Real Lasting Life

The Narrow Gate

Lent is a great time to explore what it means to be a follower of Jesus. In his latest book, Tim Keller writes about the significance of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. He writes, "...The whole story of the world--and how we fit into it--is most clearly understood through a careful, direct look at the story of Jesus. My purpose here is to try to show, through his words and actions, how beautifully his life makes sense of ours" (King's Cross: The Story of the World in the Life of Jesus). What if the beauty of his life has everything to do with forgiving love?

I grew up with Jesus being the ticket to heaven. It did not matter so much how you lived your life, but what mattered was what you believed. As I go deeper in my love of God, I am finding that the meaning of Jesus is so much bigger and deeper. It is about real life now, which will last forever. But when we are only focused on heaven, we miss God's mission for us in the here and now. We miss the purpose of our changed lives.

What if the forgiveness that Jesus displays on the cross is the secret to a beautiful life. I mean, as we experience God forgiving us, we are on a journey of being healed and forgiving others. And we are not only called to forgive and love people who are close to us, but we are called to forgive our enemies, too. What if the power of forgiveness is not only for our own personal sins, but also applies to the reconciliation of the whole world? What if what Jesus does on the cross completely absorbs the power of evil, which leaves evil impotent? The way of defeating evil is revealed in Jesus' love and forgiveness of his enemies.

I just finished reading one of the best books I've read on forgiveness. Unconditional, by Brian Zahnd has made me rethink the power of God's forgiving love, revealed on the cross. He puts together two verses of scripture that I've never put together. One is the passage on the Narrow Gate (Matthew 7:13-14), and the other is the passage on the Golden Rule (Matthew 7: 12). Even though one runs into the other, I've always read them in two different contexts. The Narrow Gate has always been read in terms of going to heaven when you die, and believing the right things to get there. Whereas, the Golden Rule has to do with a way of life that we lift up as important, but do not see it as a part of our salvation. It's a way of life left for bumper stickers on our cars and a cross stitch that hangs on our wall. But what if the context is the forgiving love of God? What if it's all about this forgiving love, which has changed our lives, being lived out in such a way that the lives of people we meet are changing. Lives are changing because people are experiencing forgiveness, and they are passing it on--even to their enemies.

And what if when Jesus cries from the cross, "It is finished," he is talking about the old way of an "eye for an eye, " and the way of violence and revenge. So, what if the Narrow Gate is this life of forgiveness--treating others with the forgiveness we want for ourselves. We pray something like this every Sunday: "Forgive our sins, as we forgive the sins of others." What if this is not just something we say in church, but begin to realize that it is the mission into which we are called, though which God is saving the world? And this is the beautiful life which makes sense of our lives.

Back to Basics

At the start of another new year, I've been thinking about my work in evangelism. When evangelism works, our communities change, more people experience real and lasting life, our churches become vibrant communites of faith, and creation is renewed. All these things happen because people are following Jesus into the brokenness in their own lives and the world. When we follow Jesus, we experince healing and become agents of healing in our world.

We have been working on a new evangelism resource, and there are many good things associated with this new resource. We explore what it means for churches to help growing Christians reach a changing culture, learn to share their faith, connect with the community, and engage discipleship. But what if evangelism is simply part of what it means to follow Jesus. In a relationship with Jesus, we experience forgiveness and hope that leads to a better way to live.

Following Jesus means that we need one another in community, and that our life together is for the healing of the world. So what if this life we have in Jesus is as simple as sharing our lives and faith and serving people in our families, circle of friends, co-workers, and community. If life takes us to another town, state, or country, then we live our lives in that place by following Jesus into sharing faith and serving others.

Maybe, just maybe, the work we are called to is to help one another follow Jesus into the lives of people who are hungry and thirsty for life that is real and lasting. We offer others the same grace and love that has healed and changed our lives. Maybe, just maybe, this is how healing comes into a very broken world. And this is how Jesus intends for the Kingdom to advance.

WHO DO YOU SAY THAT I AM?

For two thousand years, this question that Jesus once asked his followers has been debated passionately. It has been answered in many different ways by many different people. It’s interesting that people outside the church often have a negative view of Christians, but they think highly of Jesus. Many people in our culture want to talk about Jesus. They are not so much interested in our styles of worship, programs, and church government, but they are interested in Jesus.

The Office of Evangelism wants to connect people outside the church with people in the church around conversations about Jesus. So in partnership with a group of students from Princeton Theological Seminary we have created www.whodoyousaythatiam.net, a brand new, innovative, and interactive website that explores this question using the internet and social media. People are invited to give their answers to the Jesus question in text, art, or video.

