Not of the World but Sent into it

I have been teaching through the gospel of John since we arrived in Hernando County, Florida. Over the last couple of weeks we have been focused on the last week of Jesus' earthly life (the Passion week), and I have entitled it, "Living Your Life Like Time Has Run Out."

As I have delved into the topic it has been fascinating to me how passages that I have read again and again are so easily lifted from their context of the passion week and taught without passion or power. These verses are most often used to comfort us, and to assure us that but rarely are they used to send us on mission with God (note: I don't necessarily mean a mission trip or moving to a foreign land.)

This past week as I poured through John 17 I was confronted Jesus expectation that because his disciples were in his care that they should be unified through one of the most painful weekends of their lives, and that they love one another, and from his resurrection forward that they would continue in this way, not for their own sake, but for the sake of the world, that they might believe through them. Jesus' seemed to feel that without being unified in love, that the disciples would be ineffective, and that the Father would not be glorified. Hmmm.

How many times do we pray to see God's glory manifest, or do we pray to be effective in reaching the lost, only to promote ourselves, seek what is best for own local congregations, and even position ourselves with advertising that bashes the "competition" touting how our worship is better, our youth group more exciting, and our preaching more relevant and insightful. Ugh!

Really, that's not important. What is important is that we as disciples of Jesus have treated as pie-in-the-sky the high priestly prayer of Jesus, as wishful thinking, rather than as imperative mission. We have forgotten that Jesus said, the way to fulfill the great commission runs through this holy ground of loving one another. I am not making light of some very real differences theologically. There are some real issues on the table. But the world does not care about the issues themselves as much as they care about how we handle them. How do we treat one another? How do we glorify God? These things matter to the world. Moreover, these things matter to Jesus, and to the Father.

So then, let me ask you. Is your church a missional church? I don't mean do you have missionaries posted on your church wall with a map of the world. Not in some cool postmodern way, but in the biblical sense? Do you, and the people you do life with, love other believers, and glorify God by believing the best about other Christians, speaking well of them, not positioning your church as the best, and not demeaning the other churches, so that unbelievers might get the idea we are all on the same team? Do you have real love for other Christians?

At this point if you are not uncomfortable, you are either fooling yourself or you're amazing. I am not sure which. For me, this is uncomfortable, because I am painfully aware that I am more missional in my thinking about effective outreach, than I am in thinking about other Christians.

If you think the church is ineffective, maybe its not our outreach programs that need the most help. Its not even our church programs that need help. It's our hard hearts, that put ourselves first, and our outreach programs that are sterile and keep "lost"people out of our lives and at arms lengths. Maybe its the simple fact that we don't really love one another enough for the world to see any difference between us and any other religious group.

How we go matters even more than if we go. Because if we go, like we have been. Well, their is nothing more crazy than doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

Naturally Supernatural

When people find out that I am planting a new church in Brooksville, they always want to know what kind of church is it. When I tell them that it is a Vineyard Church most have not heard of a Vineyard and if they know anything at all they often try and pigeonhole it as a Pentecostal or Charismatic church, and they are confused when I am tell them that we are neither. Then I proceed to explain that we are an empowered evangelical church. Meaning we embrace the power of God as for today but that our theology is evangelical more than Pentecostal or Charismatic. Those big words just don’t do much for anyone but a theologian. So now I just say, we are a naturally supernatural church.

What is naturally supernatural? It often gets thrown around as a buzzword in some circles, especially in mine, but it is an ideal of pursuing God, who is supernatural, in ways that are free from hype, spiritual superiority, and religiosity. It means that there is enough weird stuff that happens when the divine intersects the mortal without me having to become weird in order to be filled with the Holy Spirit and do the works of Jesus. It means the kingdom of God can come into a room and bring order rather than chaos. It is a value of letting God be extraordinary with out us needing to be anything but ordinary. Unapologetically, this is the way that I lead the Hernando Vineyard. We don’t need to get worked into a lather to experience the power of God. In fact, I believe that this often keeps people from following God’s leading, when their flesh is whipped into a frenzy, and all they can hear is the dull-roar of someone shouting in tongues.

Granted there is some pretty weird stuff in the Bible: Dry bones that grow flesh on them, and Balaam’s talking donkey, Prophets walking around naked, and what about the serpent in the garden? It’s true that God does some weird stuff. At the same time, we have Jesus’ example, of praying for the sick with hot one-liners like, See! Or Come out! We have Jesus sending away the crowd so that he can pray without the crowd hovering. All I am really saying is that God does not need me to act strange for him to get glory.

Why does that matter? Well the majority of the Christian church worldwide believes that God heals, that he saves, that he delivers and that God does all he has ever done. This is not a Vineyard thing, it is Baptist, Catholic, Methodist, Anglican, Presbyterian, Alliance, Orthodox and Reformed, et al. We pray for the sick, we pray for help in times of need, we sometimes see answers that we cannot explain apart from those prayers and we call it a miracle. The more often we ask, trust and believe God for those things, the more often we seem to see them. Other times we receive not because we ask not.

The only way I know how to categorize this church is naturally supernatural. Not Pentecostal, not liberal, not fundamentalist. Just Christian. If you are looking for Pentecostal we aren’t it. On the other hand, if you are looking for fundamentalist you need to know we believe that the Holy Spirit did not retire when he wrote the New Testament, and we believe in the freedom of the believer, apart from sin management. But we are not liberal either, we believe the Bible, and we are trying to live it in a way that is naturally supernatural. We are just ordinary people serving an extraordinary God. I hope you will join us.