Who are we, in and for these days? In our various contexts and in all the varieties of culture around us, how shall we now live - and serve?

Alan J. Roxburgh echoes these thoughts in his book, ‘Missional Map-Making’ (Jossey-Bass). Here’s Al’s take on some of this:

“ . . . The Church in all its forms is a work of the Holy Spirit. That being said, today’s church requires a transformation of imagination, organization, practice and leadership. In the young church in Jerusalem, for example, this transformation of imagination was wrought by a geographical shift of its centre from Jerusalem to Antioch. Jerusalem represented the assumption that the ways of religious life that had worked for centuries, the sense of a continuous, developmental process from all that God had promised in the Old Testament to its fulfilment in Jesus and the birth of the church, would be a seamless development of this past. This church, as Acts 11 makes clear, was almost totally Jewish in composition. The overarching assumption in Jerusalem was that Jesus’ death and resurrection fulfilled all the expectations of Jewish hope, and the young Jewish church was its fulfilment. The early church was and would remain Jewish in form and nature because Judaism was the young church’s map. The Jewish church was rooted in Jewish practices, rhythms and leadership forms. Jerusalem represented continuity and equilibrium; it was the central metaphor for all that God was doing. Within the young church’s imagination were assumptions about what it meant to be the people of God as well as God’s relationship to the rest of the world and the future of the community formed by Jesus. But this map would undergo a radical transformation that shifted the young church out of one world and into another.”

Some instruments have strings and bows, others - reeds and keypads; still others are comprised of brass parts and valves. One blows or strums or strokes mouthpiece, drumhead or wire. What incredible diversity - but what a unity of sound that reflects the head and heart of composer, the magnificence of the maestro, and the skill of each player.

We do not do mission or ministry in patronizing ways to individuals or in the various cultural contexts, to the very different people-groups of the world. It is not that one culture or way (our culture and ways) is better or best, nor is our gift, experience,or perspective (in how to live out the Gospel and to follow in the Way of Christ) is the only way things are or really should be done.

We need all the cultures, perfectly tuned, cleaned, refined and revealed in the uniqueness of contribution. In God's ourposes for each, and together in His Kingdom orchestra, with all of the peoples of the world binring the best of their creaturely gifts.

Differences (vive la . . .!) as well as the common similarities of humanity (or musicality) all contribute to the praise and glory of the Creator and the Redeemer who is putting things back-to-right and allowing us, and every culture under the sun, to play our individual and collective parts.

God's people need each other, and the cultures and peoples of the world need to find their place in the great orchestra of God's praise. Our job in mission is to help them do that as we introduce them to Creator, Redeemer, Orchestra-Leader.

The music of the spheres and the music of all Creation is reflected through both the diversity, harmony and wonder of God's glorious purposes.

When St. Paul visited Ephesus and spent several years of ministry there, he would have seen the Nike swish, very similar to that which has become almost ubiquitous in our day. Visiting Ephesus, I too saw an ancient stone carving of the goddess who personified victory during the time of Greek culture prevalence. The ruin depicts the goddess in a posture from which emulates the same basic design in the modern symbol.

This winged goddess had as her Roman equivalent, Victoria. Often portrayed as the divine charioteer, she and her siblings were known as close companions of Zeus, the dominant deity of the Greek pantheon. In Greek art she is shown flying above battlefields rewarding the victors with glory and fame. This goddess of victory, speed and strength was one of the most commonly portrayed figures on Greek coins. Names such as Nicholas and Nicole come from this ancient goddess and mean: 'victory of the people.'

Modern advertizers know that symbols are important as part of their branding and advertizing positioning. The Nike swish and the Apple apple say what a word or words no longer have to say. At one time, Nike advertisers included the name along with the symbol; now the symbol says it all.

Christians still live in a subculture largely dominated by words. Our culture has moved not always to exclude words but by accenting sight and sound, emotion and movement, with which emphases many in our churches are not yet comfortable.

Even bad symbols are powerful symbols.

