|
||
|
Look around you… this is the dream of God! The church is the “dream of God”…what he anticipated when he engaged Abraham in Genesis 12. It was initiated by Jesus, the long-awaited Messiah of Israel, and made alive by his Spirit (Acts 2- as in Genesis 1, God breathes his breath into Adam and he became a living being) in order to portray/embody the dream for all of creation. * Having left, he expected that they would learn to trust what they knew of him and order their lives accordingly. Their activity was not scripted, but seemed to possess a certain spontaneity; what Paul would call a “working out” of life. So, they would have to trust what they already knew and somehow rely on Jesus’ lingering spirit for wisdom in what they had yet to discover. * The great mission was not just an assignment or a task given to the early followers of Jesus and carried out with a sense of duty, but the result of having experienced great motivation….love. “Well, we better get busy. Anyone have any ideas about how to this ‘take it to the whole world’ thing?” Luke 19:10 sums up Christ’s mission… “For the son of man came to seek and save those who were lost”. Son of man- title for Jesus which emphasized his identification with humanity. seek and save- celebrating the initiative of love. lost- a way of describing us which would not devalue us; on the contrary, would suggest inherent worth (Luke 15 sheep, coin, son). * We’ve tried everything imaginable in order to “win people to Christ” (i.e. we’ve tried the “bait and switch” tactics, the fake $20 bill tip/tract decoy, the urinal drain cover gospel!) * The biggest obstacle: we thought we could share the message without sharing our lives (1 Thessalonians 2:8). The success of a church can no longer be measured in conventional terms (i.e. budgets, programs, attenders, etc.), but simply by individuals with transformed affections resulting in identifiable expressions of God’s experience of us (not our experience of God!) Acts 2:42-47 (read) * The first century church seemed to possess (3) qualities of relationship which made their lives attractive: APPRECIATION- for the value of the individual; that to become a follower of Christ was not to conform to some predetermined behavioral code or to lose your sense of identity and uniqueness. Certainly God’s dream is that we should all be one, but not that we should all be alike! AVAILABILITY- an intentional “being with” the other person; not that you had nothing else to do, but that you considered being available more important than much of what you were doing. Nobody “drifts into” meaning relationships! The frequent going “IN AND OUT” of each other’s lives (i.e. Seinfeld promoted itself as a show about ‘nothing’; no real plot or predictable story line, because life is most often not that way). ACCOUNTABILITY- within the context of an accepting, trusting relationship. The mistake that we make is that we demand accountability without appreciation or availability. * Our approach often looks something like this… …we make people “measure up” (usually to our own standard); if they do, we accept them and attach value to them. Which, in turn, leads them to conclude that they have earned the right to be part of the community. GOD’S WAY? 1. He begins by attaching value to us (John 3:16; Romans 5:8). Removing the anxieties of performance and offering us security in his love. 2. He makes himself vulnerably available to us (with the chance that we may not accept his initiation or respond accordingly to the movements of his love). 3. He expects accountability within the context of relationship. ► Dream God’s dream! (it’s a dream of winning our devotion by capturing our hearts; by offering something so compelling that it would be worth giving ourselves to). * God invites us to live in the dream; to be a part of his reclamation project. He describes it as… “To act justly (set things right through our actions), love mercy (make allowances for all the ways that we fail to fulfill the dream) and walk humbly with your God” (with an authenticity that demands honest evaluation of ourselves and our God) (Micah 6:8) ► We need to be seen with lost people. JESUS WAS ALWAYS LOVING ALL THE WRONG PEOPLE FOR ALL THE RIGHT REASONS! * “Those people” often become an enemy to be eliminated rather than a treasure to be recovered. (i.e. the ones that took the Ten Commandments out of the capitol building, those homosexuals who are defiling the sacred institution of marriage, or those people who took prayer out of school!) * I think it’s interesting throughout the story of God that he never blamed the Egyptians or the Babylonians for the decay in the moral landscape of the day; he never blamed them for the apparent adversity his people were facing. Instead, he alluded to the fact that it was their own “anonymity”; their failure to maintain a strong sense of identity and distinctiveness as the people of God. ► We need to stay long enough to hear their story. - Eventually, we will become part of their story. - We don’t remember laws/principles, we memorize them. But, we remember stories. It’s easy to tell when you haven’t lived the story, but you’ve simply memorized someone else’s! ► Be available for the people God chooses to love through you. Consider that God is at work in everyone around you. ► Honor their quest. - I’m amazed at the level of commitment that we demand with so little exposure and so little experience. - Don’t be so quick to label their hesitancy as “resistance”, but a desire to make the best choice possible. ► Invite them to explore the mysteries of God with you. - Don’t concentrate on answering all of their questions (you don’t have all the answers anyway), but on providing a safe context for asking them. * We have reduced life with Jesus to a decision; an event. Although I would affirm that there are decisive- moments, they are best viewed as part of a process. * Currently, in our culture, there is something working in our favor: There is a feeling out there that there may be more to Jesus than we realized; a suspicion that Jesus is much more inspiring than our presentations. We have reduced our approach to nothing more than a lab experiment; in that context, Jesus is no longer compelling. * As we engage our culture with its conflicting worldviews and convictions, we need to understand that the most formidable strategy we have is “persuasion”. (peitho in the Greek- ‘to have confidence; to have influence; having made their friend; to win over; to listen to; bringing about a change of mind by influence’) * Within the context of Jesus’ dying prayer (John 17), we find (3) anticipated responses of Christ-followers to our culture: John 17 “not that you take them out of the world…” IN, BUT OUT OF THE WORLD (disengaged) It’s where we segregate ourselves to ensure we won’t be tainted; breeds self-righteousness. If you convince yourself that you are not “one of them”, it will prevent you from ‘being with’ them! IN, BUT OF THE WORLD (distinctiveness) This is the opposite end of the spectrum. Here we become so anxious to fit in that instead of identifying with our culture, we become identified by our culture. Our loss of distinctiveness leads to our inability to persuade others. IN, BUT NOT OF THE WORLD (disarming) This is where we are fully engaged; our faith becomes fully functional and fully relational. Although it may not be desired by all, it is certainly definable.
|
