Pastors should not complain about their congregations, certainly never to other people, but also not to God. A congregation has not been entrusted to them in order that they should become its accuser before God and others.

The only church we know is the local church found in a neighborhood.  The only church we know is the mysterious and messy church made up of people with depth and maturity, and those who have many miles to walk on that journey.  This local congregation is the people of God, the body of Christ, and the temple of the Spirit.   This local church is the one that has been entrusted to teams of pastors and lay leaders.

Pastors start complaining, not without good reason. The work becomes burdensome. The hours are long. The accomplishments are sometimes difficult to see. The criticisms flood in. Still, pastors are called to task of faithful service.  Pastors are to ambitious for the gospel, not in a hyper-productive, success driven sense, but rather pastors are called to nurture a congregational environment where the presence and power of God might be manifested among the people leading to a missional vocation in the world. This local church will be characterized by beauty and vitality and flourishing, not by destructive habits, corruption or mediocrity.

The task towards congregational renewal does not rest solely on pastors. Rather, it is the call of the entire congregation, guided by the Spirit, to discern the movements of the Spirit and then to obediently follow. Still, it is the responsibility of pastors to humbly and joyfully tend to and draw a congregation towards greater fruitfulness.  Pastors, church leaders,  don’t get to complain.  Pastors enter into service anew, strengthened by the Lord, and yearning for extra measures of patience, and grace.

This drift towards institutionalization is a problem that all institutions are subject to whether religious, educational, political or marketplace.  What begins as a wild idea becomes a fire like movement, but over time, unless there is intentional resistance by heretics who continue to throw catalytic agents into the mix, the wild movement becomes domesticated, tame and passe.

Fredrickson: Covenant/Mission Friends

In the 1940’s Dietrich Bonhoeffer noted  “The church is only the church when it exists for others.” So among other things he suggests, “clergy must live solely on the free-will offerings of their congregations, or possibly engage in some secular calling” (Letters and Papers from Prison). This proposal is radical, still every pastor should consider the spirit of Bonhoeffer’s words and choose to engage the neighborhood.  The possibilities are many: serve as a police or fire chaplain, join a service club, meet regularly with other ministers, get involved in community efforts, serve the poor.

I have been away for sometime. Sorry about that!  I just finished my dissertation and sent it off to the Research Librarian at Fuller Theological Seminary for a final look over. I will be earning my PhD in Intercultural Studies from Fuller in June.  My dissertation concerns a missional imagining for denominational structures that are not hierarchical, but rather emerging from a missionally nurtured environment.  My dissertation is called: An Ecclesial Ecology for Denominational Futures: Nurturing Organic Structures for Missional Engagement. You will hear more about this in the future.

For now…I am back…here is a message I posted last Easter.  Happy Easter to all of you.

I am a proud member of a Rotary Club in my hometown.  I have been in Rotary for over ten years. I faithfully pay my dues, attend meetings, work on projects that better my community, traveled to Peru and Zambia working on projects to better those regions of the world.  I have met wonderful people through Rotary.  Some of my very best friends are in Rotary.

William Temple once said that the church is the only society that exists for the benefit of non-members.  Temple was wrong. Rotary is an amazing organization that though not perfect, exists for the sake of others. It does good work in local communities and around the world.  It is a leading force for a number of causes: stamping out polio around the world, helping people gain mobility through wheelchairs, fighting HIV/AIDS in sub-Sahara Africa, battling malaria, and creating sources for clean water.

Often I find that the church is an organization that, in spite of its language and mission statements, exists for itself.  Dietrich Bonhoeffer says the church is only the church when it exists for others.  In his day, and in our day, we know the church falls short of that description.

Easter is upon us.  Again we celebrate the amazing good news that Jesus Christ is risen.

Rotary is a fantastic organization, but it is not the church. The church is also called to make a difference in this world, to exist for others. The  church is radically different from Rotary because the church  is constituted by the Easter event. Because Jesus is risen, everything changes.  Paul reminds us that anyone who is in Christ is a new creation, the old is gone, the new has come (2 Corinthians 5:17)

This Easter event is to so captivate our hearts that we cannot keep silent! As great as my Rotary Club is, it cannot change hearts or transform societies.  The Easter message makes the most outrageous of claims:  the power of the risen Christ makes all things new.

This gives us great hope! This hope impacts the way we live and work today. Because of Jesus everything changes. We have a hope-filled mission. We do not sit back and wait for heaven, rather we engage in our world and become a sign and an agent of the good that God desires for his loved creation.

I will continue to be a proud Rotarian, but this always pales in the light of Easter. Christ is Risen!  He is Risen indeed. This is the hope of world, and the hope and joy for my life.

Those who imagine missional change in the church are unicorns! And they are also seen as heretics–people who go against the status quo.

Wilbert Shenk, senior professor at Fuller Seminary, notes a number of strategies for renewal that have been evidenced throughout the history of the church (Shenk 1997:157-158).

First, churches renew through a reaffirming of tradition. This mode seeks to recapture the original identity of the church. This is the church always reforming with change emerging out of the past. This mode defends and promotes tradition. This mode can inhibit mission.

Second, churches renew through restructuring. This option recognizes that structures can become sterile. So organizations need to be streamlined for efficiency.  Restructuring often does not stimulate vision or commitment.

Third, renewal occurs through ‘mainstreaming’ the church. This method is driven by culture. Here the church becomes culturally embedded and reactive, thus it often lacks an ability to become a distinct presence in society.

Fourth, renewal occurs through attempts to restore the primitive church. This model is built upon the New Testament apostolic model. It seeks to replicate the original church as found in the New Testament.  This is an a-historical model without memory. This model ignores or denies that the Spirit of God has been active in the church since the primitive period, and the Spirit has been active in a variety of ways. This model elevates the New Testament period without regard for current cultural considerations. This is the method encouraged recently by Frank Viola in his books Pagan Christianity? and Reimagining Church.

Shenk’s fifth model for renewal is missionary engagement. This model is built upon the biblical concept of missio Dei. It witnesses to the reign of God in history. With this model, renewal is concerned with the recovery of the churches primary reason for existence. It is linked to the church’s engagement in society.   Context takes priority over structure.  This model of church renewal, Shenk notes, sets an agenda based on the heart cries of the culture and it reads Scripture and is drawn to Scripture in new ways in light of the anxieties of contemporary culture. This fifth model provides the way forward. It becomes the missiological basis for churchly re-imagination.

Abraham Joshua Heschel in God in Search of Man despairs about the impotency of religion:

It is customary to blame secular science and anti-religious philosophy for the eclipse of religion in modern society.  It would be more honest to blame religion for its own defeats. Religion declined not because it was refuted, but because it became irrelevant, dull, oppressive, insipid.  When faith is completely replaced by creed, worship by discipline, love by habit; when the crisis of today is ignored because of the splendor of the past; when faith becomes an heirloom rather than a living fountain; when religion speaks only in the name of authority rather than with the tone of compassion—the message becomes meaningless.

As we imagine new ways to be church that connects Good News with the hurts of our world, we need to take the position of a unicorn. It will be risky and it will make people nervous. But this is necessary–for the sake of the gospel, and for the sake of the world.