Dear LORD:
Please help us to find a community of believers who represents your Spirit in the current age. Amen!
Dearest Ruth:
Your MEQ today was the loving kiss when we said goodbye at the gate. I miss you!
In my readings of ERM, I have made some new discoveries. One of the things he talks about in terms of friction/traction is the issue of postmodernism. In a postmodern society, there is much greater diversity in terms of spiritual values and beliefs. This changes everything.
Take leading someone to Christ. I have had a lingering, undercurrent of dissatisfaction with respect to this whole concept and the way it is carried out in the modern (i.e. prior to postmodern) church. ERM points out why it sucks so much.
We basically say:
“If you died tonight, do you know for sure you would be in heaven with God?”
Which carries with it the following assumptions:
- This person believes in heaven
- This person believes there is a God.
These things cannot any longer be assumed. We previously dealt with people very, very similar to ourselves. Maybe they were “away from God”, “sowing some wild oats,” or the like. But this person, whoever he or she might be, was raised in a similar context as we were. This assumption no longer applies.
Another very basic assumption. As soon as you get the person to say “no” to your previous question (assuming you do not get bogged down by the basic issues I identified above) you then proceed to argue based upon the following reasoning:
“The word of God says ‘blah, blah, blah.’”
Again, the assumption is clear: The bible (which we tend to call the word of God -- another assumption) is authoritative. It can be relied upon because it is infallible and true. This could previously be assumed by someone who was raised in the church, lived their lives in a rural or suburban white, middle class environment, and was simply taking a break from Jesus for a while to go off and enjoy a season of sin. What if your neighbor is an Iranian moslem? Or a Chinese Buddhist. How about a Hindu? Bahai Faith? No such assumption can be made.
We ran into this early in our relationship with the couple who were worship of Baguan Sri Rashneesh. That experience was very frustrating, although it was stimulating and challenging as well. That was a small taste of what the postmodern process of evangelism is like. We are competing with other faiths and ways to God. None of the other ways are true, and we know that, but they don't. Effectively, they are trying to convert us too.
Thus, you must make your appeal for Christ from the context of their culture, including their religion. I am completely unprepared and unequipped to do this. You are as well. I have heard you talk to many folks and you make the same assumptions I do. We are powerless as believers to share our faith in a postmodern context to our friends or neighbors from foreign countries, cultures and religions. This is the vast, vast majority of the people around us at this point, and will become more so as time goes on. Including, by the way, our own children who are from a postmodern culture radically different from our own.
Some of what I was discussing with you yesterday morning at Max’s applies to these issues. We are the most segregated country in the world, and the most segregated hour of the week is around 11:00 a.m. on Sunday morning. I am sick of this. It is no longer realistic to think in this way.
Even in TLC, this was common. While trainings were integrated, the meetings on Sunday were not. We segregated ourselves into distinct cultures. One meeting for the Caucasians. Another for the Spanish speaking. Another for the Koreans. Another for the Chinese. This had more to do with culture than language. The language barrier can be overcome by technology. The trainings proved that. We simply could not coexist because we could not stand each other. We wanted to be with our own kind.
Again, I am sick of this.
ERM is having this effect on me. He is revealing to me why I have been pissed off, disaffected, dissatisfied, and generally speaking passively aggressively apathetic about church. We suck, pure and simple.
He has yet to get to the solution to these issues, although he identifies a few. Mosaic is a cultural melting pot supreme. One third Asian, one third Latino, and the remaining third a motley mix of Caucasian, African American, and so forth. It is a weekly miracle that it works at all. Their growth rate has probably been slower as a result of the diversity. But what a rich experience! Not only do they have music that appeals to the R&B, classic rock stuff you and I like. They have Tuvan throat singers. African drums. Flamenco music. All presenting the Lord Y’Shua in a unique way. They use art, sculpture, dance, music and even fragrances to express worship.
This is definitely pushing my buttons.
It seems clear that we went profoundly wrong in TLC. As you pointed out, putting the emphasis on your children, and attempting to “grow the church by enjoying your wife” is supremely self centered and self absorbed. Effectively, you do not have to become uncomfortable at all. You can maintain your traditional culture, no problem.
