RE: Spiritual Movements and Multiplication Constipation

As I finished up my last post I was reminded of a Perspectives lecture by a cross-cultural missions expert by the name of Carol Davis (at the time she was a professor at Golden Gate Seminary).

She was relating an experience with a fruitful church planter in Latin America; the below is the best my memory could retain these 15 years.  

The church planter had been raising up multiplying churches and indigenous leaders for a long stretch.  The planter returned to his home country for a time and then took a trip back to visit the leaders.  

At his first stop, the leader took him to the local house that the church was meeting in.  They were growing and were actively planning the next stage of multiplication and expansion to nearby villages.  He left encouraged and confident that they were on track and were practicing the principles they had inherited.

When he landed at his second stop the leaders met him with great excitement on their faces.

"We have something incredible to show you", they gushed.

As they traveled down the road and neared the last turn, the planter related that his heart immediately sank.  He knew that the chances of this church ever multiplying again was slim to none.

"What do you think?!" they exclaimed in great anticipation of the joy that the church planter was sure to have.

Before them stood a towering spire topped with a cross.  The brand new church building, a gift of a generous and well meaning American short term missions team, instead must have looked to the church planter like an iron anchor.

Why was this such a terrible thing?  How can a church building be a bad thing?

From that point on, that particular church saw a literal building as a necessary ingredient to growth and maturity.  In order for them to multiply, they were going to expect that they also had to multiply the environment - brick, cement, steel, steeple, cross and all.

This is the equivalent of constipation for multiplication.

A note to remember.  Even though well meaning - in our rush to bless others like we have been blessed - we end up giving them things that become a burden and hindrance to their growth, maturity, and multiplication.

A few questions to reflect on.

Take a look at your discipleship process for new and maturing believers.  

What are the expectations, rules, or environments that they must move through?

What do these things help you accomplish in their lives and what has been some of the results?

Are any of them extraneous, burdensome, or downright legalistic?

If the list is long for that last question, you are building a high maintenance and HIGH ROAD spiritual environment which is dangerously close to a NO ROAD environment (which we will look at in my next post).

One quick example from my context is that the discipleship process emphasis is on ministry skills while the heart is usually touched on but mostly assumed to be strong and growing.  This results in disciples with strong hands and sharp minds but unsupported by a heart relationship with the God they are serving. Very, very dangerous.

One way we are trying to change this is to ask everyone involved with us three questions - and the order is paramount.

1. How have you been reflecting a true follower of Jesus the past few weeks? 

If a disciple cannot clearly articulate this, then there is no need to process with the other questions.  We have narrowed down into the place of deepest need.

2. How is your relationship with your wife, kids, family, friends, and "neighbors" (in the Good Samaritan sense of neighbor)?

Again, if a disciple cannot clearly articulate how they are following Jesus into these relationships and being an agent of faith, hope, and love then there is no need to proceed.  

Only after the first two do we get to the skills part.

3.  How is your ministry?

The assumption and implication of this order is that:

• ministry flows from relationship (with God and others).  See Great Commandment in Matthew 22.
• our work for Him, though an important part of our service, isn't the only part of our service.
• ministry IS relationship.  How many marriages of Christian workers wouldn't be strained to breaking, how many children wouldn't be embittered toward their fathers if this was the attitude rather than that it is o.k. to sacrifice our families and friends on the alter of ministry.

100W

RE: Spiritual Movements and the Tabernacle

This post will continue our look at the HIGH ROAD style of architecture as defined in a previous post and how it relates to environments Christians set up to experience God.  I had written in an earlier post that HIGH ROAD buildings tend to move toward becoming a museum or a monument.  In an email, one of the readers of 100W Lightbulb wrote, "I like your thoughts and the parallels drawn - but I am also a sentimental person who likes to remember the past and enjoy my time in museums.  I think there is a good tension there but not sure how to articulate it."  

Thanks for writing in, and I think you articulated it well.  HIGH ROAD architecture is inviting, it is complex, it is rich, it forces us to pay attention to detail and tradition.  I love museums and institutions as well.  It gives a permanence and place that allows me to put my life in the context of something larger.

Please hear me, HIGH ROAD is not a bad thing.  As we will see in this post, there are clear instances of HIGH ROAD architecture in the Bible and it had an intended affect on how people related to God.  My intent with these early posts is not to say that HIGH ROAD spiritual environments have no place in Christianity, but only to ask the question - is a complex and more rigid HIGH ROAD environment the best to foster multiplying spiritual Movements?  

Last year I had the opportunity to travel to Israel. Awesome trip, and the journey there was as informative as any of the sites I visited.  NOTE TO TRAVELERS: if you are flying on El Al airlines arrive to the airport VERY EARLY!  If not, they will take a great interest in you.  Let's just say my suitcase was dumped into a bin, and I was down to my underwear for a strip search. Hello!  

