Recently I was asked whether I believed in a social gospel or a biblical gospel. I found this question strange, having a few seconds of complete silence as I thought about how to answer. My response was one word: "Yes."
To be fair, I understand where the person was coming from. She was concerned that Christians today are being sucked into a humanitarian movement and calling it the gospel - which is a legitimate concern. An equally large concern is that our biblical approach to sharing our faith involves only our testimony, an invitation to follow Jesus, and then a decision that must be made by our audience. The Spirit has worked through this approach consistently through the ages, but I don't think this alone is the true biblical model of evangelism. Sure, this approach is there - check out Acts 10. But how do we see Jesus spread the gospel? I read about him taking care of the sick, feeding the hungry, and socializing with the outcast. How do we see the early church do this? See the answer to the previous question.
So why the Social vs. Biblical gospel argument? It seems they should not be pitted against each other, but instead, coupled together to give a complete definition to the message of Jesus Christ - "to seek and to save what was lost" (Luke 19:10). In today's church language, we can focus so much on converting people that we forget to show hope in the form of fighting social injustices, such as those Christ fought himself.
Giving the world a complete gospel picture communicates clearly the message of who Jesus is: loving, redeeming, transforming. Many outside of the family of God have long been given a message of "you need to believe, you need to change your life, you need Jesus." These are all true, but how much more powerful is this message if the world first sees Jesus in us? If the world sees followers of Christ fighting against human trafficking, they'll think, 'Jesus wants sex slavery to end? I believe it should too.' If the world sees followers of Christ being the first in line raising money to end world poverty, they'll say,'Jesus cares that everybody gets a meal? That's change I want to see too.' If the world sees followers of Christ take the action that Christ himself took, those who currently want nothing to do with Him will, for the first time, see who He truly is. This realization may ultimately lead them to the conclusion,'I do need Jesus.'
Our spoken words of Jesus cannot be neglected. The apostle Paul writes in Romans 10:14 that there must be someone speaking the message of Christ so that they will hear it. But this message cannot be effectively delivered if our lives don't symbolize the type of redemption Christ will bring to those who seek Him. He is about changing hearts and minds, defending the powerless, loving the unlovable, and saving the incapable. Yes, we must preach Christ, but me must also live Him. When we do this, there is no Social vs. Biblical argument. There is just the gospel, there is just the good news, and there is just the true picture of Jesus Christ.
Friday, April 8, 2011
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
Right, Wrong, and Rob Bell
The last couple of weeks have been a whirlwind for Pastor Rob Bell of Mars Hill in Grand Rapids, Michigan. With the release of his new book Love Wins, Bell calls into question the existence of heaven and hell as we traditionally picture them. Now I haven’t read this book, so I’ll stop there in offering a description (the subtitle is Heaven, Hell, and Every Person Who Ever Lived, so my initial attempt can’t be too far off).
When orthodoxy is questioned, one can assume controversy will arise. In this instance, controversy may be a limited definition of what has taken place since the release of the book and the preview trailers that surfaced on Youtube weeks ago. Bell’s theology, motives, and even his own salvation have been challenged over the past several days. Having appeared on several nationally broadcast interviews, Bell has defended his book in typical Rob Bell style: with more questions.
Many of the questions people have brought against Bell are good. If all people who do good go to heaven regardless of whether or not they follow Jesus, what’s the reason for following Jesus? If hell is no more than the hell we experience on earth, what is the real motivation for escaping life as it exists today? If God sends someone to hell, shouldn’t we attribute that to his holiness rather than saying he is a villain? These questions are important. They have serious implications. To expect an answer from Bell is right.
However, I think many church leaders have gone way beyond simply asking such questions. Many have written him off (one famous preacher from Minnesota simply posted via Twitter. “So long, Rob Bell”), some have publicly and angrily rebuked him, and others now view his previous work as heretical. This approach – to cast Bell aside, to ostracize him, to brand him a wolf in sheep’s clothing – in my opinion, is very wrong,
Then there’s Bell. Answering his critics with long-winded, round-about answers and deferring to not being a biblical scholar couples with his definitive, repetitive statement that God’s love overrules every earthly or even orthodox Christian principle. This is a mixed bag of right, wrong, and confusion dressed in hyperbole.
