Christ Seeker

Missional Formation

I have been spending a lot of time with this dude named Qoheleth.  He's a pretty cynical and bitter guy who seems to think that life is futile and fatalistic.  He isn't easy to be around. He doesn't pretend that life is a rose garden or all buttercups and butterflies.  He seems to think a lot about death which makes him somewhat depressing, dark, and brooding.  There are times when I want to grab him and give him a good shake, point him to hope, and challenge him to think more positive thoughts.  There are other times when I want to dismiss him altogether.  But something keeps bringing me back.  There's just something deeply refreshing about his transparency, his honesty, his brutally realistic view of life and death. 

Qoheleth wrote a book called Ecclesiastes in the Bible.  Outside of Job it may be the hardest book to deal with.  It takes on life at the ground level.  No attempt to make sense of it.  No attempt to dismiss suffering or to find redemption.  No attempt to gloss over the gray areas with pious platitudes.  It's simply a stark, plain, gut honest view of the human condition.  And this is what makes Ecclesiastes so important for missional formation.  As I have spent time with folks in my community who do not yet follow Jesus, I find that their view of life often sounds a lot like Qoheleth's.  Life isn't easy.  Life can be unfair, unjust, and full of suffering and pain.  I find they want answers but more than that, they want to know if the Christian God takes these issues seriously. They want to know if the Christian faith presents a compelling argument that will help them make sense of the utter confusion and mess of life.  Quite often, they have tried many different kinds of spirituality but have been left with an empty feeling.  Like something isn't quite right. These superficial spiritualities may comfort for a time but they ultimately cannot stand in the face of raw human pain. 

This is why meditating, struggling, wrestling with Qoheleth is so important.  Eugene Peterson has written that "Ecclesiastes sweeps our souls clean of all “lifestyle” spiritualities so that we can be ready for God’s visitation revealed in Jesus Christ. Ecclesiastes is a John-the-Baptist kind of book. It functions not as a meal but as a bath. It is not nourishment; it is cleansing. It is repentance. It is purging. We read Ecclesiastes to get scrubbed clean from illusion and sentiment, from ideas that are idolatrous and feelings that cloy. It is an exposé and rejection of every arrogant and ignorant expectation that we can live our lives by ourselves on our own terms."  Boy, how we need this cleansing!  How we need to face honestly our fears, our struggles, our heartaches, and our pain.  How we need to come clean with ourselves that much of our lives are spent chasing an illusion.  The illusion of security and safety.  The illusion of health and wealth.  To this, my friend Qoheleth would say, "you are just chasing the wind."  Better to deal with life on real terms.  Better to face it with honesty and courage than to pretend any different. 

This became deeply personal for me the other day when one of my three year old twins was diagnosed with a significant stutter.  Watching little Emma struggle to communicate with us is painful to say the least.  Her pauses, her facial contortions, her growing awareness that something is wrong breaks my heart.  I want so badly for her to not struggle with this problem.  I want so badly for it to go away.  But then I am reminded that this is life.  Life is full of struggle.  Life is full of suffering.  And my role is not save Emma from her pain but to help her face it with courage and overcome it with strength and grace.  This will build her character and give her a depth that her twin sister Sophia will not have (at least right now) because she has not endured what Emma has to endure.  What if instead of running from our pain, medicating our pain, ignoring, or denying our pain; we chose to face it?  As another author I have been reading has said, "Courage is always found with fear...courage is not the absence of fear, it is the mastering of it...do not be ashamed of your fears; otherwise you may be tempted to deny their existence.  Delusion is not courage.  The true path to faith is to swallow your fear, like a lump in your throat, and boldly move forward, clinging to the God who goes with you." 

Missional Formation

One of the stated values of our new church plant is to intentionally orient our lives around people who do not yet know Jesus Christ.  We intentionally go to them, hang out in their spaces, love them without strings, and listen to their life stories.  Along the way, friendships are formed, deep relationships are built, and our faith is shared.  It sounds so idyllic and yet...

It is also a life of heartache and pain.  Of struggle and labor and toil.  I have felt so weighed down recently by the burdens I am carrying for my dear friends.  I can hear the fear in their voices.  I can sense the weariness of their souls.  So many of them are seeking and searching for something that seems to stay just out of reach.  They can't quite put their finger on it and they can't quite articulate what it is, but it there nonetheless.  And they feel it acutely.  Particularly during times of crisis.  Like when their marriage begins to break down.  Or their kids get sick.  Or they get laid off.  Or lose their home.  Or struggle with family members.  And the rug is literally ripped out from underneath them.  Many of them have asked me if there indeed can be peace...real, eternal, unshakable peace...in this life.  They know who I am.  They know what I do for a living.  They want know if the Christian faith provides a compelling answer to their deepest questions. 

And you know what I've discovered?  My answer better go beyond words.  It simply isn't enough to tell them the Good News of the Gospel.  That isn't enough to fill the hunger of their souls.  I must show them the Good News of the Gospel as well.  My life needs to be an open book.  My life needs to be transparent and authentic.  My life will demonstrate the vitality and viability of my faith.  And that's what makes it real.  That's what makes it compelling.  That's what draws people to Jesus. 

