Missio Dei Suburbia

sub-text

Steve McCoy and Joe Thorn have just launched sub*text - a blog devoted to discussing how the gospel plays out in the suburbs.

These guys are two of my favorite bloggers - and the conversation is critical. Visit now and visit often.

Homemaking and Mission

From Girl Talk...

Christianity Today on Pornography and Sex Addiction

The most recent issue of Christianity Today has two article dealing with pornography and sex addiction:

Help for the Sexually Desperate

Porn's Stranglehold

They also profile the Samson Society which is doing some very good work in providing authentic relationships for men in a group environment.

I'd say the statistics in the article are conservative and you might quibble over some of the explanations and solutions, but it's becoming increasingly impossible to sweep this under the rug in churches. So how do we handle this without making assumptions about people and how do we discuss something personal in a public forum?

'A Place Where People Can Finally Stop Rushing Out of Their Sorrow'

That line from a post by BTM (who will be in Watkinsville with Red Mountain Music on March 29-30) got me thinking:

If there's a trend to whatever criticism we get at Christ Church (and thankfully there's not that much of it these days), it's that our message - and particularly my preaching - can feel dark and heavy sometimes.

My knee-jerk response (you might call it the Gammons Syndrome) is to say, 'Fiddlesticks.' Only because I know where we end up every week in our worship gathering, coming to the table and clinging to an infinitely valuable and all-satisfying Jesus and finding a joy that can only be found through allowing life to bubble to the surface - and make of it what you will, but whether you come top-down from the Scriptures or bottom-up from life, what you end up with is rarely as smiley and cleaned up as we try to make it in the suburbs.

Once I work my way through gut reactions and such, my assumption is that there's a breakdown in the message at one of two points (and maybe both). There's the distinct possibility that in my preaching of a biblical text, I've missed the tone and bent of the message - which to be honest, is just as critical as getting your exegesis and interpretation squared away. You shouldn't preach any text indifferently but you should breathe out the emotion that's latent within the text. So even though I've got more than my fair share of junk, I'm generally thankful to be able to see how God is using that slowly in my life to teach me to delight in trusting him in all things. So while I could just be in a funk and end up in a dark place every Sunday, I'm not wired to be that way and I work hard to avoid whatever is there that might move me away from the tone of the text.

So it could be my preaching. But what I keep finding is that the people who are the most fussy about dark and heavy things are the people who have some really dark and heavy things to deal with. Stuff about themselves; stuff they've done or are doing; stuff that's been or is being done to them. I know a lot of people's junk and while those things don't consume me, I'd be a jerk to walk into a room and know what I know and not walk with people through that on the way to Christ and the cross.

I won't pretend to know a lot. I do know that dark and heavy things are alive and well in Watkinsville and Athens and on the UGA campus. I know that darkness isn't a strategy - we don't make junk up just to make things feel weighty. That would be both cruel and stupid - tying an anchor to someone's ankle and tossing them into an ocean of hopelessness is sadistic; painting in unnecessary strokes of dark and doubt is pretty foolish in our sunshiney-obsessed suburban world...unless underneath our thin veneer of 'got it all together' is more doubt and disappointment and confusion and rage than we'd ever want anyone to know.

So whatever we are - and I love how someone described our church recently as a people and a place of brokenhearted joy - hopefully the cross and a deepening experience of Christ creates a place of risky authenticity and radical hope.

2008 - The Year of Discipleship

So I've been thinking and talking with some of our people in Christ Church about what God might be doing in and through us as we walk into 2008. The attempt to be on mission in the suburbs is challenging - a number of factors work to pull us individually and corporately away from our calling to make God known and put broken people and things back together. So coming out of these conversations, here are a few things I believe we'll be working for this year.

