Rooted Up

Jesus Manifesto: Biography (Chapter 3)

Jesus Manifesto: As If

RootedUp — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 05:01:19 +0000

If God wrote the biography of you, or your church, what would He write? Would He say that you were rooted deep in Christ, or that control, guilt, and good deeds were the major themes of your existence?

About this series

For more about why this series was written, please see the first post.

Chapter Four: A Violin Called Messiah

Back in the ’90s (when I was growing up) the phrase you heard from a lot of girls was “as if.” It was a way of expressing disbelief/refusal to accept a suggested proposition. “Becky and Sean look like a nice couple,” …”As if!”

“Like,” a preposition, and, “as,” a conjunction are statements of similarity. When a man and a woman marry, does the wife become like her husband? The husband is as his wife is? No. They do not become the same person, but they share a life together.

“As Christ is the bridegroom and the Church is the bride,” is not as “as if” statement requiring us to pretend that it is true. No, Christ is the bridegroom and we are the bride. If you are a human, you behave like a human all the time. You don’t play dress up and pretend to be one.

Humans are already created in the likeness of God. We have his character in us already. Currently though, we lack his holiness and therefore a shared life, a relationship, with him. Christ came, to point us to a relationship with the Father, and to do this by sharing life with him. If we strive to be like or as if we were Christ we will fail. You cannot pretend to be like someone you are not.

The fact is, Jesus was the greatest human being who ever lived, and if all we have to look forward to in life is the frustration of trying to be someone we are not, then we’ve got better ways of enjoying the interval between birth and death.

But the “good news” is that Jesus doesn’t want us to be “like” Him. He wants to share His resurrection life with us. He doesn’t want us to imitate Him; instead, Christ, the Unspeakable Gift, wants to live in and through us.

The gospel is not the imitation of Christ; it is the implantation and impartation of Christ. We are called to do more than mediate truth. We are called to manifest Jesus’ presence. [page 71-72]

When Christians stop pretending, stop trying to live up to the impossible standards of being like Christ, and begin living life with Christ there will be a major shift – back towards what it means to truly be the Body of Christ, his Church.

When someone says to you, “may you be more like Christ,” I hope you reply: “As if!”

Read the other posts in this series:

Jesus Manifesto: Biography (Chapter 3)

Jesus Manifesto: Biography

RootedUp — Sun, 19 Jun 2011 05:01:28 +0000

About this series

For more about why this series was written, please see the first post.

Chapter Three: If God Wrote Your Biography

I have had many conversations with Christians about the problems the American Church faces as membership has steadily declined over the last decades. A phrase continues to recur, “If only we could get more people to come to our church!”

It is a statement often made in desperation, and from a belief that if only people would come they would see how great and wonderful our community is and would stay. Unfortunately, often the next step is for church leaders to take a next step without having sufficient knowledge of the problem as to why people are not coming to church in the first place.

In Experiencing God, Henry Blackaby describes God as saying to us, “Don’t just do something, stand there!” And in Henri Nouwen’s book Spiritual Direction he says that any activity that causes us to slow down and be intentional is a spiritual discipline.

Is it possible that the American Church is so busy being worried about the storm surrounding the ship that it has forgotten that Jesus is also on board? That Christ is at the helm? Yes, in many cases I think so.

I had the privilege of attending the regional conference of a major American denomination annually from 2007-2010. One year it was decided that each church in the conference would find a way of recording the number of members who had been engaged in acts of service to the community each week. A system of cards was devised and placed in the pews for people to drop into the collection plates or leave on the alter to signify their weekly service activities.

This metric was devised for well-intentioned reasons to try and gauge the level of service, thinking that service was one of the ways to make the Church more attractive and that one of the reasons attendance was declining was because community service was declining also. Upon further reflection I eventually came to the conclusion that such a plan was flawed from the beginning.

I don’t think this is an expression of legalism, but it is a form of control. It’s slightly passive aggressive to encourage more random acts of kindness by trying to get people to place a token card in the offering plate each Sunday. This particular example is not sinister in nature.

