The antidote begins with worship – to give glory back to God.

Repent: Repentance in this case looks like giving back to God what is rightfully his: worship. Glory. Renown.
Believe: Believe that the glory that comes from God is better, richer, and more lasting than the transient glory that comes from man (John 12:43).

Repent: Be humbled as you realize you have attempted to use the ministry and gifts God has given you to pilfer from him the fame and renown that he and he alone deserves.
Believe: Be lifted up as you realize and experience afresh your unalterable identity as son or daughter of the King who died to make rebels and glory thieves his kids.

Worship to repent. Worship to believe.

And I’m not just talking about a “lifestyle” of worship. A true lifestyle of worship begins with the specific practice of worship. For those of us who wrestle for our lives with the idolatrous whore of acclaim, then we need to build into our lives consistent habits or rhythms of worship, both corporate and private.

We need a consistent practice of seeing the greatness and beauty of God with the eyes of our hearts then pouring out praise with extravagance and abandon. This is the only thing that will begin to free us from ultimately worshipping ourselves or seeking glory from others instead of seeking glory for God.

If acclaim is your idol of choice:

• Begin the day with worship. Don’t rest till your study, meditation, or prayer leads to adoration.

• Command your soul to worship. Don’t wait for the music or the feeling. David did this multiple times throughout the Psalms, just look up “O my soul”.

• Practice being more expressive. Shout, clap, dance. You have to retrain your body, mind, and soul. Learn again the language of adoration. This is a fight for your heart’s affection.

• Memorize Psalm 16 (“In your presence there is fullness of joy.”) Psalm 42 (“As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God.”) or Psalm 63 (“My soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you.”)

A great place to start, right now, is to sing, pray, and meditate on these words from Be Thou My Vision:

Riches I heed not, nor man’s empty praise,
Thou mine Inheritance, now and always:
Thou and Thou only, first in my heart,
High King of heaven, my Treasure Thou art.

“When you’ve had all the experiences – met all the famous people, made some money, toured the world and got all the acclaim – you still think ‘is that it?’” –George Harrison

Most Christian leaders I know got into this whole ministry game because of a passionate love for God and a deep love for people. At some point, however, every pastor, worship leader, speaker, musician and leader faces a crisis.

At some point in our hearts we are tempted to make ministry more about us and less about God. We start to believe our own press (whether good or bad). We start to feed off of and need the attention and respect we get from others. We crave bigger platforms and more influence. We start to give in to the idol of acclaim.

At this point, it becomes almost impossible to distinguish whether the leadership decisions we make are fueled by zeal for God’s glory or for our own. This is dangerous ground for any leader, but especially for those of us whose job it is to constantly point back to the beauty, fame, and glory of Christ.

Signs of acclaim’s influence
What are some signs that you’ve been lead astray by a desire for your own acclaim?

• Jealousy Do you become easily envious of leaders who have more influence, a larger platform, or a bigger following than you?

• Despair When someone’s talent, level of attention, fame or power eclipses your own, does it practically affect your level of joy – even driving you to despair?

• Self Absorption Do you find yourself busily preening your public image, Googling your name, obsessing over how many times your sermons or songs have been downloaded, the number of hits on your site, or the number times you get retweeted?

• Need for Credit Is it hard for you when others get credit for something you deserve? Do you find yourself constantly needing to set the record straight, making sure people know that was your idea, how hard you worked, or that you were in fact the genius behind the big success?

It’s very possible you have already given your heart to the idol of acclaim and you are sin-sick with pride.

Certainly the answer is that you and I need to again repent of our idols and embrace the gospel at a deep level. But how? How can we detach our hearts from the idol of acclaim, before we are destroyed or enslaved by it?

Part 2.

At least that’s the argument.

This line of thinking assumes that there would be no other reason for a pastor to approach this topic with great care.

For many reasons, homosexuality has become the issue not only for contemporary culture, but also for the contemporary church – defining boundary lines and immediately sticking one in either the camp of “liberal” or “conservative” often depending entirely where they fall on this single issue.  And sadly, it seems that the loudest Christians who receive the most publicity on this topic are the angriest; many doing everything short of waging war against the homosexual community.

