>It’s all about changing — transformation.
A relationship with God in Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit will change us. A church grounded in God will be transformed, and it will likely transform its surrounding culture. If living in Christ makes no difference, we of all people are most to be pitied.
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Found in a 2005 article in Christianity Today, “Spirituality for all the wrong reasons“
(HT to Chaplain Mike over at Internetmonk.com)
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As stated, we had our Consecration of our new church yesterday. I had looked at all sorts of stuff online to help me shape the service. A pastor friend gave me his services he had used at a consecration nearly 20 years ago. I had never had to plan one of these and felt great pressure. After all, the Bishop was going to be here.
The problem with so much of the stuff I was looking at was that it was so “high church” and formal. “Process with Bible and Cross.” Tons of ritual. Lots of formal language. It looked great for the right setting. Our church is a lot more informal than this. None of this was going to feel particularly “Girdwoodian.”
This is not to say we don’t have important rituals in our church. No, rituals are very important. We have communion every week and go through the full liturgy. We have the kids come down for children’s time. We do the creeds often. It all just seems to have a more informal feel to it. It seems “common.” It seems “colloquial.”
Granted, this reflects me, personally. However, from a theological perspective, I don’t pretend to have some religious “realm” or state of being and some “secular” realm. I really don’t have a style of language I use in church and one I use at home. Or at least I try not to. Because I don’t think these two things can truly ever be separated. When Christ became incarnate he, as Petersons’ The Message says, “moved into the neighborhood” (John 1). He entered this real world with its real people and the salvation he offered was for the real world…with our own language and culture and problems. Yes, we need to be in awe of God. We should fear God. We should offer God reverence. But we can do so by offering who we are here and now. We stand before God, with all of our quirks and baggage and problems, and are redeemed in the real world and we offer that salvation to those around us in the real world.
One of the illustrations I use frequently in church to talk about the very worldly salvation that Christ offers is the problem of slavery in the US in the 1700s to 1800s where slaveowners would tell their slaves that they had to keep being slaves but that Christ had set them free IN THEIR HEARTS. It was a disembodied salvation. It was gnostic. It only “seemed” like salvation. And it’s wrong.
Likewise, a church that says it believes in a Christ that saves, but isn’t trying to transform its community is practicing the same kind of gnostic salvation — a salvation that doesn’t really transform anything at all.
Just as our salvation is one that is intimately connected with our skin, so the salvation the church offers is intimately connected with the community and the culture. Our faith is about changing how we live and how the world operates. I remember a preacher at Duke Divinity School that “God not only wants to save us in the ‘Sweet By and By’ but in the ‘Nasty Here and Now.'” The only religion worth its salt is one that is tranformational–of the individual and the world. (Remember our mission statement here at Girdwood Chapel: “Love God. Love others. Change the world.”)
That’s the understanding of salvation and faith I’ve tried to live and to teach and is why, yesterday at our dedication, we tried to connect with where our people are and why we had a question and answer time to include the community members in asking how we can, together, work to transform our community for the better. There is not a separate life for my faith, apart from how I live and experience the world. There is not a separate world of the church, apart from the community in which it finds itself.
I found the following quote from Ken Myers of Mars Hill Audio that gets at the theological underpinnings here:
Much of modern culture, with its Gnostic undertones, alienates us from creation and its givenness. Theologian Colin Gunton sees the affirmation of the Incarnation as essential to our enthusiastic participation in creation and therefore in cultural life. “A world that owes its origin to a God who makes it with direct reference to one who was to become incarnate — part of the world — is a world that is a proper place for human beings to use their senses, minds and imaginations, and to expect that they will not be wholly deceived in doing so.”
Christians have the only account of human and natural origins that can give cultural life meaning. But even after 2,000 years of opportunity to reflect on the Incarnation, many contemporary Christians persist in believing in a Gnostic salvation, a salvation that has no cultural consequences. In such a dualistic understanding, our souls are saved, the essential immaterial aspect of our being is made right with God, but the actions of our bodies — what we actually do in space and time — are a matter of indifference if not futility. Salvation is an inward matter only. It affects our attitudes and some of our ideas. But insofar as our cultural activities have any Christian significance it is as mere marketing efforts — things we do to attract others to our essentially Gnostic salvation.
Believing in a gospel that has few earthly consequences is, ironically, just the sort of state our secularist neighbors would wish us to sustain. They, too, are dualists, believing that religion may be a fine thing for people, so long as they keep it private. Their secularism isn’t threatened by Christians as long as they aren’t too “Incarnational.” As long as the cultural lives of Christians aren’t significantly different from those of materialists and pagans, secularism is safe. Christians may pray “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” but as long as they don’t actually do anything that demonstrates how such a petition should affect their political, economic, and cultural activities, the Enlightenment legacy is safe.
