Rounds 2 & 3: Law vs. Love and Head vs. Heart

I'm going to take a break from the current series to continue the celebrity death match I began with my original post.

This post was inspired by two things: a thread from The Reach, (primarily comment #75, by Jody Bilyeu) and a book called "This Little Church Went to Market," by Gary Gilley.

When a member of our species is passionate about anything, he or she tends to want to turn it into some sort of battle. It's not good enough to be crazy about what I like, I also have to try my best to defy whatever is the opposite.

But to say "Love trumps Law," (as Jody Bilyeu did) or to claim like Gary Gilley that God designed Christianity to be a Thinking Faith, not a Feeling Faith, is like arguing about who's going to win the Super Bowl, the Cubs or the Canucks.

Granted, I don't accuse Jody of hating the Law, or denying its importance. But the battle between love and law only exists in people's heads.

And contrary to Jody's perception, even Jesus never actually broke the law. If Jesus' love was stronger than His law, all He had to do was say in a big voice so the whole world could hear "YOU'RE ALL FORGIVEN!" But what did He really do? He spent His ministry helping people understand what the law really means, before dying for all of us to fulfill the law. A sacrifice was required, and His great love and His perfect righteousness were the only powers strong enough to give us grace within the confines of His law. The fact is, it doesn't make any sense to pit Jesus' law against His love, because neither can be broken by the other.

What does that mean for us? It means that grace is not cheap, and showing God's love for people doesn't consist of standing in the midst of sin and shouting "I'm OK, You're OK!" Never once in scripture does God instruct us to ignore sin, either in ourselves or in others. There are plenty of times He expects us to mind our own business, but we are also called at times to rebuke and reproof. These times must be chosen carefully, however, and must be done with the utmost love. The lifestyle of leaving others' sin between themselves and God, yet lovingly holding them accountable when it's appropriate is a perfect example of Law and Love in concert.

In other words, if your obedience to the Law and to Love is turning into a boxing match, then you're failing at one or both.

Now to Round 3: "Head vs. Heart."

I don't recommend the book, "This Little Church Went to Market." Gary Gilley is a pastor that obviously has an ax to grind, and apparently believes that the church was okey-dokey 100 years ago, before the entertainment industry's hostile takeover.

It is true that the Church has digressed from a thinking institution to a feeling instutution. I won't go into all this, it would take 20 pages. (Even though it only took Gilley 115.) But I think most of us could look around and see that this is generally true.

And as the giant pendulum ceaselessly swings from one irrelevant extreme to the other, there are plenty of those who believe that a return to the glorious intellectualism of yore would take care of the now rampant experientialism. To keep a long story short: It is true that emotion does not lead us a true relationship with God. But neither does the intellect.

100 & 200 years ago the Church was competing with, and is a product of, a worldly paradigm, just as it is today. The 1700s and 1800s was the Age of Reason. Naturally then, the Church would try to be the Church of Reason. Were a lot of thoughtful commentaries written? Sure. Were a lot of great Thinker's Hymns composed? You bet. Did people understand the Bible better and have a firmer grasp on Christian apologetics? Probably. Are these all things we should strive for today? Absolutely.

But did all these things actually result in real faith, in surrendered lives? No. I am so bold because I believe firmly that it is that third component of our selves, apart from head and heart, that brings us to the cross: our Will. Each of us must willingly empty ourselves of all our IQ and EQ in order to be filled with the realness of God. Then he invariably proceeds to use our heads and our hearts for his glory.

And once again, to find that the great thoughts of the Faith and the great experiences of the Faith are colliding in battle, is to discover that we are failing at one or both.

Part 2: First Century Church (The Super-Model)

OK, I lied. I said in a recent comment that my next post would be about the Ancient-Future Church. Let’s make that the next one after this one.

Here’s the reason: Post-Modern Church, as I stated, is a mindset. It is a way to BE the Church, not just a way to DO Church. The same goes for First Century Church.

I see a progression here. There’s GO, then DO, then BE. Godobe. Cool.