Visiting the ancient village of my ancestors, in Suffolk, England, I found that the walls of the large church, where little baby Barbers were christened for many generations, had been whitewashed. Like so many others, some of them now revealed by intent and by time, in all likelihood pictures and murals lie buried underneath many layers. If removed, one could again see depicted many stories and characters of the Old and New Testaments.

In a day when most people were illiterate, and if there was a Bible, it was chained at the altar rail of such churches, one way of portraying and augmenting the power of Bible stories was by painting them, often in vivid, colours and striking and compelling scenes. Post-Reformation iconoclasts (such as a man named Dowsing in that area of East Anglia) insisted that such idolatrous pictures be covered over with layers of paint and whitewash. At the same time, wooden and stone carved heads of saints were knocked off in niches and on baptismal fonts. Rood screens (often with elaborately carved and painted Bible characters and stories) were torn out and, in many cases, stained-glass windows, depicting similarly such stories but in the medium of glass, were also destroyed.

But symbols, per se, are not evil. They are pointers. They are icons or windows to something or Someone beyond. They become idolatrous only if they are worshiped in themselves, rather than giving due honour and worship to the One to whom they ultimately point.

One pastor tells that while watching television an advertisement for cat food came on. He pointed to the television so as to direct his own cat to the food and furry friends depicted there. Look, there are some of your friends! His cat merely came over and sniffed his fingers. The same happens, in effect, when we see only the pointer (the image, the icon, the symbol) and fail to see what it is pointing us toward. So, the hymn-writer writes: Beyond the sacred page, I seek Thee, Lord.

Advertizers putting their brand on things, and symbolize our world. Christians would do well to re-symbolize their world too, regathering and creating anew those helpful pointers to the Presence of God and His Kingdom rule which all should be, and perhaps are, longing to see.

I am reading and appreciating a new book this summer: "Deep Church: A Third Way Beyond Emerging and Traditional." (IVP Books) The author is Jim Belcher (M.A., Fuller; Ph.D., Georgetown, founding church planter and lead pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Newport Beach, California. Here's a blurb from a related web-site that introduces it very well. You might want to order it through our ReadOn Bookstore.

Feel caught between the traditional church and the emerging church? Discover a third way: deep church. C. S. Lewis used the phrase "deep church" to describe the body of believers committed to mere Christianity. Unfortunately church in our postmodern era has been marked by a certain shallowness. Emerging authors, fed up with contemporary pragmatism, have offered alternative visions for twenty-first-century Christianity. Traditionalist churches have reacted negatively, at times defensively. In Deep Church, Belcher brings the best insights of all sides to forge a third way between emerging and traditional. He offers measured appreciation and affirmation as well as balanced critique. Moving beyond reaction, Belcher provides constructive models from his own church planting experience and paints a picture of what this alternate, deep church looks like--a missional church committed to both tradition and culture, valuing innovation in worship, arts and community but also creeds and confessions.

So, perhaps really just trying to break the ice, I said: “Well, I see that your church sanctuary could seat about 300 people – but somehow you have managed to ‘grow’ it down to 30. But – not to despair: Jesus only had 12 or so to start with!”

Pressing on, I asked: So, what would it take . . . what kind of church would prepare and send out 30 missioners this week, rather than those 30, or their leaders at least, ruing the fact that ‘what a shame that we only have 30 people around here anymore to ‘run the church?’”

Could this church be perhaps one – perhaps the only church in this community, that is preparing its people to actually 'go', or at least ‘as they go’ – to be missioners, as opposed to paying pastoral leader(s) (if we can any longer afford to) to do religious things (trying to get congregants to help – though mostly ducking when the nominating committee draws night)? Are we paying somebody to do our ministry for us, and are we committed only to doling out religious goods and services 'on our turf' (ie. the local church building), when we (or the 30 who are left) manage to bring a friend, having attracted them somehow to the programs, and to the building, of the local church? Attracting them to our building and programs and necessarily extracts people from where they usually live and move and have their being (i.e. the neighbourhood, work, where they work-out, etc.).

And then there is the question as to whether we have merely attracted them to our church sub-culture (not that that still cannot be a valid 'means to a good end), or whether we have actually introduced them to Jesus and to the Life He called abundant.

