Breaking Bread

Coram Deo's Launch Team participated in the Lord's Supper together for the first time on Sunday, August 28, 2005. Though we're not a fully functioning, publicly meeting church yet, we are a bona fide local expression of the body of Christ... and this sacrament unites us to the rest of the body - past, present, and future.

Much yet to be done... but so much already done for us by Christ!!!

Life is Mission

We’ve been talking a lot about engaging culture and being missional. I fear that some of us are wearing this calling like a burden, saddled with a narrow definition of culture – as if going to a bar or an art show is the only way to really engage the world around us. While we do need to move outside our usual circles of comfort, it's also true that mission is all around us. Engaging culture happens down the street, around the corner, in the front yard. It happens anytime we move outside of ‘cultural Christianity’ to truly love and serve people around us in the name of Christ.

My wife is a stay-at-home mom, trying to raise and disciple 3 kids. If we’re trying to plant a church that’s hip to the down-towny arts scene, she’s not a prime player. But since Coram Deo is about engaging the culture where you are, even a mom at home with kids can live on mission.

Yesterday she went to the park with another mom from Coram Deo. As they were watching the kids play, they noticed an Asian woman with her boys playing nearby. Since we’re in the process of adopting a baby from China, my wife struck up a conversation to find out where this woman was from. Turns out – you guessed it – she’s Chinese. She has 3 boys. Her husband works in research at the Med Center. And the prospect of adopting a Chinese baby girl provided a natural bridge for interaction. Could it be that a sovereign God is at work in this situation?

No idea where this woman is spiritually. Maybe she’s atheistic, like most Chinese. Maybe she’s Mormon – she did live in Utah for a year! Maybe we’ll have a chance to bless this woman by talking about the gospel of Christ. But even if that’s a long time coming, she’ll bless us by helping us understand the Chinese culture a little more fully. We’re hoping that a friendship will be created, and that perhaps through that friendship, the gospel will travel.

Life is mission. Don’t get sucked into thinking you have to do something drastically different. Just open your eyes to where you are, and start living intentionally!

Spending on Ourselves

What should we be spending our money on? I got this today from a friend. A blogger in Atlanta was comparing the costs of some megachurch programs with the cost of making the world a better place. Hope this helps us think about what it means to create a church that really has mission as the central priority of everything (including budgets):

• Estimated cost of the new 3,000-seat North Point Ministries church to be built on Lenox Road: $40 million

• Annual budget of the largest church in Atlanta, First Baptist Church: $13 million

• Number of uninsured children in Georgia: 166,000

• Approximate cost to give a basic check-up, without blood tests or vaccines, to all those children: $12,450,000

• Approximate number of Sudanese refugees who've fled to neighboring Chad because of tribal warfare: 250,000

• Cost to shelter and feed those refugees for one year: $13,590,000

• Minimum number of homeless people in metro Atlanta 37,000

• Minimum number of meals provided to homeless by the Open Door Community each year: 15,600

• Annual budget of the nonprofit Open Door Community: $440,000

Sources: Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Georgia Department of Community Health, Georgia Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, Save Darfur Coalition, CARE, Metro Atlanta Task Force for the Homeless, Open Door Community

Consumers vs. Communal

One of the thinkers who's talking about community and the kingdom of God in ways that would resonate with Coram Deo folks is Dallas Willard. This is from a recent Relevant Magazine interview (note his words about the challenge of community):

RM: I know that for most twenty-somethings, myself included, it's easy to get lost in a maze of options...

DW: That's exactly right. See, young people identify life with consuming...and not just consuming stuff you might buy in a store but consuming all the stuff that is offered to them. They are constantly being hammered with all types of things which they open themselves up to by staying plugged in The old saying from the drug generation, "Tune in, turn on, and drop = out" has been made manifest, we have a generation of young people now who are living in a constant state of "dropped out-ness" from the real world and from its history and from community and from the integrity of themselves. ...And they don't even know that.

RM: But you're talking about a generation that has a put a great amount of emphasis on having friends and surrounding themselves with community...

DW: That's an expression of their loneliness. But most of them don't know what community means because community means assuming responsibility for other people and that means paying attention and not following your own will but submitting your will and giving up the world of intimacy and power you have in the little consumer world that you have created. They are lonely and they hurt. They don't know why that they think community might solve that, but when they look community in the face and realize that it means raw, skin to skin contact with other people for whom you have become responsible..that's when they back away..

The entire interview at http://www.relevantmagazine.com/beta/god_article.php?id=6964

Coram Deo's New Home?

What if there was a missional church, gathering in the heart of the city to renew covenant with God and celebrate his grace, and fanning out from there to live the Coram Deo life in neighborhoods and workplaces and schools all over the city? This building may be God's provision for this vision to become reality...

