TMC - Highlight #3 - Church?
posted May 7, 2008 by Bob Roberts Jr.
On pages 39-44, I began the chapter on Global Church Planting Movements and, in doing so; I deal a little with defining the church. You notice the phrase “a little.” The reason is because I think we are lost in our definitions of church. When you say that, automatically we go to our theology–which isn’t bad, but neither is it enough. I’m not anti-theology, but our theology must not be “sola theologia!” When you discuss “church” with Chinese and others, the focus is more on who you are and where that leads you as a community. When you read it in theology books, it’s more the structure and community, and sorely lacking in purpose. For me, Alan Hirsch articulates it about as good as it gets. I also worked with Chris Seiple, President of IGE because of his exposure to the global church and the world as it is. The premise is, we must first understand theologically what the church is before we can function properly. I disagree. I believe we must first live as family committed to loving the least and farthest. When that happens and Jesus is at the center, we behave in certain ways driven by the life of Christ, not polity. THEN, after we’re living the life of Christ, polity can be formed, but not until then. Furthermore, when we say church often we are saying primarily form or model of church, polity, and location. I believe the church is far bigger than my local congregation. If I really believe that, that has huge implications for how I relate to other churches and believers both in my community and worldwide.
The Evangelical Manifesto will be released at the National Press Club in Washington, DC. You can read it here.
Glocalization:
The La
Celebration o
The Divine Conspiracy
The Unshakable
The Prayer Saturate
Engaging God’s World
Worldview: The History of a Concept
Religion, the Missing Dimension of Statecraft
The World Is Flat
The Pentagon’s New Map
Wikinomics
The Book That Transforms Nations
A Billion Bootstraps
My Husband Wants to be a Church Planter (multiple authors, including Niki Roberts, Bob’s wife!)
The Forgotten Ways
Breaking the Missional Code
Organic Church
May 7th, 2008 at 6:43 am
Bob,
Wow. This is incredible. A buddy of mind just sent me a link to your site. Awesome. I’m an Episcopal priest and church planter and one of the things I love about our way of doing things (even while there are many I don’t love) is just this approach to a life of faith shaping our ways of thinking faith. “As we pray, so we believe” is a piece of our framework. We understand that to refer mainly to liturgy — the way in which we worship shapes our understanding –but it applies on a wider scale. It better gets at the Hebraic notion of belief, a whole body enterprise grounded in action, as opposed to the Greco-Roman model of belief as an intellectual exercise. If what Jesus said is true, and the Kingdom of God really is at hand (and I see it everywhere), then individual conversion can never be a solo enterprise. Instead, it becomes a soul-saving, life-changing, vision-expanding transformation into the ongoing redemptive work of the living God. Thanks for your work. Can’t wait to read more. Jay
May 7th, 2008 at 7:21 am
Welcome aboard Jay! I too see the Kingdom of God everywhere - maybe that’s one of the key issues that separates how we do ministry - those who long for it - and those who are engaged in it.
May 7th, 2008 at 9:21 am
This is so huge…one of the primary reasons I’m seeing here for the failure of church starts is that the pastor/lead guy is much more in love with the church (structures, systems, polity, etc) than he is with the people.
And the crazy thing is that after all these failures, the only way we can think to increase our effectiveness is to tweak the model rather than to change things at the core of who we are. Tranformation first in us turns into Transfomation in our friends turns to Tranformation in our churches.
Thank you for continuing to push us toward People and Kingdom and Transformation.
May 7th, 2008 at 12:12 pm
Bob, I think you are right that we are “lost in our definitions of church” at this point. I am encouraged that more people seem to be peering through the mist, though, in search of a better picture. I think Alan Hirsch’s gift has been showing us how apostolic leaders think and what they do (which you have modeled for many of us, and which I am trying to start living out right where I am). Part of the trouble seems to be our whole western and platonic mindset. Even when we start to think about the meaning of church, we seem to immediately want to move toward definitions more than substance (as kc said, changing things at the core of who we are). A friend of mine always says, “The American church loves words.” But I’ve noticed that what always catches fire with people in deep ways are the things that we suspect truly matter: not our definitions, but the places Christ frees us and the mission he invites us to join. My people are a hundred times more fired up about how God is restoring someone’s marriage, our work in a poor Hispanic neighborhood, and the schools and clinic we are building in a Haitian river valley than they are about ANY definition I could give them of “church”. I’ve been thinking about how we, as the followers of Jesus, are invited to live the realities of the kingdom now, knowing that Jesus is Lord of the earth even if the whole world doesn’t know it yet– it seems to me that whatever we conclude “church” means, it must derive from our understanding of the kingdom, and we must see ourselves as manifesting now the kingdom that one day will be as plain as day.
May 7th, 2008 at 1:56 pm
Right on Bob. Sadly, i have noticed that we are more “cultural christians” in America than we are “Scriptual Followers of Christ”. A large bit of the way we “do” church (our church practices) are saturated in OUR culture, instead of based upon the scriptures. As i continue to study the scriptures about what Jesus says about The Church, and how it functions in Acts it saddens me to find little of it in America. However, we’re shifting, and moving everyday and i love it! Thanks for helping us make that shift towards being more Scriptual Christians instead of simply cultural.
May 8th, 2008 at 3:33 am
I wonder where the leadership issue comes in thereby defining the church guys - for example - the early church was led by pastor/missionaries - it seems today it’s teacher/administrators. Do you need each gift? Definitely, the question is where they are placed - because it has a huge implication for where the church is going and how’s its organized.