Church Membership Is Not Enough

Posted on July 25, 2009

…Rather than thinking we should get rid of church membership, I do not believe that church membership is enough.

…Unfortunately, membership in a local church sometimes feels like joining a gym. You start going for a few weeks and then stop when you get too busy….

We have a different approach at Mosaic. Anyone can be a part of our community no matter where they are in their spiritual journey. People are allowed to belong before they believe. It has been a beautiful experience to see people from diverse ethnic, socioeconomic, and spiritual backgrounds come together to discover that God loves us and that His name is Jesus….

Allowing people to belong before they believe and mobilizing volunteers to serve with such a high level of authority and responsibility comes with great risks and great rewards….

Read the entire article here.

Listen to the Scot McKnight Conference Call

Posted on July 23, 2009

Listen to the Conference Call with Scot McKnight from July 7th.

Scot McKnight is a New Testament professor at North Park University, prolific blogger, author of several books including The Blue Parakeet and JesusCreed, part of the Origins Project creative team, and a Chicago Cubs fan.

For previous interviews with Skye Jethani, Erwin McManus, Dan Kimball, Mark Batterson, Dave Gibbons, and many others go here.

A Change Beyond Criticism

Posted on July 17, 2009

Charles Lee is the lead pastor of New Hope, and one of the driving forces behind Idea Camp which is a new way of doing conferences.

In a world where customer  is KING, it’s no wonder that many of us have culturally nurtured an unhealthy perspective of entitlement and voicing complaints. Whether it’s a standard, style, or service, it has become commonplace to feel that we have a right to complain if our expectations are not met.

Unfortunately, the same worldview has clearly permeated much of the Church. In addition, the emergence of new media has given incredible voice and influence to the average person, either for good or you know…

Are many of the complaints warranted? Honestly, I think many complaints about the Church are quite legitimate.

BUT… Please keep a few things in mind as you consider broadcasting complaints about the Church…

1. Think Change, Not Compensation
   • In a consumer-based culture, the goals of the complainer are often to (1) be heard and acknowledged by those who have wronged them and (2) receive some kind of compensation (usually, more than the fair amount) for the inconvenience or pain experienced. Rarely, if ever, do consumers think of bettering the business or organization that has wronged them during such interactions. As a result, complaint rarely leads to healthy change. It’s really about compensation, not change.
   • For those in the Church, this must NOT be our worldview. Even if we have legitimate complaints about how things may be run or communicated, our goal should NOT end with airing complaints nor seeking compensation. The difference in the Church is that the organization is not suppose to be primarily a “service”-oriented entity in the same way as a product. The center of the organization is NOT us! It’s actually someone named Jesus…or something like that.
   • Over the past 20+ years of being in church leadership, I’ve heard and participated in many movements that accurately pointed out the inadequacies of the Church. Unfortunately, many of these movements, did not provide an embodied alternative for how things could be. Although many paradigms shifted philosophically, most defaulted back to an old methodology and system that created the problems in the first place while others shifted philosophically, but did not possess a workable plan or system.
2. A Rationalization for Paralysis
   • In my experience, it appears to be that those who often complain the most, whether in a company, church, or organization, have a tendency for using the complaint to rationalize away the energy needed for their participation and problem-solving. Whether it’s the language of burn-out, disconnectedness, new passions, transitions, lack of time or resources, etc., the reality is that it’s easier for us use our dissatisfaction as a reason for paralysis and inactivity than to catalyze change. It’s true, complaining exerts a lot less energy and is more enjoyable than actually doing something about a problem.
   • In the context of the Church, this perspective will result in discouragement for leadership, disunity, confusion, lack of motivation and energy, etc. It’s unfortunate that it only takes a few vocal individuals to drain the life out of a group.
   • Consider that the Church we highlight faults in is still Christ’s Church; a Church he loves, cherishes, and seeks to work in and through.
3. Difference Between a Freedom of Can and a Freedom of Should
   • I think it’s important in this conversation that we make a clear distinction between the freedom to say what we want and the freedom to say what we ought. Some historians have pointed out that our Constitution’s upholding of freedom of speech was originally instituted to make sure people had freedom to speak what ought to be said. In other words, it implied that freedom was deeply connected with some kind of moral responsibility.
   • In other words, just because we have the freedom and technology to be critical about the inadequacies of the Church, it doesn’t follow from there that we ought to be. Scripture is very clear that in moments of great trials, suffering, or injustice, our tongues can become a great source of evil (James 1-2). We must work towards better reframing our conversations.

If your posture remains humble and open, while our goal focuses on mutual change, we will be far better off as a Church than simply airing our complaints. Don’t you want to be a part of movement that brings change by identifying and embodying how the Church could be rather than what the Church is not?

The Beat-Attitudes

Posted on July 15, 2009

Marlon Hall is the cultural architect and spiritual leader of the Awakenings Movement, a grassroots church community of social visionaries who worship in and serve out of coffee shops, clubs and bars in Houston, Nairobi, and Detroit.

 

 

 

 

 

I’m a leader in a church designed to reach folks on the fringe. We discover sacred potential in secular places by worshiping and doing life in public all over the inner-city of Houston. In fact, during the week we work out of a Muslim coffee shop where we do our coaching, hold meetings, and host discussion communities and Bible studies.

It sounds cool, but it’s hard. This approach to living out the Great Commission makes us open to public criticism and persecution daily. Our theme verse could easily come from The Beatitudes, where Matthew 5:10 says: “Blessed are those who are beat up, kicked, and thumped for righteousness, because the Kingdom of Heaven is theirs.” I like to call this verse on of the “Beat-Attitudes” because we are constantly emotionally and mentally beaten.