That’s a great quote.
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I was merely going out to ask the guy across the street not to park his car directly behind our Suburban. It’s hard to see back there. Plus, really, I think it’s kind of rude to park at the end of someone’s driveway. I was asking nicely, but I just never understood why, when there was ample parking space in front of the house they were renting that he thought that the best place was at the end of our driveway, making it difficult for us to get out. I seemed inconsiderate. And, more, as the snow will soon begin to fall we have a great interest on our street keeping the road as wide as possible. We live on a hill. Sometimes in winter you really want to have a two-lane road because the car going downhill may not be able to stop. It happens. You need some passing room. It’s safer. And, as I said, there was ample room for him to pull off the road right in front of his home. He didn’t have to park where he was parking. But, I was going to be nice about it and I was.
So, that’s what got me out of the house in the dark to talk with the new neighbor across the street on a weeknight. Slightly confrontational? Yes. But something learned by actually living on the street for the past 7 years and seeing how it all works. We need some room to maneuver.
I, frankly, was a little nervous as the door closed behind me. I’m really not one that handles confrontation very well. I’m more of a “smooth-it-over guy.” I didn’t want to have anyone upset with me. I like everyone to love me and be happy with me. I don’t want to be seen as an obnoxious neighbor.
And, as I got out there at night I saw a familiar face among the four persons standing out there. She’s someone whom our church has helped out financially. She’s someone who has worked with my kids in daycare. She’s someone who used to work in a drive-through coffee shop and I used to go get coffee from her every Sunday morning between our 8:30 and 10 AM worship services. 16 OZ SKIM MILK LATTE WITH SUGAR FREE HAZELNUT, HALF THE USUAL AMOUNT OF HAZELNUT (my drink of choice.) And each Sunday she’d ask me what I was preaching on and each Sunday I’d give her a terribly abbreviated version of my sermon. Each Sunday.
One Sunday we were discussing poverty in church and I shared some of the statistics about “the working poor” and the struggles they face. She said, “Pastor Jim, that’s me. I work two jobs and sometimes three in this town just to try keep living here and each month I get farther and farther behind. There’s a lot of us in this town.”
Sometimes it was she who preached to me.
Well, in the street at night, addressing the car parking issue, she said to the others from the rental unit. “Pastor Jim here is one of the nicest guys you’ll ever meet,” and she put her arms around me to give me one of those those “side hugs” that are always pretty “safe” but can still show some genuine affection. I love flattery, but it’s what she said afterward that I really loved. Afterward she looked at me and said,
Do you remember all those Sunday mornings you came and got your coffee and shared your sermons with me? Well, those were awesome. I always looked forward to that time. I grew up Catholic and left the church a while ago, but those times brought me closer to Christianity than I’d been in a long time. They kind of restored my faith in the church. Thank you.
As I think back to those Sunday morning coffees, I think I got the sense that she truly enjoyed hearing my condensed sermons. And I think she got the sense that I wanted her perspective and to hear her stories about them for the week. I did. And to hear now, in the dark, a few years later, that God was acting in her life because of those conversations was awesome to hear. It was a blessing. It was a blessing for me to know that it made a difference.
I don’t really want to take any of the credit here. I’m very happy calling this a “God-thing” and leaving it there. But I am going to hold onto this conversation.
Sometimes in ministry I can wonder why it is that I do this…this whole ministry-thing, with its meetings, and planning, and worrying about church finances, and running off to Bible studies, and entering into some dramatic highs and lows in persons’ lives.
So, why do I do it?
Because sometimes, God, acting through me, leads to a transformation in someone’s life. Sometimes I see someone drawn closer to God again (like my friend in the street). Sometimes a person learns something and their eyes are opened to a new reality about Scripture or person and work of Christ. Sometimes I can see the proverbial “gears” grinding away in their minds as they begin to understand faith at a deeper level. Sometimes right choices are made and wrong choices are confessed and atoned for. Sometimes marriages are saved or children come home or those who have lost loved ones are comforted in their time of need.
I do it because the Holy Spirit is alive and kicking and sometimes works through even me as surprising as I sometimes find it. And sometimes, like in the account above, I get to actually see some of the fruits of this whole minitry-thing.
Religion today is not transforming people; rather it is being transformed by the people. It is not raising the moral level of society; it is descending to society’s own level, and congratulating itself that it has scored a victory because society is smilingly accepting its surrender.
… A. W. Tozer (1897-1963)
Jim Doepken 