Everything Must Go - Jesus Christ Superstore

On Wednesday night at CityGroup we had a great time of worship, teaching and discussion. We began our new mini-series Everything Must Go - The implications of being a missional church. Around candle lit tables we sang, listened and threw out thoughts and questions, all incredibly helpful and challenging stuff. The audio of the talk will not be made available but I hope to be able to capture some of what we looked at here.

The question was what kind of church should we be seeking to establish in Belfast?  Here are some of the ‘models’ of church that we looked at.

Air raid shelter church

An air raid shelter church is one that separates itself from its context.  Fearful of the ‘evil’ and ‘dangerous’ surrounding culture it shelters waiting for the end when a place in the sky called Heaven awaits.  Aware of the churches responsibility for spreading the ‘gospel message’  the occasional grenade might be thrown out usually in the form of a missions team on a recon exercise checking out the enemy land in hope of bring some ‘converts’ back into the fold.  A self-created gap exists between this type of church and the context in which it exists.  The gap is usually made up of a few key components.

1. Cultural gap
This will include among other things the language used, books read, clothes worn, etc.  A sub-culture is created so alien from the context in which the church sits requiring a massive leap for anyone wanting to join this group, it might feel more like a society or club.

2. Moral
This is usually born out in a ‘them’ and ‘us’ attitude.  One of my students at University was recently told by a prominant NI charity that she couldn’t go out with them to observe their work with the homeless because she wasn’t a ‘born again Christian’!  They then had the ordasity to invite her to one of their meetings where she could find out more about becoming a ‘born again Christian’.

3. Class
Maybe a controversial one but there do seem to be a lot of very middle class churches around.  We love to engage in social action (a phrase that I really don’t like) where it becomes easy to treat those who are ‘more needy’ as projects or even worse a phrase I once heard used, clients!

4. Education
Is the way we communicate relevant to our audience?  Not everyone understands a seminary level preach, as much as it can stroke the preachers ego to deliver one. I know because I have been there. Martin Luther (yes the one that preachers like to quote) even though he was a highly intelligent man when preaching would aim his content at the children and the least educated in his congregation.

So the air raid shelter church realising that there is a gap but not understanding that it is of its own making will try and bridge it. Enter the concept of ‘bridge building’ a phrase and concept that I really don’t like.  It speaks of needing to bridge a self-created gap by expecting people to make a massive leap from their context into the often alien culture of the church. To build bridges with the local youth we might hire a local christian band, fire up some x-boxes and have a gospel presentation. Its a ‘come to us’ mentality. 

Jesus Christ Superstore

This second model weighs in heavily on being ultra attractional. It works on the basis that if we make church attractive enough, if we make what we do on a Sunday relevant enough, people will come. Now I must add here that there is a difference between being attractional and attractive. The message that we have, when communicated correctly, is very attractive. This is a principle we see in the NT church when people saw how the poor were being cared for, goods were being shared and life was being lived they became attracted to the community. The emphasis with attractional church is often on the product, if the worship, visuals, presentation are great then people are sure to come. My question would be this; In doing this are we not just creating a brand of Christian sub-culture where it might all look a bit different but in essence we expect people to make the same leap as the air raid shelter church?

Am I against attractional church? If it is just attractional church where the emphasis is product not missional community then yes. If it is a missionally attractive church that sees its weekly corporate gathering as one of many front doors into the church drawing from its culture and context then no. I want to emphasise the point here that church planting is not about planting a Sunday service, it is about facilitating and enabling a missional community that seeks to transform its context with the message of Jesus. If we think about our weekly corporate gathering as the ‘front door’ to the church we are in danger of undermining or misunderstanding everything else that the church is or should be doing. I believe the church should have many front doors, everything from conversations in the school playground to small group gatherings to large corporate meetings. I believe that your place of work is maybe even a more important front door to the church than your main Sunday meeting.

Incarnational

The third model that we looked at was the incarnational model. It is here that we hear the echo of Jesus’ post resurrection words in John Ch 20.  “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.”  These are astonishing words. As the Father sent Jesus, on mission, incarnationally, in a cultural relevant and contextual way, so we are sent in the same way. On the face of it Jesus didn’t arrive on earth as anything different from the people around him. He was (in one sense) an ordinary, everyday, working class, Jewish, middle eastern male. As Jesus was sent, on mission, amongst the very people to whom he was to witness to, so we are sent.  When we think about mission and the church in this way we realise that the self created gap need not exist. So are we totally the same as our context? No we are set apart, we are different, our identity is in Christ not of this world. Are those in our context the same as us? No, they are (we hope) not yet set apart. 

Where the ‘them’ and ‘us’ come together is a beautiful collision. It is here that the church can be the true ekklesia offering unrivalled value, care and service to its context. It is in the collision that the church is salt and light, representing the new, everlasting and unfading covenant born out in lives of grace, servitude and community. It is here that the church is the true City on a hill, bright shining, unashamed and there for all to see. It is here that the true temple, the new temple, the you temple proclaims with a unified voice that there is no longer any sacred space but the temple of the living God is in those who are in Him. The collision is where the church is who she is supposed to be. A multi coloured, kaleidoscopic bride revealing an upside down kingdom where there exists an economy of justice, peace, care and community with each other and more importantly with the only true living God.

The church is not called to be an air raid shelter, hiding in fear that the evil culture might come and corrupt us, nor are we the Jesus Christ superstore peddling a sub-culture creating product in the hope that if we do it really well we will attract more (normally already Christian) people. We are an incarnational, kingdom minded, missional, community, communicating timely, unchangeable truths in a culturally relevant contextual way. Just like Jesus.

Next week at CityGroup we will be looking at the implications of being a missional people.

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