuing mission of Jesus Christ himself.[8] So instead, we preach a Gospel of benefits to the people evangelized to. The church offers a potential convert a gift box with a sticker that reads, "From: Jesus Christ." Inside is a ticket. His guilt is not at seeing how his life has missed the mark; he doesn't understand his sin in the brilliantly painful light of the holiness of Christ. Rather, his guilt comes from either a standpoint of eternal damnation or solely moral conviction; the first thing that Pattengale appealed to was the horrors of hell.

In this Heaven-Hell dichotomy, we may begin to subconsciously understand Christ as a Deist Christ. That is, because we understand his work as means by which we gain heaven, his work is finished, or that he accompanies at a distance, leaving his work purely in the hands of people. In this dichotomy, Christ is not dynamic, present, and living. He is merely a presence, a sidekick to the Church. All the while, this fire continues to spread as the urgency of Hell continues to add fuel to the movement.[9]

The emphasis on the conversion as the efficacy of salvation denotes a conditional love. Both Calvinist and Arminean camps, when viewing salvation through this lens, could demean the work of Christ. Either we do not take seriously the work of Christ as the appropriation of our salvation or we make love conditional by placing grace after election and conversion instead of within Jesus Christ.[10] The difference between this reductionistic Gospel and the living Gospel of Christ is extremely subtle, but the consequences are huge. It is the difference between a vibrant, living community participating in the work of Christ in his Lordship and a community that tries to control Jesus.

It could be argued that this type of reductionism results in no more than a Gnostic flavor of Christianity. Is that what we are not telling the world, that we have a salvation claimed in what we know about Christ? Our questions and aspirations have now become, not what the living Word of God has to say to this age; rather, our effort is put into how we can be relevant or "fresh" to the generations. In other words, "how do we best explain this knowledge to the world?"[11]

Thus forms our mission to the world. We hold this good news, and are left with the mandate, the obligation, to share it. Out we send our missionaries. I wonder how often we miss the mark. I remember a story about a missionary sent to Kenya. A student recounts what a tribesman said. "The missionaries missed their chance" he said, "They should have used baptism much more to initiate us into one new divine community."[12] To often the contents of our gift box is written in the wrong language. Our effort to reduce the Gospel and control it results in a somber trip back home. In our effort to master the Gospel, we only show a world of set of standards and ethics which have been stripped of their life-giving power.[13] In this "unevangelical conservatism" we find that we are not comfortable letting go and letting Christ be the head.

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[1] Guder, Darrell. (2000.). The Continuing Conversion of the Church. Grand Rapids. Wm. B. Eerdmans. Pg. 101

[2] See Guder. Pg. 124

[3] Pattengale, Jerry. (2004.). Str8t@lk. Marion, Indiana. Triangle Publishing. Pg. 43

[4] Pattengale. Str8t@lk. Pg. 161-162

[5] See Guder. The Continuing Conversion of the Church. Pg. 115-119

[6] See Barth. CD IV, 3.2. Pg. 796

[7] Ibid. Pg. 813

[8] Ibid. Pg. 815

[9] Ibid. Pg. 817

[10] For a detailed discussion on this read James Torrance's essay The Incarnation and Limited Atonement.

[11] Barth. CD. IV, 3.2. Pg 818

[12] Asante, Emmanuel. (2001.). The gospel in Context: an African Perspective. Interpretation, 55-4, Pgs. 355-366

[13] Barth. CD. IV, 3.2 Pg. 819