1. Tweaking our definition of church. In the American Southern Suburbs, 'church' usually is only thought of in terms of our large group, Sunday morning worship gathering. I'm thankful that 2007 saw small groups become a critical part of our life together. In 2008, we need to continue to work so that one-one meetings between individuals and couples becomes a more regular part of life. We'll never toss aside Sunday mornings (and it's unfortunate that some missional churches are doing so) but church is bigger than Sundays.
2. Suburban compassion, mercy and justice. I'm hoping we see a movement of churches and individuals towards missional pathways that address issues like marriage and parenting, addictions, and functional poverty.
3. Leadership development. This has not been a strength in the 18 year history of Christ Church and we just now feel like we're getting a process in place that can help us come alongside leaders in the church and the community and equip them to be who God has called them to be.
4. Decentralize leadership/ownership. In most churches, power and decision-making lies in the hands of a few. While we wholeheartedly and passionately affirm the biblical and ecclesiastical imperative to have elders oversee the church, we've started a conversation about how we reshape what our elders do and how we function in order to get all of the giftedness in the church engaged in where God is sending us in Watkinsville and Athens.
5. Learn how to take care of our business. We want to minimize the amount of time spent maintaining the 'machine' of church in order to free everyone up to be on mission. Infrastructure is necessary and critical - healthy bodies have strong bones, muscles, tendons, etc.  But it  is very easy for leaders and entire churches to exhaust all their energies on  tidying up the house without ever thinking and praying and acting in conjunction with Jesus' mission.
6. Value-driven leadership. This fits in with a couple of things previously said...our elders must spend their time guarding the values-practices of our church, embedding those values in new areas for gospel and community to happen, and creating environments that equip people to be on mission in ways the church cannot and should not. One of the things this means is that when elders and our staff meet, the big question is not 'how do we do this' but 'what is God doing?'
7. Less time trying to please Christians - particularly those who have little inclination to join in mission. This does not mean that we ignore people who are hurting. At the heart of mission is incarnating Jesus in the lives of hurting people. What I mean is that we simply cannot spend inordinate amounts of time trying to explain ourselves to those who don't share our core values and work off of other agendas. Thankfully, this hasn't been a huge issue in 2007 - part of that is because we've worked hard to be clear about who we are and what we're about.
8. Continue to talk about who we are, not who we are not. Work hard to help people see the big picture of what we're about rather than getting bogged down in secondary issues and bizarre theological questions. We want to foster genuine discussion and dialogue without getting caught in missional quicksand.
9. Quit worrying about numbers. Notice that I didn't say quit paying attention to numbers - healthy things grow so you'd expect more people to be connected to the church. But to worry about that - particularly if it drives us away from a regular life of repentance and faith - does no one any good.
10. Get better at breathing. It's very easy for Christians to hold their breath - we spend little time taking in good deep breaths of grace and even less time breathing out in lives that love people in our neighborhoods, schools, workplaces and communities. How do we improve our breathing? There are certainly techniques that we can learn in order to breathe in and breathe out in more healthy ways. We're thinking through ways to help people do that. But what we can never miss is that breathing is the natural way of life for healthy people - grace and the gospel should create breathing in and breathing out as the way we do life. We take in love and grace from God and give it away to others.

When I read all of those things, the word discipleship comes to mind. My guess is that most of us have heard that word and maybe even use it a lot. I've spent the past few weeks thinking and reading and talking to people about discipleship and trying to pull it apart and understand it.

For me discipleship is simply learning to become who you already are. As Christians, God has done something objectively permanent in our lives on the cross. He has chosen us, redeemed us, restored us, and brought us into a binding covenant relationship of love with himself. He has adopted us as children - that is our identity. My life today is learning how to live in response to all of that - sin is my failure to believe that any or all of that is true. So discipleship is God's work of teaching me to be who I already am.

And who am I? I'm someone created and re-created by God to join Him in his mission of making Himself known as He puts broken people and a broken world back together. That's my identity and when I understand that I was created for mission then I'll see discipleship as the process of joining Jesus in the mission I was made for.