Non-Negotiable?

Following up last Friday night's Preparation Team meeting, I'd like to start a little debate. Rules: you have to back up your thoughts with Scripture, and you have to be willing to mix it up a little. No getting your feelings hurt if someone challenges your ideas.

So here's the question: when it comes to structuring a church, what things are non-negotiable? What do we HAVE to have in order to be a church? And by contrast, which things are NOT actually essential to the life of God's people, and are instead assimilated from the culture we've grown up in?

Click "Comment" below to add your thoughts.

Lane Mixes It Up

Coram Deo is a communal affair... so welcome Lane Freemyer to the fray with some thoughtful thoughts (is that redundant?) on structure. Writes Lane:

Passionate, disciplined, loving, scripturally aware, active members have to be the dream of every pastor. That and a hip building with really good coffee. But the elusiveness of that kind of church is expressed by that rueful joke about the trouble with churches (they’re full of Christians), which would be funny if it weren’t so true. Our community is made of the same selfish, sinful folks as many others. I personally testify to all-to-frequently passing on opportunities to be missional, due to apathy, fear, or whatever. My question is: How do we avoid falling into the same trap that has swallowed other congregations? Is there structure that can help?

We say we want to be a community that helps bring people to Christ. What does Coram Deo to need to do to be that kind of community? The 'programs' we disparage, privately or otherwise, all started out with the noblest of intentions. They were a means to accomplish noble goals - to instruct and guide the faithful and the new believer, to mobilize the congregation, to marshal resources for ‘the Good Fight,’ wherever it was being fought. Flawed as they were in practice, they started out as best attempts to do those things that every community needs to do - including us.

That’s not for us, though. We’re about authenticity. We’re about organic community, organic friendships, evangelization through loving the hell out of people (literally). What do we have right now other than our intentions? We will bring about the kind of community we want as a collection of individuals, united in common purpose, acting every day. We must act. How do we structure to best enable effective action? Or do we even need structure? Maybe congregating on Sunday, hopefully with our new friends and new believers, and just celebrating Jesus together with the aforementioned really good coffee is all the structure we need. Sounds pretty good to me. But effective action without plan or framework doesn’t often translate from theory to practice in the business world, and I know God is not a CEO and most businesses aren’t Spirit-led so maybe the analogy doesn’t work, but I’m thinking a little structure might help us harvest.

I’m not asking for a step-by-step manual. I think Bob illustrated very well in his 8/6 post how rules or externals lead to legalism that leads away from our Lord. I know that being ‘organic’ (new buzzword patent submitted) is the reality of true ministry, that rules can’t express the truth of loving God and one’s neighbor. After all, even Jesus illustrated the concept with the example of the Good Samaritan rather than a list of rules. Clearly it’s more easily illustrated than defined. Maybe missional community, to paraphrase Potter Stewart, is a ‘know when I see it’ affair (if you’ll forgive the analogy). Maybe the answer is as simple as "We’ll be led by the Spirit and Bob’s Spirit-inspired leadership," and if that’s the case, consider me down with that.

Maybe I’m getting ahead of myself. Organization vs organism is this Friday, and all will be revealed then. Then again, maybe our conversation can be framed by these questions.

It is a pleasure and an honor to run this race with you all. May God be glorified in us.

Fasting for Hunger

An email from my friend Dave, a "friend of Coram Deo" who resides out of state... might some of us consider a statement of solidarity with the developing world?

Sojourners is calling on more than 30,000 people to declare to President Bush their intention to fast and pray during the World Summit, from September 14-16. The Summit, which will take place in New York during the opening session of the United Nations General Assembly, is one of the best opportunities we have to let President Bush know that he has a mandate to make poverty history in our world. We will be praying and fasting. I hope you will too.

A fast can be as simple as sacrificing one meal during the course of the Summit, which can serve as a spiritual and personal act of solidarity with the billions of people across the world who go without food and basic necessities every day. In addition to declaring our intention to fast, we are calling on the president to stand up for life by committing an additional $5 billion in development assistance in the 2007 budget, accelerating 100% debt cancellation for the world's poorest countries, and supporting more just trade policies. http://go.sojo.net/campaign/30000_children?rk=ydq-Z_91Jz3yW

(Note: Sojourners is a progressive Christian organization primarily committed to social and political justice causes. This post is not a blanket endorsement, but simply a challenge to consider this initiative. What, Bob, you mean there are other things for us to care about besides just getting a conservative on the Supreme Court??) ;)

Bounded Sets Vs. Centered Sets

Last night’s living-room discussion raised an interesting issue that deserves more elucidation and discussion here on the blog. The question is: how do you measure what it looks like to be a follower of Jesus?