The mission of this new site is to foster conversation about Jesus, so that people inside the church and beyond the church will encounter more deeply the life-changing love of God. We believe that it is when we live out of this love in Jesus Christ that everything begins to change.

 

First Things

Even though I love my new work, there are days in which I miss being an active part of a faith community. As I continue to think and write about twenty-four years of parish ministry, I easily engage the moments of sheer joy. The common denominator for these moments is lives changing in the good news of Jesus Christ. These moments were both corporate and personal moments of change.

I remember being part of a faith community that helped build a home for a young woman and her children. The joy of the transformation of that experience continues to touch my life with the hope that life can be different. I recall the joy of a faith community that helped a homeless man leave the streets for new life in an apartment, regular work, and a new family called church. His life radically changed, and his joy touched countless people. I remember people coming to faith in Jesus Christ, and I can still feel the water of those baptisms on my hands. And I remember people coming back to faith after many years of wandering in the desert.

As I reflect on the joy surrounding all these moments in which life changed for people, I realize that the main thing in all these moments is God's transforming and forgiving love in Jesus. This love is our main thing! Gabe Lyons has written an excellent book, The Next Christians, in which he writes about the "first things" and "second things" in our lives. As people of faith, the "first thing" in our lives is this transforming and restoring relationship with God. The "second things" have to do with styles of worship, church polity, programs, and serving the community.

The problem we face in the church is we have a tendency to make the "second things" "first things!" If our relationship with God, through faith in Jesus, is the "first thing," then our worship, church polity, programs, and service will be filled with a vitality and joy that will spill into our communities. But if the "second things" become the "first things," then our ministry will lack direction and we will lead people into burdensome activity that lacks joy.

When Jesus is the "first thing," Jesus' way will become our way and faith sharing and social justice will run deeply in our lives. The Apostle Peter writes, "Be ready to speak up and tell anyone who asks why you're living the way you are, and always with the utmost courtesy" (I Peter 3:15). So, what if this faith of ours was never meant to be something that is added to the rest of our lives, but is actually meant to change us from the inside out, so that we live our real and lasting lives for the restoration of the world?

Maybe that's the shift we're beginning to make; Instead of being a part of our lives, Jesus is becoming more and more who we are. The work will be hard, but we will experience joy.

 

What's So Special about Jesus?

I have traveled across our denomination a good bit over the last six weeks, and I have had a good experience in every gathering of Presbyterians. There is hope in the church. People do want to do evangelism! It's just the way in which it has been done that has turned people off. However, there is another problem when it comes to evangelism:something is missing in our churches; we have not helped people encounter their own stories of faith and learn how to share them. Part of the problem is that for too long we have invited people to serve, teach, and attend church activities, but we have not helped them engage the life-changing story of God's love in Jesus. And we have not provided the kind of community that would help them grow up as Christ followers.

James Byan Smith has written a beautiful and simple book on discipleship. He describes disciple making as a Holy Spirit driven experience that includes these things:adopting the narratives of Jesus, engaging in soul-training exercises, and participating in community. He writes that we all grow up with stories about God that are not true. It is the life of Jesus that corrects these stories. One of the stories we grow up with is that God causes bad things to happen to us if we go against God or sin. And Jesus is clearly opposed to this line of thinking. In Jesus we experience God loving us as we are. Period! But then we are loved way too much to be left as we are. So we enter a community in which we experience the spiritual disciplines that help us die to the old ways and be raised into new life.

Being a follower of Jesus is critical to our journey. It's more that accepting a system of beliefs. It's more than praying a prayer. It's about being healed, and creation being healed, too. All we have to do is look at our own lives, our communities, and the oil spill in the Gulf to see that brokenness is all around and inside of us. However, when we encounter Jesus, we experience the one unbroken person in all of creation. In a relationship with him, we find our real and lasting lives. We experience healing, and we are part of Christ's body for the healing of the world.

It's interesting that when John's disciples ask Jesus, "Are you the one we've been expecting or are we still waiting" (Luke 7:19), he does not respond with a belief system or a prayer. He points to healing: "The blind see, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the wretched of the earth have God's salvation hospitality extended to them" (Luke 7:22-23). When evangelism is the by-product of discipleship, our communities are healed, relationships are restored, and creation is cared for. Christ followers not only serve out of love, but have the words of the story that have transformed them as a gift to share with others.

The Shift

If evangelism is to be engaged authentically and enthusiastically in our churches, then it must be connected to discipleship. But we have a hard time with discipleship. We know how to manage and maintain ministry, but we struggle with what it means to help people grow in a relationship with Jesus Christ and then live his life in the world.

