Pastorates manuscript #8

Pastorates do many things better than traditional congregations.
Not only are pastorates better at doing many things than traditional small groups, they are also better for many things than the traditional congregation.  Much of what the church does happens best in pastorates rather than in the larger congregation.

Pastorates excel at pastoral care.
One of the greatest things about pastorates is the level of care they can provide both for their participants and for others.  Several of our pastorates have walked with a member of their group through significant illnesses, and some have experienced the death of one or more of their members.  

In a congregation, a pastor often strives to provide significant spiritual care during this kind of crisis, but a single visit, or even two or three, is usually the best the pastor can provide.  

In contrast, pastorates have often set up around-the-clock care for a person in need.  They fill each other’s freezers with meals during a hospitalization.  They have done fundraisers to help cover medical costs.  They become an extended family at a time of death, walking through grief with a new widow, for example, in ways beyond what one ordained pastor can provide.  Recently one of our pastorates walked through lung cancer and death with a member.  A few weeks before Adeline’s death, she and her husband Hartley celebrated their 68^th wedding anniversary.  She was not able to move out of her home, but the pastorate hosted a wonderful anniversary party for the two of them.  Pastorate members greeted guests at the door, provided refreshments, and made sure every guest understood Adeline’s limitations.  A few weeks later the entire pastorate attended Adeline’s funeral along with hundreds of other people.  That evening was the regular pastorate meeting.  Even though he was exhausted at the end of a very long day filled with grief, Hartley was there and the pastorate suspended their regular plans as Hartley shared story after story of his 68 years of life with Adeline.  The pastorate continues to walk with him through his grief, and he recognizes how important the pastorate is in his life.  

Pastorates excel at getting God’s Word into people.

The trouble with so many of the ways we do church is, as we’ve examined, that people are so often passive.  Any teacher will tell you that the more active a learner is in the process of learning, the better the material will be absorbed and applied.  And that is exactly the key -- not only absorption, but application.  

In a pastorate, there are usually two or three people involved in directly teaching and proclaiming the Word of God.  This means that you have two or three people digging deep into scripture as they prepare.  If they are properly coached and encouraged, this act of preparing to teach can be fertile ground for the Holy Spirit to work in these teachers to deepen their knowledge of scripture and their ability to apply it.  

Participants in the pastorate not only hear and discuss God’s Word.  Traditional small groups also do this.  But the pastorate is actively seeking ways to apply that Word immediately.  Pastorates are actively inviting others in, and they are seeking ways to do the mission work of the gospel in the world through serving in some hands-on way.  This means that the Word that is heard in the pastorate is applied, and this means that the Word has greater opportunity to transform the lives of individuals and to transform the collective life of the community.

Pastorates excel at discipleship.

Mike Breen, who has worked with pastorate-sized groups for many years, points out that the basic problem with institutional Christianity is that its structure imitates the structure of social life that dominated the Middle Ages, a system known as feudalism.  In many of our churches, a “lord” (the ordained pastor) and a few “nobles” (the staff, perhaps, or a church council or board of elders) have nearly total control over a large group of people who are responsible to do the work of the “serfs” (the members of the congregation).  In return for their work, the “serfs” have a claim on the “lord” to feed them and protect them.  Breen points out that this goes a long way to explain the conversation that happens in so many church parking lots after worship on Sundays.  “I’m just not getting fed at this church” is a comment and criticism heard far too often after worship.  This attitude and assumption about what’s supposed to happen in worship sets us up with a faulty paradigm for what the church is about.  

Breen goes on to say that Jesus rarely fed the masses.  Instead what he did is he invited people in (“Come, follow me”) and then challenged them (“You give them something to eat”).  This invitation and challenge is the basic framework for discipleship.

Pastorates are full of invitation and challenge.  We invite people in to attend, participate, eat, enjoy.  About the time people really start to appreciate the fellowship of the pastorate we challenge them to serve beyond themselves.  Individual pastorate members may be challenged to share their testimony, to provide teaching, or any of a number of other leadership functions.  Anyone who has been around Christianity for any length of time -- and many who are brand new to it -- recognize that this is what it’s all about.  We are putting into action what has only been theoretical for too long.

One of the keys to the success of the pastorate model is that pastorates are expected to live out the gospel.  Pastorates are expected to make disciples.  And they do.  The most effective disciple-making churches are those that structure themselves at all three levels of the church -- celebration, congregation, and cell -- capitalizing on the strengths found at each level of Christian community.

Pastorates manuscript #7

I am utterly convinced that the Spirit of God is moving across the globe, creating a revolution in the church that is rooted in biblical community.  In many parts of the world these biblical communities are simply house churches.  In North America where we live with an image of “church” as a specially dedicated religious building, it might be more helpful to refer to these groups as “mid-sized communities” in order to distinguish them from the more familiar “small groups.”  

Small groups -- groups of 8-15 people -- have been popular in the church since the days of Serendipity in the 1970’s and before.  Without a doubt small groups have been a great vehicle to create deep relationships and in-depth biblical study in certain situations.  But pastorates, mid-sized communities, are quite different from small groups.  Traditional small groups have some significant weaknesses that have become all too familiar within church leadership circles.  Mid-sized groups like pastorates, properly led, are strong where small groups are weak.  One of the greatest temptations for churches considering pastorates is to build small groups -- possibly slightly larger than average small groups -- and call them pastorates.  Trouble is, there are certain dynamics to mid-sized groups that simply don’t happen in small groups.  So let’s take some time to distinguish between small groups and pastorates.  

