George Maloney writes in Inward Stillness p. 131:

Man’s instinct does not tell him, as animal’s instinct does, what he must do. Because he has to cut himself off from the roots of his past by throwing away traditions, he is at a loss as to what he ought to do. Usually he finds himself in the position that he does not know what he wants exactly.

Reminds me of Alain De Botton talking about how our supposed ability to do anything and be anything causes us a lot of unhappiness. As much as I’ve always rebelled against tradition, there is much to be said for it giving a firm sense of identity.

The pastors of America have metamorphosed into a company of shopkeepers and the shops they keep are churches. They are preoccupied with a shopkeeper’s concerns - how to keep the customers happy, how to lure customers away from the competitors down the street, how to package the goods so that the customers will lay out more money.

- Eugene Peterson, Working the Angles : p. 2.

For still others, the “mission of the church” should be understood much more realistically… as planting viable church communities in every culture, especially where there has been none before. What then if such planting and growth could be facilitated by accepting ethnic isolation and defensiveness because in certain homogenous cultures people will not forsake their own cultural style? That price in terms of ethical compromise would be worth paying for the sake of church growth. (37)

The Book of Acts does not report that the apostles remembered the so-called “Great Commission” and conscientiously set about obeying it. Nor do we see them thinking about the lost status of individuals whom they had not reached. The event of ingathering came first. Only later did the Twelve think about it. Only still later did they “send” someone. The theology to explain the rightness of the ingathering was imposed by the events, which it explained after the fact. The Twelve did not set out to obey the Great Commission; they talked about the risen Lord and they broke bread together in their homes and thus they found themselves together first with Hellenized Jews and then even with Gentiles… The action of mission was prior to theory about it.

This observation might provide some guidance within the current lively debates about “church growth” and cultural homogeneity… If reconciliation between peoples and cultures is not happening, the Gospel’s truth is not being confirmed in that place.

- Body Politics p. 37-38

I’ve been worried about how the Great Commission is used, especially by church growth people. WA Baptists favourite John Kaiser starts with the Great Commission and then asks how we can most efficiently do it. The assumption is that we know what the Great Commission means. Yoder drops a couple of hints that it doesn’t mean what we think it means. He doesn’t seem to think it’s as important as church growth people make it either. I want to know more about his argument here, because as the last words of Jesus in Matthew at least, and as a command, it is of course important. But here’s Yoder’s footnote on it:

For two centuries the term ‘Great Commission’ has been the code label for Matthew 28:20 ‘Make disciples of all nations, as you go, baptizing them, teaching them…’ This was understood as the most specific statement of the missionary imperative the church was called to obey. In the beginning of the modern missionary movement, there were debates about whether this command was still binding, or whether perhaps the apostles had already done it. Often the first words “Go ye” were accentuated, although in the Greek that is said adverbially, as it is rendered above: “As you go…” (p. 85)

I think Yoder would say - and I say - it is still binding. As usual, he gives us a history of an idea as a first step, and expects us to do the work from there. In calling it the Great Commission, we bring a whole set of ideas to the command. Translated as he has done it here, it has a different sense - ‘as you go’.

It seems to be a feature of a lot of evangelicalism to accept a certain sense of the Great Commission, with distinctives coming out of the best way to do it. Here’s some rough stereotypes:

1. Sydney Anglicans - personal evangelism using doctrinally correct resources (2 ways to live)

2. Church Growth - seeker sensitive mega-churches using research about what people groups are looking for. (This has probably moved on a bit)

3. Emerging missional church - incarnational mission to particular people groups - ie small church expressions among subcultures.

To differing extents, all three of these streams would see the command as being filled in individual conversions. In their classical expressions, none of them would see the shape of the church, the breaking down of emnity between races and classes and genders, as a part of the good news. But in all of them, there’s people willing to listen to the idea!

A few weeks ago, Hamo wrote an interesting post called ‘Why the missional incarnational church is screwed’. He quoted at length from the postliberal theologian John Milbank:

The church cannot be found amongst the merely like-minded, who associate in order to share a particular taste, hobby or perversion. It can only be found where many different peoples possessing many different gifts collaborate in order to produce a divine–human community in one specific location.

St Paul wrote to Galatia and Corinth, not to regiments or to weaving-clubs for widows. He insisted on a unity that emerges from the harmonious blending of differences. Hence the idea that the church should ‘plant’ itself in various sordid and airless interstices of our contemporary world, instead of calling people to ‘come to church’, is wrongheaded, because the refusal to come out of oneself and go to church is simply the refusal of church per se.