For instance, one day I was in the coffee shop talking to Thurman “T” Brown—an agnostic filmmaker who had “beaten” me often and who, I assumed, was only using my faith as a reference for future film projects about “misguided” Christians—when an unfamiliar patron began a conversation with us, saying she’d heard I was a “down-to-earth prophet and priest of the coffee shop” and needed to talk.

I pretended to be hard of hearing and asked, “Could you say that again?” (Just to be sure T heard her too.) She then stated that what we were doing for Christ in the shop was working.

Finally, our hard work in the trenches of grassroots ministry was paying off! Like an inner-city Enoch, I had finally ascended to heavenly places. In that moment I was practically standing to the right of Moses, who was to the right of Christ, who is seated at the right of God the Father. I was the man, next to the man, next to The Man.

With a soft, sweet voice she said, “I need your help.”

I wanted to respond like an astute urban Pope with a, “Yes, my child”, but I kept my cool. “Yeah, what’s up?”

Then out of no where, in a volume more elevated, she asked, “How does it feel to propagate a white man’s copy-cat religion that promotes drinking blood every first Sunday?”

At first, I was speechless. Then I realized this was my weekly tax for public life ministry. After a few doctrinal references, curse words and passionate arm-flailing gestures (not as many on my part) I soon realized there was nothing casual about this conversation, and I felt like a failure.

To this woman, I was just the man, next to the man, next to the other culturally irrelevant, simple-minded pastors she’d experienced all her life. To her, I—as well as my message—lacked authenticity.

Even though I was hurt, those Beat-Attitudes kicked in. I stopped to process her challenge differently. Like a shopper who thumps a cantaloupe and then listens to test its integrity; she was thumping me to hear God’s freedom resound in my heart. This wonderful woman was seeking to authenticate Christ’s presence in the world from her seat in that coffee shop and God had chosen me to help her do it. I was the melon in the garden of God’s grace that she was thumping, to test His integrity. What an honor it should have been to be the resonant vibration of God’s power in the face of persecution.

As she shared her closing statements, I was awakened to the fact that by living out the Beat-Attitudes, I get to see real love, freedom and truth flow through me. And then, just as I was about to stand and declare that I was honored to be a member of a mystic tribe that lives in a promised land of freedom which flows with emotional milk and mental honey, guess who stood up for me?

T.

Thurman T. Brown stood and boldly stated, “Calm down, sis. This dude is the real deal.” He went on to say that what he’d seen in our weekly discussion community and our very presence in the community represented something true, something real.

I suddenly saw that this dude who’d made a habit of thumping me himself in that same coffee shop, just authenticated Christ in that precious moment.

To this day T. and I still talk about life, love and film over a cup of coffee like we always have, but lately, for me, our conversations seem to be about so much more. 

Written by Marlon R. Hall

Abolishing Poverty Pt. 2

Posted on July 10, 2009

Abolishing Poverty

Abolishing Poverty

Posted on July 9, 2009

Taking Heat from the Watch Dogs

Posted on July 3, 2009

“Taking Heat” written by Erwin Raphael McManus

One of the most curious things I have experienced about the church in the U.S. is the reaction that becoming a truly missional community has on most churches and perhaps especially vanguard theologians. One of the surest ways of becoming suspect to mainline evangelicalism is to actually reorient the church around the mission of Christ.

The first core value of the Mosaic Alliance is “Mission is why the Church exists.” When you throw into the mix that we are focusing on reaching those who are farthest from the gospel (and therefore from Christian culture) then things start getting really interesting.

The challenge of course is that we far too often confuse approach with orthodoxy. It only feels biblical if we do it the way we have always done it. We create our own rituals that confirm our orthodoxy and that becomes the measure by which we judge everyone else’s work.

For some reason it is easier for us to be more open when it is a missionary in a far away country. When our friends from Mississippi move to an unnamed city in the Middle East or in Asia we get it. They have to learn a new language, they begin to dress differently, and they begin to learn the culture.

They also begin to look for connecting points between the religion and beliefs of their people group and the truth of the Scripture. They start with where the people are and slowly begin to build trust and confidence so that those they are burdened for might become open to the Scriptures and the gospel and ultimately to Jesus.

Some places and peoples are so open that mass crusades draw thousands. Other places require a different approach- a far more specialized approach. The difference is like that of a general practitioner and a surgeon. Our tension is often influenced by the great results we see among wonderfully open people. We begin to assume this is the approach that God affirms for every place and situation and everyone must adhere to this same process.  But you don’t use the same approach to treat the flu and to treat cancer. Nor do you get the same results. In fact the one that is more critical and more urgent is also the one with the most unknown and the least success. In the end the one who failed may be the one who endeavored to accomplish the most noble of tasks.

What is happening across the world and here at home is that there is an army of cross cultural missionaries who have become the new leaders of the church. Their calling isn’t to pastor churches that focus on the happiness of its members, but to mobilize the church for the purpose of fulfilling God’s mission of reconciling the world to himself. We used to send our missionaries out and it kept the mission a safe distance from us. Some how they broke back in and decided they were not going without us.

At Mosaic we have no members only missionaries. There is nothing to join except a community on mission. We have little patience for self indulgent spirituality that insists on everything being about us.

And there are implications. We have a zero tolerance policy for religious jargon or Christianese. We have little room for traditions that mean something to us but nothing to a person searching for God. We will not forsake the Word of God for the traditions of men. We are committed to removing every non-essential barrier between God and humanity. We refuse to allow the Gospel to become lost in our nostalgia or to appear irrelevant because we are.

And I must confess we are less concerned about whether mainstream Christians get us than about whether those searching for God get Him.

And if this makes us the bane of the church than so be it. Paul said he would be accursed if only Israel would be saved. If he was willing to take on hell for eternity, we can take a little heat from the watch dogs of Christian orthodoxy.