Reflections on Six Megathemes

The Parousia Update Letter For the Week of March 2, 2011

Dear Friends,

I hope this note finds you well, and your house church growing and prospering. Much going on. I  have “traded newsletters”. In the last newsletter I promised one entitled “Seven Profound  Changes Confronting The Church”. But after finishing it I just didn’t feel at peace about sending  it, and my thoughts turned to this one entitled “Reflections on Six Megathemes”. I actually wrote  it well over a month ago, and it has been sitting in my draft folder, awaiting the proper moment.  And apparently this is it. I’ll either save the other letter for a later time, or simply post it as an  article on the new website. Haven’t decided.

I have posted a new page on the website entitled “Discipleship”. I would encourage you to look at  it. I plan to begin posting more thoughts on discipleship and house church there. I have recently  been deeply struck by the observation that “church planting is a discipleship process which  leaves a church in its wake”. I cannot tell you how profound that observation has become in my  own thinking, except to say that the new “Disciplehsip” page on the website is one of the results  of its impact on my thinking. We have also begun a weekly Monday night discipleship gathering  where our expressed intent is to discuss, teach and model the “values” of biblical discipleship.  Notes from these meetings will be posted on the “Discipleship” page of the website. While those  of you in the Spokane area are invited to attend, no “tire kickers” please. This is where we lay all  of our cards out on the table and ask God to shape us into a community of disciples in pursuit of  a Jesus-shaped spirituality. Feel free to contact me if you’re interested. Again, Don’t forget to  visit the new website.

Blessings,
Maurice
Join me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/housechurchdog

Reflections on Six Megathemes

The Barna Group (www.barna.org) recently published an article entitled “Six Megathemes  Emerge from Barna Group Research in 2010".  The Barna article  is essentially six observations regarding the life of the Church at large, distilled from their various  church research projects over 2010. I found most of the observations (called “Megathemes”)  interesting enough to spend some time (both yours and mine) reflecting and commenting on  them. I would encourage you to read the entire Barna article for yourself. For my part, I simply  want to repeat their observations and make my own comments.

1. The Christian Church is becoming less theologically literate. I’m tempted to place an  exclamation point at the end of that sentence. As I was reflecting on this newsletter a  controversy erupted in the “blog-o-sphere” over an upcoming book by Mars Hill Pastor Rob Bell  which – according to reviewers of incomplete copies – appears to endorse Universalism (feel  free to groan appropriately at this point). You can read the ChristianityToday Online article here.  The original  blog which sparked the article was by Justin Taylor. After 1,500  responses to the original blog post (including one by me, posted on our home page blog) I feel vindicated in my view that therapy has replaced  theology throughout evangelicalism (see point 3 below), and that heterodoxy is quickly replacing  orthodoxy (O.K., “orthodox” comes from Greek orthodoxos meaning “having the right opinion”,  whereas “heterodox” comes from the Greek “heteros” meaning “other” or “another” and “doxos”  meaning “opinion”). The postmodern view of personal opinions being self-validating (“it’s true  because I believe it”) has found its way into the Church. “Universal Salvation is true because I  believe it is true, and I even found a website that agrees with me”. Once the ability to define the  boundaries of orthodoxy has been lost to the Church (and that includes your house church), it is  a rapid descent into one of three traps: 1) theological nihilism (we can’t know anything with  certainty), theological existentialism (“I believe it, therefore it’s true for me”) or New Age  metaphysical mysticism on the other (“it’s all God” - no, it’s not, but thanks for sharing!). My  response to the perennial question of “What do you believe about (fill in appropriate doctrinal  blank)” is becoming my standard response: “Go buy a copy of Wayne Grudem’s Systematic  Theology and read it. When you’re done, if you still have questions, call me and we’ll talk”. As  the Church becomes increasingly theologically illiterate, we are losing the theological context  required to have intelligent theological discussions (hence, the need to read a good systematic  theology).