So here's to the next 366 days (we have a leap year!) of learning to be who we already are as missionaries to the places God has placed us. May this kind of missional discipleship become part of the fabric at Christ Church in 2008.

Big Trouble

This article in Monday's AJC is a good reminder of the financial trouble we face in the American Southern Suburbs. Not only have we gotten ourselves into houses we really can't afford because of foolish mortgages (and I'm using the term 'we' for a reason) but now we're paying for houses with credit cards and not paying those off either.

Way too many of us are living in functional poverty - and along with any number of addictions and struggles in marriage and parenting - these are the mercy and justice issues in the suburbs. We're starting to brainstorm about ways to move towards those in our community whose lives are being destroyed by so many things that promise the world and never deliver.

I'd love to hear if you have any ideas about how to make these kinds of missional connections with people living in the suburbs.

Before You Head Out To Best Buy This Morning...

Apologies if this dampens anyone's Christmas spirit - but Bob Herbert's column in this morning's New York Times sure sounds al ot like the suburban world I'm living in:

What seems to be happening now is that working Americans, and that includes the middle class, have exhausted much of their capacity to tread water. Wives and mothers are already working. Mortgages have been refinanced and tremendous amounts of home equity drained. And families have taken on debt loads — for cars, for college tuition, for medical treatment — that would buckle the knees of the strongest pack animals.

According to Demos, a policy research group in New York, “American families are using credit cards to bridge the gaps created by stagnant wages and higher costs of living.” Americans owe nearly $900 billion on their credit cards.

We’re running out of smoke and mirrors.

Now debate will rage on about what to do about all of this. But one wonders if all of our economic ingenuity isn't merely an attempt to put a band-aid on a bad case of hemorrhoids - those of us in debt aren't there only because of economic forces gathered against us. The contents of the ever-elusive American Dream get more lavish by the year and we've done little to question the madness that surrounds how we handle money.

This issue of functional poverty is one of, if not the biggest mercy and justice issues in the suburbs. Any ideas on what the Church should be doing about it?

Advent Conspiracy, Week Three

Here's this week's article in The Oconee Leader:

So when did Christianity lose its soul?

It’s one thing for a band to sell out and lose their edge in order to sell a few more records. I get that – it’s hard to resist the money that is reserved for artists that can craft their sound to the plastic, vanilla melodies that attract the masses. But when did following Jesus become this polyester cliché that ends up trying to find life in days gone by or in the values of the world we live in? And when did Christmas stop being about Jesus and his conspiracy to change the world through compassion?

I know that those of us who do church are going to hear a lot about Jesus over the next couple of weeks. In an effort to counter the increasingly consumeristic message of Christmas in our culture, we’ll program the Christmas season to death – children’s musicals and Sunday School Christmas parties and special sermon series. And the focus will be on the story of Jesus’ birth and if we’re lucky we won’t be subjected to vapid reminders that ‘Jesus is the reason for the season’ – especially if the season is going to continue to look like it does for most Christians.

What has Christmas become for the followers of Jesus? Not the weeks leading up to Christmas – but the actual day itself. Has anyone noticed that for all of our talk about Jesus in the days and nights before Christmas, he somehow gets lost underneath the piles of presents and ripped-apart wrapping paper? Maybe it’s just me, but I’m pretty sure that my thirty-two Christmases to date have had little to do with Jesus and a lot to do with what this Santa character dropped down the chimney for me.

What would it look like if December 25th took on the heartbeat of Jesus when he came to earth? Certainly there would still be gifts since giving is at the heart of God’s mission in our world. But it shouldn’t be lost on us that when God wanted to show his love for us, he didn’t send stuff, he sent Jesus. He sent a person, not a present.