There are more sinister methods of control: the use of guilt for example. Some churches preach and teach rules and regulations to try and control peoples behavior. Jesus did not use this tactic. From Jesus Manifesto we read:

…why such an emphasis on “works”? Good works are simply fruit falling off a tree. If you sink your roots deep into Christ, who is your life, you will not be able to stop the fruit from coming forth… The engine of being “missional,” therefore, ought never to be religious duty. Neither should it be guilt, condemnation, or ambition. The engine should be blindly and singularly a revelation of Jesus Christ.

The decline in the church is not because we are serving less in the community. We don’t need to put cards in the offering plate, we don’t need judgmental or ostracizing church communities to “control” the behavior of others.

If all that is necessary to live and be a Christian is to have a revelation of Christ then all the other stuff we place an importance on is irrelevant. “Christian leadership” and other spiritual gifts assessments and training are nothing.

Phrases like “personal relationship with Christ” or “knowing/following Jesus” have become so loaded they no longer carry the meaning they should. Instead they have become synonyms for “believing” or “having faith” or whether or not someone has said the sinner’s prayer or been baptized.

I submit that if we simply stuck to Jesus’ examples about how to reach people and show them that being a Christian is about a spiritual journey (and not about following a set of rules, or doing a list of good deeds) and encouraged people to seek revelations of God then we would be moving towards a fuller more vibrant expression of Church. May we learn to be still and know that he is God, and receive fresh discoveries of his nature and character.

Read the other posts in this series:

Jesus Manifesto: Biography (Chapter 3)

Jesus Manifesto: Unveiled

RootedUp — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 05:01:22 +0000

In this post we discuss the significance of the New Testament, specifically Paul’s epistle to the Colossian church. Like a bottle washed up on the beach, or contact from another planet, it has a reality-altering message.

About this series

For more about why this series was written, please see the first post.

Chapter Two: A Bottle In the Ocean

Stop. Imagine for a moment Paul the Apostle. He was once Saul, and what made him Saul is that he was raised a Jew, succeeded in all his studies to become the best of the best, literate in all the Hebrew Scriptures, and firm believer and strong enforcer of Mosaic Law – the core essence of what it meant to be a Jew among the rest of the nations of the earth; God’s chosen people. Now, understand the gravity of Paul’s words in Colossians as described by the authors of Jesus Manifesto:

In a [modern] church that is filled with leader-oholics, justice-oholics, commandment-oholics, and doctrine-oholics, it is essential that we comprehend how Paul (the go-to guy for all matters “doctrinal”) understood his calling as an apostle. For Paul, his apostolate was not to advance a defining array of doctrines or a checklist of propositions. As far as he was concerned, our faith is not even a relationship with a set of doctrines or commandments. [page 39]

Did you catch that? A Jew, once so devote that he hunted and killed Jesus’ disciples for their “heresy,” preached and wrote in the New Testament that there is no more relationship with a legal code of commandments. That’s deep!

Throughout Paul’s letters and the entirety of the the New Testament we have a picture, a revelation, of Christ. The New Testament is not a set of doctrines to be followed, but an attempt to explain what exactly Jesus’ arrival on our planet meant to the human race. It changed everything.

You know those movies that portray alien life forms visiting or communicating with earth? My favorite is Contact (1997). In every one of those movies, whether the aliens are hostile or friendly the effect upon the human race is the same. Reality suddenly changes. Not only does the old way of doing things no longer apply, but it has become completely and utterly irrelevant. The human species unites as one in a shared reality that changes life for every person on the planet.

The simple fact that Jesus exists at all has life-altering implications for everyone. Life-altering. Everyone.

Never forget: There is much more in Christ than we have ever imagined. And there is infinitely more to Him than we have yet to know or touch. We can never exhaust Him. Christ is so large that no search party in the universe can explore an iota of His infinite depths. What is more, He will never grow old or stale. Jesus Christ is the only thing in God’s universe that doesn’t wear thin.