2. Christians are becoming more ingrown and less outreach-oriented. While this  observations doesn’t really say anything new, the trend it represents is growing and disturbing.  The Church is modeling and teaching a “bunker” or “fortress” mentality which says, “You’re safe  inside these four walls, so let’s stay here and have another Bible study, or watch another video.”  The ripple effects of this thinking are profound, not the least of which is reducing evangelism to  little more than preaching to the Choir in the ever present hope of snagging the occasional  unsuspecting unbeliever who happens to wander in. But there’s more. Perhaps you remember  the scene from one of my all-time favorite movies, “Patton”. General Patton is surveying a  recent battle scene with his aide. He comments that the moment is ripe to invade Germany, that  he could be in Berlin and end the war in a matter of weeks. “What about the German defenses  and fortifications?” queries the aide. “Fixed fortifications are a monument to human stupidity,”  Patton responds. “If mountains and oceans can be overcome, anything made by man can be  overcome.” Now that’s profound. Do you get it? In the cultural and spiritual war currently being  waged, our postmodern culture is in the process of successfully overcoming the “fixed  fortifications” of our traditional churches where believers are being encouraged to huddle for  protection. Our only hope for survival, and the only hope for our Postmodern culture to hear the  gospel and experience its transforming power, is for us to leave our buildings and join the battle.  And this applies to “hunker-down house churches”, too.

3. Growing numbers of people are less interested in spiritual principles and more  desirous of learning pragmatic solutions for life. This falls into the category of abandoning  theology in favor of therapy. The goal of the growing, bustling evangelical church seems to be  for people to come, have a positive religious experience and to leave feeling good about  themselves. Let’s be real. We ALL find ourselves in need of pragmatic solutions to some of life’s  practical challenges. And while I’m all in favor of people feeling good about themselves, I’m  unwilling to sacrifice truth in order to get there. My fear is that the road to hell will be paved with a  generation of people who felt good about themselves and their journey right up to the last  moment, but who found themselves unprepared for the ultimate of all practical problems -  standing before God’s Judgment Seat and giving an account of themselves on God’s terms  instead of theirs. I’m all in favor of “practical pragmatic solutions for life” so long as they don’t  mask underlying spiritual conditions of unrepented sin and spiritual “rot”. Jesus didn’t suffer and  die so you and I could watch a Dobson video on marriage or graduate from “Financial Peace  University”. He died to deliver us from the moral catastrophe of sin, death and judgment.  Everything else is negotiable. I’m reminded of the words of A.W. Tozer,

"Every age has its own characteristics. Right now we are in an age of religious complexity. The  simplicity which is in Christ is rarely found among us. In its stead are programs, methods,  organizations and a world of nervous activities which occupy time and attention but can never  satisfy the longing of the heart. The shallowness of our inner experience, the hollowness of our  worship, and that servile imitation of the world which marks our promotional methods all testify  that we, in this day, know God only imperfectly, and the peace of Christ scarcely at all." A.W.  Tozer, The Pursuit of God

4. Among Christians, interest in participating in community action is escalating. I actually  find this theme encouraging. It means that a growing number of believers want to take their faith  outside of the four walls of the Church and to have an impact in their communities. I see this as  an important trend. Do you remember the book, Jim and Casper Go to Church: Frank  Conversation about Faith, Churches, and Well-Meaning Christians. One of the observations made by Matt Casper (the atheist) regarding nearly  every one of the fifteen largest evangelical churches in America that they attended and  analyzed was, “When do you get around to telling people  to DO things?”  Allow me to quote  from the book:

"Casper simply could not imagine Jesus telling his followers that the most important thing they  should be doing is holding church services. And yet this was the only logical conclusion he was  able to come to based upon what he’d observed. If people who had never heard of Jesus  wanted to see what Christians were most interested in, they would probably start their search in  some of the same churches we visited. ‘If that’s where they started, they would have to  conclude that Jesus’ number one priority was that Christians invest the very best of their energy  and their money into putting on a huge church service - a killer show, as it were,’ said Casper.  ‘Jim, is this what Jesus told you guys to do?’”

The short answer to Matt Casper’s question is: “No”. And a growing number of believers are  waking up to this biblical reality. In our forth-coming book, “The Least of These: The Role of  Good Deeds In A Jesus-Shaped Spirituality”  I discuss 15 “Good Deeds Principles”. Principle  #6 on page 70 is “Make Yourself Valuable!” where I discuss several historic examples of the  Church making itself valuable to the people and communities where they live. I conclude that  section by saying, “As believers seeking to live out an authentic Jesus-shaped spirituality in our  skeptical Postmodern culture, we need to once again make ourselves “valuable” to those around  us through our good deeds.”

