Family Resemblance

From Jeff Clarke in The Church Jesus Style: The  Sights and Sounds of a Jesus Shaped Community-

The Church should always center its identity, activity and witness in Jesus who defines the life of the ecclesia (gathering). As a result, the gathered community of Jesus-followers are a people who reflect, imitate and live the life of Jesus wherever they are....

...Following after Jesus is a community-driven event. His teachings, example and entire life become the basis upon which we build our following. We are defined by him. He leads us and we follow him together as a community.

Jesus continues to live through his community by the grace, presence and enablement of the Spirit.

The only physical embodiment of Jesus that others will see will be in and through those who follow him. Without this embodied presence, Jesus will be invisible to them.

How tragic it is when those who claim to follow after Jesus look nothing like the one they claim to follow; when there is little too no family resemblance....

This is a great article - read it all at the link.

Community Over Relavance

3 Ways We Prevent the Gospel from Making Our Churches Attractive by Jamie Dunlop at Crossway:

What if the things you do to make your church attractive actually obscure the attraction of the gospel?

The attraction of the gospel is what Jesus described in John 13:35: “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” Not just love in general, but love for one another. That love in the Ephesian church—between Jew and Gentile who shared nothing in common but Christ—is what Paul says makes even the heavens above stare in wonder at the wisdom of God (Eph. 3:10). The gospel brings people with nothing in common (Eph. 2:18) to love each other even more deeply than family (Eph. 2:19).

Here’s an example of that kind of community: a few years ago, a Harvard professor visited my church. He was an expert in crowd psychology. He wasn’t a Christian. The relationships in the church fascinated him. It seemed people had nothing to gain from each other. He didn’t see any plausible explanation for what drew this ungainly group together—until, underneath it all, he discovered the gospel. Today, he is following Christ in our church.

In an attempt to be attractive, however, many of our churches let that vibrant, supernatural attraction of gospel-filled community sit idle in the background while we settle for tepid, naturalistic, similar-to-this-world attraction. To paraphrase those well-known words of C. S. Lewis, we’re making mud pies in the slums instead of delighting in a holiday at the sea.

How do we do that?

1. We divide a church based on similarity.

Sometimes an entire church is geared to a particular demographic, like a hip-hop church or a church for millennials. Sometimes it’s segmentation within the church, like a singles group or small groups for couples with kids, or services for different musical styles. There’s nothing inherently wrong with this “ministry by similarity.” But it comes at significant cost: if ministry by similarity starts to characterize your church, it obscures true gospel unity.

What if the Ephesians had split up into a church for Jews and one for Gentiles? After all, Jewish Ephesians would be more comfortable going to a church of their peers, right? But a gospel unity between natural strangers is profoundly more attractive than the comfort of similarity, be it the natural strangers of Jew and Gentile, Democrat and Republican, millennial and retiree, home-school mom and lawyer mom, or NASCAR fan and opera connoisseur. Have you constructed your church so that this kind of love is on display? Or is it smothered by ministry-by-similarity?

2. We downplay the commitment to each other Jesus expects every Christian to make.

Our churches allow any Christian to feel part of the church community on whatever terms they desire. But Jesus expects every Christian to love other Christians in ways that are quite significant—to sacrifice for each other, to pray for each other, and to hold each other accountable. When we’re not honest about the commitment Jesus expects of every Christian to a local church, we obscure the depth of commitment the gospel creates in a church. Look hard at how your church practices membership: does it clarify that Jesus expects this kind of commitment from all his followers?

3. We make evangelism an individual endeavor instead of a corporate endeavor.

Church community is perhaps the most obviously supernatural evidence for the truth of the gospel (Eph. 3:10). Is it clear in your church who led who to the Lord? Or are there so many people involved in each conversion, it’s impossible to say? If the church is functioning as it should, I hope that your general experience falls into that second category.

How are you trying to make your church attractive? Let’s be like Paul: “For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds.”

Imperfect Preview

“The gospel creates the kind of community that is even now an imperfect preview of the kingdom’s marriage feast that awaits us. The church originates, flourishes, and fulfills its mission as that part of God’s world that has been redeemed and redefined by this strange announcement that seems foolish and powerless to the rest of the world.”

— Michael Horton  The Gospel-Driven Life  (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2009), page 11

HT: Of First Importance

The Word In Community

"The gospel word and the gospel community are closely connected. The word creates and nourishes the community, while the community proclaims and embodies the word."