One can’t set up a church in a cafe amongst a gang of youths who like skateboarding because all this does is promote skateboarding and dysfunctional escapist maleness, along with that type of private but extra-ecclesial security that is offered by the notion of ‘being saved’.”

- From ‘Stale Expressions: the Management-Shaped Church’, Studies in Christian Ethics, April 2008 by John Milbank.

It would be wrong to focus on Milbank’s defence of the parish and how admittedly un-diverse many parishes are, rather than his critique of emerging-missional ecclesiology. I’m no great fan of the parish, but it’s these words and talking to Ian Packer while he was over that have helped consolidate my points of difference with EMC ecclesiology. As much as great things are happening with the EMC, I think it would be a mistake for me to lose the distinctive Anabaptist ecclesiology that I had clear in my head for a while and which Milbank has helped me begin to recover.

I need to re-articulate the fundamental point of disagreement between an anabaptist ecclesiology and the agenda laid out by Frost and Hirsch in The Shaping of Things to Come.

As much as EMC criticisms of church culture are valid, an anabaptist ecclesiology maintains that the church must be attractional. We mustn’t think the two choices are between ‘mega-church attractional beasts’ and ‘incarnational missional communities’. There is a third way…

The church is a counter-cultural community, a city on a hill embodying the gospel, a people called to be now what the world is called to be ultimately. It calls people into a new humanity living in the kingdom of God. It calls people to be baptised into this new humanity where their primary identity is no longer their subculture - whether that be skater, biker, twentysomething, mortgage belter, activist, gay, professional or artist (or Jew, Greek, slave, master, male, female) - but where their identity is in Christ.

The diversity of the church is part of the good news! It announces to the world that the old barriers have been broken down, the emnity between peoples has been overcome. Baptising subcultures as ‘churches’ misses this good news. It may even risk retaining an individualistic evangelical idea of what the good news is: ‘personal salvation’.

Where can this church be found?

It’s hard to find, and that’s why we need to articulate the hope, pray for it, and do what we can in the power of the Spirit to practice it.

For me, right now, it is found in Network Vineyard Church. Maybe part of my call is to help the church, right where I am, discover its call to diversity and to the body-life of the kingdom. I want people to know that when they break out of their comfort zone and reach across culture in church, they are partaking in the good news. It starts in small ways. It starts with who you talk to in the coffee break. It leads to you becoming family with people you wouldn’t otherwise associate with: different classes, different races, different outlooks.

Reading this history of the Vineyard movement made me remember how important history is. Evangelicals and Charismatics are mostly ignorant of their own history, and are poorer for it. Or I know I am. So many things we take for granted have historical reasons and interesting stories behind them. This book connected the dots of lots of snippets I’d heard about pentecostalism, charismatics and the vineyard since I was a kid - including the Toronto Blessing and John Wimber’s visits to Australia but also things like the impact the Jesus movement had on Christianity in the 1970s.

The radical middle of the title is what Jackson sees as the Vineyard’s capturing of the radical middle of both biblical doctrine and Spirit-led spontaniety. In the early chapters he puts the case for the
Vineyard as being a movement which has managed to harness the best of both the Word stream and the Spirit stream of Christianity. As someone from the Word stream, I saw less of the Word stream in the history which followed, but at the Vineyard’s best, I think he’s right.

As you would expect, John Wimber is central to this history of Vineyard. His story is fascinating, with so many strands and turning points (they’ve already gone out of my head). Spirit empowerment didn’t come instantly to him. He prayed and preached it for a long time until the healing started.

Wimber appears in the pages as a benevolent dictator. Jackson paints him as a flawed but talented man who God raised up to do something special with. He made some questionable calls and lost his passion at times, but comes across as a man who had a special mission and unusual power. The Holy Spirit broke out where he went.

There hasn’t been much room in my thinking for a movement that is centred on a particular individual, as good as he or she might be. Last year I read some things talking about APEPT ministry in the church, and the recovery of apostle-leadership. I guess Wimber had the role of an apostle within Vineyard, bearing at least some resemblance to the function of apostles within the early church (strategic leadership and vision?). I’m still suspicious of concentrating power or influence in one person’s hands, but I’ll grant that there was something special about Wimber and that God genuinely does use particular people.

It’s very disturbing to hear of how Sydney Anglican leaders allegedly treated Wimber in the early nineties; according to Jackson they didn’t even give him a hearing but just told him he was not wanted in Australia. I would like to know how they saw it, but I have encountered some Sydney Anglicans like this. (As well as some wonderful ones.)