What I think this means for us here in Oconee County is that our gifts never get detached from the gifts of time and self. It’s not about the money – relational giving can include a day out taking pictures or a weekend in Chicago. Maybe it’s a new guitar strap and an afternoon playing vintage guitars at Musician’s Warehouse in Athens. Maybe it’s the college guy who drives back to Marietta to spend an afternoon with his mom and at the end hands her a scrapbook of pictures of the two of them throughout his life. The possibilities are as wide as our interests – what do they like to do and how can you give yourself to do it with them.

I’ll be the first to tell you that this won’t be easy – it’s hard to give this way because it asks us to give our time and energy which we really don’t have to do when we hand over a gift card to Best Buy on Christmas morning. And let’s be honest, if someone gave us the choice between the Best Buy gift card and something ‘homemade,’ we might think we’re getting ripped off if we don’t choose the gift card. What we’ve come to value at Christmas are not the people around us but the stuff that their money can buy us; instead of loving one another, could it be that we’re using each other to get what we want?

I know that more than a few of us have already bought all our presents for this year. Maybe all that happens this Christmas is that conversations begin to happen. It might take more than a few weeks for your family to catch up with where you are in re-imagining a Christmas that looks more like the relational gift named Jesus that God gave to the world 2,000 years ago. So would we all remember that conspiracies are about creating freedom, not new rules – and would we remember that the process of change is usually rather slow as God chooses to work in lifetimes, not days.

Advent Conspiracy. Worship More. Spend Less. Give More. Love All.

How Big Is Your Life?

Paul Tripp wraps up his excellent book, A Quest For More: Living For Something Bigger Than You with this - I hope it encourages you to wrestle with the realities of the life we live between two kingdoms.

What kingdom shapes your decisions and sets your schedule? Have you shrunk your life to the size of your life, or have you expanded everything you are doing to the size of God's kingdom? These final questions are designed to help you accurately evaluate your lifestyle, and my hope is that they will produce in you a quest for more.

1. Are you doing the concrete things in your life regularly because you are living for something bigger than your own personal definition of happiness?
2. Do you live aware of the deceptive nature of the kingdom of self (remember, it really is a costume kingdom), regularly examining your motives and how you are investing your time and energy?
3. Are you living that form-and-freedom jazz life that God has called you to? Are you committed to staying within the boundaries of what he has written, yet enjoying the freedom to improvise in the situations and relationships where he has placed you?
4. Are you dissatisfied with the broken world that you live and work in every day? And do you work for its restoration to wholeness in any way you can?
5. Have you allowed yourself to be so busy with work on earth that you do not have time to long for heaven? Or is everything you do done with one eye on the present and one eye on eternity? Are you able to deal with the pain and disappointment of today because you really have embraced the promise of a day when this world and everything in it will be made completely new?
6. Do you hold loosely to your plans, your schedule, your agenda, your expectations? Are you always looking for way to be part of what God is doing wherever you are, no matter how mundane the moment is?
7. Do you live with a deep appreciation for the Lord Jesus Christ and the gift of grace that has fundamentally changed you and the course of your life? Do you work to keep your love and worship of him fresh and new? Do you live with a sense of humble privilege that not only have you been chosen to be a citizen of his kingdom, but his ambassador as well?

We were never made or remade to live for ourselves. We were created for transcendence. The borders of our lives were always meant to be way bigger than the borders of our lives. When we live this way, by his grace, we not only become part of the most important work in the universe, but we are given back to our humanity.

Evangelism In the 'Burbs

I had lunch with a friend today and we ended up talking a bit about evangelism. I don't think it happens a ton in the American Southern Suburbs - we tend to assume everyone around us knows Jesus and strangely enough, people in the South aren't very friendly after you get past they 'Hey y'all' bit. So we've got some work to do here.

So I was glad when Joe Thorn posted this today. Among the things he said that I wholeheartedly agree with:

The evangescript is perceived as invasive and fake.
The unchurched can spot the evangelistic script before you finish that diagnostic question. If not because they are religiously savvy, it is at least because living in a consumer culture allows them to detect a sales pitch with little effort.