There’s always a temptation to settle for smaller groups.  Small groups are more comfortable -- everyone can have a chair around the living room.  (Note:  The most common objection from people who first learn about pastorates is, “How do you find houses big enough for 30-40 people?”  I immediately tell people to stop counting the chairs in their living room and accept that it might be a good thing to have people sitting on the floor, the stairwell, the windowsills.  Almost any average sized house in North America is large enough to host a pastorate.  This minor bit of crowding helps people get beyond their personal space issues and creates a collective energy for worship and for the Spirit’s movement.)  Small groups allow everyone to participate in one big conversation.  Small groups allow us to really get to know each other intimately.  Trouble is, as we pointed out above, for exactly these reasons small groups don’t grow, and they don’t function to make new disciples.  We get used to each other and comfortable in “our little group.”  It’s awkward for newcomers because they don’t feel like they’re part of the group, and they will probably not return.  A small group may settle for just “Bible study.”  Bible study is good and valuable, but many groups have studied the Bible for decades without ever growing significantly in numbers, in faith, or in mission.  It’s easy for a small group never to serve beyond themselves.  

One young pastor in his first parish was quite excited to find that a small group had been studying their way through the entire Bible every year for six years.  They met together each week and dug into the Word under the leadership of one gifted teacher within their group.  When the new pastor encouraged the six members of this small group to begin to teach others, they were horrified.  “Oh, no!  We could never teach anyone else.  We don’t know enough yet!”  Their small group was comfortable and even though they had studied the entire Bible for six years, they did not want to reach out beyond themselves.  Perhaps less obvious but equally important, the small group allows people to maintain a distance from the need to develop and exercise their own gifts.  

So what can a pastorate do that a small group can’t?  Fact is, pastorates are better at many things than small groups.  As we’ll see later, pairing pastorates with a smaller-than-usual form of small groups makes a complementary structure that is hard to beat.

Pastorates are better at evangelism.
Small groups don’t do evangelism well.  Once a group is established, it’s hard for anyone else to join.  If you are bold enough to visit an established small group, you will bump up against inside jokes and conversations that leave you on the outside.  Group members already know a lot about each other and your presence as a newcomer makes conversations awkward.  This is why many small groups choose to be “closed” groups that don’t take in new members.  Pastorates are never closed.  If you visit a pastorate, you will find half a dozen small knots of conversation and you can be welcomed into any of them.  Relationships are more open, and people come and go from the group fairly regularly.  As a newcomer to a pastorate you’ve also got a better chance of finding someone you can connect with.  Because pastorates tend not to get as in-depth in Bible study and discussion as small groups do, newcomers are less likely to feel stupid, like everyone else knows the Bible through and through.  Since a pastorate is larger -- 2-3 times as large as  a small group -- there’s less pressure to know everyone’s name early on.  It’s much easier to be a newcomer.

Also pastorates tend to do more activities than small groups.  Small groups tend to focus on just one activity -- usually Bible study in church groups -- and that’s it.  Pastorates, however, have a social gathering three or four times each year.  Pastorates seek out mission activities like volunteering at a food shelf or landscaping a school’s flower bed or holding a garage sale to raise money to support a mission project.  These additional activities appeal to many people who would never come to a group that was just doing Bible study.

Pastorates are better at leadership development.
One person can lead a small group, but pastorates are far too diverse and too large for one person to lead.  At a minimum it takes a team to lead a pastorate, and if the leaders are wise, they’re constantly delegating tasks out to potential leaders within the pastorate.  Again, this kind of natural leadership development is structured into the pastorate model.  Over time, people’s spiritual gifts and natural strengths rise to the top within the pastorate.  Quite often, new leaders emerge who serve within the pastorate.  These individuals may find that their gifts grow as they are used, and they may find new opportunities to use their gifts in a larger context.  If their gifts allow, they can also feed back into the larger church, so the pastorate network becomes a leadership development engine for the whole church.  Nicky Gumbel of Holy Trinity Brompton in London says that when, for a short time in the 1990’s, they gave up pastorates in favor of small groups, their leadership development dried up as well.  When they went back to a pastorate structure after a few years, they began to see new leaders emerging once again.

This leadership development happens because the pastorate is too big for one person to lead.  Pastorate leaders have to intentionally recruit others as often as possible.  Over time the various activities and relationships within the pastorate become a potent place for new gifts to be identified, called out, and developed.

Another key to leadership development within pastorates is that the pastorate provides a perfect place to try new things and fail.  Most of us learn and grow far more from failure than we do from success.  A pastorate becomes a supportive community where failure is met with encouragement and the opportunity to try again.  Too many potential leaders don’t weather their first failure well, and they never dare to attempt anything of the sort in the future.  With the encouragement of a pastorate, fledgling leaders may see that what they perceived as failure was, in reality, simply the first shaky steps toward success.

Pastorates are better at multiplication.
Once a small group is established, it’s almost impossible to get it to multiply.   From the very start, pastorates talk about multiplication.  They actively seek to grow “too big” so that their pastorate can give birth to another.  Because the relationships within the pastorate are less intense, less intimate as a rule than those in a small group, multiplication becomes a real possibility.  Because leaders are growing and developing constantly within the pastorate, it’s natural to consider whether they’re ready to step out and lead a new pastorate on their own.  This multiplication creates a sense of expectancy and excitement.  The entire pastorate model drives toward this growth and multiplication.  A large part of this growth happens because of the new leaders that are being developed.  As individual leaders begin to realize their gifts, they are more confident to move into forming a new pastorate with the support of the larger congregation and the love and encouragement of their original pastorate.

Pastorates are better at mission.
Because small groups tend to focus on just one thing, it’s often hard to add in a missional aspect to the small group.  Pastorates, however, are diverse and there is often a person in a pastorate who functions as a “mission champion” keeping the pastorate focused outward toward some missional activity.  Some pastorates collectively sponsor an orphan through World Vision.  Others financially contribute to support a missionary.  Others adopt a local program to aid homeless people.  Others volunteer to host a worship service in the larger congregation, serving as ushers and greeters.  Others send some of their members to volunteer in the church’s Alpha course.  

Pastorates are better at getting beyond themselves.  Anyone who has tried to coordinate activities for a group knows how tough it can be to coordinate schedules.  Pastorates include enough people that even if not all the people can show up, enough will come to make the mission work worthwhile.  Recently one of our pastorates booked a day with a local organization, “Feed My Starving Children,” that packs non-perishable meals to be sent all over the world.  This pastorate committed to 96 slots, then invited a couple other pastorates to join in.  Not only did they step up and do this amazing activity together, but this evening of volunteering together drew in quite a few newcomers who experienced the joy and excitement and camaraderie of these pastorates.  Cooperative mission resulted in evangelism!

