Idolatrous Methods?

I’ve been reading a great book called Thirty Years That Changed the World: The Book of Acts for Today by Michael Green. I just randomly skimmed through it at Lifeway and was intrigued by it immediately. Earlier I posted some stuff from Tim Chester about this, but here is Green saying something similar:

Evangelism and church planting on the whole seemed to have happened spontaneously without heavy planning. I am not denigrating planning: there needs to be proper planning behind any work for God if it is to take root and grow… The planning was done by the Holy Spirit, and he seems to have guided the Christians into the appropriate approach for different situations. This meant that they needed to keep depending on him, and could not denigrate into producing a technique. Had the Apostles sat down to plan the outreach in Acts, it would have looked very different from what actually happened, and it would have been microscopic in scope compared with the breadth it attained when the Holy Spirit led them in their ways.

Of course, there are always extremes. I personally am trying to think about this in relation to the community group that I have been leading, and our strong emphasis on multiplication. We actually go into this during this week’s discussion. The two extremes I laid out were unfaithful multiplication and stagnant in-breeding. We can go one direction and simply think about growth for the sake of growth – in which the “fruit” produced is not the fruit of the Spirit (a united, healthy expression of who Jesus is to the world) but rather simply a desired outcome (a certain number of people for a certain number of groups). On the flipside, we can become so focused simply on ourselves that nothing new is birthed from within our group – and this is not health.

So, the question I posed was, “How do we balance these two biblical visions: deep, sustainable community and healthy multiplication?”

I heard Tullian Tchividjian quote AW Tozer a couple of weeks ago and I had to let what Tozer said 50+ years ago sink in. I can’t find where the quote came from, but basically what he said was that in the early church 99% of what happened was because the Spirit was leading, directing, planning, etc. Today, 99% of what happens is because of us trying to lead, direct, plan. The question then becomes, “What would our churches, our small communities, our families, etc. look like if we depended more on prayer and the indwelling Spirit of God than our flawed attempts at making something happen?”

But, then, I am also left with the problem of redeeming methods. I am not arguing against the reality that we can and should use different methods to accomplish our vision. But, at what point do the methods themselves (the “ways” in which we “get things done”) become idolatrous and actually go against the Kingdom of God?

Mission Planning

Tim Chester: “The book of Acts is not the story of the apostles making plans and then putting them into effect. It is the story of the Holy Spirit directing mission” (http://timchester.wordpress.com/2009/03/13/mission-planning-in-acts/).

Is “attractional” a bait and switch?

I started really struggling with the traditional interpretation of 1 Cor. 9 several months ago. I’m still not convinced that it is speaking about changing our evangelistic methods to win as many people as possible.

One of my fears with the traditional understanding is unintentionally creating a bait-and-switch situation. There’s a very real possibility that we could try so hard to “hide” the fact that we’re Christians or a church in order to get people into the door that we end up tricking our “victims.”

I’ll put it like this: I really like horror movies. Most people don’t. But, if I really wanted to get someone to watch a horror movie (who I knew had no desire to watch one), how could I do it? Well, I could use a different name to disguise the truth that it’s a horror movie. I could create a fake poster about the movie, or even use just part of the movie that is somewhat appealing to create a poster. I could tell them about the introduction (which is usually before the bad stuff happens). I’m sure this would work a good majority of the time – but the payoff would be devastating.

Maybe this is a ridiculous example. But, then again, maybe we shouldn’t be putting so much effort into trying to get people, who really have no desire to “check out a church,” to walk into a building on a Sunday. Maybe, instead, we’re called to actually be the church together, out in the open, in front of a watching world. Maybe instead of inviting our friends to a service of worship, we should be inviting them into our lives (or being “attractive” enough to be invited into theirs).

Maybe we should have zero expectation that a truly post-Christian person will walk into the doors of our church buildings. But, maybe we should have equal expectation that those we interact with on a daily basis would ask us about the hope we have in Jesus (1 Peter 3:14-17), the reason we’re so different (holy). Not weird different, but loving and humble and honest different.

But, maybe it’s just easier to not be concerned so much with our own representation of Jesus to the world and stick with the easy part of following cultural trends and trying to “fit” our methods into them.