Often, we try to make discipleship a program. We run the program over weeks, months, and even years, and we do not see much change in a person's life. This is because programs cannot hold us accountable to this new life in Christ and they often speak only to our minds. We receive information, but do not have the resources to apply this radical new way of living.

My youngest daughter works as an apprentice for Vidal Sassoon. She has been to school, worked in a salon, passed her state boards, but this is not good enough for Vidal Sassoon. She is serving as an apprentice for two years to learn to cut hair the Vidal Sassoon way. On a regular basis, she is tested by the hair stylists in the salon, so that she can learn from them about how to cut hair. This is a difficult and grueling process.

So, I wonder why the church does not have a process for apprenticing when it comes to discipleship. Our faith is about living into the fullness of life, which is real and lasting. And I know a haircut is important, but why is the church content for an "anything goes" and haphazard way of helping people grow in the faith, when we are dealing with the most important commodity on the planet: life?

What would it look like for growing Christians to be connected to others in the faith community who would hold us accountable to disciplines of prayer, scripture study, community, worship, giving and serving? What would it look like to apprentice with others, so that we could learn through all our senses what it means to love our enemies, care for the marginalized, and hold our tongues when we want to lash out and be right about an issue? We would be part of a Spirit empowered community, which is growing up people who share faith and relieve suffering.

A disciple making community no longer reduces the faith to going to heaven when we die, but works within God's mission of real and lasting life. We become a people who share faith, care for the sick, feed the hungry, walk with the lonely, and fight the principalities and powers that provoke hatred, fear, and poverty. We become Christ for the world--the body of Christ.

Glenn McDonald's book The Disciple Making Church and Greg Ogden's book Transforming Discipleship are excellent resources for churches looking at what it means to begin shifting from a membership model of church to a disciple making model.

Marked By God's Love

I have just returned from a Larger Church Pastors/ New Church Development Coaches Gathering in St. Petersburg, Florida. The weather was amazing and our time together very informative. I continue to believe that evangelism must be connected to disciple making or it will simply remain the ministry of the church that we feel we must do but don't want to do. One of the things we talked about in St. Pete is the importance of knowing our stories. How many of us can talk about God's transforming and redemptive mission found in scripture? And how many of us can talk about our own stories of transformation? What I'm wondering is this: do we have the practices available in our churches to aid people in the claiming and reclaiming of these stories?

Do we have the practices of prayer, scripture reading, community that hold us accountable to the new life we have in Christ, and mentoring? One of the best ways to grow in the faith is to not only learn from another person, but to experience from that person how he or she treats others who are like him/her and not like him/ her. The point of these practices is to take us more deeply into the love of God, so that we can trust God when there is turmoil inside us and around us. Often, when there is turmoil, we try to make it on our own. But if we live more and more out of God's great love of us, then we are more and more the people God created us to be. And it is here that we begin to share with others the story that has set us free and saved us.

The church has to both nurture the faith of growing Christians and send us out to serve others. It is in this sending that the Kingdom of God is advanced through our words and acts of kindness. When I encounter my Kingdom purpose, I have a tendency to want to mark that experience with something concrete. For example, when my oldest daughter and I took a hike along a beautiful mountain creek a couple years ago, we shared our love of each other, God, and how God has wired us to share and live our lives with others. It was a powerful time for me to know the deep meaning of God's love in the love that my daughter and I share. All along this creek, she was collecting little grey stones from the creek. She collected so many that our pockets were overflowing with these creek stones. When I returned home, I placed all these stones in a glass vase to remind me that I am marked by God's love and that God's love can be trusted.

Not long ago, I visited a church in Pittsburgh that is raising up disciples of Jesus Christ that have a deep passion for serving people in their community. One night we went to a local tattoo parlor, where they have Bible studies in the basement, and I was so touched by the story of the owner of the parlor that I did something I never thought I'd do! I got a tattoo! It's very small, and it's on my forearm, but I just had to mark a moment in time in which I experienced the love of God changing the lives of people. I marked that time with a small tattoo of a cross, so that I would remember God's great love of me and trust it in the midst of life's beautiful and difficult moments. 

But then I started thinking... We are already marked as God's beloved. We are marked with the waters of baptism. We are marked for a purpose: to experience and share the love of God in ways that bring healing to all of creation.

Preparing for God

This is the first Advent in twenty-five years that I have not been part of the design and implementation of an Advent experience. It's a very strange feeling. However, what I continue to realize is that our ministry and life together are about God entering our world in flesh and blood.