Yet so many Christians are blissfully unaware of His vastness. They have settled for so much less and have known Him so little.

But mark this down: When the people of God get a sighting of their incomparable Lord–and when the world encounters His unfathomable love, irresistible beauty, and overwhelming glory–every idol will be forced to the ground. The clouds of doubt will part from our eyes, and Jesus Christ will displace everything. But first, the church and the world must see Christ. [page 40-41]

My prayer is that you communicate an image of Christ so large to the people around you that His power and glory will be the revival and life giving power that this world so desperately needs.

Read the other posts in this series:

Jesus Manifesto: Held Hostage

RootedUp — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 05:01:14 +0000

In this second post in the Jesus Manifesto series we ask questions about what it means to be occupied with and by Christ. We encourage you to follow this series by also reading the book Jesus Manifesto, and invite your comments.

About this series

For more about why this series was written, please see the first post.

Chapter One: The Occupation of All Things

The sad truth is that the Jesus who is preached so often today is so shallow, so small, and so uncaptivating that countless believers are enthralled with countless other things. [page 20]

Wow, and wow!

I was once surveyed by a campus ministry of a church that was within walking distance of my dormitory. Asked what my preferences would be for an hour long worship service I said that I would like about 40 minutes of it to be in-depth Bible study or teaching. I would tolerate about 15 minutes of corporate singing, but given that much of the other experiences I had for weekly worship regularly devolved into repetitive chanting of popular chorus lines I could have done without any singing whatsoever.

What are the things, mere things, that are holding you and your church hostage from a larger, fuller, Christ?

Whether our churches fail to captivate us on Sundays or during the rest of the week, is as much a question of bold leadership as it is about the fears we have of the decline of the church. I’m not criticizing anyone for any lack of boldness, there are many people who earnestly wonder and seek after solutions to the problems the American church faces. “Who do you say that I am,” and “do not be afraid” can be answered in the same way: Christ. He is the head, it is his Spirit that leads us, and with that assurance alone we should be empowered, not afraid.

Are you concerned that your church’s budget will come up short? Have you considered a strong stewardship campaign in response? What about declining membership? Has your church gone the extra mile to advertise your Vacation Bible School this summer? Or what about organizing a revival, you haven’t had one of those in years!

What if the answer wasn’t typical — as clean cut as knowing that the church is short finances or members and then responding in kind with a pledge drive or an alter call every Sunday until the results materialize; only to fade away after a little while. Jesus often does a funny thing in the Gospels. He is asked to heal illnesses, but then forgives the person’s sin. Why would he do that?

If you have ever been at a church finance meeting and the treasurer reports that certain bills are 30 days past due and the summer months don’t look any better, has your group ever resolved to let God have the budget? I’ve actually seen this happen, and the church I attended was carried through, and those of us who knew the situation and saw how it all went down were strengthened in our faith — quite simply because when it comes to bills and budgets, there is no arguing with a balance sheet.

What if we were occupied with Christ when it came to, well everything? What if a sermon series covered more than the stories of Pentecost accompanied by the usual songs and hymns, the children’s message and the same old order of service you get every week?

If we were truly occupied with and by Christ people in our churches would be challenged to see Christ anew on a regular basis. Someone once said to me that when your stories about God’s miracles in your life and your church start aging, and there aren’t more recent ones to share and remember, it is a telling sign. Telling indeed. When was the last time you were so occupied with Christ that you couldn’t contain yourself and you simply had to share your revelation of Christ’s goodness and mercy?

Read the other posts in this series:

Facebook Short URL

RootedUp — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 03:34:51 +0000

It’s a small milestone, but no less exciting! Today the Rooted Up Facebook Page reached 25 fans, and thereby allowing for a shortened URL: fb.com/RootedUp

No more funky looking, extra long web address! Now Rooted Up’s Facebook Page can be shared easily in places that are character sensitive like Twitter or business cards. The Page has actually been active for a long time, about 2009, but with a recent relaunch of the company overall it actually didn’t take too long to get the necessary 25 fans Facebook requires before they let you pick your desired URL name.