So this is where we are: amidst controversy. The real question now is what do we do with it? My hope is that Bell will continue to ask questions, to engage those who don’t know Christ, and to form ideas that lead to Jesus more so than to an abstract “What if?” But I think the real lesson here is for the church to learn to answer questions with more grace and less condemnation. Our words form ideas within our faith, but they also tell those outside of us who we really are. We may disagree, we may have different approaches to and theories on scripture, but we cannot eat each other alive and expect outsiders to want to be a part of us. Even in times of disagreement, Paul relentlessly called churches back to unity in the faith, where Christ is the head.
Rob Bell is a part of our body. He loves Jesus, and I believe he is trying to be obedient to Him. His writing has consistently brought great discussions, important insights, and passion for Jesus out of people. Whatever wrong Bell might have written in Love Wins, the Spirit is perfectly capable of bringing conviction and clarity to questions and abstracts. I pray that He makes us capable of rebuking, correcting, and training each other in love rather than resentment.
Thursday, January 13, 2011
The Goodness of Change
Change is hard. We all know this. We’ve all experienced this. It removes what we’re used to and replaces it with something foreign. It makes us uncomfortable, like a new character on a sit-com or our favorite restaurant changing menus. Change is hard (to do).
But does this make change bad? I am of the belief that a changing organization is an alive organization. When changes take place for reasons that are not arbitrary, evidence exists that the organization in question is responding to its audience. And in such scenarios, change is good.
I’ve been a part of a church community for the past 5 ½ years called Epoch Church. We are a small community, so changing plans or adding ideas is not as hard as it may be for a congregation of 6,000+. Nonetheless, we are not exempt from the difficulties of change. I was recently asked by my pastors to take a leadership role regarding our small groups. We are big believers in small groups at Epoch – we feel this is where life is most lived out together. This is where the most growth, relationship building, and intercessory prayer takes place for us. And while we have been fortunate to have a growing small group ministry, we also recognized the need to re-vamp.
The “Problem”
We realized that in our 5 ½ year history, our small groups have always run the same way. We gather, discuss the sermon from Sunday, pray together, and visit. This is pretty basic, and most small groups around America (at least) probably follow a similar format. We’ve never had an uproar of disappointment over how these meetings take place, but as a team of church leaders, we wanted to direct our small groups to be more life giving. We wanted to find out how our time together could be more dynamic. How people could be more mentally and spiritually stimulated. How our small groups could make a greater impact on our church community and our downtown Little Rock community.
The Process
Immediately after being asked to spearhead our small groups, I met with each small group leader to hear their ideas. I spoke with other participants who weren’t necessarily leading a small group, but cared about the direction in which they were headed. The feedback received was much better than anything I could have come up with on my own. Some wanted small groups to focus more on evangelism. Others wanted to incorporate more education on missions. Several expressed the desire to do more service with their small groups as a way of teaching people that serving others is supposed to be a normal way to spend our time. And still some wanted to figure out ways specifically impact the SOMA district, the area of Little Rock where we are centrally located.
From these meetings, it was clear that our small groups could use some re-tooling. Great ideas came at us from great people. The next question was could we incorporate all of these ideas into our small groups – and if so, how? Something I was intent on doing was making sure our small group gathering didn’t become a burden on people’s schedule, so there was another wrench thrown into our planning. Organizational change, and specifically how to communicate it, is an interest of mine. It’s fascinating how easy it is to do this the wrong way. It’s way too early tell whether or not we did this the right way, below is the approach we used for restructuring our small groups and communicating these changes.