Advent is a time to prepare for God's coming into our lives through Christ Jesus. The mysterious part of Advent is that we prepare our lives for two visitations. The most recognized preparation of Advent is preparing our lives for the celebration of Jesus coming as a baby in Bethlehem. The second visitation is the coming of Christ at the close of the age. We prepare our lives for the day in which Christ will complete creation. One way of looking at this "second coming" of Christ is that as we reach lost people with good news, practice hostitality, work for peace, give shelter to the homeless, and feed the hungry, we are living in ways that advance the perfect, completed creation. Maybe another way of looking at this time of preparation is that when we are about these things and sharing our faith, we are about the work of Jesus. In this mission we will recognize him and he will recognize us.

In a world in which we fuss about a heathcare plan, debate over whether to go to war or not, worry about job security and making ends meet, and experience division in our homes, communities, and faith communities, does our Advent preparation make any diffierence at all? What if followers of Jesus simply followed the one born in a manger, who died on a cross, and promised to come back again to complete what was started in the beginning as good? We'd love others as we find them. We'd share good news with them. We'd serve them. And nothing would be the same.

Living into a great Story

    Recently, I finished reading Donald Miller's new book A Million Miles in a Thousand Years. I'm still living into the simplicity of the book. I think we have a tendency to make life much more complicated as we look to things outside of us to make life better. For example, If we can buy the new car, enter into the next fitness program, find a better job, or receive a raise in our current one, then life will be what we dreamed it would be. And our churches are no different. We are always looking for the next best thing to draw more people and raise more money!

    What if the answer does not rest outside of us? What if what we need is a great story for our lives? This is the gist of Miller's new book. He makes the connection between a good story and a good movie. He writes that no one cries at the end of a movie if the plot line is about a guy who wants and buys a new Volvo! He reminds me that a good story is about a character who wants to do something with his or her life and is willing to sacrifice everything to realize the dream. The key is that what the person wants is to make life better for someone else, not just to enrich his or her own life. And this journey always leads to the main character's transformation.

    I've been thinking about my own life story and the the redemptive story of scripture. And I'm wondering if we lived more completely into the stories of our lives and the story of scripture, would we have as hard a time sharing the good news? Maybe, just maybe, we are living into the stories that are not ours and we're trying to add the gospel to lives that are not living into God's story of good news for us and the world.

     If we examine the story of scripture, we experience God creating a good world filled with promise and meaning. In God's story our purpose is to love God, others, and care for creation. However, we were created with the awesome freedom to do our own thing. And that's what we decided to do. As a result, there's been all kinds of brokenness along the way. However, God is not content to leave us in our brokenness. God sacrifices everything to bring us back and to restore creation though the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. As we live into this story by the Holy Spirit's power, our hearts begin to break over the things that break God's heart. We begin to see our purpose as joining God in God's rescue plan for creation.

    We are called to serve our families, friends and people with whom we work. We serve through our churches. But we also discover the rest of our kingdom purpose: the one thing we've been called to do and be. For Donald Miller, this purpose was to start a mentoring initiative for boys growing up without fathers. His own heart breaks for these boys because he too grew up without a father.

    When we're living into our life's purpose and our identity comes from God's mission, we find our true selves. When we are on the journey of reclaiming our lives, we realize that it is very natural to share the good news of God who finds us when we are lost and gives us sight when we cannot see the way.

What Holds Us Together?

Even though there is so much that separates us from one another, I continue to believe that it is jesus who holds us together. The body of Christ is very diverse, and our diversity often leads into unhelathy conflict that keeps us from truly engaging one another. So, when we come from different backgrounds, cultures, races, and theological perspectives, can the gospel truly be the unifying agent in the church?

For most of my ministry, I have practiced the discipline of reading through the Bible in a year. This year I have changed the discipline just a bit; I am reading through the gospels. I read through a gospel a week, so that once a month I read through all four gospels. This has been an amazing experience of seeing the more complete picture of Jesus. When I have a tendency of seeing Jesus one way, this discipline has revealed the many different aspects of Jesus. He both encourages and challenges us. But I have the tendency to want to see Jesus as encouraging me and challenging the people not like me.So, again, can the good news hold us together?

I was speaking at a presbytery event on the connection between discipleship and evangelism, and I said that our starting point for the journey is the love of God in Jesus Christ. I talked about how this love of God is what brings us our deepest sense of meaning and satisfaction. When we get down to the basics of life, this is the yearning that's in all our hearts. We desire to be loved and fed. We want to know that life works out. The church is the place in which we experience the profound beauty of God's love.

After the event, a woman introduced herself to me by thanking me for breaking a stereotype. I was introduced as the Coordinator for Evangelism, and she said that she started "checking out" because she did not believe that I would have anything to say that would be helpful to her. However, she went on to say that the way I approached the gospel was very meaningful to her.

So, what if we had more conversations around God's love in Christ: that we are loved as we are, but loved way too much to be left there?