There is certainly a place for small groups within the church.  At Central we have emphasized both pastorates (groups of 25-35) and our own brand of small groups that we call D4D groups (groups of 3-5).  We find that these two kinds of groups, along with regular large-group celebrations, create a healthy sense of Jesus-centered community.  Pastorates focus on word and sacrament, multiplication, mission, and caring for one another.  The D4D groups focus on building in-depth relationships, digging deep in to Scripture, and creating community that includes a lot of accountability.  These two are complementary.   What effectively happens is that the church begins to function at three distinct but interrelated levels:  the “celebration” or large-group gathering of a few hundred for weekly worship; the “congregation” or pastorate, a mid-sized gathering; and the “cell” or very small group which meets for accountability and in-depth study.

Most often, it’s helpful for individuals to stagger their schedules.  What often happens is that a pastorate will meet twice a month on the first and third weeks; the D4D group will meet the second and fourth weeks.  This keeps overall time commitments manageable.

Pastorates manuscript #6

The global south

I remember listening to a missionary in the 1980’s, recently returned from Africa, who talked about a model of leadership training that was growing by leaps and bounds in Africa.  It was called “theological education by extension” or TEE.  In this model, students did not travel to a seminary to take several semesters of classes.  Rather, the teachers traveled to the village where the students lived.  In these scattered villages, the professor led classes over a weekend or maybe a week.  The students were probably already leading local churches and many worked at tentmaking jobs in addition.  They took a few days to study in order to be better equipped for ministry.  This model did not produce theological sophistication in its students but rather equipped them for the fast, portable work of leading local congregations.  TEE was a response to rapid growth of the church.  To the great surprise of many in the west, African Christianity had begun to grow by leaps and bounds, and TEE was one of many desperate moves to try to provide biblical leadership.  

About the same time liberation theology began to echo out of Latin America.  In a bid to deal with the consequences of corrupt politics, a hierarchical Catholic Church, and devastating poverty, small groups of Christians called “base communities” began to live together, sharing their meager wealth and their spiritual lives.  They began to read the Bible differently, recognizing that God had a “preferential option for the poor.”  Without a doubt much of liberation theology was deeply influenced by Communism, but it was also influenced by Acts 2 and other passages in scripture.  These Christian communities started within Catholic roots but rapidly expanded beyond the Catholic Church.  As pentecostalism grew by leaps and bounds in Latin America, many Jesus-followers took a page from the flexible leadership and communal lives of these base communities.  

After Mao’s Cultural Revolution in China, many missionaries thought the Christian church within China would be devastated.  All the missionaries had been expelled, after all, and there would be a serious lack of Christian leadership.  When China began to reopen after a few decades of being entirely closed to western Christianity, the first Christians to visit this new China were shocked to find a vibrant, under-the-radar Christian presence in house churches, led by pastors who had never been to seminary but who had been educated in the “school of suffering.”  That church had grown dynamically in the absence of professional leaders.

In the global south, the church was growing by leaps and bounds.  Two characteristics of these growing churches are worth noting:  First, they were not passive, but active, because they were gathering in home-sized groups where each member had definite roles and responsibilities.  To borrow language from Bonhoeffer’s classic book Life Together, there were few if any “unemployed” people in the church, in the sense that they were non-involved in the life of that church or passive in regard to its ministry.  Second, they were led not by degree-wielding, seminary trained pastors, but by minimally trained, spiritually gifted leaders.

Please note that I am not arguing against the existence of professional pastors.  Ephesians 4 makes clear that one of Jesus’ gifts to his church is the leadership of pastors.  However, I believe that professional pastors have made serious mistakes in the way we lead the church.  We have too often failed to disciple new leaders.  Instead, we have chosen to focus on our own gifts and abilities.  We have failed to find effective models for equipping the saints to do the work of ministry and instead, we have done ministry ourselves while people watch us.  We have organized our churches in such a way that our own roles as preachers and teachers are highlighted, often to the exclusion of other gifts and other leaders.  

Pastorates are a powerful tool to help the church function as it was intended.  Precisely because they do not encourage passivity, pastorates can help fill the void in leadership development in our churches.

If we pay attention to the Spirit’s movement over the last several decades, we have to acknowledge that on the level of local leadership, a seminary education is not necessary to a healthy church.  I’m not suggesting that theological training is of no value; quite the opposite.  Theological training as has been traditionally done at the seminary level will increasingly belong at the level of oversight, not at the level of local shepherding.  The idea that we have to require a four-year degree (or more) before a person can lead a house-sized congregation flies in the face of what God has been doing for several decades in the global south.  

Today we are seeing these same patterns -- local gatherings of moderate size, meeting without the burden of mortgages and salaries, led by gifted persons who are passionate for Jesus -- expanding across the increasingly dechurched western landscape.  Networks of missional communities have taken root in England, in continental Europe, in the Pacific Northwest and elsewhere in the United States.  Something is happening as western churches are listening to and imitating their brothers and sisters in the global south.  The Holy Spirit is calling us to a way of being the church that is flexible, portable, and easily replicated. The pastorate is one particular model of this movement of the Spirit.

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Pastorates manuscript #5

An excursus for Lutherans and historians

Protestant churches take great pride in Martin Luther’s theology.  We beat the drum of “justification by grace, through faith” and claim our theological inheritance as descendants of the Protestant Reformation.    Luther’s rediscovery of the New Testament’s teaching on justification has rightly been the idealogical cornerstone of Protestantism since the 1500’s.  

But what if we inherited Luther’s theology, but missed out on other critical parts of his teaching?  

Luther never tried to create a systematic theology.  As far as we can tell, Luther had little interest in writing timeless theological statements.  In nearly every case, he wrote theological statements that were firmly rooted in the practical concerns and contexts of his day.  This is why it’s not hard to find Luther saying things that sound completely contradictory.  To make sense of Luther, it is tremendously important to understand what context he was addressing.