The “Solution”
The first change we made was to break-up our small groups in 10-week cycles, with 2 of those weeks technically being “off-weeks”. This fell into our idea of making the small groups more life-giving. We did not want a church full of overworked, busy people. We wanted to provide them with at least 1 night within those 10 weeks where they were free to enjoy time with a spouse, take out a hurting friend for coffee, get things done around the house, etc. The other “off week”, we will provide a corporate gathering for all small groups, such as a game night, community dinner, or other similar activities. The structure of “8 on, 2 off”, we hope, will give people both the ability to rest and to be actively involved in a life-giving small group.
The second change we implemented was the idea of having small group leaders incorporate 3 new elements somewhere within the 8 weeks of meeting together. These elements are: a night of internal service (serving each other), a night of external service (serving the SOMA district), and a focus on evangelism & missions. How each small group would implement these elements would be decided by them and their leader. Research suggests that people are more willing to adopt changes when they feel close to the policy-makers (Hartkamp, ter Hoeven, & Pieterson, 2008, p.14). We recognized that groups will feel closer to their leader than they will the small group pastor or church pastor. It made sense, then, to make groups their own “policy-makers” rather than construct a centralized policy for all to follow. With each group being made up of individuals with God-given passions, we felt the best way to cultivate growth and impact on our internal and external communities was by allowing each group more ownership in how they operated.
The final change was to focus our small group ministry on our church’s core values: community, authenticity, simplicity, spiritual formation, service, cooperation, diversity, and creativity. If these values are truly core to our church, they should be fleshed out in as many ways as possible. As a result, each small group leader will educate and remind his group with these core values when decisions are made within the group.
Final Thoughts
You’ll notice that 2 sections of this post have a word in quotations. To say that what were dealing with was a problem is a stretch. It amazes me how much the Lord has protected our church, despite our lack of experience, resources, and people. I’ll take problems like that any day – those are fun. For two separate reasons, it is also a stretch to say that we’ve found our solution. First, we only recently implemented these proposed changes. Over the next 5 months, we will observe the growth of our groups in number, in depth, and in outreaching effectiveness. Second, even if we conclude that we found a good solution for now, this will not be the last time we need to change things up. Organizations – churches included – “either change or die” (Beer & Nohria, 2000, p. 133). The church must engage today’s world, and society’s need for agility and the ability to embrace change is increasing (Grill & Carver, 2008, p. 3). The Church must offer the world something they won’t find elsewhere. Obviously, we offer the message of Jesus, but we must also offer opportunities for the world to meet Him.
References:
Hartkamp, M., ter Hoeven, C., & Pieterson, W., (2008). Resolving resistance: the role of commitment to change in public organizations. Conference Papers -- International Communication Association, 2008 Annual Meeting
Beer, M. & Nohria, N. (2000). Cracking the code of change. Harvard Business Review, May-June, 133-141.
Grill, Kristine; Carver, Leilani. (2008).Organizational change as sensemaking, not resistance, in nbc’s the office. Conference Papers -- National Communication Association, 2008
But does this make change bad? I am of the belief that a changing organization is an alive organization. When changes take place for reasons that are not arbitrary, evidence exists that the organization in question is responding to its audience. And in such scenarios, change is good.
I’ve been a part of a church community for the past 5 ½ years called Epoch Church. We are a small community, so changing plans or adding ideas is not as hard as it may be for a congregation of 6,000+. Nonetheless, we are not exempt from the difficulties of change. I was recently asked by my pastors to take a leadership role regarding our small groups. We are big believers in small groups at Epoch – we feel this is where life is most lived out together. This is where the most growth, relationship building, and intercessory prayer takes place for us. And while we have been fortunate to have a growing small group ministry, we also recognized the need to re-vamp.
The “Problem”
We realized that in our 5 ½ year history, our small groups have always run the same way. We gather, discuss the sermon from Sunday, pray together, and visit. This is pretty basic, and most small groups around America (at least) probably follow a similar format. We’ve never had an uproar of disappointment over how these meetings take place, but as a team of church leaders, we wanted to direct our small groups to be more life giving. We wanted to find out how our time together could be more dynamic. How people could be more mentally and spiritually stimulated. How our small groups could make a greater impact on our church community and our downtown Little Rock community.