Church people are trying to get people into church (read: building, programs, etc.) whereas Kingdom people are trying to get church people prepared for their out-in-the-world, thank-God-it's-Monday, life.

Life in the Spirit leads us to Worship in the Spirit, and vice versa. So it’s more that planning and preparation, practice, processes, programs, procedures and performances. It’s the conducting of the flow of the Spirit, as if Water was flowing through us wee bits of pipe, to assuage the thirst of spiritually dry and shriveled lives.

It is by God that we live and move and have our being. Apart from Him we cannot exist. Our recognition of His Presence,  Power, Provision and Protection (in all of life) is essential. Without Him we are nothing – we can do nothing, we will be nothing; indeed, we shall cease to be at all.

YOUR KINGDOM COME; YOUR WILL BE DONE ON EARTH, AS IT IS IN HEAVEN.

God wills to, and will, re-establish all aspects of His rule, in all aspects of life and in all places in the cosmos. Once more the earth is beginning to resound and to resonate with His creation (and re-creation) purposes. Despite all the seeming evidence to the contrary, each day God’s people – hopeful, Easter-resurrected people, see evidences of Kingdom coming.

Beginning with Persons and with a People (and all through the One in Christ who redeems, releases, restores, resources them), God reclaims from the Enemy what was willfully submitted over to him, in our early-days Rebellion – resulting in the brokeness, sickness, incompleteness and estrangement of the world – and of so much within it that still reveals sin’s taint and stain on the earth. But the flow has been reversed in Christus Victor, through His triumphant life, death, resurrection and ascension and as Christ-followers believe and live out new life in the midst of that flow. As when He was present with us (having pitched His tent for awhile among us  – cf. John 1:14), Jesus claimed: ‘The Kingdom of God is among you; the Kingdom of God is near you,’  – so Kingdom people, Easter-resurrection people also (may now) go into all rooms and spheres of creation, there to announce with boldness that ‘the Kingdom is near, the Kingdom is present. This happens daily – or it is supposed to, as we believe, go, act .. .) as an obedient, sent, ruled-over People (persons individually and more so, collectively, together as the Church) shows up among the peoples and places of the earth, showing and telling the Good News of God’s reign. Thus, the Church proclaims and reveals (and again makes incarnate) the Presence of God in Christ, begotten anew by His Spirit, as He lives and reveals Himself among and through the ‘concrete’ and gifted expressions of each member of His Body, and through the Body as a whole.

GIVE US TODAY OUR DAILY BREAD.

Paramount to Kingdom coming and to God’s purposes is the Creation Purposes God has had, and continues to have, for this world, for each inhabitant, whether living creature or inanimate object (from macro to micro). The Creation will be restored. Indeed, it groans still, awaiting the full redemption of God’s people (though this has begun in Christ and where the Church takes seriously once again, in and through the Second Adam, it’s Creation and Re-Creation mandate). O the potential for the More, already, though the fullness of what is longed for is yet to be (revealed). God feeds his people and His world with what is needed for surviving and thriving  – for beauty, joy and delight in His purposes. As Calvin put it, God is as interested in sewer-systems as sanctification – i.e. for the health of cities and the restored wholeness of all creation, as for the cleanliness of the soul (and indeed for the whole being of each individual) for whom Christ died and came to release so to be fully Human once more. The context is daily and in the now of our lives. We live in space and time – and we may (and are to), through prayer and prayerful-faithful, living pull down (or into from the dimensions of the spiritual Real) into this space-time continuum, the realities and provisions of the Eternal. We borrow from tomorrow. We receive all that we need for today from the storehouses of the Eternal, which is very near us, had we eyes to see, and faith to believe. Heaven on earth living (or earth lived as permeated by Heaven) is possible as fore-taste even now, because it is filled with and animated by God’s Glory and with that Food, both physical and spiritual that daily we need.

AND FORGIVE US OUR DEBTS AS WE FORGIVE OUR DEBTORS.

