11.16.07

What REVEAL reveals ..

Posted in culture, ekklesia, formation at 6:16 am by len

Somewhere Richard Rohr writes that, “The mind can only take pictures using the film with which it’s loaded.”

This morning David Fitch comments again on Willowcreek’s self-study, and his comments display Rohr’s insight. Somehow we have to “see our seeing,” and that is a more fundamental task than problem solving, which tends to mean shuffling the deck chairs. Fitch writes,

“On p. 64 REVEAL says that Willow sought to “meet the needs of its people” too much. This creates an unhealthy dependence. The solution the report provides for the problem is that the church needs to teach its people more spiritual practices. At first glance, this appears encouraging. Perhaps Willow has been listening to those who have been asking serious questions about consumerism and business practices in American church. But then REVEAL goes on to say that as we grow more mature in Christ, we need to teach people to become “self-feeders.” In the words of Bill Hybels (in the video), we need to provide coaching, “customized personal spiritual growth plans.” As “you go to a health club and you get a personal trainer to figure out how to care for your health we need to provide coaches for personal spiritual growth.” Here the language might have changed, but the strategy remains the same. We’ve seen the problem, let’s provide a program to meet the individual (customized) need. Here the Christian life is seen as a personal individualist pursuit for some goods that are frankly seen as self-beneficial. Spiritual growth has now become a goal in itself.”

This is the same critique Jim Wallis offered in the early 80s in his book Agenda for Biblical People. Wallis offered, “An individualistic understanding of the Gospel carries the danger of making salvation into another commodity that can be consumed for personal fulfillment and self-interest.” (31) Fitch continues,

Eph 4 is a lesson on spiritual growth. It happens within the formation of the Body of Christ. Here the organic “Body” of Christ works for the edification of our spiritual growth “until we all grow to the full stature of Christ”(Eph 4:13 read the whole chapter). Spiritual growth cannot happen as a “self feeder,” it is the outworking of the Body of Christ as we participate in His Mission.

Did you know the study that “revealed” all this cost 3 million dollars? Stunning. David offers some other thoughts as he finishes the post: “The REVEAL staff are in the process of surveying an additional 500 Willow Creek Association Churches with the same approach. .. I suggest there will be conferences to follow for which you will pay 280 dollars to come to see how anyone can use the principles they discovered to transform their Willow creek style church into a discipling church.” Which brings us nicely back to Dr. Einstein: “the kind of thinking that will solve our problems will be a different order than the kind which created them in the first place.”

We can’t consume our way to discipleship. When our structures and methods declare the opposite of the gospel message, when the very ethos we imbibe works against our stated intention, we undermine the very gospel we preach. The medium IS the message. Until we find ways to cleanse our worship of the false stoichea – the false gods of our fallen system – we will remain a people enslaved and our communities will not be transformed by the gospel.

How long O Lord? How long must we be captive to the gods of this world? Darrel Guder writes in Missional Church,

“In an incisive essay on the missional challenge of late postmodern Western culture, Diogenes Allen suggested that Christopher Fry had captured our situation well in his play A Sleep of Prisoners. Allen introduced the following quotation with these comments: “We remain captives within a mental framework that has actually been broken. We are like prisoners who could walk out of a prison because all what would enclose us has been burst open, but we remain inside because we are asleep. Christopher Fry, however, tells us that this is the time to wake up.”

The human heart can go to the lengths of God.
Dark and cold we may be, but this
Is no winter now. The frozen misery
Of centuries breaks, cracks, begins to move;
The thunder is the thunder of the floes,
The thaw, the flood, the upstart Spring.
Thank God our time is now when wrong
Comes up to face us everywhere,
Never to leave us till we take
The longest stride of soul men ever took.
Affairs are now soul size.
The enterprise
Is exploration into God.

* * *

Sometime last year I reflected that the gospel that God gave us is designed to create faithful communities of disciples. If those communities can’t be found, then the gospel we are preaching is the wrong gospel..

This is part of the impetus of Seabeck and the formation of a missional order. What shared disciplines can draw us deeper in God? What practices can help us remain free for the kingdom and form us as apprentices of the one whose Kingdom is not of this world? I probably need to create a new category for this discussion so it’s easy to find the posts and comments that are forming the conversation around a rule of life.

I am struck that the problem is not fundamentally how to disciple our children or how to get adults to give more thought. .and finances.. for the kingdom. The problem is that we are formed by the soil we grow in. Culture is a cultivating force. We spend a few hours in church and Christian functions every week. We spend perhaps 100 waking hours walking and living in the matrix. How will we form faithful communities given that reality? We need to create an alternative culture. Culture is defined by shared practice.
Knock, knock Neo..

Related: this post by Bro Maynard references a video with Bono singing “Wave of Sorrow”

O Lord, how long?

Permalink