I found the more pentecostal phases of Vineyard threatening to my comfort zone. I vacillate between thinking truth might reside here, and feeling that it’s crazy. In fact, even when I think it might have truth, I still think it’s crazy.

The story of the prophet Paul Cain is intriguing. I would like to write a novel inspired by his life. For a time he had the ear of Wimber and influenced the direction of the Vineyard, before a split with him and the Kansas City Prophets. (Alas, a google search reveals he has had a bad fall in the last couple of years and has been stood down from the Kansas church where he was ministering.) Here’s a long quote giving some of his story:
Paul Cain was born in 1929 to his mother Anna who was 45 years old. Anna was pregnant and had inoperable cancer that had eaten away one of her breasts; the doctors sent her home to die. In the throes of death she vowed to offer her child to God, as Hannah had done with Samuel, if the Lord would spare her life. a short time later the Lord spoke to her through an angel and promised her that she would live and bear a son. She was to name him Paul since he would preach the gospel as Paul of old. She was immediately healed, her breast grew back and she suckled her new baby as a medical miracle.

… By the time Paul was eighteen, he had a regular radio ministry and was conducting healing services in a small tent…

… Paul was on the verge of a stellar career in the early 1950s. He had, by this time, received a call to celibacy and became something of a recluse, desiring to be alone with God…

[Leaves the big tent revivals]

In the midst of this, Paul says God spoke to him and told him that if he kept himself from corruption and became content with living a humble life, given to Scripture reading and obedience, one day he would be allowed to stand before a new breed of men and women who were serious about holiness and the things of the Lord. This new breed would be a ‘faceless’ generation wanting nothing for itself and giving God all the glory. God added that this new generation would be used to usher in a great revival and he would see them before his mother died. At that time Anna was 73 years old.

Paul assumed that this would be fulfilled within a few short years but he spent the next 25 years living in a two-bedroom home in Phoenix, Arizona, where he took care of his mother with the help of family members. He spent most of those years reading Scripture and occasionally preaching. He refused to take offerings and trusted the Lord for his income. He briefly pastored two churches and was a help to many leaders during the Charismatic movement.

As the years of seclusion were coming to an end, Paul felt the Lord told him that he would soon see some of the new breed he had so often seen in the prophetic realm. His mother was 102 years old when he met Mike Bickle and others from Kansas City Fellowship in 1987. He said God spoke to him that these were some of the people….

Paul never even considered John Wimber as an option until he was in the room with John delivering a prophetic word to him on December 5, 1988. It was then that God whispered to him that John was the man he had been looking for.

-pp. 181-188

You probably get a sense of the style of this book from this extended quote. No sources are named for the rather big claims that Anna’s breast grew back and the like. (I wanted to know how old she was when she finally did die, but that’s just my obsession with longevity.) It’s a believer’s history and as much as it admits mistakes in the movement, it’s certainly not scholarly.

I found it a very readable book, with a narrative drive. Yet it’s unpolished prose and structurally has problems. If you care about those things.

My faith is intellectual. I admit it. I’ve been apologising for that for a long time, but yesterday as I passed all these books in my library that I would like to have the time to read, I realised I wasn’t going to apologise for it any longer.

So many people are critical of those of us who find ourselves relating to God through books and ideas. But I had this sudden renewed insight that my way of relating to God might have come from Him.

Don’t get me wrong. I believe in being practical. I believe that whatever I come to understand intellectually needs to be lived out or it means nothing. I don’t like endless debating or theological egos. I believe that prayer and all the other spiritual disciplines are essential.

But my faith is nourished by reading, thinking and writing, and just because that doesn’t work for so many people, doesn’t make it wrong for me.

I’ve made the mistake in the past of thinking everyone should be like me and find God in books too, but I mustn’t overcorrect and think that I must be like everyone else.

I also think I have a role in making what I discover accessible, and I intend to keep that up.

If you were at the Tom Sine event at Vose Seminary, last week, you might want to see these photos from the night…. http://vose.wa.edu.au/view/news/20080430113407/

Anabaptistish-futurologist-populariser of kingdom ideas Tom Sine was in Perth last week, and Chris Summerfield has written a thoughtful and interesting post thinking through the consequences.

In Tom talking up the new conspirators (emerging, missional, multicultural, monastic communities), it brought up for me a struggle over the last few months against feeling left behind. For me, I have fought against a sense of having tried and failed, and fearing I have sold out. Or that’s what I was feeling, but I’ve decided to stop it. I’m content doing unglamorous things for God at the moment. It’s important to give up the need to be on the cutting edge. It’s important to give up the need to feel important. I defy the cult of celebrity and success which infects even Christianity and even ‘new conspirators’.