So, should pastors never address the topic of homosexuality? Of course they should. In 1 Timothy 1, Paul contextualizes the Ten Commandments for Timothy’s current context. The only reason for him to bring up same-sex sexual acts under the overall heading of adultery or sexual immorality would be that it was a specific sin prevalent in 1st Century Ephesus. Paul was being a good pastor in using scripture to address the issues of the day. However, how did he do it? We can use the passage to mine some principles on how to talk about such an explosive topic.

1. Paul specifically mentions homosexual practice and not homosexual persons. It’s men who practice homosexuality (arsenokoitai).

As much as Paul says, however, he never says that being gay is a sin.  Homosexual activity is clearly named as sinful, but not necessarily those that would identify themselves as gay or who wrestle with same-sex attractions.  This is a small but important distinction.

This simplifies things. It means that when a staff member confesses to same-sex attractions, your first response is certainly not to fire him. It also means that homosexuals in our churches are called to the same grace-enabled disciplined abstinence that we would ask of any single person in our church attempting to walk in the light.

2. Paul talks about homosexuality in the larger realm of Christian sexual ethics. Homosexual practice in the New Testament isn’t a sin worthy of some sort of special censure. Any church that has people in it, is going to be a church filled with people who sin sexually in a variety of ways, whether its use of pornography, extra-marital affairs, or sex outside the bonds of marriage.

The church needs to be able to call people to repent and then to equip them, in loving community, to walk out of sexual sin of any and every type.

3. After naming “men who practice homosexuality,” Paul is quick to confess his own sin. Specifically.

He says, “the law is laid down for sinners. Sinners like me.” And then he names himself as the worst, chief, or foremost of sinners.  Along with naming the sins of his culture, he names his own sin. This is unheard of in today’s evangelical climate.

What if every time a Christian wrote an article on the “wickedness of sodomy” they also had to say, “but, you know, I looked lustfully at a woman last night, spoke sharply to my children, and I’ve practiced a lifestyle of safely secluding myself from the needy in my area. I’m no better.”?

This would bring a level of humility to the subject that could really help defuse tensions.

4. In his “sin list” Paul does not discriminate. He weaves back and forth between classic “liberal” and classic “conservative” sins: immediately after “men who practice homosexuality,” Paul aims his guns at human trafficking.

This is one reason that use of the words “sodomy” and “sodomite” are particularly unhelpful when talking about homosexuality.  Ezekiel 16 clearly indicates that the sin of Sodom was “pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease” along with a failure to “aid the poor and needy.” To use the word “sodomy” for one group of people but not the other is intellectually dishonest. A word steeped in fear is used only to shame and marginalize those we don’t agree with.

In the recent past, I believe conservative evangelicals have put too much emphasis on homosexuality. I think this has been done partly out of a love for truth, but partly out of fear and partly because the “gay agenda” makes for an easy target. Because of this, we are in danger of losing our “prophetic right” to speak to this topic. Any honest words are lost among the white noise of angry, hate-filled, homophobic jargon.

Evangelicals Christians have marginalized, attacked, and shunned homosexuals.  The gay community knows that evangelicals think that they’re wrong. They haven’t heard, with nearly the same force, that we love them. Because maybe we don’t.

What do I want gays and lesbians both those inside my church and those outside of it to know more? That I disagree with their sexual lifestyle? Or that God’s true message is different than they’ve heard… that in the gospel, we find a surprising message of a God in hot pursuit of sinners and rebels of all types?

And this question is so important, because if I lead with the first message, it will most likely eliminate any chance I have to communicate the second. As Jochem Douma says, “The direction of our moral argument(s) should be from love to law, not from the law to love.”

This is why any pastor reaching into his community would want to approach this topic with great care.

See, one message comes in sound bites and is easily printed on a bumper sticker. The other message takes incarnation. It takes life.  A grace-saturated life that disarms and breaks through defenses, loving despite differences and labels.

Something about Verge was different – and I want to get it down before I forget. Because I easily forget.

1. Worship Gatherings Should Not Be Abandoned
This first thing is actually a running thought I had throughout the conference.