Luther had a kind of conversion experience around 1514 as he was preparing to lecture on the book of Romans.  This conversion amounted to a paradigm shift that would shake western civilization.  It sounds simple enough in the beginning -- Luther realized that the “righteousness of God” in the book of Romans referred not to God’s holiness that gives God the right to smite sinners, but rather to the gift of righteousness that God gives to those who trust in Jesus, and to God’s character in giving this free gift.  

Luther spent the rest of his life working out the implications of this paradigm shift.  One of the greatest questions Luther grappled with was what this shift in understanding means for the church.  Almost immediately Luther saw that much of the church’s hierarchy, much of the church’s traditional practice (including indulgences that started the Reformation rolling in 1517 as Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the door of the Castle Church) did not fit with this simple teaching that God makes people righteous as a gift for Jesus’ sake.

In 1520, Luther published three critical books that laid much of the groundwork for the Reformation.  In these three books (An Address to the German Nobility, The Babylonian Captivity of the Church, and On the Freedom of the Christian) Luther laid out basic doctrines that drove the Reformation forward -- the priesthood of all believers, the authority and accessibility of scripture, and the nature of Christian vocation lived out in community.

For the next decade, from about 1520 to 1530, Luther developed these ideas -- all rooted in the basic truth of justification by grace through faith -- and their practical implications for the church.  Obviously, if scripture has authority and can be interpreted by any Christian, the people need to be able to read the Bible.  So Luther translated the New Testament in 1521-22.  In 1526, Luther published On the German Mass which gave some specific guidelines for worship in the evangelical churches (more on this in a moment).  In 1528, Luther and a few others visited many churches in Saxony and realized that the churches desperately needed some basic teachings to help priests and people alike understand the basics of what it means to be a Christian.  After these visits, Luther wrote his catechisms -- The Large Catechism intended mostly for pastors, and The Small Catechism intended for use within households.  Both of these instruction books were designed to help Christians understand the basics of what it means that we are justified freely by God’s grace in Jesus Christ.  

Throughout this decade, in many of his writings, Luther teased out the implications of justification for the church’s life.  Too often theologians have read Luther’s writings about justification but have not studied the practical consequences of this doctrine in his other works.  Luther himself was deeply concerned about practical matters.

Students of Luther at the beginning of the 21^st century would do well to remember that Luther’s world was quite different from our own.  Luther could not have imagined a world in which the church’s hierarchy was divorced from worldly power, even though he often railed against the abuses of power in the church.  Luther was immersed in “Christendom,” that system in which the Christian Church stands in league with worldly powers and functions as a great political power in its own right.  As we read Luther today, it is important to translate some of his ideas and advice for our own times, when the church has been pushed largely to the margins of society and the church’s own political power ebbs with each passing day.

Yet in Luther’s thought and writing there are hints of what he dreamed for the church beyond Christendom.  It is worth noting that Luther constantly sees the community of Christians, the church itself, as the first consequence of justification.  Christian community is not just a byproduct of salvation.  Rather, Luther sees Christian community as the necessary consequence of our justification.  For example, in Luther’s Small Catechism, his explanation to the second article of the Apostles Creed (“I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord …”) lays out in great beauty the reality of justification:

I believe that Jesus Christ, true God, begotten of the Father from eternity, and also true man, born of the Virgin Mary, is my Lord.  At great cost he has redeemed me, a lost and condemned creature.  He has delivered me from all sins, from death, and from the power of the devil, not with gold or silver, but with His holy, precious blood and with His innocent suffering and death, in order that I may be His own, live under Him in His kingdom, and serve Him in everlasting righteousness, innocence, and blessedness, even as He is risen from the dead, and lives and reigns to all eternity. This is most certainly true.

Immediately following this explanation, in his explanation to the Third Article (“I believe in the Holy Spirit …”) Luther talks about the reality of Christian community created by our justification:  

I believe that I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ, my Lord, or come to Him; but the Holy Spirit has called me by the Gospel, enlightened me with His gifts, sanctified and kept me in the true faith; even as He calls, gathers, enlightens, and sanctifies the whole Christian Church on earth, and keeps it with Jesus Christ in the one true faith.  In this Christian Church He forgives daily and richly all my sins and the sins of all believers, and at the last day will raise up me and all the dead, and will give to me and to all believers in Christ everlasting life. This is most certainly true.

Throughout the remainder of his life, the Christian community was critically important to Luther.  No doubt his passion for the church was deeply shaped by his experience of living in community in the Augustinian cloister when he first became a monk.  Throughout his career he yearned for the church to function as a gospel community, living out the consequences of justification.

When, in 1534, Luther and his wife Katie were given the building that formerly housed the Augustinian monks in Wittenberg, they created something of a house church of their own. With their own children and numerous students who boarded at their home, their house became a boisterous place full of theological conversations serious and comical (many are recorded in the volumes called Table Talk in Luther’s Works) as well as more focused prayer and worship times.  Luther loved to pull out his lute and play Christian songs, some that he had composed himself. 

In 1536, Luther wrote what he thought of as his theological will and testament, The Smalcald Articles.  When we consider how important the experience of Christian community was to Luther, it is worth noting that in The Smalcald Articles, when Luther writes about the gospel, he explains that justification is communicated to us through the word and through the sacraments, two categories that are familiar to any Lutheran theologian.  “Word and sacrament” has almost become shorthand for the Lutheran understanding of the church.  However, Luther immediately adds a third category that he gives equal weight with Word and sacrament.  He says that the gospel is also communicated through “the mutual conversation and consolation of the brethren.”  By this Luther is referring to that experience of Christian community in which Jesus-followers hear each other’s confessions (formally or informally) and declare God’s love and absolution to one another (formally or informally).  

In short, Christian community was absolutely critical to Luther as the first consequence of the doctrine of justification.  Luther would have resonated with the idea that “the gospel creates community, and must be lived out in community with those it is trying to reach” (Reggie McNeal, Missional Communities).

Luther was very realistic about conditions in the evangelical churches in Germany.  He recognized that they could handle only so much change at one time.  In the 1520’s the churches of Germany were reeling from both theological and political shifts.  Luther’s writings had created enormous changes in the German churches.  At the same time, zealots took Luther’s writings as an excuse for their own violence in the iconoclast movement in 1522, and political tensions between the classes broke out in the Peasants’ Revolt in 1525. In just a few short years Luther and the other reformers had made enormous changes, and it took time for people to adapt and grow into these changes.  Some of the resulting societal changes were bloody and bitter.  Because he saw the potential for anarchy firsthand, Luther was careful to slow the pace of change when chaos threatened.  Yet at the same time, Luther dreamed of more.  

In the aftermath of the Peasants Revolt, in 1526 when he wrote On the German Mass, Luther allowed himself to dream in writing about what the church might look like someday.  First Luther described the Latin mass and the German mass which were both in common use in the evangelical churches at that time.  But then Luther went on:

“The third kind of service should be a truly evangelical order and should not be held in a public place for all sorts of people. But those who want to be Christians in earnest and who profess the gospel with hand and mouth should sign their names and meet alone in a house somewhere to pray, to read, to baptize, to receive the sacrament, and to do other Christian work.  According to this order, those who do not lead Christian lives could be known, reproved, corrected, cast out, or excommunicated, according to the rule of Christ in Matthew 18.  Here one could also solicit benevolent gifts to be willingly given and distributed to the poor, according to St. Paul’s example in 2 Corinthians 9.  Here would be no need of much and elaborate singing.  Here one could set up a brief and neat order for baptism and the sacrament and center everything on the Word, prayer, and love.  Here one would need a good short catechism on the Creed, the Ten Commandments, and the Our Father.  In short, if one had the kind of people and persons who wanted to be Christians in earnest, the rules and regulations would soon be ready.  But as yet, I neither can, nor desire to begin such a congregation...for I have not yet the people for it, nor do I see many who want it. But if I should be requested to do it and could not refuse with a good conscience, I should gladly do my part and help as best I can.  In the meanwhile the two above-mentioned orders of service must suffice … until Christians who earnestly love the Word find each other and join together.” 

Sadly, Luther never saw this dream realized.  No doubt some of those conversations and prayers in his own home were a bit like this.  Other leaders down through the years succeeded in limited ways in creating this kind of Christ-centered community.  Count von Zinzendorf and the Moravians experienced a bit of this life together.  Philip Jakob Spener and the pietist movement he founded began to push in this direction.  John and Charles Wesley created groups that prayed and held one another accountable in their methodical way.  Many tiny congregations across the frontiers of North America must have worshipped in much this way in the 1800’s.  Dietrich Bonhoeffer experienced this kind of community life with his students in the illegal seminary at Finkenwalde.  But especially among Lutherans, the patterns, hierarchies, and liturgies of the state churches of Europe resurfaced again and again to dominate the church’s community life and to disrupt Luther’s dream of dedicated believers meeting in homes, sharing communion and baptisms, centering everything on the Word, prayer and love.

The state churches of Europe had grown out of Luther’s temporary solution (again, trying to avoid chaos) to the question of authority in the church.  In the early 1520’s Luther himself asked the princes to step in to take care of the church’s needs for discipline, ordination, and the like.  It seems clear from Luther’s writings that he fully expected this temporary solution to last a short while and then to be replaced with some more desirable solution.  However, the way history unfolded, Luther and the reformers never found a better solution to the question of church order.  Within a few decades, this “temporary” measure had been transformed into a state church system in which the government paid the clergy and churches were regulated by and loyal to the state.  The hierarchy became entrenched.  The clergy and the state both recognized that lay-led movements of groups meeting in homes could be a potent source of political resistance to the state.  So the church and state hierarchies across Protestant Europe frequently found themselves in the curious position of outlawing home Bible studies!  In each of the Protestant areas of northern Europe, however, the Holy Spirit working through the proclamation of the gospel drove again and again toward dynamic Christ-centered community.  The Word raised up leaders who founded communities.  Each of the countries in northern Europe has a slightly different history of non-clergy Christian leaders outside the state church system.  These leaders were persecuted by the state church because they preached in public, met for Bible study in homes, or formed unauthorized church bodies outside the state church’s authority.

In America things were a bit different.  The American Lutheran churches were actually making great strides toward creative ministry and cooperative work with other denominations in the mid-1800’s.  For these American Lutherans, it was easier to see the church as a voluntary organization rather than a state-supported structure.  Cooperation between Lutherans and other Christians was becoming more and more normal.  Lutheran distinctives were not obstacles to cooperation any more than the Anglicans’ Book of Common Prayer or the Presbyterians’ Westminster Catechism.  In the mid-1800’s, however, a flood of immigrants began to arrive in America, most of them from the Lutheran countries in northern Europe.   Immigrants were looking for stability and familiarity in worship, and the American Lutherans recognized both their responsibility and their opportunity.  These successive waves of immigration from Europe swamped the reforming work within American Lutheran churches.  “Home missions” was the term the American Lutheran churches used to describe their massive efforts to show hospitality to immigrants from the Lutheran countries of Europe.  These immigrants were understandably seeking something familiar in the midst of the upheaval in their lives, so the churches went back to forms of worship patterned after the state church liturgies in the old countries.  In the late 1800’s, hundreds of new congregations were founded speaking German, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, and other languages of Europe.  These massive home missions efforts were hugely important, and they shifted the course of American Lutheranism for generations.  It took a hundred years and more for generations of immigrants -- and their descendants -- to be assimilated into American culture and to begin to learn again how to cooperate with other Christians.

Today those European immigrants’ great-grandchildren rarely remember their European roots.  They speak English, surf the internet, talk and text on smartphones.  If they worship in a Christian church, they probably sing worship lyrics projected by LCD projectors on gigantic screens.  They are no longer drawn to the hierarchical church systems or high-church liturgies of the old country.  Those that are Christian are probably not worshipping in Lutheran churches.   Home missions was a success, more or less, in that the immigrants were well served, many churches were founded, and for a few generations the Lutheran churches grew along with the birth rate of the immigrant population.  

That wave of increase has passed.  In any case, caring for European immigrants is not the primary task facing American Lutherans in the 21^st century.  Today we face many challenges -- including the following:

• How can churches function with less worldly power without compromising our mission?
• How can we effectively create leaders who will be faithful to the gospel?
• How can we make disciples of Jesus here and now?
• How can our Lutheran roots inform a mission that is appropriate for the needs of the 21^st century?

The answer to these questions may well be tied into the question Luther asked in 1526: 

Have we come to that time in history when Christians who earnestly love the Word can find each other and join together?

If our answer is yes, Luther gave us a template, a pattern by which we can create gospel-centered community in which we can live out the reality of justification by grace through faith.  If we look around us, all over the world the Holy Spirit seems to be raising up this kind of community.  On every continent, whether among persecuted Christians in Beijing,  in the shadows of empty cathedrals in London, or in the trendy suburbs of Seattle, groups of Jesus-followers are meeting in homes.  They are experiencing the joy and fullness of Christian community centered in the Word, prayer and love.  Amid the crumbling ruins of the traditional church, the Holy Spirit is on the move.  Martin Luther’s dream for the church is being realized.

Pastorates manuscript #4

Pentecost

Just before he ascended into the heavens, Jesus told his disciples to wait in Jerusalem until they had received the promise of the Father.  So in Acts 1, they wait in a very active way, studying the scriptures, praying, and dealing with some leadership issues.  Then in Acts 2, the Holy Spirit comes on them with power, just as Jesus had promised.  Eventually -- after six more chapters of hanging around Jerusalem -- the disciples move out into Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth (Acts 1:8).  It is only by the power of the Holy Spirit and under the authority of the ascended Lord Jesus Christ that they can do this.  Every time these Jesus-followers opt for their own agendas, they fail.  Every time they choose to operate in their own strength, the movement falters.

The Church of Jesus Christ can only be the Church of Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit.  If we are operating by any other power, we are not operating as the Church that Jesus intended.

Look back through Christian history with this lens and you see a fascinating landscape.  Movements rise and fall by the power of the Holy Spirit.  Individuals arise at just the right time in history and wield amazing power because they trust in the Spirit.  

Modern students of history are often tempted to secularize history -- to view it as a purely human chain of causes and effects.  Jesus’ followers must never give in to this temptation.  We need to remember (as Paul boldly proclaims in Acts 17) that the events of human history are Spirit-driven events.  

I am not saying that all events are caused by God.  The debate between strict predestination and open theism is far beyond me, though I believe Scripture tends to favor those who give God more credit, not less.  However, it is important to recognize that God is active in history, moving his followers to build his kingdom, to speak truth to power, and to proclaim Jesus in all ages and all places.

In the early 1900’s a group of Christians experienced a supernatural outpouring of the Holy Spirit complete with miraculous healings and gifts of “glossalalia” or speaking in tongues.  Since that time, the word “Pentecostal” has usually referred to these Christian sects that expect the miraculous gifts and intervention of the Holy Spirit.

However, Mark Noll has described “Pentecostal” in a deeper and wider sense.  I quote him at length from a lecture at Roanoke College in 2006.

The simple demography of the world situation today forces -- or should force -- Christian believers in the West to reexamine questions that they may not have thought of for quite some time.  

I'm a Presbyterian.  Presbyterians are defined by:

A. Resistance to change,

B. A desire to have lots of committees, and

3. [sic] An inability to move past a mile or two an hour on any kind of conceptual issue. 

The world -- the Christian world we live in today is not a world made for Presbyterians.  It is a world changing fast, that's demanding Christian and theological reconsideration.

For example, how close is the world of spirits to the world in which we live?  In other words, what is to be made practically of the traditional Christian belief in the supernatural?  All Christians in one variety or another believe in forces beyond nature, in a God who acts for his own purposes when he wishes.  In most of the Christian world today, however the abstract belief in God's ability to act supernaturally is connected to a strong belief that God acts supernaturally, practically, in the world almost all the time ...  

[Noll describes a work by a Canadian author on images and experiences of Jesus in West Africa, and the sophisticated theological reflection that grows out of these images and experiences.]  

What I was impressed by was how standard, how ordinary, the expectation that God would normally, often, in the regular course of things, act for his own purposes, to bring about physical healing ...  

[Noll next describes a friend of his who leads seminars in the Philippines and elsewhere in the world on Bible reading.]  I asked John, "Now, how many of the people who come to your seminars -- and they would be Baptists, they would be Presbyterians, they would be Nazarenes, they would be Catholics, as well as many from independent churches -- how many of these people would be Pentecostal and charismatic?" He shakes his head and he says, "Every single one."  

They all are.  They all are expecting God to act immediately. 

Well, I don't.  I'm an academic Christian who thinks through things, and I want the Lord to kind of take his time.  But on such questions, it actually might not mean a whole lot what I think, very very soon.

Mark Noll has his finger squarely on one of the most important divides in Christianity today.  Christianity is not divided so much between Catholic and Protestant, or rich and poor, or Arminian or Calvinist.  Those divisions are real, but less important than this simple question:  Does God act freely, commonly, often, even daily, by his Spirit, to intervene for his own causes in the created world?  Those Noll labels "Pentecostals" would say a firm "yes!" to this question.  The rationalist protestantism I grew up with might more likely say a cautious, "Maybe."

Christianity is growing by leaps and bounds across the globe.  Much of this growth is happening in Africa and in China.  The growth that is happening, whatever denominational label it has, is a "Pentecostal" kind of Christianity in this specific sense: It is a Christianity that expects God to act immediately, supernaturally, in tangible ways.  It is a Christianity that is filtered more through the book of Acts than the book of Romans.

In 2011 Pastor Paul Johansson from Central spent some time in Ethiopia and Tanzania as part of his sabbatical.  One of the conversations he had during that time included observations about the Lutheran churches in Kenya and Tanzania.  In the 1960's, a charismatic revival broke out across the globe, including East Africa.  The Lutherans in Kenya discussed the revival and said, "This is not what our Lutheran churches are about."  They rejected this revival, and the Lutheran church in Kenya today has a few hundred thousand members, much the same size today as it was in the 1960's.  Next door in Tanzania, the Lutherans -- about the same size in the '60's as the church in Kenya -- embraced this charismatic revival as a legitimate work of the Holy Spirit.  The church began to grow by leaps and bounds, and today there are more than five million Lutheran Christians in Tanzania.  The Lutheran church in Tanzania continues to be Pentecostal in its expectation that God will act in a daily, supernatural way.  It continues to grow like mad.

Those who are doing cutting edge work in theology today have to speak about the presence and power of the Holy Spirit in the church and in the world.  We cannot cling to a rationalistic, Enlightenment-based distortion of Christianity that we think somehow reflects the Protestant Reformation, but that loses the heart of the New Testament.  Theology today must find a way to speak with clarity about this kind of expectation, this kind of Pentecostal expectation that God will act.  This is pneumatology, the study of the ways of God's Spirit and the difference that this Spirit makes in the life of the believer and of the church.  If Noll is right -- and I believe he is -- then this expectation cuts across every denomination, every tradition.  Expectant Lutherans have far more in common with expectant Catholics than they do with more rationalistic Lutherans.  This Pentecostal expectation has not exactly undone the Protestant Reformation, but it has certainly created a new watershed within Christianity.  On one side of the divide, the church is growing deeper and wider.  On the other side it is shrinking.

What does this have to do with pastorates?  Everything.  If pastorates are a program initiated by humans in response to a need within our churches, they will fail.  But I believe that the Spirit of God is moving through churches in the world today.  Not surprisingly the Spirit has started with churches where human beings hold the least power -- churches among indigenous peoples in the global south, churches in the secularized cities of western Europe, churches in the chic, agnostic populations of the Pacific Northwest in the United States.  Among these power-poor churches the Spirit has started to create Jesus-centered communities that exist in the Spirit’s power.  These communities are thriving for a variety of reasons, not least of which is that they actually work.  In a short time this book will examine the why, what, and how of pastorates.  First we need to take one more historical detour into the Protestant Reformation.

Pastorates manuscript, #3

Christian churches throughout the world proclaim the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  Why, then, are so many churches -- especially in the developed world, in the West -- decaying, declining, and dying?

I love movie versions of the life of Jesus.  Jesus’ story makes such great cinema!  Nearly every story of Jesus ends with his resurrection.  Often when we proclaim Jesus in the Christian church, our proclamation ends with his resurrection.  When we consider our own identity as his 21^st century followers, we think of his death and resurrection.  But the New Testament story does not stop with Jesus’ resurrection.  

In the first verses of Acts, Luke writes that in the first book (the gospel of Luke) he wrote about all that Jesus began to do and to teach until his ascension.  The implication is that after his ascension, Jesus continued to act and to teach.  We should not be surprised by this!  Before his crucifixion, Jesus himself told his disciples, “I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear.  But when the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth” (John 16:13).  If we are to understand God’s intention for the Christian church, we need to better understand both Jesus’ ascension and the coming of the Spirit at Pentecost.

Jesus’ Ascension

Sometimes well-meaning teachers talk about Jesus’ ascension as if the problem is just to get Jesus’ physical body out of the way so that his spiritual presence (via the Holy Spirit’s arrival at Pentecost) can empower believers simultaneously all over the globe.  This is not the Bible’s teaching!  No, Jesus ascends to the heavens physically, but more importantly he ascends in authority.  The ascension of Jesus (see Acts 1) points to the fact that Jesus is now exalted as Lord of all creation.  It is in the ascension that Jesus takes up his rightful place “at the right hand of the Father” as the creeds put it.  During his earthly ministry, Jesus’ most common title for himself was “son of man,” an allusion to Daniel 7:13-14.  Daniel sees one “like a son of man” who comes before the Almighty and is given authority to judge the nations.  Jesus alludes to these verses during his trial before Caiaphas, and the song of all creation in Revelation 5 echoes these ideas.  Paul certainly understands Jesus in these same terms in Philippians 2 and Colossians 1.  Jesus is King of kings and Lord of lords.  It is in Jesus’ ascension that he takes up this mantle of authority.

To be the church, we must rightly understand the sovereignty of Jesus.  As someone has put it, if Jesus isn’t Lord of all, he isn’t Lord at all.  Jesus is Lord over all creation, over all nations, over all people, and -- don’t miss this -- over the church.

What does this mean?  It means that the church doesn’t belong to us.  When Peter confessed that Jesus was the Christ, the son of the living God, Jesus said, “On this rock I will build my church” (Matthew 16:18, emphasis added).  Jesus is Lord of the church.  So all our positions of authority, whether as pastors, as teachers, as members or tithers or committee members or volunteers, are under the authority of Jesus.

This is obvious, right? If it is so obvious, why do we strive to control the church?  Why do we battle to the death over the worship schedule, the stewardship program, or the color of the new carpet?  Why is it so hard for people who have received some position in the church to share that authority?  Why do so many Christians have a complex about trying to control things?  If we strive to get our own way, to have our own control, we are not living in the ascension of Jesus Christ.

The ascension means Lordship for Jesus, and it means freedom for us.  It means that there are very few hard and fast ironclad rules for the church.  What ironclad rules there are have to do with the Lordship of Jesus, not with the structures or traditions of the church.

In the ascension Jesus takes up his authority, his sovereignty over all time and all space.  When we face a decision, it is Jesus’ word alone that matters.  When our circumstances seem difficult, we can trust that Jesus is working to shape and lead his church.  When the work of the church is too difficult for us, we can confidently ask Jesus to raise up workers -- and then we can confidently share the load without trying to control the outcome.

While it may seem that this is all obvious, the church has too often been held captive by human desires for control.  We must do more than pay lip service to the Lordship of Jesus.  We must learn to trust him to be Lord in fact, not just in name.  How does this work in practice?  It has to do with Acts 2, with the Father’s gift to the church -- the gift of the Holy Spirit.

