open source theology

When my wife and I got married, we agreed that we had had enough of small, struggling, inner-city churches and moved off to Uptown Baptist, an incredibly diverse and diffuse place considerably further down the road of city mission. We were very happy there, but the Lord called us, kicking and screaming, to help start a plant in another neighborhood called Lakeview. Our experience of church transformed from being a home to a house construction site.

In keeping with our new mission, I embarked on a journey to convert my small group to a harvest mentality. Along the way, I lost all but one of our members, an extraordinarily loyal woman whose middle name is (ya guessed it!) Faith. Now, you ought to know that evangelism was the least practiced of my Christian disciplines, mostly out of dislike from the sort of activities I commonly saw it labeling. But then I had the opportunity to see the power of God to transform the people he is seeking. Following is an email account of it:

Friends,

This Saturday we are throwing a party to celebrate the completion of our first Alpha group. It is fair to say that it revolutionized the lives of everyone who attended. Out of the six unchurched people who came more than once, two were baptized, two have made confessions of faith, and the other two have also become regular attenders at church. Three of these had avoided churches; one with a vow. Two had fled from church. Now some are blooming in ways nothing short of miraculous. God’s power and love are running rampant. Moreover, we got to know and invite many others, and the group has decided to become a regular small group.

Best of all, Sandra and I came to a new understanding of evangelism. We offered friendship, not teaching; we came as servants, not leaders; we hung out while God did all the talking.

I’m simply astonished. I’d started this group in the same way a quarterback launches a “Hail Mary.” It had seemed a highly unlikely proposition. Now I tell Sandra, “Heck, anyone can do this!”

But the important thing about Saturday is that, in the midst of the food and games, we will be soliciting for people of peace to host new groups. There are several possibilities—people who I know have stumbled over the spiritual or whose lives are rocking on their foundations. Pray that at least one of these will say, “Yeah, I’d like to check into this. And I’m going to invite everyone I can to check it out with me!”

All this took place in a general context of reconstruction of my belief system—my other posts bear witness to some of the other things that are developing. I went through all my articles and picked the following as the most comprehensive summation of these epiphanies:

The Shame of the Anointing

I used to laugh and wonder how the Quakers came up with the word "friends" to describe themselves. Now I’ve developed such an appreciation for that way of seeing the Christian life that I’m sorry I’m not a Quaker myself.

The demands of our postmodern target group have shown me the quality of ministering as a friend. There is no better way to meet the Great Commission than friends placing themselves at the service of friends. Being a true friend – a friend whose friendship is not conditional on someone’s choices – means one is there for the long haul. It is the long haul that forges a believer into a dependable witness and trustworthy guide. Such a friend gives a growing believer the most chances to encounter Jesus and follow him.

But all too often, believers choose the inferior approach of making ministry a career. They minister by imposition rather than by invitation; they address the general because it is more difficult to learn the specific; they win less credibility because of the natural suspicion that, after they imagine they have completed whatever task it was they came to accomplish, they will be gone.

I suppose one can argue that ministry through individual friendships is not as efficient. True, but I can’t think of a single verse of the Bible that promotes efficiency as something God desires. Rather, the One with a whole universe to run makes the effort of counting the hair on each person’s head. So his measure of your ministry may very well be whether you made and kept friends, not how many dollars were spent or how many people were “reached.” Isn’t this what Jesus was trying to tell us when he told us not to take the title “teacher” and instead called us “friends?”

The fact that the world is now practically overrun with mega- evangelists, teachers, pastors, and now prophets and apostles is the Church’s shame. Most are gifted, faithful, and in every way admirable, but the sum of their many great accomplishments pales in comparison to what would happen if every common Christian took seriously his or her general calling to be a friend. Moreover, I think even they would admit that the quality of their ministry to their personal friends is much greater than that of their ministry to people they will never meet. The truth is, the anointing of mega-ministry is a shabby but necessary substitute for the excellence that the Lord would prefer.

So while we continue to bless those who have risen to stand in the gap, let’s pray for that day in which the Lord promises that all believers will seize their little bit of friendship anointing and "each will teach his neighbor!" And let’s test our own approaches to ministry after converting ourselves to friends.