— Tim Chester and Steve Timmis, Total Church  (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2008), 55

HT: Of First Importance

Finding a Safe Place in Grace

Great piece by Justin Buzzard on grace creating safety- places where people can be real and be accepted.

We’ve all experienced (and contributed to) this dynamic: You are afraid to share what you’re really thinking and what’s really going on in your life with your spouse/friend/parent/church leader because you fear they will use this information against you. You’re afraid that sharing reality will result in being challenged, fixed, or judged, instead of being known, understood, and loved. This dynamic creates unhealthy cultures in marriages, friendships, churches, and workplaces–people never share what’s really going on because they’re afraid, and this stunts both intimacy and growth.

Fortunately, this unhealthy dynamic can be replaced with a healthy dynamic: grace. Grace is God’s undeserved love. When an individual embraces a grace-based identity (instead of a performance-based identity) and standing with God, he or she becomes capable of extending grace (undeserved love) to other people. This individual becomes secure, and safe. This individual now has the ability to truly listen to what another person is really thinking, to what is really going on, without attempting to immediately use that information against the person.

See, grace creates safety. Grace creates a culture of safety where people can face and talk about reality. And, lest any of you think I’m being soft on sin, change, or sanctification, the crazy truth is that this grace-soaked culture of safety is what finally results in people changing.

Think about it. Environments and relationships that approximate unconditional love are what resulted in true, deep change and healing in your own life. When you experienced grace and felt safe, you finally opened up. And then you finally began to get help where you most needed it.Grace creates safety, which creates change.

How can you be such a person to others? How can you use your leadership to create such environments?

“‘I will place him in the safety for which he longs.’”-Psalm 12:5

Successful Churches?

"The biblical fact is that there are no successful churches. There are, instead, communities of sinners... In those communities of sinners, one of the sinners is called pastor.

            - Eugene Peterson

Gratitude For Schaeffer

Francis Schaeffer died 30 years ago this month. Ray Ortlund posted these three reasons to be grateful for the life and ministry of this great man.

Here are three reasons — for starters — why I am grateful for the life and ministry of Francis Schaeffer..... 

One, Francis Schaeffer pioneered a new way of advancing the gospel.  All my life I’d been exposed to conventional people using conventional methods, and I don’t mean that in a condescending way.  I had the privilege of knowing men of true greatness, like my dad.  But Schaeffer was just different.  He located the gospel within a total Christian worldview.  He talked about modern art and films and books.  He spoke with prophetic insight about cultural trends.  He worked out fresh ways to articulate old truths, even coining new expressions like “true truth.”  He had a beard and long hair and dressed like a European.  He had Christian radicalism all over him, called for by those radical times.  I found him non-ignorable.  To this day, I dislike conventionality, partly because I saw in Francis Schaeffer a man who made an impact not by conforming and fitting in but by standing out as the man God made him to be, the man the world needed him to be.

Two, Francis Schaeffer united in a coherent and even beautiful whole theological conviction with personal humaneness.  I remember his saying once that, in a conversation with a liberal theologian, he would try to conduct himself so that the liberal would gain two clear and equal impressions.  One, Schaeffer disagreed with him theologically.  Two, Schaeffer cared about him personally.  Moreover, Schaeffer pointed out that, in ourselves, we are unable to demonstrate simultaneously the truth and holiness of God, on the one hand, and the love and mercy of God, on the other hand.  In our own strength, we will slide off toward one emphasis or the other.  But as we look to the Lord moment by moment, we can hold together both theological conviction and human beauty.  But only by both together can we bear living witness to the magnitude of who Jesus really is.  And if we fail to show the fullness of Christ, we actually bear false witness to him, we make him ugly in human eyes, and we set his cause back, however sincere we may be.

Three, Francis Schaeffer and his wife Edith, leading L’Abri Fellowship in Switzerland, exemplified compelling Christian community.  They welcomed all kinds of people.  They attracted all kinds of people.  They demonstrated a gentleness, openness and tolerance that created space for many diverse people who wouldn’t have found a home in our more typical churches.  They sacrificed personally to create this rare kind of community.  Their wedding gifts were wrecked, people threw up on their carpets, and so forth.  The Schaeffers flung open their lives, their hearts, their space, and it cost them.  But they gained many people for Christ.  This bold commitment is real Christianity.  Anything less is bluff and hypocrisy.

I thank the Lord for Francis Schaeffer.