One of my fears is that young zealots will walk away from Verge and say, “I get it now. We’re going to totally scrap our public worship gathering,” or “Who needs preaching? It takes the already limited time I have away from community and mission.”

Maybe some failed to notice, but during Verge we were convicted, inspired, moved, and challenged… all through preaching and powerful corporate worship experiences.

I know that as a whole, we’re moving away from event and program-driven Christianity (good!) – but an “event” is an okay event in my book if at that event the gospel is proclaimed, God’s Spirit is present, and the sacraments are observed.

2. Francis Chan is Awesome But Not For the Reasons You Think
Yeah, Francis Chan blew us away.

Here’s what stuck out to me, though, more than any one thing he said: we saw this mega-church pastor get on his knees in front of us all and beg God, in tears, to show him how to do church.

You got this sense from him the entire weekend that the bigness of his church didn’t matter. His books didn’t matter. His reputation as a pastor didn’t matter.  He acknowledged that he distrusted even his own motives for why he does what he does and that he wanted to be courageous enough to ask the question: does any of the stuff we think is so important in the evangelical world really matter in the end?

3. The Holy Spirit is Real
The best part of the weekend was a worship session on Saturday afternoon that never seemed to stop. It was time for the singing to be done and for all of us to move on to the next deal on the schedule – except that God had something else on His schedule.

Matt Carter got up and acknowledged that something was going on. Breakouts were going to start soon and that if people needed to go they could, but he opened the door for others to stick around if they felt so led. And we did. People just stood there. Or knelt. Or bowed.

And then one by one, people spontaneously started calling out to God. In a group of thousands, people started calling on the name of Jesus.

It’s hard to describe what happened, and I really don’t want to dishonor that moment by trying to make it seem more dramatic than it was. I’ll just say that for me it was an intense moment of sensing God’s hugeness and my own smallness and yet feeling accepted in that instead of alienated. It’s the first time I’ve seen something like that happen in a group that large since my charismatic revival days.

4. Mission & Community Are Hard
I was trying to explain to a friend unfamiliar with evangelical church jargon what a “Missional Community Conference” was about. I failed. It should’ve been simple because the conference was about mission and community (obviously).

Here’s why this conference sticks out: Verge was not just about mission and community, it was about being committed to those things until it gets painful.

Being committed to doing mission with a small band of people who know you well should and will be uncomfortable. It will cost me something. It will hurt.

But it’s worth it.

That’s what I’m leaving with. It showed up in the teaching, sure, but I got a fresh reminder in person.

During the weekend, I got to spend some time with Josh Wilson, a close friend and co-worker from The Journey that I hadn’t seen in months.  Right now, since leaving one church and getting ready to plant another, my experience of community is somewhat sporadic at best.

Seeing Josh reminded me first of the depth of friendship I miss out on when I am away from community. Secondly, it reminded me that community is painful because it means letting people get close enough to call you on your garbage. I don’t like getting called on my garbage.

There’s a trend right now among evangelical pastors that plays on our natural fears and desire to manipulate. It says that if you’re a pastor, you can only let people get so close. If people get too close, then you loose some of your power. Clear lines of authority get cloudy. You loose organizational effectiveness in pursuit of relationship. It’s that much harder to hold someone accountable to job performance and becomes close to impossible to fire them, if God forbid, one day you’re forced to.

Who cares.

Letting people in close enough to see through your every motivation is stinking painful. But the alternative – living life alone, surrounded only by admirers and no real friends – is infinitely worse.

You don’t have to have church-planting already in your DNA, however, to become a church-planting church. Let’s say that you pastor an established, traditional church & have never planted a new church or supported a church planter. Where do you start?

Meet area planters
If you’ve always been a pastor in an existing, established church situation, get to know church planters in your area. Take a couple out to lunch.  Most likely, they’re poor & hungry.  Church planters often feel like established church leaders are distrustful of them and their motives. Listen to planters in your area & their heart for reaching new people. Be available for conversation, prayer, and networking.  I hear story after story of church planters that are new to an area and can’t get pastors of established churches to even return a phone call.

