Where is Your Church?

As a Pastor I’m often asked where the church I pastor is. Where is St Luke’s? In many ways it is a logical question, but at the same time, a question that misses the point in regards to what the church is. We’ve become culturally conditioned to equate a church with a building. St Luke’s doesn’t have a building or a facility. A church isn’t simply a building. Where is St Luke’s then?

A church is a community of people who’ve responded to God’s call to live the Way of Jesus with faith and trust in him. So on a Sunday you’ll find our church gathered at the Mount Sports Clubrooms (you’re welcome anytime). The rest of the week however you’ll find our church scattered here and there throughout the Tauranga community. Young and old, students, stay home mums or dads, doctors, sparkies, dentists, teachers, builders, volunteers, those looking for work, those retired from work. You’ll find us here, there, and everywhere. A Church is therefore not a building, but rather a community that gathers and scatters to live out the call to follow Jesus.

 

 

We gather to celebrate the work of God in our lives and world. We gather around God’s Word, around the Lord’s Table and in his presence. We don’t gather simply to watch or to consume a ‘service,’ rather we gather to participate in community. We gather to stand alongside each other, to love one another, to pray for one another, to encounter God in one another, to encourage one another, and to greet and welcome the stranger and the sojourner. We call this ‘churching’ and we gather to ‘church’ each other; it’s a verb!

We’re not always gathered though. We scatter. We scatter embracing the challenge of living as those that bear witness to the life changing reality of God in the nooks and crannies of everyday life. We attempt to live as representatives of love and grace in our work places, where we study, in sports teams, to the stranger and in our various friendship circles; everywhere and anywhere life takes us. We are called to be the church Monday through Saturday, to at times shine boldly as a light and to at times flavour subversively as salt the world around us, with creative and authentic proclamation of the Good News of Jesus. 

You’re welcome to join us when we gather this Sunday. We’re a community not a building.

St Luke's - Truth and Humility

The church finds itself existing in a postmodern context that is suspicious of institutions, organisations, experts, and people that claim to have all the answers or have discovered the truth. We’re surrounded by people suspicious of the way organisations use and interpret texts to suit their own ends. So of course, it’s not surprising to discover that average Joe is suspicious of the church and how the biblical text has been ‘used and misused’ by the ‘experts’ up the front to advance their own agendas. Heck Pastor Joe (me) is suspicious of that.

And yet as Christ followers we affirm the Bible authoritative and inspired by God. We believe it contains ultimate truth, a grand-narrative, a big story which gives meaning to all of human existence and out of which we can make sense of our own stories. We’re people of the Spirit. We’re people of the text – the Bible.

In a postmodern context you could say it is a little stacked against us!

An yet I believe in the possibility, potential, and the ability of the church to shine brighter than it ever has, to make more of a difference in the world than she already has, to offer the world faith, hope and love in the midst of confusion, hopelessness and heartache.

Mindful of our context we seek each time we gather to speak the truth out of love, with grace and in humility, understanding that we may not have it all exactly right – though we are more than confident of being on the right track.

We’re called to shine boldly as a light and also flavour subversively in the world around us, pointing people towards Jesus and working towards the Kingdom of God being established on earth as in heaven.

At St Luke’s we’re more about out working this in humble conversation. Sermons are talks to start talks not talks to end talks, the opening word rather than the final word. We won’t yell at you, but at the same time we won’t shy away. Humility isn’t weak it’s just inviting.

To be continued...

St Luke's - In a Postmodern & Post-Christian World

The church is by nature a number of things...

Those who have responded to the call to follow Jesus (to pledge their allegiance and worship to the Lordship of the Creator God revelled in Father, Son and Spirit).

Those that are “alive” in Christ and the gathering of those that are alive in Christ.

Those that gather united in baptism and communion.

Those that live out of and in witness to the big story of the Gospel.

An integrated renewed humanity in community (an eclectic bunch of people sourced from here, there and everywhere but who have all found life in Jesus Christ).