Friendship Deficits

From a great piece by J. Lee Grady on Why We Don't Develop Meaningful Friendships:

...The modern church does not always place a high value on relationships. While the New Testament commands us to “fervently love one another from the heart” (1 Pet. 1:22, NASB), we have developed a cold corporate culture. We are content to herd people into buildings for services and then herd them out. Our main concern is that they occupied a seat and listened to a sermon. But did they connect with each other? Even in churches that try to nurture relationships, only a fraction of the people get involved in small groups.

Personally, I don’t believe we will see New Testament revival power or New Testament impact until we reclaim fervent New Testament love. But that realm of love isn’t possible without deep healing and serious attitude adjustments. Here are five of the most serious reasons Christians today struggle in the area of relationships:

1. Self-centeredness. Jesus defined love when He said, “Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13). Real friendship is always sacrificial. We tend to want friendship on our terms; we want to be loved and encouraged and comforted. But if we want that kind of love, we should be willing to give it to someone else first. British preacher Charles Spurgeon wrote, “Any man can selfishly desire to have a Jonathan; but he is on the right track who desires to find out a David to whom he can be a Jonathan.”

2. Lack of transparency. Too many people today live with secrets. We are experts at faking it. We hide our private pain behind masks and thick body armor. We go through the motions and we mouth the right words—but church life becomes shallow and superficial without raw honesty. True friends take off their armor, reveal their shame and share their hearts—and they confess their sins to each other (James 5:16). This is the path to true healing. 

3. Bitterness. Paul told the Ephesians, “Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ also has forgiven you” (Eph. 4:32). Yet many Christians today have never let go of their resentments. They don’t realize that people who seethe with anger over past hurts poison themselves—and make it impossible to develop close friends. Bitterness will make you unfriendly—and people will avoid you because you are toxic. We must learn to pay close attention to our hearts and purge any grudge the instant it takes root in our souls.

4. Low self-esteem. Jesus told us to love our neighbors as ourselves (Mark 12:31). But our love for others is short-circuited when we don’t think we have anything to offer in a relationship. Many people lack the confidence to reach out and make friends because they don’t think they deserve to be loved. Self-hatred can be caused by abuse, lack of parental affection, bullying or other factors. If you struggle to love yourself, you must be willing to crawl out of your shell and seek help. Reach out to the people around you. God has prepared someone to pray with you!

5. Fear of rejection. I meet people who have given up on church altogether because they were betrayed. Some have even left ministry positions because friends turned their backs on them. Their attitude is “I will never let anyone hurt me like that again.” But is it really worth it to close the door on the possibility of friendship just because of one or two bad experiences? Proverbs 18:24 says, “Friends come and friends go, but a true friend sticks by you like family” (MSG). The loyal friends in my life have more than compensated for any disappointments. Friendship is a risk worth taking.

When Jesus brought heaven’s kingdom on earth, He assembled a group of followers who came to be known as His friends (John 15:15). He called them to follow Him as disciples but also to be connected to one another in deep fellowship. Our vertical connection to Christ makes a horizontal connection to our brothers and sisters possible. Don’t let anything stop you from enjoying healthy relationships.

The Secret to Creating Community

The biggest problem people have in searching for community is just that. You don't find community; you create it through love. Look how this transforms the way you enter a room full of strangers. Our instinctive thought is, "Who do I know? Who am I comfortable with?" There's nothing wrong with those questions, but the Jesus questions that create communities are, "Who can I love? Who is left out?"

Here are two different formulas for community formation:

1. Search for community where I am loved: become disappointed with community

2. Show hesed love: create community

--Paul Miller, A Loving Life: In a World of Broken Relationships (Crossway, 2014), 100; italics original

HT: Strawberry-Rhubarb Theology

Evidences You Are Living in Gospel Community

From Tim Brister - Evidences your church family is a gospel community: You know you're living in a gospel community when:

• believers practice confession instead of trying to make an impression

• people are defined by a lifestyle of repenting rather than pretending

• you embrace truth at all costs, not agreeing for each others approval

• light exposes & wounds and love covers & heals – both/and not either/or

• people are happy to be holy not content to be comfortable

• you own your mess because of His mercy instead of hiding them because of your shame

• functional saviors & heart idolatry are lovingly confronted & challenged by Christ’s reign & rule

• unbelieving sinners & believing sinners together look away from themselves & look to Jesus

• the pleasure of God in Christ to save you liberates you to passionately serve others

• hospitality is given to those on the margins & those not like you are welcome in your world

• individual preferences take a back seat to community purposes of loving God and neighbor

How do you (we) measure up?