Do a study
You and your church need to first believe in the importance of planting new churches on local soil.  If you expect some of your key leaders to be resistant on this issue – do a short study together on the importance of planting new churches, specifically in Western areas.  Tim Keller’s paper, Why Plant Churches or Glenn Smith’s article Does the U.S. Need More New Churches? are both great & simple places to start. The key leaders in the church, especially those who set vision and budgets need to be convinced of Keller’s words: “The vigorous, continual planting of new congregations is the single most crucial strategy for the numerical growth of the Body of Christ in any city, and the continual corporate renewal and revival of the existing churches in a city.”

Budget appropriately
This is where it gets hard, and is the first place that established churches turn back from becoming church-planting churches. If you are going to plant churches, you have to set aside money in your budget for it – and that most likely will mean taking some percentage from money that you already give to foreign missionaries or to your denomination’s missions sending agency.

Vision from the pulpit
Whenever the primary teacher talks about the mission of the church, evangelism, or engaging the world with the gospel, make sure that you tell your people that a key piece of your missional strategy is planting new churches. Putting it out there strong will help hold you accountable to your new vision. “We are not quite sure how we’re going to do it – but a key piece of us reaching the world with the gospel is that we are going to start planting new churches – right here. There are unreached people groups right under our noses -  and the best way to reach them is to plant new churches.”

Join a church-planting network
In addition to having access to church-planting resources, when you as an existing church join a church-planting network like The Acts 29 Network or ARC you signify to potential planters around you that you are serious about church-planting. Young potential planters are already watching these networks because of their success in planting. When you join up, potential planters in your area will start to look to you for church-planting support & internship opportunities.

Begin a church-planting internship
The next difficult step is to start an intern program for potential church-planters. Doing an intern program can cost less than you think, but is likely to be more time intensive than you first realize. A few brief thoughts on internships:

Have interns raise their own support
If a potential planter can’t raise support for a part time salary, how will he ever raise money for a new church? If his own grandma doesn’t trust him, why should you? You could consider a stipend for a candidate with a lot of experience, if the candidate has a family (with multiple kids) to support, the cost of living in your area is exceptionally high (like NYC), or if the candidate does not come from a culture with an assumed network of churches, friends & family who can back a pastor financially (generally non-white or non-western.)

Assess potential interns well
Two mistakes here: 1.You set the bar too low (ie you accept anyone who remotely expresses a desire in church planting). If this happens, even a year (or two) of training at your church will not produce of guy that you will want to plant, and you may end up sending out someone who never should have planted in the first place. 2. You set the bar too high (ie you expect him to already be network assessment ready). This is not your network’s complete, rigorous assessment – this is your own pre-assessment. You’re looking for someone who has the raw DNA to be a church planter but still needs 1-3 years to work on theology, a marital communication issue, or needs to have more teaching & leading experience. They do have to demonstrate character, entrepreneurial skill, and a sense of calling – the three things that I think are impossible to teach.

Mentor interns well
A lot of fast growing churches bring on interns without any sense of what do with them. Sure, the “grab an oar, let’s get to work” mentality is great – and gives you some needed hands on deck – but at some point interns need: 1. theological shaping, 2. real mentoring 3. leadership opportunities where they can safely fail.  Also, with potential church-planters, give them opportunities to start something.

Send them out with money & people
If an intern goes through your whole process, has learned from your church & added value to your church, has passed your assessments, and responded & learned from your critiques & coaching, then be prepared to enthusiastically send them out with money and people.  If they really do have entrepreneurial & teaching skills, strong character and a good family – then by all means, put your money where your mouth is.

Show your congregation
Celebrate church planters – both those you send out and those you support. Have them preach in your church (if they can handle your pulpit). Lay hands on them and publicly pray for them. As they’re planting, find out the good stories and share those with your people. Regularly show pictures of your church planters just like you might your overseas missionaries. Let your congregation celebrate God’s work among these new churches.

These are initial thoughts on becoming a church-planting church. Much more can and has been said. What are your thoughts?

There are a ton of lessons I’ve learned over the years about what went wrong and why, but I’ve distilled five of the most important.