You could say that the church is; a community that gathers and scatters as followers of Jesus in order to encourage, equip and help each other in the active living out of God’s will and in order to bear witness in both word and deed to the truth and love of God.

Why St Luke’s then? Why plant a church?

The short answer is in response to God’s calling, leading and prompting. At an intuitive level I felt God was leading us (Lisa and I, and then what became a church planting team) to plant a church.

Now we all know that churches can work out their ‘churching’ in a variety of ways.

So what about St Luke’s...?

All along we wanted to do this in a way that would resonate somehow with the postmodern and post-Christian context that we live in; with those that know Christ in this context and with those that don’t.

St Luke’s isn’t a postmodern church. I’m not sure that is possible as, at the end of the day, a Christian worldview and a postmodern worldview are not really compatible. We have set out however to speak into a postmodern context.

Let me explain that a bit, and yes I’m cutting out as much guff as possible, and yes, the story is a little more nuanced than what follows...

First we had the enlightenment:

A cultural movement of intellectualism in the 1700’s that sought to mobilize the power of reason, in order to reform society and advance knowledge. It promoted science and intellectual interchange and opposed superstition. It is the foundation to what is known as modernism, our modern way of living; scientific, technical, rational, logical, educated, reasoned etc. It carries with it the idea that we’ll fix the world as humanity advances intellectually and one by one thinks and fixes and invents solutions to the world‘s problems and humankind's deepest fears and desires.

Now we have postmodernism:

As time as carried on we’ve discovered that science isn’t going to fix everything. Despite the great advances in philosophy, medicine, humanitarian work, education, capitalism – the world is a pretty broken place. Science couldn’t fix or prove everything. Postmodern thinkers began to declare truth as relative,[1] to become suspicious of literary texts and our ability to truthfully interpret the text,[2] and to doubt any sort of metanarrative[3] by which sense could be made of life.

Imagine a flyer in your mail box from Shell Oil explaining their new environmentally friendly and sustainable oil - who wrote this? Why? Can they be trusted? What’s their agenda?  Who can you trust? Who are the experts? This is just their version of the story, it’s not necessarily the only version or the truest version, in fact it’s most likely not!

There is suspicion of truth, suspicion of the text, suspicion of the expert (who’s paying them), a suspicion of institutions, a suspicion that any particular story is a true story let alone the true story. All is relative.

We live in a postmodern context.

At the same time we live in what is very much a post-Christian society.

First we had Christendom:

Christendom is the religious culture that has dominated Western society since the 4th Century. Prior to this the Western world was pre-Christian. Greek gods, Roman gods, and Caesar were considered as lord. It was criminal to be a Christian at times. Christians were thrown to lions in the arena or killed by gladiators. In the 4th Centruy the Roman emperor Constantine made Christianity the official imperial religion. Christian faith moved from being a marginalized, persecuted, subversive movement to being the official religion. Church gatherings moved from underground catacombs to large temples that were specifically built. The Emperor worshiped in temple in all his finery and so gowns and robes and the like were acquired for the priests to wear and conduct services in, they needed to look the part for the Emperor. The Church and state became one. In many countries the King or Queen was the head of the church as well as the State. Members of society were assumed to be Christian by birth rather than by choice. Over the last 1000 years or so however, there has been a separation of Church and State.

Largely though, until the last generation or so, the church was still held in high regard in society. Countries still considered themselves to be a Christian nation. Everyone went to Sunday school. Priests or Pastors were held in high regard. Church and teachings of the church still held tremendous sway.

Now we have post-Christendom:

Many historians though are now calling the world we live in a post-Christendom society. In many places prayer in schools has been banned, it is being requested that Christmas be renamed as a solstice gift-giving festival, that nativity scenes be removed from shopping malls. You may have seen on the news a few years ago the debate around the monument of the Ten Commandments in the Montgomery State judicial building being taken down. After having been in place for two years it was ruled to be in violation of the U.S. Constitutions principle of a separation between religion and government.