Most people’s first experience with Church is just to GO. Observe. Absorb. Maybe participate where it’s comfortable.

The next step for a maturing believer is to DO Church. Help with something. Lead something. Start something.

But the Church is not reaching its potential in anyone’s life until he or she learns to BE the Church. They must recognize that they carry the Church with them everywhere. They are Christ’s kingdom in microcosm. Notice, however, that once a believer begins to be the Church, they will not stop doing or going.

Although “Being” is the last step in the progression, I want to this series to begin with it. Learning how to be the Church involves investigating one’s mindset and lifestyle. That’s why so many people have so much unlearning to do when they start to be the Church. Their DOINGS have been so wrapped up in wrong mindsets and lifestyles. A good grasp of post-modernism is fundamental to understanding how to be the Church in this day and age. And on the opposite end of the historical spectrum is the First Century Church. While working to keep our head in the clouds of current culture, are we also making sure that our feet are planted on God’s own ecclesial foundation?

Let me introduce you to the First Century Church with a paraphrase of Acts 2:42-47:

The first Christians devoted themselves to the Apostle’s teaching, to prayer, to joy, to unity, to eating together, to selflessly providing for one anothers’ needs, to meeting in each others’ homes, and to simple, focused lives. God did miracles among them and drew many people in their communities to Himself and His salvation.

Granted, in a literal sense this talks more about DOING than about BEING. But it is painfully obvious what sort of being was going on here. And that is the mindset and lifestyle of total dedication to God and to each other. Notice that, although it says that they prayed, it doesn’t say how long, or in what language, or in how large a group. Although it says they learned, it doesn’t say who taught, or how many taught, or if there was preaching, or discussion, or quarterlies. Although it says they had joy, it doesn’t say if they expressed it with music, or dancing, or shouting (but they definitely expressed it through EATING.)

My point is… this is not a passage about form or style. It is the definition of Being the Church. God purposely left it up to us to figure out the rest. I believe He did that both to test our unity and showcase our diversity.

How fitting that our own God-inspired Model (Super-Model?) should be so vague. Let us talk and talk till the cows come home and leave again about how to DO Church. Let us pray and experiment and dabble. Let us rejoice in the myriad manifestations of Church. But Father, don’t let us stray from that which you’ve called us to BE.

As the drink says… SoBe.

Part 1: Post-Modern Church (Everything & Nothing)

Let me begin by saying that I hate terms like “Post-Modernism” and “Generation Y” I’d feel the same way if I encountered a poem called “Untitled, Part 2” by Anonymous, Jr. We didn’t know what the last thing was enough to give it a real name, so how much less could we name the sequel?

But things are often defined by names; limited by labels. Such cannot be the case for the term Post-Modernism, since it doesn’t mean anything anyway. And it may be for this reason that Post-Modernism is so broad and difficult to pin down. But I think I’ve got the gist of it, in two parts:

1) A rebellion against Modernism. Although I cannot claim to be one of the few who can really define Modernism either, I can venture that it was an obsession with everything NEW, distinguished by its dissimilarity with everything that’s gone before. The value of anything is determined by its newness; its novelty. So it’s not hard to see why people would want to rebel against it. It became clear that the experience of history (both recent and ancient) should not be chucked out the window like so much moldy bread. Post-Modernism tends to embrace many, if not all, methods, paradigms, preferences, styles, etc. This sometimes excludes Modernism, as you might expect. Some use this sense of pluralism to seek truth in all corners, others use it to broaden truth into total relativism, or nihilism, which brings us to:

2) A rejection of absolute truth, meaning, or value. Although #2 has had little impact within the Church, it represents a veritable revolution in the world around the Church. Where once a Christian could debate with the world which idea is true, now the world rarely takes the bait. They are all true, or all false. Despite the influence of this facet of P-M on the transmission of the Christian message, I will devote the rest of this post to discussing #1, and the part it has played in the continual transformation of the Church.