So, here is a very BIG thank you to all those who made it possible!

Jesus Manifesto: Directionally Challenged

RootedUp — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 05:01:14 +0000

So you’re wondering about the future of the Church, and whether or not there’s such as thing as a post-Christian era. Maybe your church is struggling against the minutiae of ministry, seeking desperately a more vital, energetic, life-giving Christianity?

A little about this series on Jesus manifesto

You might think it’s odd a communications company cares about such things. However, Rooted Up is interested in edifying the Church not just by offering website design, hosting and social media services–we want your congregation and the Church itself to be transformed by the Holy Spirit by the renewing of our minds. And so, this series on the 2010 book by Leonard Sweet and Frank Viola, Jesus Manifesto.

First of all, to be clear, this blog series is not a book review so much as it is about presenting points that are raised in Jesus Manifesto and thinking about the implications for Christians and the Church. We have taken this book to heart, we hope you will too. Our hope is that you will be lead to a more exploratory relationship with Jesus. We hope also that our thoughts will encourage you to discuss ideas with people in your own community, causing others to rethink their ideas about Christ and the Church.

Begin: the introduction

The authors’ intention for Jesus Manifesto is to open our eyes to the truth that somewhere over the years we have lost the essence of who and what Christ is, i.e. our Christology is warped because we have dissected him so much that Christ is more theological subject matter than our personal Emmanuel, our Abba Father, our bridegroom.

The person of Jesus has become increasingly politically incorrect and is being replaced by the language of “justice,” “morality,” “values,” and “leadership principles.” The world likes Jesus; they just don’t like the church. But increasingly, the church likes the church, yet it doesn’t like Jesus.

Many are seeking a revival of the church–many out of a fear that it is loosing its place in the world; decline in denominational membership etc. Forget statistics, conference studies, committee reports and all that “stuff” and ask yourself: “Who is Jesus.”

Was it not an awakening to the disciples when they discovered who Jesus really was, and more importantly what that meant for their lives and the nature of the world they lived in? They had rediscovered the “living Word” and Christ as they had never seen him before. They were also given the Holy Spirit and were aware of his ability to manifest Christ in the context of their lives. This is revival. So does it not make sense that if we seek to rediscover the scriptures, rediscover Christ, and rediscover the Holy Spirit’s power then we are then in the midst of an awakening?

When Jesus asked “Who do you say that I am?” he was not asking, “What are you doing to bring in the kingdom of God?” or, “What are you doing for justice?” or, “In what causes are you engaged?” or, “What kind of leader are you?”

One way to summarize the introduction to Jesus Manifesto, and the concept for the book is this: the Church has become so busy and preoccupied with other things, things we have told ourselves are important elements of what it means to be and do as the Church, that we have lost sight of Christ. Are we slaves to Christ or are we slaves to the monotony of our annual events calendar that revolves around dates in the Christian year because “that’s the way we’ve always done it”?

Even more frightening, how often do we neglect the people we see on Sundays, at church events and committee meetings because we are too busy being a congregation to stop and be a community? This behavior, this way of living as the Church sends a message to people. To some we can appear inhospitable or inflexible to change, ignorant even to the suffering of the world around us, unloving maybe. To others we may be exactly what they are looking for: a place to sit pretty and undisturbed, secure in an environment that never challenges them to be more than pew sitters, silent auction organizers, or trustees who just maintain the facilities.

This is an attitude that affects the entire life of the church, and therefore has significant impact on the “communications” of your church. Yes, if you have communications ministries they will be affected by the overall culture of your faith community. More importantly though, when we think of each member of the body as a representative for Christ in the way we treat other people (which revolves completely around our understanding of who Jesus is) your church’s “communications plan” relies in large part on how committed each person is to a manifesto of following after the true Christ.

Read the other posts in this series: