Being The Nuts and Bolts of Christianity: An Experiential Witness

In the opening scenes of Ragamuffin: The True Story of Rich Mullins the character of Rich Mullins is placed in the role of narrator of the film through a radio interview that interjects narration throughout the movie. This interview opens with a question about how he came to faith. Mullins responds, "I am a Christian, not because someone explained the nuts and bolts of Christianity, but because there were people willing to be nuts and bolts.” (originally from his book, The World As Best I Remember It) This quote epitomizes what the witness of a missional community should be. It's what I hope our Diakonos Community is becoming.

Too often we see witness or evangelism as presenting an airtight explanation of what Christians believe that will convince the hearer that this is the best way to believe. The Bible seems to present a different picture of witness in the early days of the church, though. There were times when the Gospel was publicly proclaimed. Still, there are many places where early Christian leaders (and Jesus himself) emphasised that the witness we live out will be as important as anything we say. Consider the following:

“You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven." Matthew 5:14 - 16 

“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” John 13:34, 35 

Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful. And pray for us, too, that God may open a door for our message, so that we may proclaim the mystery of Christ, for which I am in chains. Pray that I may proclaim it clearly, as I should. Be wise in the way you act toward outsiders; make the most of every opportunity. Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone. Colossians 4:2-6 

Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us. 1 Peter 2:12 

Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us. 1 John 4:11, 12

A community of people that are living the self-sacrificial life that Jesus modeled will speak the Gospel to people burnt out on the self-centered culture of our contemporary age. Together we live out the nuts and bolts of Christianity. Together we let the light of Christ shine in the midst of the darkness of this world. When the actions of a Christian community match it's words, this is the witness the world needs to see.

Suring Up Our Weaknesses

Last night I enjoyed listening on-line as one of my favorite IndyCar drivers, Ed Carpenter, won his third career race in the Firestone 600 at Texas Motor Speedway.  I'm always partial to the smaller teams in IndyCar, especially owner/driver teams like Carpenter's, and enjoy any chance I have to see them win out over their highly funded competition.  They do everything they can to help their teams survive in a sport where it is often hard to make ends meet.  Sometimes as team owners they make decisions that are hard to make as drivers.

After winning his first career race in 2011, Carpenter launched his own team in 2012.  He has continued to experience a measure of success with 8 top ten finishes and 1 win on oval courses.  His weakness as a road and street course racer has become more apparent in the last two years as IndyCar shifts to more of these type of races.  For the first two years as a team Carpenter has an average finishing position of 8th on oval tracks and 19th on road / street courses (16th overall).  So, for the sake of the team, Carpenter the owner needed to make a decision on how to improve their overall standing for the team to survive and how Carpenter the driver fit into this.

Along came Mike Conway, a relative newcomer to IndyCar who has shown an ability to win on road / street courses.  After two serious crashes in his three starts at the Indy 500, Conway decided he was no longer comfortable with racing on ovals and became a fill-in road / street course specialist in 2013.  As a race team owner, Ed Carpenter made the decision in 2014 to split his ride with Mike Conway behind the wheel in the 12 road / street course races and himself as driver in the 6 oval races.  So far this year they have won two races and the car's average finish has improved to 14th overall (12th if you factor out the Indy 500 where Carpenter had a good chance to win until bad decisions by two other drivers took him out of the race with 20 laps to go).  Neither will have a chance of winning the IndyCar points championship, but their combined points is enough for the car to be in 6th place so far.

Sometimes leaders need to identify their weaknesses and find people that are able to compensate for these weaknesses for the bettering of the overall team.  This is not only true in auto racing, but in all areas of life.  Team will often outshine individual performance.  Ed Carpenter Racing may become a great example of that this year.

A Call To Integrated Lives and Churches: Reflections On Reading Slow Church

One of our families early encounters with missional church was being a part of Bluer (now Renewal Vineyard) in Minneapolis.  I often remember Pastor John Musick's expression for sin: "disintegrated lives."  It really caught the essence of all the ways our culture tries to pull us away from the holistic, integrated lives God desires for us to live.  Sadly, it's often hard to see how contemporary Evangelical church offers anything different from the compartmentalized lives corporate America sells us on a daily basis.

In light of this, it's refreshing when a book like Slow Church by Chris Smith and John Patterson comes along.  This book paints a picture of church that is counter-cultural to the fast-paced, compartmentalized lives many of us live.  Borrowing from the language of the Slow Food Movement, it challenges the reader to think about how to make life and church more integrated without resorting to the "church-bashing" that can sometimes find it's way into missional church literature.

Chris and John are not professional clergy trying to sell you on their program for building a church.  They are self-professed amateurs in the truest sense of the word: lovers of church-life that seek to see it integrate into every other part of their lives.  They live in two different communities and have found their way into congregations that encourage their ability to live these principles out.  Drawing from their own experiences, both healthy and unhealthy, they provide an appealing vision of what church could be.

The book is laid out in a very accessible format that anyone can pick up and enjoy.  Chris and John begin by presenting a theological basis for the type of church they desire to see.  They follow-up with nine characteristics of slow church broken down into three "courses:" ethics, ecology, and economy.  Throughout the book they revisit several of the challenges that contemporary culture pose to living out these characteristics and ask whether the cost of acquiescing to the status quo is worth what we appear to gain by following the cultural norms of a society living at supersonic speed.  Slow Church is not simply a manual on how to "do church."  It is a call to live a more integrated life that will naturally include a different approach to how church integrates with that life.

During a time of great stress in his life, King David wrote a hymn that invited others to "taste and see that the LORD is good." (Psalm 34:8)  Slow Church invites readers who are worn down by our fast-paced culture to take the same taste and discover the goodness that can be found in living and worshipping at the pace God desires for us.  For those of us who are professional clergy, it is a challenge to create the type of faith communities that allow the weary to enter in and slowing taste the goodness of God at a pace that is healthy for their soul.  For those of us who consider ourselves "amateurs," true lovers of church-life, it is a call to examine our own pace of life and find ways to make it more "tasty" to those around us.  For both groups of readers Slow Church is a meal worth tasting and digesting.