I talked to you about the hymnal. The hymnal in TLC is a big symptom of what was wrong there. I see the same thing in a different context in other church groups, including Journey and even Grace. Folks in TLC would speak in hushed worshipful tones about the hymnal. What great theology! What incredible spirit!
Any attempt to introduce diversity in the music of TLC was met with quiet but firm disapproval, as we saw with Diane Bedwell in Anchorage. There is no flexibility or freedom in this area. Minds completely closed and made up. Conform or leave.
In the process TLC lost an entire generation, including our own children. For whom music is incredibly important and a huge part of their lives. And they roundly despised the music from TLC, especially the hymnal. This is one of many reasons why I believe TLC is doomed and will disappear within a few decades. Another generation at most. Unless they radically adapt. Which I see no sign of happening.
Putting the focus back on myself, unfortunately, our children also hate the music that you and I love. So we also have some dying to do. They love Green Day, Tool, and the like. There needs to be some music that appeals to them, which they can grab onto. This is critically important. It appeals to their culture which is radically different from ours, like it or not.
And that is not a bad thing. The fact that our kids absorbed and embraced their culture in completely normal. We did the same thing. In the process, we were able to reach people when they were outside of the traditional Christian culture, which happened to me in spades during the 80s. I did not push Amazing Grace down their throats. At that time, I was ready with Mylan Lefavre, Petra, and so forth as an alternative to Guns N Roses and the like.
I am not so ready now with my own children. I don’t know who the alternative is to Tool. I have no understanding or familiarity with the current wave of Christian music. I am stuck in a classic rock context. I want to continue to listen to Phil Keaggy, Russ Taff and so forth. Because that is my culture.
Art and film are similar. The Christian video and film I have seen is incredibly lame. There is only one Hollywood produced commercial film (Amazing Grace) which I have seen in the past few years which expresses the gospel in a way that would appeal to someone who was affected by the Hollywood culture. Other than that, things are pretty grim.
Why is this? I see massive amounts of money spent on film by Christian groups like the Billy Graham Association. Their stuff is simply terrible. It is locked into a churchist cultural context. Lots and lots of white middle class faces in a suburban setting. All the assumptions I spoke of above are firmly in place. No one deals with the issues of whether there is a God. Whether the bible is in fact true. Whether heaven is a real place. And so forth.
Ron Bell is a stark exception. Why not more stuff like his? He is amazing.
So, getting to the point of this rant, what I am looking and praying for in our lives is a community of believers like what I discussed with you this morning:
- A movement, not an institution. Movements impact culture. They even create new culture. They are exciting, energizing and motivating. Institutions perpetuate the traditional culture. They seek to survive. Movements do not try to survive. They may live, or they may die. Whatever. The Cause is the point, not the institution.
- Directly involved with and impacting the community that surrounds us. Stop the hiding. I am not talking about knocking on doors. As JD pointed out at Summit last weekend, that really, really sucks as well. There must be a better way. I am trying to find that way.
- Diversity in culture, religious background, ethnicity, country of origin, etc. expressed in a daily way. No agist segregation either. Everyone mixed. Let’s figure out how to get along without dividing ourselves.
- Freedom. No restrictions. I saw this at Journey the night that Jeanae tried to lead worship. A bunch of closed, bigoted, traditional Christians who thought what Jeanae was doing was interesting but completely did not get that they were called and expected to participate in it fully. I want a church that expects a weekly miracle. That does not attempt to program things. Let God show up.
- Aggressively non-professional. No church bosses.
- Wildly creative. A vibrant culture that expresses art in many media, including music, the Web, print, and so forth.
- If these things are in place, we should see explosive growth. I am talking about a subversive, radical movement that seeks to destroy the established order of the World Religious System. A revolutionary movement in other words. That is what the Church was in the first century. Why not now?
The way I feel about this is a sense of longing. I am in a state of desiring to find this movement in my community, or to create it if I have to. I do not want to go on any longer without this.
It is like the sense I felt when I was alone before I met you. I had a longing for someone like you with whom I could share my life. I wanted to be married to a very special person. I have found that person, ant that person is you. I want to find this church. If I cannot find it, I want to create it.
Love,
Me
