Clarence Jordan... Radical Follower of Jesus

Clarence Jordan is one of my faith heroes.  He was a walking, talking, living, breathing example of authentic Christian faith.

Jordan grew up in a Christian home in the deep south. From an early age he was troubled by the poverty and racism that afflicted the black community, even though blacks and whites served the same God. He decided to study Agriculture at the University of Georgia with the aim of helping poor, black sharecroppers.

During his years in college however, he discovered that the roots of poverty and injustice were not merely economic but spiritual as well. So he decided to go to seminary after completing his bachelors degree. He earned a Ph.D in Greek in 1938.  

Following his marriage to Florence Kroeger, the Jordans wanted to find a way to combine an interest in agriculture and a passion for the Gospel of Jesus. They moved to Sumter County, Georgia to live out the teachings of Jesus in the midst of the poverty and racism of the rural south.

The Jordans envisioned a place where blacks and whites could live and work together in a spirit of partnership.  They sensed a radical call to live as disciples of Jesus, and wanted to create a community that was committed to racial integration, nonviolence, a simplified lifestyle, sharing of possions and stewardship of the land and its resources.  The blueprint for this community came straight out of the Bible in the Book of Acts.

This experiment was called Koinonia, from the Greek word for community.  Koinonia Farm was developed as an interracial Christian community in Americus, Georgia. Jordan referred to the adventure as a "demonstration plot for the kingdom of God."

Clarence Jordan believed that the incarnation was the only effective method of evangelization. He said, "We haven't gotten anywhere until we see the Word become flesh." Jordan's understanding of the incarnation became a major theme of his life. 

Here's an example of the incarnational theology of Clarence Jordan taken from "The Subsance of Faith and Other Cotton Patch Sermons."

What the virgin birth is trying to say to us is not that a man became divine, but that God Almighty took the initiative and established permanent residence on this earth!

Now we, today,…have reversed the incarnation. Instead of the Word becoming flesh and dwelling among us, we turn it around and we take a bit of flesh and deify it. We have deified Jesus and, thus, effectively rid ourselves of him even more than if we had crucified him. When God becomes a man, we don’t know what to do with him. If he will just stay God, like a God ought to be, then we can deal with him. We can sing songs to him if he’ll just stay God…. We can build our cathedrals to him. This is the bind we get in today. We reverse the action—from heaven to earth—and we turn it around and build it from earth to heaven. And salvation becomes something that we will attain someday, rather than God coming to earth to be among us. So we build churches, we set up great monuments to God and we reject him as a human being.

A church in Georgia just set up a big $25,000 granite fountain on its lawn, circulating water to the tune of 1,000 gallons a minute. Now that ought to be enough to satisfy any Baptist. But what on earth is a church doing taking God Almighty’s money in a time of great need like this and setting up a little old fountain on its lawn to bubble water around? I was thirsty…and you built me a fountain. We can handle God as long as he stays God. We can build him a fountain. But when he becomes a man we have to give him a cup of water. So the virgin birth is simply the great transcendent truth that God Almighty has come into the affairs of man and dwells among us.

Three Things I Learned from my Father

1. Learn to laugh at yourself - My dad loved to dance for his son and daughters.  Sometimes on Sunday afternoons while Mom was finishing our Sunday dinner, Dad would entertain us with his version of an Irish jig or a Polka.  He taught me to do the Polka by placing my feet on his feet and we would hop-step-hop around the living room.  

Dad didn't go out dancing with my mom.  The only time he ever danced was on Sunday afternoons for our amusement.  He knew he looked a little silly, and that's why he loved to dance for us.

By learning to laugh at himself, Dad was less likely to be offended when others laughed at him.  And that was an important life lesson.  Those who are easily offended spend way too much time trying to defend themselves.  They become defensive, argumentative, conflicted.

The scriptures have a lot to say about avoiding conflict... "Yanking a dog's ears is a foolish as interfering in someone else's argument" (Proverbs 26:17). "Avoiding a fight is a mark of honor; only fools insist on quarreling" (Proverbs 20:3).

2. Don't let others use you... use yourself for others - Dad was a skilled plumber and should have been able to earn a good living at Krouses Plumbing and Heating. But he did too much work for free.

If a boiler broke down and there was no heat in a neighbor's house, Dad fixed or replaced the boiler, whether or not they could afford to pay him.  And many times when we were out of town visiting friends or family, Dad spent the entire visit in the basement fixing something.

Some people have a way with words, others speak through their actions.  Dad was the later.  His life was a kind of proverb that declared, "Selfishness invites misery but selflessness summons contentment."

3. Nothing is ever so broken that it can't be fixed - Long after others might have given up, Dad would continue tinkering and tweaking until what was broken got fixed.  

I worked as a piano salesman in Philadelphia for about a year while I was in college.  The piano store was in the first floor of a two story building on Germantown Avenue.  The second story had several neglected apartments and one of the apartments developed a signifcant leak in the sewage line right above the piano showroom.

My boss called a plumber who was unable to fix the problem, but that didn't keep him from sending a sizable bill for his trouble.  After paying three plumbers to fix the problem, sewage from above still dripped on the pianos below.  

I said, "I wish my dad was here.  He'd be able to fix things."  Dad and Mom lived several hours away in western Pennsylvania.  My boss said, "Tell your dad I'll give him $200 just to come and look at the problem.  Back then, $200 was a lot of money.  A starting school teacher in those days made around $6,000 a year.

Dad came to Philly, diagnosed and fixed the problem in a couple of hours and then didn't want to take $200 for a few hours of work.  So my boss found a number of other things that needed to be fixed until Dad thought he had done enough to earn the money.

I didn't grow up to be a plumber.   God saw fit to pass my dad's ability to fix "things" on to my sons.  But if Dad believed "Nothing is ever so broken that it can't be fixed," I grew up to believe "No one is ever so broken that they can't be fixed."

When John the Baptist was imprisoned and realized that his days might be numbered, he sent some of his disciples to Jesus to ask if he was truly the Messiah or if they should wait for someone else.

Jesus told them, "Go back to John and tell him what you have heard and seen - the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised to life, and Good News is being preached to the poor" (Matthew 11:4-6).

Then a little further down in that passage Jesus continued with this invitation, "Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heaven burdens, and I will give you rest" (verse 28).

Jesus was devoted to fixing broken lives. Sometimes they had "things" in their bodies that needed to be fixed.  But many times it was their faith that needed to be restored or a relationship that needed to be healed, or a corrupt heart that needed to be cleansed. 

Jesus probably never uttered the phrase, "No one is ever so broken that they can't be fixed," but his life shouted those words!

Carmen Sandiego and The Mystery of the Missing Horse

Carmen Sandiego is the name of a series of educational computer games developed by Broderbund software back in the 80's.  My sons loved to play "Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego," the first game in that series.

The game followed the exploits of Carmen, a cunning international thief who committed crimes all around the world.  Each game provided a series of clues that would help the gamer find and arrest one of Carmen's accomplices. To find the clues the gamer needed to answer questions about history and geography.  It was a fun, educational game.

I thought about the game this morning after reading the story of Paul's conversion in Acts chapter 9.  I've read the story dozens of times and was sure that Paul fell from a horse after hearing the voice of Jesus and being startled by a blinding light while on his way to Damascus. But when I read the story this morning, there was no mention of a horse.  That's when "The mystery of the Missing Horse" began to take shape.

I was sure I could solve the mystery by turning to my Greek lexicon. Apparently the Bible translation I was reading didn't translate the word "horse" from the original Greek text.  But the mystery went unsolved because the original Greek text doesn't mention a horse.

Then I remembered that the story of Paul's conversion is retold in two other places in the Book of Acts (Acts 22:6-7, Acts 26:12-14). But neither of those texts mention a "horse" either. So where did I get the idea that Paul fell from a horse on his way to Damascus?

It turns out that one of my favorite paintings "The Conversion on the way to Damascus," painted by Caravaggio in 1601 shows Paul on the ground beneath a horse. I have admired the painting from the first time I saw it in an Art History book during college.  Years later I was staggered when I saw the actual painting in a tiny chapel in Rome when my wife Carol and I were there for our 25th wedding anniversary.  

It had started to rain one evening as we walked through the Piazza del Popolo, so we ducked into a tiny, nondescript chapel... and there was Caravaggio's  masterpiece.  Amazing!

So what's the point?

The point is this: how many times and in how many ways have we embellished God's story with personal biases and inaccurate details that were never part of the story?

This may not seem to be much of a problem in the story of Paul's conversion.  The main point of the story is neither harmed nor enhanced by the appearance of a horse.  Paul still heard the word of the Lord and did great things for God.

On the other hand... most of the religious leaders back in the first century rejected Jesus because they had a different version of the messianic story than the story Jesus came to proclaim.  And they didn't just disagree with Jesus' version of the story, they had him killed to keep him from telling his story. 

The story of Jesus and his love is a life changing story... when we get the story right and keep the story straight. It has been 54 years since I first embraced his story, and it continues to convict, challenge and change the way I think and act. I've never felt the need to add anything to his story, and never wanted to delete anything from the story.  