The church, priests, reverends, pastors, prayer, the Christian faith no longer enjoys the same privileged status it once held in western society.

Thus we find ourselves living in a postmodern and post-Christian context.

To be continued...

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[1] Francis Watson, Text, Church and World: Biblical Interpretation in Theological Perspective (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1994), 102.

 [2] Mark Poster, “Foucault, Michel,” in The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism (ed. Michael Groden and Martin Kreiswirth; Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994), 277-280.

 [3] Jean-Francois Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984), xxiv.

Concerning the Church - Part 3

The church is to exist as a witness to the gospel and is to model to the world: grace, love, forgiveness, kindness, gentleness, self control, acceptance, patience, sacrifice, a willingness to die to oneself, faith, determination, extra mile living, the laying down of one’s life, service rather than the need to always be served, passion and action for justice, peace as a non-anxious presence in the world, faithful witness, initiative, creativity, light and life in the midst of darkness and death, hope and courage in the face of impossibility and lose. We’re to take up our cross and follow Jesus. We’re to lay down our lives for our fellow men.

Paul really meant it when he said ‘it’s no longer I that live but Christ who lives in me’ and he really meant it when he said ‘come follow me as I follow Christ.’

Full on. For sure!

The call is not to join an institution or to sign a pledge card; it is rather to sign on for a different narrative account of reality that is in profound contrast to the dominant account of reality into which we are all summarily inducted.[1]

Our “doing and living” is to be as people “alive in Christ.”

Philippians 2:5-11
⁵ In your relationships with one another, have the same attitude of mind Christ Jesus had:
⁶ Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
⁷ rather, he made himself nothing
by taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
⁸ And being found in appearance as a human being,
he humbled himself
by becoming obedient to death—
even death on a cross!

A renewed identity in Christ leads to a new way of living; you are a new creation, act that way!

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[1] Walter Brueggemann, The Word That Redescribes the World: The Bible and Discipleship (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2006), 95.

Concerning the Church - Part 2

By nature the church is those that are alive in Christ and the gathering and scattering in mission of those that are alive in Christ.

Craig Van Gelder writes this... The church lives in the world as a human enterprise, but it is also the called and the redeemed people of God. It is a people of God who are created by the Spirit to live as a missionary community. As such, the church is both a social organisation and a spiritual community. Empowered by the Spirit the church is God’s personal presence in the world. This makes the church as a spiritual community unique. The church exists as a social reality with human behaviours organised with human structures. But this human behaviour, through the redemptive work of God, is empowered by the Spirit. This is the duality inherent in the church’s nature.[1]

Or in other words, yes as soon as the church gathers, suddenly you need administration and structures and policies and everything else involved in social organisation but: the church is unique as a community empowered by the Spirit as God’s personal presence in the world.

Michael Gorman puts it like this...

The ekklesia is what God is up to in the world: recreating a people whose corporate life tells the world what the death and resurrection of the Messiah is all about. This people, the “Church,” lives the story, embodies the story, tells the story. It is the living exegesis of God’s master story of faith, love, power and hope.[2]

So by nature the church is a counter culture community that lives out of, and in witness to, the big story of the Gospel.

Empowered by the Spirit the church does not live according to the patterns or the ways of this world but rather, transformed by the renewing of the mind; lives, thinks, acts, functions in the world in line with the Good News of the Gospel of Jesus. In doing so the church community bears witness in word and in deed to the reality of the Good News of the Gospel and more specifically the reality of the resurrected Jesus as the way, the truth and the life. The church us to be a living explanation, a living example, a living interpretation of Good News of the Gospel, of the reality of the truth and power of the cross. 

Leslie Newbigin asks...

How is it possible that the gospel should be credible, that people should come to believe that the power which has the last word in human affairs is represented by a man hanging on a cross? What is the most effective vehicle through which a scandalous gospel can be communicated so that it is credible?