The Process
Immediately after being asked to spearhead our small groups, I met with each small group leader to hear their ideas. I spoke with other participants who weren’t necessarily leading a small group, but cared about the direction in which they were headed. The feedback received was much better than anything I could have come up with on my own. Some wanted small groups to focus more on evangelism. Others wanted to incorporate more education on missions. Several expressed the desire to do more service with their small groups as a way of teaching people that serving others is supposed to be a normal way to spend our time. And still some wanted to figure out ways specifically impact the SOMA district, the area of Little Rock where we are centrally located.
From these meetings, it was clear that our small groups could use some re-tooling. Great ideas came at us from great people. The next question was could we incorporate all of these ideas into our small groups – and if so, how? Something I was intent on doing was making sure our small group gathering didn’t become a burden on people’s schedule, so there was another wrench thrown into our planning. Organizational change, and specifically how to communicate it, is an interest of mine. It’s fascinating how easy it is to do this the wrong way. It’s way too early tell whether or not we did this the right way, below is the approach we used for restructuring our small groups and communicating these changes.
The “Solution”
The first change we made was to break-up our small groups in 10-week cycles, with 2 of those weeks technically being “off-weeks”. This fell into our idea of making the small groups more life-giving. We did not want a church full of overworked, busy people. We wanted to provide them with at least 1 night within those 10 weeks where they were free to enjoy time with a spouse, take out a hurting friend for coffee, get things done around the house, etc. The other “off week”, we will provide a corporate gathering for all small groups, such as a game night, community dinner, or other similar activities. The structure of “8 on, 2 off”, we hope, will give people both the ability to rest and to be actively involved in a life-giving small group.
The second change we implemented was the idea of having small group leaders incorporate 3 new elements somewhere within the 8 weeks of meeting together. These elements are: a night of internal service (serving each other), a night of external service (serving the SOMA district), and a focus on evangelism & missions. How each small group would implement these elements would be decided by them and their leader. Research suggests that people are more willing to adopt changes when they feel close to the policy-makers (Hartkamp, ter Hoeven, & Pieterson, 2008, p.14). We recognized that groups will feel closer to their leader than they will the small group pastor or church pastor. It made sense, then, to make groups their own “policy-makers” rather than construct a centralized policy for all to follow. With each group being made up of individuals with God-given passions, we felt the best way to cultivate growth and impact on our internal and external communities was by allowing each group more ownership in how they operated.
The final change was to focus our small group ministry on our church’s core values: community, authenticity, simplicity, spiritual formation, service, cooperation, diversity, and creativity. If these values are truly core to our church, they should be fleshed out in as many ways as possible. As a result, each small group leader will educate and remind his group with these core values when decisions are made within the group.
Final Thoughts
You’ll notice that 2 sections of this post have a word in quotations. To say that what were dealing with was a problem is a stretch. It amazes me how much the Lord has protected our church, despite our lack of experience, resources, and people. I’ll take problems like that any day – those are fun. For two separate reasons, it is also a stretch to say that we’ve found our solution. First, we only recently implemented these proposed changes. Over the next 5 months, we will observe the growth of our groups in number, in depth, and in outreaching effectiveness. Second, even if we conclude that we found a good solution for now, this will not be the last time we need to change things up. Organizations – churches included – “either change or die” (Beer & Nohria, 2000, p. 133). The church must engage today’s world, and society’s need for agility and the ability to embrace change is increasing (Grill & Carver, 2008, p. 3). The Church must offer the world something they won’t find elsewhere. Obviously, we offer the message of Jesus, but we must also offer opportunities for the world to meet Him.
References:
Hartkamp, M., ter Hoeven, C., & Pieterson, W., (2008). Resolving resistance: the role of commitment to change in public organizations. Conference Papers -- International Communication Association, 2008 Annual Meeting
Beer, M. & Nohria, N. (2000). Cracking the code of change. Harvard Business Review, May-June, 133-141.
Grill, Kristine; Carver, Leilani. (2008).Organizational change as sensemaking, not resistance, in nbc’s the office. Conference Papers -- National Communication Association, 2008
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