The Divinely Commissioned Orchestra

"The gospel isn’t meant for just me in my room. The beautiful music that comes from God’s people gathered in worship and united in service isn’t meant to be performed by one person in one place. The declaration that Jesus is Lord sounds most glorious when it is proclaimed through his church. When we tailor the gospel only for individuals and make the message solely about a private religious experience, we wind up with a “cassette-tape gospel” that captures a sliver of the message but cannot do justice to the glorious melody of Christ’s lordship playing all throughout creation. It is true that the church is made up of individuals who believe that Jesus is Lord. But together we form the called-out community of faith: the church—an orchestra divinely commissioned to play the music that proclaims salvation in Jesus Christ alone. "

            -Trevin Wax, Holy Subversion: Allegiance to Christ in an Age of Rivals

Deeply United

"The gospel is the deepest foundation for community. What connects believers is the reality that we were all very messed-up people, broken before a holy God, yet rescued and given new life in Christ  What unites believers is deeper than anything that can divide."

       -Matt Chandler, Creature of the Word: The Jesus Centered Church,  page 50
    

Bigger than Just Me & Jesus

"Not only does our worship as rescued sinners reflect an eternal reality, God also supernaturally utilizes our corporate gatherings to mature and encourage His people in ways not available anywhere else. God designed our faith to be communal and interdependent - and markedly supernatural. When believers gather together as a worshiping community, we benefit from all the spiritual gifts of the body of Christ. Worship reminds us that the Church is bigger and more beautiful than any one person or a few leaders alone. Each of us, worshiping together, is used of God to build each other up in Jesus."

     - Matt Chandler, Creature of the Word: The Jesus Centered Church,  page 41

Marks of Healthy Small Groups

Rick Warren on Healthy Small Groups:

1. Healthy small groups study the Bible. Small groups in the New Testament studied the Bible together. Acts 2:42 says, “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching …” Of course, we know the teaching of the apostles is what we call the New Testament today. They lived in an oral culture, but they were still studying lessons from the apostles....

2. Healthy small groups share life together. The Book of Acts says the early believers were devoted to fellowship (Acts 2:42). This means they were serious about their friendships. Notice the Bible says they were devoted to the fellowship, not just to fellowship. In other words, fellowship is not just something the church does; we are the fellowship.Jesus calls us to be committed to one another, and it is through small groups that we learn the skills of relationship. Small groups are laboratories of love, where we learn to obey the command of Jesus to love your neighbor as you love yourself.

3. Healthy small groups remember Jesus together. The Bible says the early believers devoted themselves “to the breaking of bread and to prayer” (Acts 2:42). The “breaking of bread” in this passage specifically refers to Communion (or the Lord’s Supper). In the early Church, they did not take Communion in a large worship setting. They served it in small groups.

4. Healthy small groups pray together. The Bible says the early believers devoted themselves to prayer (Acts 2:42). Jesus taught that there is a power to prayers spoken aloud for each other, and he made an incredible promise about small groups of believers: “For where two or three have gathered together in My name, I am there in their midst” (Matthew 18:20 NASB). In the intimacy and confidentiality of small groups, we can pray for each other as we share our hurts, reveal our feelings, confess our failures, disclose our doubts, admit our fears, acknowledge our weaknesses, and ask for help.

5. Healthy small groups are generous. The Bible says these small groups gave “to anyone who had need” (Acts 2:45 NIV). Small groups allow us to help each other with practical needs. Can I loan you a car? Can I provide you with some meals when you are sick.

6. Healthy small groups worship together. The Bible says the New Testament small groups worshiped together, “praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people” (Acts 2:47). We need to worship God more than once a week, and small groups offer an opportunity to worship together.

7. Healthy small groups witness together. As these small groups met together, “the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved” (Acts 2:47). They were inviting others to join them. One of the proofs of a healthy small group is that it reproduces, so a small group may add members, but a small group may also help start another small group.

I cut out some material specific to Warren's Saddleback Church. You can read the whole thing at the link.

Hat Tip: Rick Ianniello

More Than A Symbol

Interesting - a strong case for the regular, weekly celebration of communion, made by a Pentecostal preacher! Check out this great article by Jonathan Martin, pastor of Renovatus Church in North Carolina.

Yesterday, I announced formally that we would be celebrating the Lord’s Supper weekly at Renovatus.