Here's my challenge: Let's take the story in, keep the story straight, live the story out and pass the story on.  Amen!

Measuring the Effectiveness of Our Mission

Edgar Schein, Professor of Management at MIT, says that whatever an organization measures and how it measures it becomes its de facto culture.

Churches and ministry organizations write mission statements that sound good on paper. But these only articulate wishful thinking if the way they measure success is contrary to those lofty mission statements.

Here is a random church’s mission statement taken from the internet:

“Our church seeks to make disciples for our Lord Jesus Christ through Christ-centered worship, Bible-centered spiritual growth, and evangelistic service.” 

Okay. That sounds pretty good, but how do you measure that?

The most widely used tools for measuring success, according to Thom Rainer and Ed Stetzer, are  “bodies, budget, and buildings,” in other words, how many people attend on Sunday, how much is collected in the offering, and how large the church facilities are (see Rainer and Stetzer’s Transformational Church: Creating a New Scorecard for Congregations)

However, if these are our primary measuring tools, this mission statement should read:

“Our church seeks to get as many people as possible to commit to attending our Sunday morning worship services and tithing.”

Hmmm…

Is that a good mission statement? How does that align with God’s mission in the world?

The mission that God has sent us on is not to attract people into the church. No, the goal is to send people into the culture as incarnational “little versions of Jesus” invading every institution and sphere as God’s instrument for bringing all things under the Lordship of Christ and His Kingdom.

The Gospel of Matthew offers this brief, telling outline of Jesus Mission:

Jesus traveled through all the towns and villages of that area, teaching in the synagogues and announcing the Good News about the Kingdom. And he healed every kind of disease and illness. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them because they were confused and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.  He said to his disciples, “The harvest is great, but the workers are few. So pray to the Lord who is in charge of the harvest; ask him to send more workers into his fields.” (Matthew 9:35-38)

What would happen if we faithfully followed this outline to measure our faithfulness to the mission of Jesus? 

(most of this was taken from a blog by Bob Robinson)

Will Grandma's Church be there for the Grandkids?

WHY CLASSICAL CHURCH PLANTING IS FAILING

The increasing failure of traditional church models to engage the millennial generation, coupled with the reality that our churches’ memberships are literally dying out, is the new reality of the Christian religious environment in America. And so, as I have continued to take a look at the future of church planting while asking innovative questions about what it will look like, a couple statistics have stood out to me as particularly relevant:

• According to a study on church planting sustainability by the Center for Missional Research from 2007, only about 68% of churches are still around in their 4th year of operation.
• Congruently, in a recent Pew study, those who now self-identify as Christian have dropped nearly 8% since 2007, and those who self-identify as atheist, agnostic, or non-religious (the ‘nones’), have risen 33% up to 56-mil from 19-mil in the US in the same amount of time.

To be fair, although Christianity in America is by no means disappearing, with around 70% of Americans still claiming it and making it the US’ leading religion, the numbers themselves insist that the trend is unavoidably on the decline. Whether or not about 32% of new church plants are failing because mother churches drop their funding after year three is unclear, but it seems likely that it’s a root cause when coupled with a classical model of church that is becoming increasingly irrelevant to the up and coming generations.

One branch of the church wants to attribute the rising numbers of the “nones,” and the falling number of Christians to mere lukewarmness playing itself out. But, another hypothesis suggests that one of the more prevalent causes is actually an old and ineffective model of church that is attempting to engage a new generation in communities and practices that may have worked 40 years ago, but are no longer compelling.

MILLENNIALS AREN’T INTERESTED IN YOUR HOUR-LONG SERMON

The idea that you can preserve a 40 year-old model of church in a church plant in 2015 and give it a little money, hire a secretary, and parachute drop it in to a city, has become a tired methodology for our churches. The crazy thing is, people still try it! Again, to be fair, there will always be anomalies and places where this may work because the cultural consciousness is still 40 years in the past. However, today we need to ask more questions about what thriving communities with replication built into their DNA will look like. In other words, if our hour-long exegetical sermons are putting millennials to sleep (and that is not a knock on good biblical scholarship), how can we awaken an enlivened, self-sustaining, reproducing church model for the future?

3 SUGGESTIONS FOR A WAY FORWARD

Here’s a threefold methodology for the first year of a new plant that may point us in the right direction and offer us a way forward:

1. Take the first year to understand the community you are engaging. Ask questions and learn about the local people and their needs instead of expecting immediate results in the form of new baptisms and membership.
2. Become aware of the costs associated with your community coming in. This could be everything from the price of your housing to what it will take to make your community a viable financial option for you and your family.
3. Whereas church planting can often be a lonely scenario, instead plant in an area with a cohort of other innovators. This will remediate the loneliness-factor and give planters instant solidarity in a time where most pastors struggle to find deep community.

(Written by Spencer Burke, Founding Executive Director of Hatchery LA, an incubator for Common Cause Communities.  For more information check out http://hatcheryla.com)

God is doing a New Thing

It is happening again. A new species of church is emerging throughout North America and other western nations. Both in major cities and in rural areas, a unique kind of church life is peeking through like the fresh growth of new crops pressing through the surface of the soil each spring.

Hungry for community and relationship, people are learning the values of the kingdom by first-hand participation. They meet in small groups in homes, offices, boardrooms or restaurants. Church becomes a way of life where discipleship and growth occurs naturally as everyone develops their gifts and “learns by doing,” under the mentorship of spiritual fathers and mothers. I like to call this fledgling grassroots phenomenon “house church networks.”

Within the next years, I believe these new house church networks will dot the landscape of North America just as they already do in other nations of the world. Places like China, central Asia, Latin America, India and Cambodia have experienced tremendous growth through house churches that disciple and empower each member to “be the church.”

They are called house churches because each one functions as a little church. They are networks because they work together to foster accountability and encouragement. Although the terminology house church networks, sometimes called micro church networks, may sound like a contemporary concept, they are not really new; in fact, house churches are as old as the book of Acts.

The New Testament church was defined as the people. Believers did not go to church or join the church; they were the church. All members functioned as priests because everyone served as ministers. Each person got on-the-job-training and learned how to make disciples. These followers of Christ practiced their faith in spiritual families, met in homes and radically changed their world. They grew in number as they obeyed God’s Word and shared resources and spiritual blessings. They multiplied into more and more groups of believers meeting in homes, all networking together. This was the original house church networks!

Recently, new house church networks have sprung up throughout North America—from Denver, Colorado to Austin, Texas; from Richmond, Virginia to Indianapolis Indiana; from Toronto, Ontario to Edmonton, Alberta, and dozens of places in between.

(This is an excerpt from an article entitled, "House Church Networks - A Wave of the Future" written by Larry Kreider, former member of the White Oak Church of the Brethren) 

Prejudice and the Foolishness of Peace

Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless.  Not to speak is to speak.  Not to act is to act. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer

It seemed like the perfect day to clear my head and get some exercise, but as I biked down a narrow country road one sunshiny day, I came face to face with an episode of road rage that quickly escalated into a political incident. And I was more than a mere, innocent bystander.  Here's the story.

As I biked down that narrow country road, a young kid in a souped up Subaru WRX roared by, so close that a deck of cards would have barely fit between his car and my bike.

I responded with a hand gesture that expressed my outrage at his recklessness.  It was not the one-finger salute that has become a universal symbol of disapproval, but an old-school full-handed salute like an Italian nonna (grandmother) might use to correct her grandchildren, "Hey! What-sa-matta-you!"

The wheels of the Subaru skidded to a halt and the young man jumped out of the car and "got into my grill" if you catch my meaning.  He poked his finger into my chest, and I countered with a flurry of words that questioned his competence and judgement.

Fortunately, he eventually saw my point and began the retreat to his Subaru.  At least that's what I thought until I heard footsteps, cursing and the sound of heavy breathing hastily approaching from the rear.  A couple of "full-figured" men who had been watching the incident from some distance away decided to join the fracas.

At first I thought they had come to lend a hand, but it quickly became clear that they were not on a humanitarian mission.  Their mission had more to do with inforcing the ethnic purity of the community.

Even from a considerable distance away, they could tell the young driver was not from the neighborhood.  They were pretty sure his poker straight black hair and cinnamon colored skin revealed that he came from somewhere south of Texas.  They said something like, "You F...'n Mexicans need to go back home and leave America to us Americans."  That was pretty much the moral high ground of their assault. Things went downhill from there.

I knew I needed to say something to de-escalate the conflict before someone got hurt, but the only thing I could think to say was, "He's not Mexican.  He's Cambodian!"

Miraculously, the explosion of words came to a full stop and the men became unexpectedly silent. They turned to me with one of those, "What planet are you from?" kind of looks and said "F... you!" Then they quietly walked away.

When Bonhoeffer said, "Not to speak is to speak," he probably had something a little more erudite in mind. My words were not even clever.  I've replayed them many times in my head since that incident and each time I push replay the words seem more foolish. I have finally come to this conclusion: in the eyes of the world, the words of peace often reflect the foolishness of peace.  Our words may not need to be profound, but they do need to be spoken.