We've been reading the Sermon on the Mount together as a community.  One of the more well-known verses from that sermon is, "You are the salt of the earth."  As I pray for my friends, for those people in my life who have not yet met or made the decision to follow Jesus Christ, I have struggled with how I can communicate in a winsome, attractive, loving, non-manipulative way the joy of knowing my Lord.  This life cannot be forced on anyone.  We cannot demand or coerce. We cannot compel people to come into the Kingdom and must reject methods that use fear or intimidation.  The way of Jesus is the way of openness, authenticity, and transparency.  People found (and still find!) Jesus attractive because there seemed to be no disconnect between his words and his actions.  His life was one of total and complete alignment.  This alignment, this congruency, this harmonious way of living is what provided a compelling answer to the deepest questions of the people Jesus met.  Jesus' life was so "salty" that those who came into contact with him were left thirsting for the same kind of life.  How I long for my life to be characterized by this same saltiness! 

Missional Formation

Wow...quite the slow start to 2009!  Actually, I was taking a break mainly because I didn't really have anything to say.  I have been spending a lot of time thinking over these past few weeks about where we stand as a community. We are now six months into this missional experiment and I have learned a ton over that time.  I wanted to take some time out to reflect before diving back into my blog because I want what I write to be at least somewhat coherent and I don't believe in blogging just to blog! 

One of the issues I have been thinking and praying a great deal about lately is this whole idea of missional formation.  Are the spiritual rhythms we are currently engaged in actually beginning to yield some missional fruit?  Are we being formed and shaped for God's mission?  This is something that's not just important to me as the pastor of this community but it's important to Jesus as well. 

"You will know them by their fruits.  Grapes are not gathered from thorn bushes nor figs from thistles, are they?  So every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit.  A good tree cannot produce bad fruit, nor can a bad tree produce good fruit.  Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.  So then you will know them by their fruits." (Matthew 7:16-20)

To be sure, any conclusion at this point is tentative at best but just as a "good tree" begins to put out buds in the spring that eventually turn into fruit, so we also should be "budding" as a community.  One of the "buds" I have seen from the beginning but particularly of late is a growing passion for God's Word.  Bible study has formed the core of our communal life together for some time but just recently we challenged ourselves to read through Matthew's version of the Sermon on the Mount daily.  Not to memorize.  Not for intense study.  But just to read it over and over again so that the words of Jesus would begin to live in our hearts and shape how we see the world. 

If someone came up to you and asked you where to start to find information concerning what life looked like in the Kingdom of God...the Sermon on the Mount would have to be right up there on the list of places to go in the Bible.  In this sermon, Jesus clearly lays out in very challenging, yet very practical, terms what it means to live in His Kingdom and under His authority.  For me this sermon clearly expresses the fundamentals of the Christian life.  It should form the foundation of our worldview, the starting place where all discussions about faith, life, issues, politics, etc. should begin for the Christian.  And I am sure there are few who would argue with this premise. 

So what's the problem?  The problem is that too many of us don't do it.  We don't spend the necessary time reading, pondering, or reflecting over these words.  At best, our "Christian" worldview is a mishmash of a few Scriptures (like the Golden Rule), folk wisdom (God helps those who help themselves), and brutal pragmatism (torture is okay because terrorists are evil).  At worst, it isn't informed by Christianity at all but rather by a civil religion masquerading under the same name.  So how do we change this?  We must get back to the fundamentals of our faith!  To quote a good friend of mine, "We must put the 'fun' back in fundamentalist!"  :-) 

Now I know the word "fundamentalist" gets a bad rap these days.  It conjures images of all kinds of radicals, often of the worst sort.  But we are all fundamentalists in our own way.  A young man who attended our gathering last weekend is a very good basketball player.  Somewhere along the way he has mastered the fundamentals of the game to the point where he can execute exceptionally during a game.  A musician masters the fundamentals of their craft so they can compose symphonies that inspire the soul.  Scientists master fundamental laws that in turn guide them on their quests to explore the mysteries of our universe.  No matter what profession or field you find yourself working in, there are certain fundamentals that have to be understood if you are to accomplish anything useful or valuable.  And to master those fundamentals, you have to study.  You have to invest time.  And the true masters of a craft come back to those fundamentals again and again and again. 

It is the same with the Christian life.  If we want to grow spiritually and become mature disciples of Jesus Christ, we must master the fundamentals of our faith.  For too long, we have allowed ourselves to think that such mastery was limited to the intellect.  If we can just memorize the Ten Commandments and the Lord's Prayer and the Apostle's Creed, then we know what it means to be Christian.  But, as Eugene Peterson has recently pointed out, "Only when the Jesus way is organically joined with the Jesus truth do we get the Jesus life."  "Knowing" His truth, according to Jesus, means acting in alignment with His Way which will result in obtaining His life.  You cannot separate them one from another.   

• "So then you will know them by their fruits..."
• "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord' will enter the Kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven will enter..."
  
• "Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and acts on them, may be compared to the wise man who built his house on the rock..."

So what are we doing to master the fundamentals of our faith?  As I said, we are starting by reading the Sermon on the Mount daily. And after the first week, not one of us was able to read it all seven days.  So we are doing it again.  And we will continue to read it and read it and read it until it begins to live inside us.  Until it begins to shape and form how we see the world, how we react in real life situations, and how we respond in relationships.  The great news is that we are all hungry for this in our group.  I think each of us in our own ways have tried to go it alone, tried to live this life without mastering the fundamentals only to find disappointment and despair.  So we are now ready.  Ready to start over again.  Ready to hear Jesus again and take Him at His Word.  What about you?