He answers...

I am suggesting that the only answer, the only way to explain the gospel, is a congregation of men and women who believe it and live by it. No amount of brilliant argument can make it sound reasonable to the inhabitants of the reigning plausibility structure. That is why I am suggesting that the only possible explanation of the gospel is a congregation which believes it.[3]

And I add, lives it!

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[1] Craig Van Gelder, The Essence of the Church (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2000), 25.

[2] Michael J. Gorman, Cruciformity: Paul’s Narrative Spirituality of the Cross. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001), 367.

[3] Lesslie Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1989), 227-232.

Concerning the Church – Part 1

When it comes to discussions concerning the church, too often the nature of the church is skipped in favour of discussing the organisation and ministries of the church. Perhaps everyone understands the nature of the church or perhaps differentiating between the nature, ministries, and organisation of the church is considered semantics. Maybe the essential nature of church has been forgotten in amongst the many choices people can make about church. These choices being on one hand brilliant, although on the other, at least potentially misleading.

We need variety of expression, flavour, tone, style, culture and characteristics when it comes to church. This is a healthy “consumer” choice. When we lose sight of the essential nature of the church in favour of her many characteristics though, it is possible that rather than allowing the Church to shape and demand something of us, we allow our expectations, demands, and tastes to become things that instead shape and place demands on the church. "Either put on something we want to consumer or we’ll go somewhere that does." This isn’t the way it is supposed to be, this is consumer choice gone too far.

So when it comes to talking about the church it is essential that we begin by talking about the essence of the church or the nature of the church rather than about the programs, ministries, and organization of the local church.

Walter Brueggemann writes that Christians are those that have responded to “God’s call to disengage from postures, habits, and assumptions that define the world of power and injustice that is so devoid of mercy and compassion in every arena of life. The call is away from ordinary life, ordinary possessions, and ordinary assumptions to a way of life that the world judges impossible. Thus the call is, indeed to an impossibility.”[1]

The church is by nature the gathering and scattering of those who have responded to the call to follow Jesus. Those that have committed to an “alternative” way of living in the world.  Those that, in faith and repentance, have pledged their allegiance and worship to God revelled in Father, Son and Spirit.

The church are those that have turned from false gods, from idolatry, from self governance, from self rule and have determined to follow Jesus as Lord and as Saviour.

The church is a community of atheists in regards to any other gods so often worshiped, pursued, and lived in allegiance to in our day and age...

Individualism – worship of self as the centre of the universe.
Consumerism – worship of consumption, self gratification, the need to posses, the idea that one is what one owns.
Relativism – worship of all truth being equal and that universal truth is unknowable.

The church is all who are ‘in’ Christ, i.e. submitted to the Lordship of Jesus and also more specifically or locally the church is the gathering of those that are in Christ.

The church may own property but she is not a building. The church may gather but she is not an event. The church may minister but she is not a program. The church is a body of people united in baptism and communion - the church is a community.

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[1] Walter Brueggemann, The Word That Redescribes the World: The Bible and Discipleship (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2006), 95.

St Luke's Website

Posts have been in short supply in the last week or so. Mainly that is because I've been working exclusively on our church website and getting all the content sorted for that. Check it out. www.stlukeschurch.org.nz

Contemporary

Taking contemporary to mean relevant, meaningful, and in tune with the rhythms, pace and heartbeat of today’s postmodern culture, then contemporary would be another great word to describe that which we are looking to do at St Luke’s. We see the process of re-embracing aspects of the churches ancient traditions and fusing them more modern practices as ultimately something that will resonate afresh in today’s cultural melee.   We’re all for podcasts and prayer candles, data projectors and the didache, iPads as well as 'I pray', forwards thinking as well as ancient remembering. We’ve not allocated this idea particular space as a value or expression to be documented but rather take the need to be contemporary as common sense. Perhaps in a postmodern world though, common sense just doesn’t look like it might always have looked.