But first I should mention that which gets called P-M, and is really not. I believe that a majority of those churches who have chosen to change from one generation to the next have never engaged in a true paradigm shift, which is the only way to become Post-Modern. Those churches which are committed to singing only the latest songs, dressing and preaching casually, running a coffee house, and staying up-to-the-minute with their sound and projection systems are really just practicing an extension of modernism, or “Hyper-Modernism” if you will. Although I haven’t researched this term yet, one might call it “Progressive Church.”

Now back to what a Post-Modern church really IS. I think we can agree that a P-M church is defined more by its attitude and philosophy than by how it looks, or what it says and does. I have discussed how P-M considers all perspectives. Since it’s obviously impossible to embrace and practice every method within a single church, P-M takes an infinite number of manifestations. One popular one is the “Ancient Future” church, which I may discuss in more depth in a later post. In short, the ritualism of the past is incorporated into a contemporary setting for the purpose of giving worship a sense of wonder and mysticism. Another approach is be forever exploratory, refusing to settle down on a particular form. This can be powered by the Holy Spirit (or what is perceived to be the Holy Spirit) or by counter-cultural trendiness.

Let me finish by expressing my opinion on the right and wrong ways that people adopt Post-Modernism. First, the bad:

Those who practice Post-Modernism wrongly seem to be driving just another float in the endless parade of Asking the Wrong Question. That question being: “How do we get more people to come to our church?” (or, similarly, “How do we get people to stop leaving our church?”) This is disingenuousness, clear and simple. And although a church may succeed in increasing its attendance/giving through this method, it is no way to please the heart of God. Another P-M pitfall is to let oneself be convinced of the relativity of truth; that one man’s interpretation of scripture is as good as the next. Or worse, that scripture has no transcendent value at all.

Conversely, it is a good thing when people who are already P-M in their mindset choose to approach the gospel in such a way, believing God’s Word, and looking for His truth to reveal itself in myriad forms. The best of these people understand that blessings and God-encounters cannot be “conjured” with formulas, since He works in mysterious ways. They are ready to abandon their comfort zones in order to follow Him anywhere. It is also possible (and good) for people inexperienced with this mindset to seek it out for themselves, in an effort more fully understand the way God works, and the nature of the world around them.

I think that’ll do for now. Thoughts?

"You know, we're like, our OWN genre, man..."

When I was in college, I went to a freshman-sophomore banquet featuring the entertainment of a local rock band. (Why anybody would want to dress formal and sit around a white tablecloth with gourmet food and listen to a rock band is beyond me. But still, our class officers have done much worse.)

What made this moment stand out for me is that, leading up to the banquet, the school newspaper was promoting the band by describing their music as rock, yet unique, defying classification. Sounded good to me. Then when the band got up to play, one of the class officers decided (for some reason) to ask the vocalist what kind of music they play. He said, "You know, we're like, our OWN genre." Whether or not they were any good, my interest was piqued.

So they tuned up, and hit their down beat. Within ten seconds my date and I looked at each other and said "alternative."

That's a lot of words to say this: It's hip for a rock band to defy classification. A lot of them fool themselves into thinking they're doing just that. The same goes for up-to-date, cutting-edge Church. Almost nobody is doing anything completely original, and the few that are, are probably running cults (there's a genre for you.)

As much as we at The Core might sometimes like to think we are original, we're not. The real question is, who are we like? With all sincerity, I will name that which we want most to be like: Jesus, and His first-century Church. In the process we will do things that resemble many other groups. But I for one hope it's more of a by-product than anything.

This is the first post in a series that will explore the "genres" of up-to-date, cutting-edge Church. I do not intend to advertise, or criticize. Hopefully, with your help, I can present an objective view of each, and we can benefit from a closer look. It may change as I go along, but at the moment, these are the ones I intend to hit:

[List edited 1/18/06]

Post-Modern Church

First Century Church

Ancient-Future Church

House Church

Cell Church

Organic Church

What other classifications would you like to explore? Speak up, now. I look forward to lots of input as this study unfolds.