This week I got a call from a spiritual son, a young man whom I love, admire, respect and love as a son. He's sharp, real sharp. I had the privilege to be one who walked with him towards the Kingdom, and helped him get to know Christ personally. I've also had the privilege of speaking into his life, encouraging him, keeping my proverbial hand between his shoulder blades and speaking into his ear whispering the truth ...that I am proud of him, and he is doing great.
I share this because he called and wanted me to know he and his bride (and their young son) are leaving their church, one with long roots, family ties and many reasons to stay. To leave will cause ripples, hurts, misunderstandings and yet, he has to go and it will be hard, and he knows that and is doing what must be done.
One of many complex reasons involves the ethos of the leadership. I often speak, teach and write regarding my concerns for the church, and its corporate DNA, something that crept into the church over the past 60+ years and has ruined her. We operate on business sense, not the radical upside down realities of the Kingdom. Business models more resemble the church than the revolutionary, counter-American culture ethos of Biblical community, a people on the journey together, bringing the Kingdom. We've supplanted the glorious community of God's people with marketing and consumer centered approaches to being the church, and relegated ourselves to attracting and holding market share.
I have admired Brennan Manning for a long time. He speaks with the cutting truth we need to hear. He's not perfect, but his words are good counsel. During lent, a couple of guys in our community are reading his work, A Glimpse of Jesus. He writes a couple of poignant thoughts that I simply must share with you.
"Christian freedom is the joyful acceptance of this unprecedented and scandalous reversal of the world’s values. In sovereign liberty to prefer to be the servant rather than the lord of the household, to merrily taunt the gods of power, prestige, honor and recognition, to refuse to take oneself seriously (or to take seriously anyone who takes himself seriously!), to live without gloom by a lackey’s agenda, to dance to the tune of a different drummer and be captivated with joy and wonder at the vision and lifestyle of the Ebed Yahweh (Servant God) – these are the revolutionary attitudes that bear the stamp of genuine and unmistakable discipleship. So central is Jesus’ teaching on humble apprenticeship and serving love as the royal road to the Kingdom that at the final judgment, God Himself disappears and is visible only in our brothers and sisters. “What you did for those around you, you did for me.” (Matthew 25.40) I would rather be numbered among the little band who have at least learned this from Jesus and the Bible than among the legalizers, the moralizers, the hair splitters who are so busy straining the gnat that they swallow the camel. Would not this radical, revolutionary, and thoroughly orthodox mindset plunge us into a new Pentecost that would renew the face of the earth? There is simply no sense in trumpeting the lordship of Jesus if his attitudes, values , and behavior are not recognizable in our lives."
A Glimpse of Jesus, p. 27-28
"Having the humility and courage to serve is the way to true greatness. When a young Baptist minister finished his doctorate, he told me that he wanted to have an international ministry like mine. At that very moment, unknowingly, he disqualified himself from any role in leadership. Ambition to be a star in the Body of Christ is alluring and seductive, it is also demonic, the glamorous enemy of Servanthood and love. The steady erosion of servant leadership in the North American church, the deference shown to charismatic superstars, and the bowing and scraping to TV evangelists deface the image of the servant Jesus and make the credibility of Christian leadership literally incredible."
Ibid, p. 28-29
"The stark realism of the Gospel allows for no romanticized idealism or slopping sentimentality here. Servanthood is not an emotion or mood or feeling; it’s a decision to live the life of Jesus. It has nothing to do with what we feel, it has everything to do with what we do – humble service."
Ibid, p. 29
Somehow, somehow, might we actually live, sustained, as a normative life to not live normative to our culture, but in it, with the people, as lovers of the people, but so different, such a peculiar people that resonate a humility (selfless and others focused), sacrificially (love enough to be inconvenienced without expectation), and caring (care enough to commit) that people who are in such a post-Christian culture tha the charicature of Christ they have might be shattered and that they might actually, possibly taste and see, smell and savor the true Jesus?