Traditional

Traditional is another term that we have chosen to describe an aspect of the style of church we feel God is leading us to develop at St Luke’s. By traditional we mean the intentional embracing of various elements of a more traditional church’s liturgy (form or arrangement of public worship). At times this will mean an awareness and celebration of the Christian Calendar or Christian Seasons, Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Easter etc, allowing these seasons to influence aspects of our own church gatherings and the communal life of our church. On occasion we will use set readings and prayers in our Sunday gatherings such as found in the Anglican Book of Common Prayer. In no way do we feel bound to any of these traditions but rather think there is something beautiful expressed and experienced in them and look forward to fusing the ancient with the contemporary. Our gatherings will always be full of life and the passionate celebration of the resurrected Jesus. We look forward to this passionate celebration being both, boisterous and noisy, as well as reflective and peaceful.      

Pictured is an Advent Wreath. It is usually a horizontal evergreen wreath with four candles and often, a fifth, white candle in the centre. Beginning with the First Sunday of Advent, the lighting of a candle can be accompanied by a Bible reading and prayers. An additional candle is lit during each subsequent week until, by the last Sunday before Christmas, all four candles are lit. Some Advent wreaths include a fifth, "Christ" candle which can be lit at Christmas. The custom is observed both in family settings and at public church services and of course can either be meaningless or full of meaning depending on how practiced in the home or in a public service. Ancient practices such as an Advent Wreath leading into Christmas have the potential though to help reshape one's thinking and attitude towards Christmas, highlighting the true reason for the season when accompanied by the set readings and reflections. A potentially wonderful practice for those both old and young!

Bible / Theology

Another characteristic that we’re committed to developing at St Luke’s is biblical teaching which challenges and inspires our community to live Christ like. This means doing the best we can to properly exegete both the bible and our 21st Century post-modern culture. We want to live in the light of God’s word and its intent and meaning to the original readers, totally committed to the reality that it has meaning and truth for us today.

The bible offers us a grand-narrative of God at work throughout history. In truth it tells us that history is indeed HIStory; a meaningful story originating in love and purpose that is heading towards a beautiful mind-blowing conclusion. We want to live in the light of this story. The life giving, transformational, challenging, inviting, moving, all encompassing, subversive, counter intuitive, upside-down, passionate story of God’s love and plan for His creation.

At times understanding this big story and understanding the smaller stories found in the Bible seems straightforward and common sense. On other occasions it’s not so easy. At times it is easy to embrace the challenges of Jesus’ teaching. On other occasions, like it was for the disciples, so easy to miss the point. At times God’s word seems life changing and refreshing. On other occasions it seems dry and difficult to swallow. In all of this we’re committed to gathering around God’s word each Sunday and to allowing it to transform our lives. We look forward to the teaching of God's word being a moment in our service that is looked forward to with anticipation. Always we gather believing for the Holy Spirit to speak into our lives, struggles, dreams, situations and circumstances through the sermon and the preaching of God's word.

Pentecostal

Introduction/Conclusion:

At St Luke’s we use the term Pentecostal to describe one of the characteristics of our church but not as the total definition of our church. We want to be open to the movement of God’s Spirit in the world and believe all Christ followers can and should live in real and authentic relationship with the Holy Spirit. We’re committed to that and in all we do want to cultivate that relationship in people’s lives. Inspired speech, inspired deeds, inspired living comes out of relationship with and the empowering of, the Holy Spirit. We do believe in overflowing baptisms of the Holy Spirit subsequent to salvation, we do believe in speaking in tongues, we do believe in Spiritual gifts and their use and function today. We’re not after experience for experience sake though; rather we are committed to God’s will being done on earth as it is in heaven. This is the main thing. The Pentecostal experience is not the main thing; it is just to help us pursue the main thing. Where Pentecostalism can be caricatured both positively and negatively we wish to embrace the positive and leave behind the negative characteristics. So as well as being Pentecostal in nature we’re also committed to a number of other values characterising our church which we’ll explore in other posts.