Pastorates manuscript, #2

Let’s be clear about something from the start.  The New Testament knows nothing of church buildings, of pews and hymnals and committees changing the altar cloths or debating the color of the new carpet.  The movement Jesus started is about people, not about property.  The idea that a person can “go to church” and sit in a building for an hour, then go back to an unchanged life for the rest of the week, has little or nothing to do with New Testament Christianity.  

The Bible envisions a church -- an ekklesia -- of people who gathered together, most often in someone’s home (see Romans 16:3-5, for example).  They read scripture, worshipped, and prayed together (see 1 Corinthians 14:26).  They shared in a mission to impact the world in the name of Jesus.  In fact, non-Christians accused these Jesus-followers of “turning the world upside down” (Acts 17:6).  By following Jesus’ example, living in community with other Jesus-followers, and loving the world around them, they changed the Roman Empire and eventually the whole world!

What does the task of “making disciples” (meaning, making followers of Jesus) look like today?  In the early years of the 21^st century it’s not hard to see that many churches have failed in this task.  We may baptize scores of people, our Sunday Schools may (or may not) be bustling, our youth programs crowded, our worship services pleasantly full.  But how many lives are changed in a lasting way?  

It’s been said that many of our churches are like football games.  A football game is 22,000 people who are desperately in need of exercise watching a game played by 22 men who desperately need rest.  Sadly, many people come to church to observe.  We relate to Jesus not so much to follow him or even to admire him, but to use him for our own ends.  In order to be blessed in this life and avoid hell in the next life, we are encouraged to pray a prayer inviting Jesus into our hearts.  At its worst, it’s cheap fire insurance.  Sadly, in most of our churches, few people experience the “abundant life” (see John 10:10) Jesus longs to give his followers. 

Yet people inside and outside the church today are hungry for exactly what Jesus’ first disciples found as followers of the Way.  We are hungry for meaning, for community, and for a mission that is worthy of our sacrifice.  Not knowing where to find what we really need, we flock to Facebook and Twitter to find community.  We let advertisers, smart phones, and sports teams tell us who we are and what we need.  We clutter our schedules so that we don’t have to face the disturbing questions that confront us in quiet moments.

This book is about a community life, abundant life, centered in Jesus.  As much as possible, the goal of the pastorate movement is to live as followers of the Way in the 21^st century following the example of those early Jesus-followers.  This is not an idealized effort to deny our history and somehow return to the cultures of the New Testament.  Rather, it is an effort to take seriously what Jesus taught about the church he came to create.  In short, the purpose of this book is to help set a group of people on the road to living as disciples and making disciples.  I believe with all my heart that the abundant life Jesus desires for his followers begins in the context of Christ-centered communities where Jesus’ followers love God, love one another, and serve the world.  As we live together in this way, the New Testament comes alive and we come to know Jesus in a new, powerful, personal way.  Across the world, churches -- gatherings of people who know Jesus as the Way, the Truth, the Life -- are experiencing what Jesus himself called “abundant life” (John 10).  Pastorates are one good way to be the church, to follow Jesus in the mission he gave us.

Pastorates series

I've spent a lot of time and mental energy this summer working on a manuscript to sum up pastorates -- the mid-sized groups we've been implementing at Central for the last couple years.  I'd like to share portions of that manuscript on this blog, starting below. 

My hope is that people who read this will chew on the ideas, whether you have any firsthand experience with pastorates or not.  If you have feedback, or if ideas are unclear, I would love to hear about your thoughts here via comments, or via email at wrdhuntr@yahoo.com.  

The manuscript I've written starts out with the "why" of pastorates, and appropriately enough we begin with the resurrection of Jesus.  Have fun reading, and feel free to offer any feedback!  I will post a new section of this manuscript every 2-3 days. 


Pastorates


After Jesus rose from the dead on Easter Sunday, the Bible tells us that he talked with his disciples for about forty days before he ascended into the heavens and sent his Spirit to give his followers direction and power.  During those forty days, Jesus gave clear directions to his followers.  They were to take up the task Jesus had started.  They were to be sent out to the world, even as he had been sent to Israel.  They had received training from him over a three-year period, and now they were to go out and invite others into this Jesus-following movement.  Nearly all of the New Testament writers include some version of Jesus commissioning his followers for this task.  

We are probably most familiar with Matthew’s gospel, where Jesus tells his disciples, 

“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.  Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.  And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:18-20). 

In John, Jesus says, “As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you” (John 20:21).  In Acts, Jesus tells his followers, “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8).  Paul certainly embodied this call in his whole life of traveling around the Mediterranean, telling people about Jesus and starting fledgling churches everywhere he went.

Jesus’ followers called themselves “followers of the Way” (Acts 9:2, 19:9 & 23, for example).  Only later were they labeled Christians, and that term came from their enemies as an insult.  Early on, these people saw themselves as followers of Jesus, who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.  This new relationship with Jesus redefined everything in their lives.  They experienced a new power and a new sense of relationship with God that came from the resurrected Jesus. 

They gathered together in groups with others who knew Jesus, who knew this new power and new life.  They referred to these gatherings as “churches,” which brings to our minds pictures of buildings and steeples, pews and hymnals, but for these early Jesus-followers, the word referred to groups of people.  The Greek word was “ekklesia” (from which we get our word “ecclesiastical”, meaning something that refers to the church).  Ekklesia means literally, “those who are called out.”  Jesus used the term himself a couple of times (see Matthew 16:18 and 18:17), and in the book of Acts ekklesia becomes the standard term for a group of Jesus-followers.  These are the ones who have been called out of the world and its ways, called to follow a different Way, called to be like Jesus and to be part of his movement in the world.  

Beating the drum

I have been saying these things for years.  Parents protect their children too much.  Kids need to take risks, and they need to get hurt when they make mistakes -- both physically and emotionally.  Parents shouldn't inflict pain on their kids, but they should let the kids take chances, fall and skin their knees, and deal with the consequences.

This article does a great job of laying these facts out in a very persuasive way.  I highly recommend this for any parent or anyone who has influence on a parent.