But I was excited by Tom’s talks in several ways. I like his emphasis on the possibilities for transforming our everyday life in creative ways to make it look more like kingdom life. I like his emphasis on hospitality and celebration, and I need to go watch Babette’s Feast now, which he mentioned several times as an example of what he’s talking about.

I may have a whole mindshift going on at the moment, but I’ll have to wait till I’ve got some time to think it through AND write about it.

Agape Chinese Baptist Church 27 April 2008

 The world brainwashes us with a particular version of success. According to the world, we are successful when we have a lot of money. We are successful when people admire us and envy us. The world tells us that we need lots of stuff to be successful and happy. We need the latest technology. We need a bigger car and a bigger house. When we have a big house, we need a second house to invest in. If you get a second house, you need a third house. To be successful, we need to be always moving up to higher paid jobs with higher status.

These messages get to us through advertising on the television, the radio and in junk mail. Advertisements are designed to stir up discontent. They tell us we don’t have enough. They tell us we need more. They tell us to be unhappy with what we’ve got and they promise happiness in the form of some new possession.

But new stuff won’t make us happy. Wealth is always relative. We’re not comparing ourselves to our grandparents who had so much less than us. We’re comparing ourselves to our neighbours who have just a little more than us. We’re comparing ourselves to the person at work who bought a new boat or a more expensive car. We feel envious, we feel left behind. We feel like we have to catch up.

The world’s version of success makes us anxious that we don’t have enough and that we’re failures. It’s tempting to think that even though this picture of success doesn’t work for me, it works for the successful. But it’s not true. Jesus’s parable of the rich fool in Luke 12:13-21 tells us that the world’s version of success doesn’t work for the rich and successful either.

In October last year, the businessman John Ilhan, owner of the Crazy John stores, died of a heart attack. He was 42 and he had millions of dollars that were no longer any good to him.

In January, the world was shocked by the death of Heath Ledger. He was just 28 years old, and he was the picture of success. He had done so well for himself. He was recognised as one of the best young actors and he had millions of dollars. Yet what does it count for when you die? His death came suddenly and unexpectedly.

We don’t know when we’re going to die, and death makes all our worldly achievements seem unimportant.

Jesus knew this and that’s why he preached that parable of the rich fool. The rich fool thinks he is in control of his life, that he has achieved success that will last. And yet he dies, and his huge barn is no good to him. Instead of being rich toward himself and his own fulfilment, he should have been rich toward God.

Jesus says in Mark 8:35-36, ‘For whoever wants save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and the gospel will save it. What good is it for man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul?’

Kingdom style success is different. The kingdom of God is upside down. Jesus told us that the poor are rich in the kingdom. That sad people will be comforted. That the shy and meek people will own the whole world.

In the world’s eyes, Jesus didn’t lead a successful life at all. He spent the first thirty years at home making furniture. It was a simple, practical job. He wasn’t ambitious or wealthy. He just spent his time loving those around him, loving God and doing his work. When he started his ministry, he spent three years going between the different towns. He had quite a few followers, but not nearly as many as the typical attendance at Riverview or Perth Christian Life Centre. He announced that the kingdom of God was here and that he was the new king. But then he got executed for it. He didn’t write any books, make any money or even become popular in his own home town.

So what was success for Jesus? For Jesus, success was obedience to his Father, the Lord God. Obedience meant doing what he was asked even when it was painful and foolish. For Jesus, success was spending time with the left out people, the people who had demons and mental illness. The people who were sick. The poor people. The tax collectors - cheating public servants who had made themselves rich by betraying their own people.

We haven’t learnt enough about success from Jesus. Even as Christians, we still take on board the message of success that the world gives us. Even in our decisions in the church we do it. So I want to tell the stories of two Christians who decided to aim for kingdom success.

John Alexander

The first is John Alexander. This man used to be a Christian celebrity. He won a prestigious Oxford scholarship and had a spectacular academic career. He wrote Christian books and did speaking tours of the world. He was a picture of success. You might think that because he was doing all these things for the church, that he was successful in the kingdom of God.

But John decided otherwise. At age fifty, he left behind all that success and took up a job as the pastor of a small house church of less than twenty people. He spent his time helping the people in that small church. He spent a lot of time travelling around to small Christian communities helping them to make peace. He didn’t get much money or glory for this, but he was being rich towards God. Once he drove for forty hours across America to visit another Christian community and to help them paint their house. He could have been speaking to crowds of thousands, but instead he was finding that God was at work in the small things.

