Not The Religious Type

Reversing Rick Warren's Baseball Diamond

First off, it was good to hear that your health is improving, Ben!  Keep us posted.

Second, as we pulled back from our conversations the last few weeks about "religion" and "Christianity," Caleb Maskell suggested we might read Jeffrey Pugh's book, Religionless Christianity: Dietrich Bonhoeffer in Troubled Times.  I asked if he could preview it first, which he's doing.  But I ordered a copy.  As of page 50 or so, it's dynamite.  I'll keep you posted.

I spent the early part of my week in a gathering for pastors of large churches (which no doubt has some intriguing context, given our recent conversation about house churches).  Our presenter was Adam Hamilton, the pastor of the largest United Methodist church in the country, Church of the Resurrection in Kansas City.  He gave me lots of food for thought.  Some things struck me as appropriate to Kansas City that wouldn't translate.  Some things struck me as appropriate to a mega-mega-church (they run about 9,000 or so on a Sunday) that perhaps I should forswear until they were clearly relevant to us.  But much was really provocative, and I'd love to pass on one of those thoughts for your consideration.

He talked about Rick Warren's baseball diamond analogy for discipleship.  (We use a heavily-modified form of it in Boston.)  Warren's premise is that discipleship flows like this.  You get converted to Jesus.  You join others in your journey (a church or, better still, a small group).  You learn more about discipleship.  You discover your spiritual gifts.  You minister to others.

Hamilton said his experience is the complete inverse.  Secular people start to minister alongside people who follow Jesus.  Then they learn more about themselves as a result.  Then they learn more about biblical discipleship.  Then maybe they start to come to church.  Then they think, "Hey, maybe I want to do this" and they start to follow God.

His case in point was a provocative one.  Their church supported a large food bank.  They encouraged each member to hand door hangers on their neighbor's doors.  If they were bold, they could ring the bell and talk to the neighbor about it.  If not, they could just leave the door hanger.  It said, effectively, "Hey, I'm your neighbor.  My church, Church of the Resurrection, is doing a food drive for a local food bank.  If you'd like to participate, I'll drop by on Saturday.  Leave a shopping bag on your porch and I'll collect it.  If you'd like to learn more, call me.  Thanks so much."  And that's it.  He encouraged his people to pray for each household when they left the door hanger.  When he himself went around to his neighbors, he did ring each bell.   Every neighbor but one participated in the food drive.  And he asked each, as he was leaving, "Are there things I can pray for for your family?"  Everyone took him up on the prayer, and he prayed in person with most, with many of them crying as he did and saying that was the first time anyone had ever prayed with them.  Many of those neighbors have ended up in their church.

His point?  Inviting people to join in low-bar mission is the way to go in terms of "sharing your faith," as opposed to spending much time persuading people they believe the wrong thing.

I found that really provocative.  What do you think?

What can we learn from Stage 2 communities about spiritual power? / Ben Catlin (Minneapolis, MN)

Disclaimer: I believe that within every community there exist people at any of the 4 stages we so often discuss on this blog.  Also, I know that an individual doesn't hold any one consistent 'stage' attitude across all subjects.  That being said, what I'm terming 'stage 2' is a community or person that tends toward more rules-based teaching and highly-structured organizational models.

I don't know if any of you are like me but I find myself periodically seeking to grow deeper in what people might call the ‘power gifts.’ That simply means I'm seeking to hear God more for myself and others, and to pray for miracles and actually see them happen.  Recently after a series of some exciting interactions, and some where I felt particularly let down, I find myself pushing into this topic again.

Just like a lot of people I know, I started digging into this by seeking out people who are better than I am and asking questions.  This could be through online sermons (like Boston Vineyards recent visit from Heidi Baker) or just hitting up my local church prayer/prophetic guru. The last time I felt I had an itch to scratch on this topic my wife and I got involved with a local group called the "Healing Rooms" to draw closer to more people trying to do the same thing.

One thing I noticed is that a lot of these people seem to come from Stage 2 communities, or they carry at least some distinctly stage 2 rules. (The Healing Rooms for example, was full of wonderful volunteers from a very large Charismatic stage 2 church).  By that, I simply mean that they have a very unmovable faith on their interpretation on miracles and healing, almost as if they have an IF-THEN approach to praying for the sick.  (IF I pray long enough, hard enough, and God wants to do this THEN it will happen). They have little to no questioning of these principals and their faith is unmoved, even in the face of some pretty major let-downs.

I once heard Heidi Baker speak (incidentally at that big local Charismatic stage 2 church, where my wife's lingering injury from a bike-on-truck accident was completely healed) and she said something to the effect of "We will not let our Theology be defined by our experience."  At that moment I was simultaneously intrigued, challenged and a little put off.  Because I didn't know what to do with that statement, I tried to compartmentalize that into the context of the setting I was in (namely a big stage 2 church).

