I finished reading a fascinating little book this week, and i want to share ideas from it with you. I cannot quote excerpts from it, because i have not yet gotten permission from the author. It has prompted me to rejoice in my own sense of playfulness, nonconformity, marginality, political incorrectness, betwixt-and-between-ness, and abnormality. As a follower of Jesus and as a stranger and a pilgrim on this Earth (our wondrous and wretched, evolving and revolving, home away from home), i find this feeling of being marginalized and out of place, and “abnormal”, to be the norm! The historical record and sacred text of the Christian Church, the Bible, records Jesus as having said about himself, “Foxes have holes, birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no where to lay his head.” He, the soon-to-be risen Lord of the Universe, was homeless, nomadic and out of place, too, it seems. He was a refugee as a young child in Egypt, then grew up in an occupied territory under a series of corrupt political leaders, and eventually chose the life of an itinerant rabbi, healer and mystical revolutionary; he grew up poor, displaced, politically incorrect, out of sync with popular culture, misunderstood and maligned by most. He never owned his own home, donkey, or business, never ran for political office, and he never stayed in any one place for long. Even his grave was borrowed, and he only stayed in it for three days.
I contrast his life with the current and historical life of the Church. The Church, ever since it was co-opted by the Emperor Constantine, has sought to find and keep positions of power, prestige, and persuasion. It has sought to be relevant, engaged, and appealing to outsiders and to the other powers-that-be. It has amassed lands, resources, and all forms of equity and influence in its global outreach. It has sought to be everywhere, and anywhere But the margins. It seeks ownership, and rulership, in this weary, war torn world. And when push comes to shove, it often shoves back, with texts and tools of terror. The church is not usually content to be salt and light, as Jesus told it to be. It has been more like pesticides and flash bombs.
The Apostle Paul wrote, in his letter to the Christians at Corinth, that he and his colleagues were looked upon as dung, the refuse of society, and the church was seen as the outhouse at the end of the road, and that God had set it up that way! He wrote that God had chosen, by and large, the weak things of the world, and the foolish things, and the despised, ignorant and poor to lead God’s loving “invasion” into the strongholds of evil in the world, where the learned, rich and powerful called the shots. “God chose the things that are naught to nullify the things that are.”
Well, the book i read is called “The Missionary Congregation, Leadership, and Liminality” by Alan J. Roxburgh, copywrite 1997! It is a booklet, really, not very big in length, but omygod, it is huge in its prophetic and insightful message. In it, the author talks about this very shift that has been forced upon the western world’s church, from its pre-industrial and modern places of centrality to a post-modern world of liminality. In it, he talks about how the church has been once again rendered peripheral, and is going through a new period of liminality, a paradoxical state that is both worse and better than just marginalization.
He goes on to make the point that the church must stop trying to return to the past, to a pre-industrialized world to create a decontextualized community, nor can it find its identity through techniques learned at a workshop. It must move from emphasizing and prioritizing the privatized individual’s inner piety to the witness of the community. And he stresses that the pastors are still the ones who bear the greatest role in shaping missionary congregations, as leaders who possess the theological, political and social skills to elicit the new “communitas”. He says we as pastors must be poets, prophets, apostles, moving away from the current views of pastors as simply enculturated professionals hired by congregations to provide religious services. Rather than the overly competent religious expert jack-of-all-trades Superclergy running the congregation’s inner life, there is a team of multiple leadership at the heart of the congregation, not of professional staff, but of everyone. This idea of religious professionals, a hierarchical limited group called “the ordained”, will have to be removed.
It is a stirring book for me to read, as i end my second year at Iliff, and this class on evangelism and mission. There is so much in it that i cannot put in this blog. But it gives me a kind of blueprint of what i want the church to look like connected to my leadership. I want to belong to a community of people who belong to this anointed astonishing Jesus. I rejoice in the idea that the people of God might grow up into mature disciples of Christ. WE must, if we are to really follow this holy madman Jesus on his ridiculous mission, to speak truth to power, and embrace the excluded, and be the excluded, and even embrace Golgotha, in a community known for His radical redeeming Love… to the Other Side of this transitory threshold world. It isn’t a “needs-based evangelism”, or a “radical welcome” kind of church that i envision. It is maybe more of a radical goodbye kind of church. I want to say goodbye to competition, marketing, over-consumption, status, power, fear tactics, shame and blame games, religiously sanctioned violence, coercion, cultural relevance, popularity, going viral, fame, comfort, ease in Babylon kind of churchianity. My idea is a threshold church, a sacred dance on the waters of Life, a stepping up to the edge of the world’s pain and passion as if it were the plane’s door, and feeling myself strapped to a Risen Man who loves to tandem skydive with me into the liminal space of amazing Grace, spread my arms wide and Jump.
Because see, he and I are on a mission. A different kind of mission impossible. WE are not going to have any car chases or motorcycle stunts or blow up any buildings. He and I are going to love the whole wide world… to pieces.
Wanna come? many are called, but few, it seems, really choose it….
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