According to his friend, Chris Rice, John Alexander redefined success like this: ‘It’s caring for each other, forgiving each other and washing the dishes, especially across the lines of race and class.’ And this is so true. Even in the church we have so many rich people, and so many people who have written lots of books. But we don’t have enough people who care for each other, who forgive each other, and who wash the dishes. Especially when you’re daring to do that with people from a different race or a different class.

At sixty years old, John died of leukemia in 2001. None of the Christian celebrities he used to hang out with turned up for the funeral. He was buried in a simple pine casket built by the brothers of his church. Etched into the side were the words ‘it is well with my soul’. The church sisters wrapped him in a quilt made of patches of his clothing. His widow said, ‘Not many people die with so much love around them.’

John’s story moves me so much because he was a man who truly knew what Jesus meant about saving your life when you give it up for him.

Henri Nouwen

The second story I want to share with you is that of a priest named Henri Nouwen, who died in 1996. Henri’s story is quite similar to John’s. I’ll read you an edited version of some of Philip Yancey’s obituary for Henri:

Trained in Holland as a psychologist and a theologian, Nouwen spent his early years achieving. He taught at Notre Dame, Yale, and Harvard, averaged more than a book a year, and traveled widely as a conference speaker. He had a résumé to die for-which was the problem, exactly. The pressing schedule and relentless competition were suffocating his own spiritual life.

Nouwen was invited to the L’Arche Community, a home for the seriously disabled. He spent the last ten years of his life there, caring for a seriously disabled man named Adam who couldn’t speak or dress himself or do anything for himself. Henri lived with Adam in a simple house with no calendar and no computer. His small room had a single bed and a bookshelf. Henri spent over two hours every day just getting Adam ready. Philip Yancey writes:

I must admit I had a fleeting doubt as to whether this was the best use of the busy priest’s time. Could not someone else take over the manual chores? When I cautiously broached the subject with Nouwen himself, he informed me that I had completely misinterpreted him. “I am not giving up anything,” he insisted. “It is I, not Adam, who gets the main benefit from our friendship.”

All day Nouwen kept circling back to my question, bringing up various ways he had benefited from his relationship with Adam. It had been difficult for him at first, he said. Physical touch, affection, and the messiness of caring for an uncoordinated person did not come easily. But he had learned to love Adam, truly to love him. In the process he had learned what it must be like for God to love us-spiritually uncoordinated, retarded, able to respond with what must seem to God like inarticulate grunts and groans. Indeed, working with Adam had taught him the humility and “emptiness” achieved by desert monks only after much discipline.

Nouwen has said that all his life two voices competed inside him. One encouraged him to succeed and achieve, while the other called him simply to rest in the comfort that he was “the beloved” of God. Only in the last decade of his life did he truly listen to that second voice.

We can’t take these two Christians’ lives as blueprints for how we live. Whatever God wants us to do, it’s not exactly the same as someone else. But we should take their lives as examples to learn from, of two Christians who sought God earnestly. God showed them that success wasn’t what they thought, and they were obedient. In giving up the world’s version of success, they found a deeper contentment and were rich towards God.

What I’m saying is very hard, because I can’t tell you exactly what you should do. But I’ll give you two practical tips to help you on the way:

1. Think about avoiding advertisements as much as possible. They give you the wrong idea of success. You could put up a ‘no junk mail’ sign on your letterbox. You could turn the sound off during the ad breaks on television. If you don’t know about all the stuff the world thinks you should have, you won’t feel like you’re missing out.

2. The best place to start this process of seeking the kingdom of God first, of seeking to be rich towards God, is to read the gospels and see what Jesus had to say about what’s important. Get his ideas of success into your mind and spirit. Make your priorities the priorities of the kingdom of God. Then when you pray and listen to discern what God wants, you’re more likely to hear it properly.

As you start to live with God’s idea of success, you’ll become less anxious. Your treasure can no longer be stolen by thieves or a plunging stock market, because it’s secure with God.

But you need to be alert, because the world’s values will keep pulling you back. You need to keep refreshing yourselves with Jesus’ teachings about success.

I’m looking forward to Tom Sine appearing in my library on Thursday 24 April - http://vose.wa.edu.au/view/news/20080414142148/. Tom has strong Anabaptist connections, and his latest book, The New Conspirators, looks at the way God is working through emerging, missional, monastic, and mosaic streams of church as heralds of his kingdom.  Please come along!