Anyway, I made it and while there had the chance to stop in at a full scale replica of the Tabernacle at Timna Park in the Negev desert. They do a good job with the resources that they have.  When I thought about Biblical examples of HIGH ROAD architecture, the Tabernacle came to mind as a good example.  

Let's see if it meets our HIGH ROAD test:  

Beautiful - from Exodus 25 we can see that the people gave to the LORD "gold, silver, and bronze, blue and purple and scarlet yarns and fine twined linen, goat's hair, tanned rams' skins, goatskins, acacia wood, oil for the lamps, spices for the anointing oil and for the fragrant incense, onyz stones."  Check.

Complex - from 25:34 we read, "and on the lampstand itself there shall be four cups made like almond blossoms, with their calyxes and flowers, and a calyx of one piece with it under each pair of the six branches going out from the lampstand.  Their calyxes and their branches shall be of one piece with it, the whole of it a single piece of hammered work of pure gold." Uh... complex?  Check.

Carefully crafted - from Ex. 36:2,8 we read, "and Moses called Bezalel and Oholiab and every craftsman in whose mind the LORD had put skill, everyone whose heart stirred him up to come to do the work.  And all the craftsmen among the workmen made the tabernacle with ten curtains.  They were made of fine twined linen and blue and purple and scarlet yarns, with cherubim skillfully worked."  Twice in the narrative, God makes a point to remind Moses to construct the Tabernacle "exactly as I show you concerning the pattern".

Why was God so concerned with the minute detail that He was requiring?  I mean, we're talking down to the pomegranate tassels on the hem of the robe of the High Priest!  I think the environment that God mandated in order to dwell with them reinforced the relationship that God had with them - present but separate. Only through the Law and rituals were the people (through a mediator none-the-less) able to approach God.  

Alright, I think at this point some of you might be asking "so what?"

The so what is this.  Why did I have to go visit a replica of the Tabernacle last year?  It is because that incredibly beautiful structure doesn't exist.  Why didn't I choose to write about my trip to the Temple while I was in Jerusalem?  No temple.  Just  some stone and shrines to mark where it (probably) used to stand.  

The book of Hebrews makes the point most articulately when the author writes, "for when Moses was about to erect the tent, he was instructed by God, saying, 'See that yo make everything according to the pattern that was shown to you on the mountain'.  But as it is, Christ has obtained a ministry that is as much more excellent than the old as the covenant he mediates is better, since it is enacted on better promises.  For if that first covenant had been faultless, there would have been no occasion to look for a second." (8:5-7)

The structures don't exist because the purpose they served is no longer needed.  The HIGH ROAD veil of separation was ripped top to bottom.  In Ephesians, Paul writes that the dividing wall between Jew and Gentile was torn down.  All this was done through the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of the victorious Jesus Christ.

Since that day, however, Christians have been temmpted (intentionally or ignorantly) to rebuilding, separating, and isolating.

• Paul to Peter and the Apostles in Acts 15 and Galatians 2 who had become a stumbling block to Gentile faith.
• Plague of the judiasers on the early Church.
• Descent of the Catholic Church into Papal Infallibility and gross excesses that isolated the people from Scripture.
• Cultural moralizing that confused the place of real life change.
• Over emphasis on seminary training to be fit for service.
• The legalist that conditions relationship to rules and confuses actions with heart.

HIGH ROAD structures - both physical and metaphysical in nature - have their places.  There are times when we need stable structure and clear policies.  Those serve to support entities that are meant to be in one place serving a singular purpose for a long time.

There is an ugly side to the HIGH ROAD, however.  It is one where the weight of history mandates certain rigid processes that serve to protect legacy.  It is the 150 year old church on Main Street that has multiple committees (any time you have to use a word that repeats three letter twice you know you are in HIGH ROAD territory)  to manage the details for running the church.  It is the religious organization that has an HR manual as thick as a phone book so as to protect itself from any and every possible threatening situation.  it is the top down leadership style that puts knowledge, resources, and mandates of ministry into the hands of a select few specialists while everyone else sits and watches.

Before we get to the LOW ROAD environment, which I will argue is the most conducive to multiplying spiritual movements, we will take a detour into what Stewart Brand calls the NO ROAD or Magazine architecture - those beautiful buildings full of glass and steel that totally exist for themselves and are completely inhospitable to those that inhabit it. 

As we pull the plug on this one, a question to consider: as you observe your current spiritual spaces, how much do they reflect a HIGH ROAD atmosphere?  How does that help or hinder bringing others with you into that space to experience Christ?

100W