What Language are we Speaking?

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It has become increasingly obvious for me in these last days that our Christian communities are in dire need of some serious introspection about the nature and content of our ministry in the world.  In attempt to engage this discussion I am co-teaching a class entitled “The Acts of the Church for the 21st Century.”  Below is a description of the aim of this class.  I would appreciate your thoughts regarding this objective.  How needed is it?  How right or wrong is the direction?  If is it needed, have I idenitified the chief stumbling blocks facing our mission in the world? 

The Acts of the Church  for the 21^st Century

The book of Acts teaches us in principle what the natural response was for a community of people who were saved by Christ and who then allowed His Spirit to live and breathe through them.  The acts of the church in the 1^st century were the result of people being genuinely transformed by Christ.  It seems a bit odd for me to suggest that we need to teach the acts of the church…since the story that was told by Luke in Scripture was written by a people who genuinely accepted that they had played a crucial role in crucifying the Son of God and were overflowing with gratitude at the gift that was given to them by that very Son of God whom they had crucified.  To be generous after that point was not an aim or objective…it was almost involuntary…stemming from their new nature…the law of the Spirit of Life triumphing over the law of Sin and Death!

            Understanding the driving force behind the beautifully written story of the 1^st century Christians is vital to our unpacking how we are to write our story in the 21^st century.  The goal is certainly NOT to do everything the way they did.  Our goal IS to join the 1^st century Christians in principle.  This is the key to discovering the value of all Scripture…identifying first what it meant to the original audience (to the best of our ability) and then (and only then) moving towards what it means today.

            The reason why this study is so significant is b/c we have done a terrible job of putting into practice the principles of the 1^st century church.  Why do I believe that this is true?  Because we are not growing.  Every statistical angle we can look at shows that the church (at least in America) is shrinking even while the population is growing.  (We are not even holding on to our own kids.  The Christian Chronicle has been chronicling this decline for some time.) I believe that if we were living in accord with the Spirit of the 1^st century church that we would be growing.  I refuse to believe that the same Spirit that was at work in the 1^st century church…that the power that was on display when the Gospel was proclaimed in words and action…is any less powerful TODAY!  If we believe that the Word is unchanging, that God is just as powerful today as He was 2000 years ago…then what’s the alternative?  Who is the variable?  Hasn’t Satan gotten too strong for God’s message?  NO!  We are the variable.  We have been too preoccupied with self-sustaining behavior…walling ourselves off behind our buildings and church social clubs…“loving people” from a distance…that God’s Spirit has not had a chance to infect the lives of others.  What is there to witness (Acts 1:8) when we are not visible to the world? 

            Additionally, we are faced with the challenge of the stigma that has been cast on the Christian world by outsiders.  When we have come out from behind our walls…we have put a target on the back of the non-Christian.  Everything that we have done has been in order to accomplish two things.  The first and most pressing issue is that the world knows that we are Christians:  we condemn others for cussing in our presence…we make snap judgments about moral dilemmas…we share how we voted on Prop 8, etc.  Whether we verbally confess to it or not, the reason why we do these things is NOT for the benefit of those that we contact in the world…it is for OUR benefit…the security that comes from having well-defined boundaries between us and the world.  The second driving force has been to “Church” people.  We target people not to build genuine relationships with them, but to “church” them.  Personally, I think unchurched people should remain un-churched, but un-Jesused people definitely need Jesus-ed.  If that happens they will find the CHURCH (at least the church that I want to be a part of!)

            The goal of this class is to unchurch the churched and to begin to write a better story in the 21^st century, one that will allow the Spirit of Christ to become visible to the broader culture who sees no difference between Jesus, Mohammed or Buddha.  The key to this is not necessarily a case of changing the well-meaning of most Christians.  I believe our hearts are by and large in the right place.  However, we have been too deeply instructed by our church culture and the modern world to understand how to connect with the post-modern world of the 21^st century.  If we do not go through a process of de-construction…we may not see that our well-intentioned acts are actually having the reverse effect of our desires…we are driving away the very people that we long to draw near. 

            In addition to the book of Acts, we will be calling upon the works of David Kinnaman whose research is found in the book Unchristian, as well as Dan Kimball’s They Like Jesus But Not the Church.  May we approach this study with humility and have an open heart to listen to the concerns of the world around us.  They are crying out for Jesus still.  Will we give them Jesus or church propaganda?

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