I stumbled across a statement that I have now been pondering for several days. It comes from Victor Choudhrie as he is describing God's change of venue from the man-made temple to the hearts and homes of his people. He says, "Now every place that we tread becomes the holy ground. He appointed elders in 'every city' to minister to the whole city."

"Elders ministering to the whole city" is not something that I remember having heard before. Usually we equate elders with the church, limiting their ministry as elder to the church. Choudhrie suggests that they not only minister to those within the fold but to those outside the fold as well.

As I considered this, it seemed to me that this reveals the difference between a church mentality and a kingdom mentality. Ministry and function is primarily church oriented, meaning that spiritual activity is almost always within the fellowship of believers. I have observed this church mentality as the modus operandi of the evangelical church here in the West.

However, the kingdom mentality is found in Psalm in 24:1: "The earth is the Lord's, and all it contains, the world and those who dwell in it." Instead of restricting ourselves to the Christian ghetto, we are called to the vast expanse of God's creation, to minister life to all people, not just those within the church. We are to be catalysts of the kingdom, leavening every segment of society and creation with its values. Yet we have fallen woefully short of being God's leaven in this world because we have functioned from an exclusive church mentality instead of the inclusive kingdom mentality of Psalm 24:1.

How might things be different if we would no longer function from the exclusive church mentality of "us" and "them" and begin to function from the inclusive kingdom mentality of "us". What if we were to see "them" as our brothers and sisters who are estranged from the Father? Isn't this why he has given us the ministry of reconciliation, to reconcile his children to him so they will not have to be separated from him not only in this life, but throughout eternity?

Our perspective will determine how we think, act and relate: in the all encompassing love of God for his defiled creation or in fearful isolation from that defiled creation.

I've been reading some of Victor Choudhrie's writings over the past several days, and I can tell you that you'll not see any major Christian publisher printing his writings anytime soon.

Choudhrie is a surgeon who gave up his medical practice to devote himself to advancing the kingdom in his native land of India by making disciples and establishing house churches. Just in one six-month period, they witnessed over 500,000 baptisms of new disciples. Thousands of house churches have been planted as a result, impacting the communities where they exist. And the movement continues to grow.

Following are some statements from his book, The Apostolic Gardens. This book isn't available in the U.S. After reading some of these statements, you'll know why. Though we may not agree with his confrontational manner, it just might be what we need to wake us up.

"Most of the 40,000 denominations are suffering from senility and out of date. Tens of thousands of their retail outlets (churches) have succeeded in keeping two billion Christians of the world unengaged and condemned to sit in the pews as cash cows until they are ready to shift six feet underground in the church cemetery."

"The ekklesia exists, not to protect man's traditions which are costly perversions, but to fulfill Yahweh's plan."

"Churching the unchurched is the bane of Christianity. Yeshua taught us to allow the yeast to leaven the whole community. We need millions of Crypto Christians who stay below the radar and quietly catalyze their communities. Churching them leaves the rest of the community not only unleavened but hostile."

"Yeshua never said, 'Go to church.' He said, 'Go and tell others what great things Yahweh has done for you.'"

"We are training the wrong people, with the wrong motives, in the wrong place, by the wrong teachers in the wrong traditions. Thousands of unemployed youngsters, driven by economics, are being trained in Bible schools to be cultural misfits... Millions are being spent to train and support them, but despite triumphalistic reports, the return on investment is just peanuts... They know the scriptures but not the mechanics of discipling or ekklesia planting. Entry points, bridges from other religions, spiritual warfare, mentoring multi-generational disciples and other relevant topics, which are powerful predictors of CPM, are not taught."

The Weary Pilgrim blog recently had a post that caught my attention: The gospel...an inconvenient truth. The author spent a year in which he read and meditated on the gospels only. He relates the following:

In the year I spent reading and reflecting on the Gospels only... I guess it ruined me. It was at that collision of heart, mind and life's events that my sense of belief in the gospels changed dramatically. They had to "be-lived." If I was to find the deepest truth of the gospels, the stuff between the lines, where the Spirit inspires life, I had to live the gospels. They had to become the fabric of my life... of what holds it together.

His conclusion is that the gospel of Jesus is an inconvenient truth. As I considered the implications of this, conventional Christianity as seen in our culture bears little or no resemblance to the gospel Jesus modeled and proclaimed. His is a gospel that invades our comfort and convenience with a way of life that is foreign to us. The Weary Pilgrim sums it up this way:

The inconvenient truth of the gospels are opting to be vulnerable; being taken advantage of; absorbing pain and suffering; realizing inconvenience is a gift; taking risks; being overwhelmed; learning to be content with questions more than a clever answer; building relationships, as the art of being a gardener, being patient to see something grow; the willingness to see forgiveness as a constant state of heart, mind and soul; that there really is no such thing as them, it is "us", we're all in this together; and Grace... more, and more, and more... it's endless.
The gospel... an inconvenient truth.

The catastrophe in Haiti has riveted the attention of the world on this poverty-stricken island nation. Political differences fade into the background as nations from around the world rally to come to the aid of the Haitians devastated by this earthquake.