Many churches choose to measure the boundary markers. The language is dichotomous: believer/unbeliever, member/non-member, in/out. And the boundary markers tend to be things that are external and easy to measure: behavior, attendance, signing off on a particular creed, dressing a certain way, doing the things that the “in” people do. If you do these things, you’re considered a “member” or insider. If you don’t do them, you’re an outsider.

Now certainly there are elements of truth in this model. We cannot entirely lose the language of believer/unbeliever, because Jesus makes it clear that those categories matter. But the problems with this model are obvious: externals become the main thing, rather than true heart transformation.

Instead of focusing on the boundaries, we want to put the focus on the center. What does it look like to passionately follow Jesus? Is your life reflecting the transformation that comes from His Spirit? Do you love people like He did? Are you living in light of the gospel more this week than last week? Is God more primary in your life today than yesterday? Is Christ everything to you?

When our focus is on the center, the boundaries become fuzzier. Some people will start to follow Jesus, and it won’t be totally clear when they “crossed the boundary.” Others will take longer to break patterns of sin in their life, but will truly be experiencing the knowledge of the grace of God in their souls. But the center is the main thing. The boundaries are peripheral.

This also means that for those of us on the preparation team, the bar is higher. Because “membership” in Coram Deo (whatever that comes to mean) isn’t about signing off on a doctrinal statement or taking a membership class or reciting the Apostles’ Creed while standing on one leg. It’s about whether there is evidence in your life that Christ is the center, and that the values of Coram Deo are your values. That’s both more subjective and more reliable than checking the boundary markers. Because you can fake the external stuff; but the heart has a way of showing itself.

To quote Jesus, “Out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks.” “These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.” “Make the tree good, and its fruit will be good; make the tree bad, and its fruit will be bad.” The reason Jesus was so bothersome to the Pharisees is that he had a centered-set view of the kingdom of God. The Pharisees were busy marking the boundaries; Jesus was busy dealing with people’s hearts. That’s what we want to do, too.

Positive Deconstruction

My friend Will is just putting the finishing touches to a book he was asked to write. He is a campus minister, and his book is about the concept of missional community. He felt the need to include a chapter about church, and about how church is supposed to be a missional community. Problem: Will hasn’t really experienced missional community at his church. It’s one of his major frustrations. So, knowing that I’d been spending the last year poring over how to create a missional church, he asked me to write that chapter for him.

I finished the chapter last week while I was in Orlando. It was great fun. I told lots of stories about you guys – the Coram Deo community – because they illustrated what I was writing about. I also took pains to distance myself from people who are bitter and negative about church. Here’s an excerpt:

A lot of the people I know are pretty bothered by the way we do church, and by the lameness of the Christian subculture. The thing is, not many people are doing anything about it. There is a whole movement of Christians who are bitter about church, and so they sit around and write books about how church sucks, and how modernism sucks, and how everything before last year sucks. They glibly deconstruct the church, leaving nothing constructive in their wake.

It’s appropriate at this point in our journey that we pause and caution ourselves against this tendency. I LOVE deconstruction. I think it’s a valuable tool for teaching. I enjoy cutting out from under people the very foundation they stand on, leaving them groundless and conflicted. Frustrated people learn stuff. So if I can raise enough tension in your mind, you’ll crave an answer! That’s what good teachers do.

And in the process of planting a church, it’s necessary to deconstruct. It’s necessary to talk about where the Church in America is failing. It’s necessary to talk about the false ideas we’ve absorbed; ideas that have more to do with American individualism than with the Bible. But this sort of deconstruction will naturally create tension in us. So how do we keep from becoming a bunch of people who sit around and talk badly about Christ’s bride? How do we keep from being negative and cynical and bitter?

The answer is: we don’t stop there. Deconstruction is good… as long as it’s followed by construction. The problem with the bitter people I mentioned above is that they are content to deconstruct and that’s all. No construction. No proposing an alternative. No recognizing the good, even in failed models of church. Let’s not be "that guy."

Let’s be people who value the good in everything, who keep a godly and generous spirit, who honor those who have gone before. Let’s recognize the Holy Spirit’s work in shepherding his imperfect church down through the ages. Let’s boldly propose an alternative model of church that answers the questions we’re raising. And let’s keep ourselves humble by reminding ourselves that in 10 or 20 or 50 or 100 years, someone will be using Coram Deo as a model of what not to do. Freeing, isn’t it?

The Bible and Objectivity

Some saucy thoughts from Bob about "Just What the Bible Says" over on the Musings blog...

Also: Prep Team, head to the Core page for some important updates and recent photos of people you should know.