I have been moving in that direction for many years, and have even ironically claimed it to be the best way to orient a weekly worship gathering. Why precisely I have been so reluctant to pull the trigger, I do not know. We just wrapped up our Love Feast series, which was intended to be about Christian community. And indeed it was, but to my surprise it became as much about communion—or to be more precise, the way that communion must be the basis of our community. We came to the Lord’s table weekly during the series. And as God continued to confirm so much of what we had been sensing for years-that much of our destiny and calling as a church is wrapped up in this path of sacramental Pentecostalism, the time was right to make it our ongoing practice......

....There are many reasons I am compelled to lead our congregation to the table weekly: from Scripture, from early church tradition, from following my own Pentecostal tradition back up the line to Wesley, from the simple prompting of the Holy Spirit. But today I want to focus only on one. When Chris and I tag-teamed the message a few weeks ago, he shared something of his own journey to discover the power of the Lord’s Supper as a Pentecostal. He said it all started with a simple remark from a mentor who said that grounding the worship service in the sacrament is the only way to keep it from being too oriented around the personality of the preacher. That stung me. I do feel powerfully compelled and even used by God to preach, and there are many ways/forms that people respond to the preached word in our church. Perhaps this still seemed to be enough before now. Perhaps some of it is the blind optimism of youth, thinking that while I’m far from perfect, the work of the Spirit in the preaching is enough to sustain the congregation.

I have continued to ponder those words. Lord knows I have a big personality, so big it scares me. Thus I have no desire for anybody to ground their faith or their life in me. But when the preaching gets more press (and more space) in the worship experience, perhaps this is still what we invite people to do. I know for my part, I am feeling my fragility these days. I have as great a confidence in God than ever to change lives, but a much a more sober estimation about the value of my own life to the church....

Love his phrase "sacramental Pentecostalism"!

What do you think?

Tweets of the Week

RT @DailyKeller: The world values power, comfort, success, & recognition. Jesus frees us to value grief, sacrifice, weakness, & exclusion.


"We carry an insidious prosperity gospel around in our dark, little, entitled hearts." —Matt Chandler


"Let him who cannot be alone beware of community / Let him who is not in community beware of being alone." -Bonhoeffer


RT @challies: "If Solomon was still around, he'd pretty much dominate Twitter." / Proverbial Truth!


RT @PastorTullian: Legalism says God will love us if we change. The gospel says God will change us because He loves us.


RT @daneortlund: What would Jesus tweet? 'It is finished.' Every day, every hour. Over and over. And I'd retweet it every time!


"To forgive is to be like God; to withhold forgiveness is to be like the world." - RT @bcloritts

RT @JamieTheVWM: The best thing you can do for someone who believes they're worthless is treat them like they're not.


RT @PastorTullian: There's nothing that screams fear and unbelief like the censorship of grace.


Envy asks “Why them? Why do they get what I don’t have?” Gratitude asks “Why me? Why do I get all that I have?” RT @RickWarren

"A successful marriage requires falling in love many times, and always with the same person. - Mignon McLaughlin"

Remember the Outernet?

Hat Tip: Vitamin Z

Orthodoxy of Community

"One cannot explain the explosive dynamite, the dunamis, of the early church apart from the fact that they practiced two things simultaneously: orthodoxy of doctrine and orthodoxy of community in the midst of the visible church, a community which the world can see. By the grace of God, therefore, the church must be known simultaneously for its purity of doctrine and the reality of its community."

- Francis Schaeffer, The Church Before the Watching World

Hat Tip: Vitamin Z

(Love me some Schaeffer - now more than ever!)

The Apostle John on Technology

Some interesting comments on the use of communication technology:

We mentioned the apostle John’s view of technology found in 2 John 12, where he wrote, “Though I have much to write to you, I would rather not use paper and ink. Instead I hope to come to you and talk face to face, so that our joy may be complete.”

John was comfortable using the communication technology—pen and ink—of his day, but he did so with a set of values that were contrary to the tendencies built into the technology of writing. Whereas a letter requires that one isolated person write a message and then another isolated person later read that message, John says that his joy is never complete until he is physically present with his community.

And yet, aware of this problem, John used writing because he understood both its helpfulness and its problematic value system. From that perspective he was able to use technology in service of the embodied communal life that Christ taught him. When John could not be physically present with his community, he was comfortable using technology to communicate with them. But he was always careful to state that he considered technologically mediated relationships to be inferior to embodied relationships.

What a Concept! - Shallow Small Groups

This is funny - but too close to reality for a lot of people and churches.



God save us from shallowness. May God bring about true community in our churches!

Hat Tip: The Blazing Center, Nine Marks