Body:

Pentecostal has come to mean all sorts of things to all sorts of people. Primarily the term is used to define churches or believers who place great emphasis on an overflowing baptism in the Holy Spirit, distinct from the indwelling of the Holy Spirit at conversion, and evidenced with speaking in other tongues. However Pentecostals around the world have come to be known stereotypically for a lot more than just a distinct perspective on speaking in tongues, sometimes positively and sometimes negatively.

Positive caricatures of Pentecostalism include (and are not limited to); a strong desire to get out there and make a difference in the world in the name of Jesus; a passion for encountering and experiencing the presence and power of God in the Holy Spirit and in the gifts of the Spirit; an ability to present the gospel in light of contemporary culture, an embracing of egalitarianism and the promotion of woman in leadership; an empowering culture which emphasises the priesthood of all believers and the ability of all (theologically trained or not) to have a dynamic and real relationship with God and with God’s word; and an attitude of faith and positivity in all things.

There does seem to be some negative caricatures of Pentecostalism as well; an over focus on feelings and experience often resulting in all sorts of hype; perhaps what could be referred to as theologically or biblically ‘light’ preaching and teaching (largely due to many Pentecostal pastors not being seminary trained); an inability to deal with the pain and suffering that exists in this world due to an overzealous sense of triumphalism; an over-focus on the ‘altercal’ as the primary (spiritual) means for healing perhaps at the expense of other (more material) ways of people finding health and wholeness such as counsellors, psychologists, and doctors; a dualistic worldview in regards that which is spiritual and that which is material; a reluctance for still or quite or reflection.

Obviously these are caricatures and would not necessarily fairly or accurately describe any particular Pentecostal church or believer. Like all caricatures though they are grounded in reality. In light of all of this our hope at St Luke’s is to leave behind some of the negative caricatures of Pentecostalism while still embracing the positive caricatures of Pentecostalism. Thus... (see Introduction/Conclusion).

Scribbled

Another way that I have described we're we are heading with St Luke's in various conversations over the last few months is through a simple diagram scribbled on the back of envelopes, napkins, or notebooks.

It hasn't always necessarily come out exactly the same but the six circles, Bible/Theology, Traditional, Pentecostal, Community, Postmodern, & Values go some way towards describing facets of what we see St Luke's looking like.

I'll un-pack them in the next few posts.

St Luke's

I am so ready and so looking forward to 2011 and all of the changes, challenges, celebrations, curve balls, and chaos that the year is sure to bring. Along with 30 other fantastic kingdom dreamers, risk takers and adventurers, my wife and I are in the process of planting a church. This is an exciting new journey for us.

The main three things we get asked about our church plant are...

1. Where is it going to be?
2. Why are you calling the church St Luke's?
3. What's the church going to be like?

In answer to those three questions...

1. We don't know yet.
2. We'll get to this in future posts.
3. We're not exactly sure as there are so many variables that are totally out of one's control.

Here's what we do know however...

We want to be a vibrant, missional, faith community. Which at an entry level and as briefly as possible we’d unpack to mean that we want to be a community of people who's vibrancy and life is grounded in the life of Jesus and the reality of the Holy Spirit. A community of people committed to missional living. A community who gather for church on a Sunday but also scatter to be the church Monday through Saturday; shining boldly at times as a light but also flavouring subversively as salt in the nooks and crannies of everyday life. We want to be a faith community, a community who live out of a different story than that of consumerism, materialism, individualism and all those other words so often used to so accurately describe our western post-Christian culture. We want to live, move, breathe, dream and play in light of the grand-narrative of God's ongoing work in history, the grand-narrative of Jesus found in Genesis through Revelation.

That's the direction we're heading in and we're looking forward to walking, running, dancing, (and at times limping and crawling), onwards in that adventure!