5. The postmodern insistence on tolerance is winning over the Christian Church. Wow.  This one could fill a book or two. As Dr. Phil McGraw might say, “You either get it your you  don’t”. The concept of “tolerance” (“I’ll leave you alone, you leave me alone, and we’ll agree to  disagree”) has morphed into “code-speak” for “approval”. I recently read a news report about a  county registrar in England. Registrars in Britain are empowered to perform civil weddings.  When an openly gay couple was scheduled to be married on his shift, this registrar arranged to  trade shifts with a co-worker in order to avoid performing the ceremony for private reasons of  conscience. A sensible solution to a practical moral dilemma. Right? No, not really. When gay  co-workers learned of this “plot” they reported his behavior to his superiors and accused him of  (drum roll please) being “intolerant”. The individual received an official reprimand and was  threatened with losing his job for demonstrating “intolerance”. The Postmodern “doctrine of  tolerance” now means the “death of conscience”. You are no longer allowed to have a private  conscience of moral convictions if those private moral convictions run contrary to the official  “doctrine of tolerance”. This is nothing less than our Postmodern culture waging moral warfare  against biblical moral convictions and people who hold them. When this type of politically correct  tolerance becomes official “public policy”, a legal basis will have been established to challenge  the legal standing (including the tax exemption) of any Churches or organizations whose beliefs  or practices run contrary to this “public policy”. This type of cultural pressure is slowly  compromising the moral/spiritual message and authority of the Church and will extract an  increasingly high price from those who stand for biblical moral truth. On a cultural level, the  Church of Jesus is in the moral/spiritual fight of its life, yet few leaders or believers seem to  understand it.

6. The influence of Christianity on culture and individual lives is largely invisible. That’s an  understated, polite way of saying that as Christians we are losing our culture, both on an  individual personal level as well as on a societal level. And losing one’s culture spiritually is  (biblically speaking) a prelude to collapse. For nearly 10 years I have contemplated writing a  Francis Schaefferesque commentary on the Book of Jeremiah, entitled “A Time To Weep”,  comparing the spiritual and cultural collapse of ancient Israel with that of the Western world. May  yet do it. Losing their culture spiritually was the prelude to God’s judgment. Any similarities there?

C. S. Lewis once observed that popular culture can be likened to “the road into Jerusalem”, what  I like to refer to as the “suburbs of Jerusalem.”(See “Christianity and Culture” in C.S. Lewis,  Christian Reflections).  In other words, a Judeo-Christian culture that resonates with biblical  values, symbols and thought processes prepares the mind (if not the heart) to consider the  claims of the Gospel. In the West, our Judeo-Christian “suburbs” are being quickly razed to the  ground by the all-consuming fires of Post-Christian Postmodernism. What does that mean in  practical terms? It means that the 10 Commandments must be removed from public buildings,  public nativity scenes must go, the Pledge of Allegiance must be attacked, the Boy Scouts must  accept atheists and gay troop leaders, and Christian campus ministries - such as InterVarsity at  Rutgers University - must sign agreements not to discriminate on the basis of religion when it  comes to the leadership of their groups (!?) or lose their campus status.

History records that in the years leading up to the Third Punic War (ca. 201-156 B.C., against the  Carthaginians) the famous Roman orator Cato ended all of his speeches to the Roman Senate,  regardless of the subject, with the words, Ceterum censeo delendam esse Carthaginem -  “Besides, I think that Carthage must be destroyed.” So too, the orators of our Postmodern  culture, in government, the media and elsewhere, seem duty bound to end every public  discourse with the words, “Besides, I think that the Judeo-Christian suburbs must be razed.”   Their plan is simple. Burn the Christian past, and all bridges which connect to it, lest some  innocent passerby stop, notice and ask the question, “What do these religious things mean? Is  there more to reality beyond what I see here?” 

And the Postmodern prophets of our age whisper  back, “Take the blue pill, Neo. Go back to sleep. There is no matrix and there never was.”

My Brother’s Keeper Website Up (www.mybrotherskeepertv.org)

We have a new website up for our project, “My Brother’s Keeper”. You can view it here.  Again, I would appreciate your feedback. Discipleship and  house church is about values as opposed to structure. And one of the core values of the  Kingdom of God is serving others particularly “the least of these”. This is the operating value  behind “My Brother’s Keeper”. We should have a dedicated website up shortly. I will post more  info there, as it will quickly become our “information hub” for this project.

Monthly Area-Wide House Church Gathering Successful

Our February 26 area wide gathering was a success. My thanks to Ed Cain for coming and  sharing his heart, both for house church and for spiritual awakening. We had good discussions  and introductions, and my thanks to all who came and participated. We hope to have videos  from the evening posted in a few days. Although attendance was down, there were several new  faces which means that word is spreading. We’re planning our next gathering, probably for the  last Saturday in March. Details will be posted on the “Gatherings” page of our website  www.safehousesofhopeandprayer.org. Stay tuned, and plan to join us soon!

© 2011 THE PAROUSIA NETWORK (www.safehousesofhopeandprayer.org)