The compassion pouring forth in behalf of the Haitian people is evidence of the image of God that is so deeply ingrained in humanity. Seldom is it seen however, due to the profusion of self-centered interests under which it is submerged. It's sad that it usually takes tragic circumstances to rip open the small world of self that encases us, thus releasing the image of God in behalf of others.

"Recent surveys in Britain have brought out the fact that great numbers of people have affirmed that the best years of their lives were those in which they shared the experience of the war. The bombing of cities, the destruction of homes, the absence of rest or holiday, the shortage of food and clothing, and the constant presence of death were all part of the picture; but what colors it all is the memory of shared commitment to a common purpose. That is what brings human beings to their very best, and most of us know it." - Lesslie Newbigin, Foolishness to the Greeks, p. 122.

That is the kind of relatedness we've been created to walk in. Being stripped of the many things with which we cover ourselves liberates us in our nakedness to freely relate in our need for each other. How contradictory it sounds for people to say the best years of their lives were experienced under extreme duress. But isn't that just like the kingdom of God?

"And from the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and violent men take it by force." - Matthew 11:12.

In his little book, Trinitarian Doctrine for Today's Mission, Lesslie Newbigin states emphatically that:

"...this recovery of a practical faith in the power of the Holy Spirit will lead us astray if it is not held firmly with an equally practical Trinitarian faith, a faith which discerns God's fatherly rule in the events of secular history, and which leads into full commitment to the life of that fellowship which is the Body of Christ in the midst of the world.

"Similarly it is rightly urged that missions cannot deal with the realities of the life of men if they cannot help men to understand what God is doing in the revolutionary changes which are everywhere taking place in the life of the world."

Could this last statement hold a key to the ineffectiveness of the Church's missional activity? The inability of the Church to help people understand what God is doing in the revolutionary changes occurring in the life of the world makes it irrelevant in the mindset of the people.

If the Church is unable to help people understand what God is doing, I think it's because the Church doesn't understand what God is doing. We can't give something we don't have. So why don't we understand? There are a whole host of explanations, of which I will suggest one.

The overwhelming emphasis on the church has made it a world unto itself, creating the mistaken impression that the church is the unique place where God's activity happens. Thus, the world is the arena of the powers of darkness exercising dominion in the absence of God.

Newbigin questions this kind of erroneous thinking:

"It is common to hear theologians speak of the Gospel as God's 'intervention' in human history. But is God absent from human history apart from this intervention? Is the world outside the Church, 'an atheistical patch in the universe'? Is God not at work in the affairs of the world outside the bounds of the body that confesses Christ as Saviour? The Bible does not allow us to doubt that he is. But how? In what terms shall we affirm the uniqueness, sufficiency and finality of Christ without either denying the reality of his working in the world or blunting the sharpness of the challenge which he puts to every man to choose?"

The following is a quote of Dave Tomlinson in a study guide of chapter 1 of Chasing Francis (which I haven't read).

"a young woman told me, 'Evangelicalism helped me to begin with, but now I feel I've outgrown it.' Arrogant? Possibly, yet she was voicing something which cropped up continually in my conversations with people: the feeling that evangelicalism is extremely good at introducing people to faith in Christ, but distinctly unhelpful when it comes to ...progressing."

Reading this statement reminded me of an observation made by Gordon Cosby, founding pastor of the Church of the Savior in Washington D.C. It is his contention that the present church structure keeps people in perpetual infancy.

If these statements are true of evangelicalism, then what is the alternative? What are the corrective measures that need to be taken to help the young woman, and countless others like her, to progress in their faith in Christ?

Though we've gone round and round on the deficiency of the present system, the crux of the matter is what do we have to replace evangelicalism? If it is another "ism", we haven't solved the problem, but have only created a new problem.

To the evangelical community, speaking of a departure from evangelicalism is tantamount to heresy. Recognizing that it is extremely helpful in introducing people to Christ may help us realize that its purpose is just that - introducing people to Christ. But to try and make it accomplish something it was never intended for only leads to frustration and possibly rejection.

So where to after evangelicalism?

This post is the result of watching several interviews at www.allelon.org/

The subject matter dealt with the question: "What is missional church?" That isn't the subject of this post however. I found the comments of the theologians being interviewed far more substantive than a mere definition of missional church.

Two primary thoughts surfaced in the dialogue pertaining to the western Christian perspective of Scripture. This perspective has been around for centuries, so it isn't of recent vintage.

It was noted that westerners read and interpret the scriptures from a personal, individualistic perspective. Thus, the scriptures are understood to be a manual for personal salvation and self-improvement in walking out the Christian life. Therefore, the reader becomes the central focus of the scriptures.

However, it was pointed out that the scriptures are not focused on the individual, but on a people, the community of God. But this has been missed in western Christianity with its individualistic approach to Scripture, resulting in a warped view of what the scriptures are really all about.

Secondly, though not necessarily second in importance, the scriptures are about the mission of God. If we don't read and interpret the scriptures from a missional perspective, we miss God's intention in his written word. The devastating result is that we don't understand the purpose of God, therefore finding ourselves out of sync with him and what he is doing.