But, it didn't fit neatly into any box.  On the one hand, to not challenge a dogmatic principal in the face of overwhelming evidence is very Stage 2.  On the other hand, this woman had just prayed to heal people and several were, including my wife.  And that is to say nothing of the all the things she said that night that I thought fit very well into a stage 4 understanding of faith, or the umpteen-thousand churches in Africa she has helped to plant, or the dead she and her friends have raised.  (I've never raised the dead, but that seems like a pretty sweet thing to have happen).

So, I was challenged.  And here I am, getting ready to help teach at a conference workshop about hearing God for yourself and other people, so the topic is very on my mind. (I figure at this point if I want to go farther into the topic, I have to start sharing with others how far I've already made it).  And I find myself wondering, what, if anything, can I learn from these communities and people (who don't seem to fit into my faith 'culture') to grow in my own spiritual power?  If I can’t argue with or reproduce the results, there has to be something good going on there that I’m not getting.

Are House Churches the Silver Bullet?

I love house churches.  I work with some start-up churches that are at the house church phase and the upsides are immense--most notably that everyone has something to do, that there's a sense of all being in it together.  The teaching style is by definition egalitarian, lots of give and take, which can make for a more-dynamic and "owned" learning experience.  They're the epitome of low overhead, so one's money-theoretically--can go other places to see the gospel advance or the poor fed. 

So I'm sympathetic to those of you who, in the comments to the last post, suggested that maybe house churches are the answer to the problems churches face, as some writers from the house church camp forcefully claim.

Those of you who have followed this blog for a year or so might remember this now-you-see-it-now-you-don't proposal we floated that we gave the crappy name of "faith ambassadors" to.  The big idea was that we might dream for one person in each zip code in the country who would take responsibility to foment a conversation about stage 4 faith in that zip code. Effectively that was a house church model with trendy language.

And there's more!  Just this week I was reunited with an awesome former member of our large church who left the area for work reasons.  I asked how life was treating his family and he talked about how, after three years of looking, they'd finally found a church in their new town that they really liked.  They'd liked our church so much that they'd kept looking for a large, hopefully dynamic church.  But they really didn't like any they visited.  Finally they tried a small church with, as my friend put it, lots of problems.  The church wasn't exactly a house church.  It fluctuates, they tell me, from 50 to 150 people and then back again with some regularity.  The kids program needs work.  But, for all its problems, they've surprisingly loved it.  The people are great.  Everyone is doing their best.  And my friends feel like they have a role there that, much as they loved our church, they could never have had here. 

So I'm entirely rooting for house churches!

But they are not the one and only hope for a stage 4 revival in the secular west. 

Again, some house church proponents write books that critique, from stem to stern, the "institutional church" in all of its forms.  That would eliminate, say, my hero, Patrick of Ireland, who built monasteries from town to town and persuaded Ireland in pretty much its entirety to follow Jesus rather than druidism (with its human sacrifice).  And then his followers, one generation later, reclaimed the whole of Europe for Jesus after the barbarian invasions had wiped out biblical faith.  By their incredible work in Europe--establishing institutions, monasteries, from town to town--they pretty much saved biblical faith entirely, since Europe was the vast bulk of where such faith had been practiced.

And, for our purposes, if we're just talking about fomenting a stage 4 revival in the secular west, I'm not sold that house churches have cornered this market.  Granted, nobody has.  But I know way more secular people who've experienced faith in, yes, institutional churches than I do who've done so in house churches.  The house churches I know the most about don't regard themselves as good at all at helping their secular neighbors experience faith.  They're too intimate and vulnerable for those friends to give them a try.  These churches tend to stay roughly the same size with roughly the same people in them. So they're awesome for full participation, but not so great--the ones I know at least--for fomenting revival. 

This summer we ran a post about the distinction between dreams (good) and idealism (bad).  Some house church proponents, in my experience, fall into the latter category.  They have an idealistic vision of why this beautiful house church dream is so much better than that evil church they were once a part of that they condemn all paid clergy and buildings throughout history as part of the devil's work.  One of the best-selling such writers came out of a house church movement that one of our staff members was also a top lieutenant in.  To listen to our guy, that bunch was astoundingly--truly jaw-droppingly--dysfunctional. I find myself longing for really functional, effective, godly churches of any stripe, big, small, whatever.

So, to recap, I am entirely rooting for any house church that can pull off a stage 4 approach to faith to thrive in all ways.  Whatever works!  That's my motto.

But when house church proponents need to draw strong lines in which they are the only heroes in this endeavor...  To put it bluntly, that's crazy talk.

CrazyPills sound bite  Will Ferrell sound bites

Thoughts?