Not only is our creaturely purpose restored and made possible (albeit incomplete still in its manifestation (but still present in its Reality) and even in our taking seriously the possibilities), so also are our spiritual needs are met through the provision of God in Christ, and as applied by His Spirit to His willing and obedient servants. We seek the forgiveness of our sins, both as individual and as a collective humanity, for we all have and continue to come short of God’s glory and purposes, we continually missing the mark, we continually leave undone the things we ought to have done and we keep doing the things we should not do. We have unclean lips (cf. Isaiah 6) and we live among a people of unclean lips. Our only hope is the eternal (and daily) Grace of our Lord Jesus, as typified in Isaiah’s temple vision, by the Angel’s taking (with tongs) a live coal from off the altar and touching our lips (as he did Isaiah’s and, indeed, by purifying all of us – both once for all and daily and continually, through the provision of God in Christ at Calvary).

Yet, it is not enough that we have our own spiritual needs met, and those of our new friends and companions – fellow-travelers in the Way, the Church of the Living God. Indeed we are concerned with both the vertical AND with the horizontal of our personal relationships and accountabilities; so we are to forgive as we are forgiven. We forgive others (and those beyond our own family and friends) as we would ourselves be forgiven. We seek to forgive and to receive forgiveness from the people, within the Body and without, whom we harm and neglect in so many ways – again, by doing things towards them that we should not do, and in not doing things towards and for them that we (brother and sister keepers as we all are) ought to have done.

AND LEAD US NOT INTO TEMPTATION, BUT DELIVER US FROM THE EVIL (ONE).

Our spiritual and physical well-being – our very lives calls for God’s protection (and so from Him we humbly ask it) as well as risky, faithful, obedient living with Him. When we dare, we will suffer; where we risk, we will fail; we will get hurt. Our very lives are at stake. And although in some ways we are to take on Satan’s Kingdom, plundering it (as He is bound in the sense of no longer ‘deceiving’ (i.e. having full or primary sway over ‘the peoples’ as in times of old-covenant living, when otherwise God’s primary purposes, light and love was displayed through God’s People Israel), we do live in great danger. Christians are involved with Christ in a kind of mopping-up operation (as in post-D-day Second World War motifs  – but not yet VE Day). In these times, until the full and final Revelation of Jesus as Lord on the Great Day of His return, we can still be harmed, maimed, even killed – as God wills or permits, for humankind’s greater good and His Glory. Whether in attack or defense-mode, believers in pursuit of faithful obedience in the world and realms where the Evil One still retains significant power and influence, still need protective armour (as per Ephesians 6 images and realities). We are still too easily seduced and we succumb easily and readily, sadly still, when we venture forth, or lag behind in our own strength, land when leaning upon our own resources and understanding.

But our Lord said, ‘I saw Satan fall . . .’.  and He tells us apprentice-disciples that ‘all power is given Him (Christ) in Heaven and earth; therefore, as you go – make disciples . . .’ So, our missional vocations and tasks for all of life compel us to live so as to lovingly touch the lives of others: intentionally sharing the Good News, attending to our world and others as we go – knowing that Christ is Present always with us and within us, by His eternal, ever-present Spirit. We are subject still to temptation and to serious hurt through the wiles and devices of our Enemy. Yet still we may go in the promise of Christ’s Presence and the protection of His Purposes. And after all, no Christian can finally be ‘threatened by heaven’ but rather live in the faith-full knowledge that not only here and now we may know His Presence but also live daily in the Hope that we shall be with Him, for neither life nor death can separate Him from those He loves.

FOR THE KINGDOM IS YOURS – AND THE POWER, AND THE GLORY.

Like a bracket, God’s Kingdom (and with it His attending Presence, Purpose, Power and Shekinah) surround this His world, the universe and all people, places and things within it. Beyond space and beyond time, as well as within space and within time, God alone reigns supreme. His Kingdom shall never end; His purposes will never cease; His promises will never fail. Not ever. So it is – has been from the beginning (as we comprehend space and time) – and before; and so shall it ever be – beyond all time. Amen and Amen.

FOREVER.

AMEN.

- William Cavanaugh, ”The Church as God’s Body Language”

- Lesslie Newbigin: 'The Household of God'

Enjoy.

Rob...