A radical course correction is required if we westerners are to get back on track with God. Thankfully, there are pockets where this is taking place, but we have a long way to go if the scriptures are to be understood and interpreted in the communal and missional context that is intended.

With this very first day of a brand new year, one cannot help but think of fresh starts and new beginnings. Dreaming of what can be and the exhilarating hope it elicits is foundational to the faith that transforms dreams into reality. As the writer of Hebrews so masterfully expresses, "faith is the substance of things hoped for."

The Greek word for "substance" is hupostasis, from hupo, under, and stasis, a standing. Vine defines it as "that which stands, or is set, under, a foundation, a beginning; hence, the quality of confidence which leads one to stand under, endure, or undertake anything."

This definition implies that the process we understand as faith is messy, down and dirty, digging deep into the soil of the physical and material to be a foundation of the hope that has captivated the imagination. Any dream that is worthwhile requires the faith of God to endure the resistance of a disintegrating creation to the launching of the new thing. And that which God initiates in the imaginations of men is so far beyond human capability that it's impossible without God's kind of faith. It's the kind of faith that liberates slaves from bondage to become the nation of Israel, that incarnates the omnipotent creator God into humanity, subjecting himself to that fallen humanity, overcoming its death with resurrection life. So with God, nothing is impossible!

So often, great expectations are ground into dust by the continual obstruction of the physical realm. But the people that know their God shall be strong and do exploits. It's a corporate thing where people are knit together as they engage in the mission of God to bring heaven to earth as Jesus incarnates himself and his kingdom through them.

All of us are familiar with the conversation pertaining to the reformation, restructuring, transformation, or whatever other terminology has been used to describe the need to change the church so that it becomes the dynamic people of God that the scriptures purport it to be. It just seems we drone on and on, growing tired of all the rhetoric that seems to be repeated over and over with a new twist here and another tweak there, but basically seeing things continue in the same way for all practical purposes.

Having said that, what I'm about to suggest appears to add to the rhetoric, becoming part of the already voluminous writing and dialogue on this subject. So at the risk of being part of the problem mentioned in the first paragraph, I pose some questions that have occurred to me. Though they may seem highly implausible and questionable, bear with me on this. Maybe something constructive will come out of it.

What would happen if we would scrap everything, go back to the beginning and start over with nothing but Jesus and his teachings? Like Andrew and Philip, inviting some that we know to come and see what Jesus is like, discovering where he will take us. Forgetting all the trappings of organizations, leadership, activities and a plethora of other things that seem to complicate matters, we would, as much as possible, walk together with Jesus as those first disciples did, learning and discovering along the way as they encountered experiences that Jesus led them into. What would happen if we start from scratch just as his disciples did? Do you think Jesus might lead us into his way of what we have been struggling to understand and correct?

Obviously, there are differences. We are already born from above, having already received the Holy Spirit; but this should enable us to be far more perceptive than the twelve were in learning from Jesus the ways of the kingdom. Possibly the greatest hindrance we would encounter is all of the knowledge we've already accumulated about spiritual things. Though we should not despise what the Spirit has taught us, neither should we allow it to rob us of learning and discovering in childlike wonder further insights he has for us through walking together with Jesus. And Jesus is walking through our communities today just like he did in first century Palestine. I believe we can experience the same kind of things together with our little group of friends as we walk with Jesus just as the twelve did.

I know this seems simplistic. But it seems that all of our attempts to change the church, form community and engage in missional activity has so muddied the waters of simply walking with Jesus that we have difficulty hearing and seeing him.

While these thoughts are not in any way complete, probably raising more questions than answers and more problems than solutions, if it stirs our thought processes, maybe something constructive will come out of it. The first being, is this even possible?

I want to pick up where we left off with the last post. To a world in ever-deepening darkness, God speaks to his people saying, "...nations will come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your rising." - Isaiah 60:3

My question is: "What do we have in place that our light shines through so brilliantly that people will come to the brightness?"

I ask this question in light of a comment that was made as several of us were sharing last week about the direction we are moving in the formation of a community. John, who works with those coming out of prison and rehab said that he is asked where they can get involved with a spiritual group. He said that he now refuses to recommend they become involved with a church after the negative experiences that were encountered by those who followed his church recommendations. Therefore, John finds himself at a loss to suggest a community where these spiritual babes can experience the kind of fellowship that will encourage and strengthen them in the maturing process.

Through John, we were confronted with the fact that we who have disengaged from regular involvement in the institutional church have nothing to offer those who are seeking to participate in a spiritual community. House churches that meet once a week aren't much different than the institutional church they left. Healthy relationships cannot develop through a once-a-week meeting with little or no contact apart from the meeting.

We're discovering just how counter-cultural genuine community is in an individualistic society. As messy and uncomfortable as it is, we really don't have a choice if we want to provide a viable alternative to institutionalized Christianity. It will entail becoming other-focused in a way we have never known before. But this is the very thing that will release the light of the Lord in us that will make Isaiah 60:3 a reality.