Here is How to Kill a Church Before It Gets Off the Ground:

1. Plant for a culture that is different than your setting.
Our new church was oh, so hip. (I’ve said more about The Hipper than Thou Church.) The problem was, this was a small town. In the South. Influenced by what large churches in large cities (primarily in the Midwest & Northwest) were doing, I was more in love with “hipness” than trying to understand the culture I was actually planting in.  Thus, in an effort to be relevant, we failed to be properly contextual. If you want to kill your church, don’t study your culture or do the hard work of contextualization. Don’t die to your preconceived notions about what your church has to look like. Plant a church like one you’ve been to or read about, not one that will actually connect with the people in your area.

2. Plant a church for rebellious evangelicals that is intentionally not like the church down the street.
We’re not like… your parents church… those Baptists… those fundamentalists… those… well, you get the point.  Our church plant was more obsessed about what it was not than what it actually was going to be for.  Almost anything that is reactionary will take an unhealthy turn in the opposite direction.

You don’t like legalists, I get it, but what will you stand for? You won’t be the church that asks for money, yells at people, makes people sit/stand/sit/stand, and where you don’t have to wear a suit & tie – that’s fine. But I hope you have more vision than just that. Deconstruction is easy (and a lot of times necessary) but it can’t stop there. What healthy thing will you actually build? How will you shape your people and your city positively with the gospel?

3. Don’t preach the Bible.
My highest calling and greatest gift to the church is to study the Bible and preach what I find there. To teach people to read and treasure scripture. And most importantly to look at the story of the Bible and point to Jesus and his work to redeem humans.

And yet, in an effort to be relevant, I was more eager to preach series based on movies and pop culture instead of the Bible. (I’ll save myself the embarrassment of telling you those sermon titles.) I strongly believe that we need to pay attention and come awake to the often subtle ways that God reveals himself through culture. However, what both believers and seekers need more than anything is to come in contact with the God of scripture.  That happens as we (intelligently, winsomely, passionately) preach the Bible.

4. Don’t protect or provide for your family.
Christ’s Bride became my mistress. (So it really wasn’t about Christ or his Bride… it was about my ego.) Driven by pride and a desire to be everyone’s savior, I didn’t put boundaries in place to protect my wife or our family time. Out of ignorance I didn’t raise enough money to support our family, and so in laziness I played around with my church plant while my wife worked a soul-killing job to support our family. It was almost the end of our marriage, and I was too blind to even see it. You want an unhealthy church? Sacrifice your marriage and family at the altar of “ministry.”

5. Plant before you’ve dealt with your own obvious sin issues.
You’ve probably heard it before, but it bears saying again: whatever is in your heart will come out at some point during this crazy church planting adventure. I am not saying that we need perfect pastors.  They don’t exist and as soon as you start acting like they do, everyone wants to play the I’ve-got-it-all-together-smiley-faced-perfect-pastor act. We do, however, need pastors and church planters who are living in the light – living lives of authentic gospel repentance.

There were hidden persistent sin issues in my life. Instead of paying attention to the darkness and opening up to trusted community, I just kept my head down and went back to work, feverishly hoping that it would all just go away. It’s obvious to say that it didn’t go away.  By God’s grace, my sin could not and would not stay hidden.

A final warning.
Shutting the doors on our dream was one of the most difficult things we’ve ever done – but it was, without a doubt, the best decision for that time. Ashley and I became a part of a healthy church and worked on our relationship and leadership.

I know that the idea of church planting is hitting a peak in popularity. It’s chic. Better than that, there is a need. We need courageous, zealous teachers and leaders who relish grace and want to take a giant risk to plant new churches in cities and villages across this planet.

Before you do, however, stop. Think. Are you ready? (Do trusted, wise advisers say you are ready?) Would time in a healthy, gospel-centered church as a volunteer or intern better equip you before you go? Could a better plan and better preparation in a community that knows you and knows your junk possibly help? Go. Plant a church. But not to the detriment of those you lead, your marriage or even your soul.

“Years ago, I was at a point of growing our church big. I was concerned about how fast we could get there…

I was walking in a pasture behind my house one day.  A pastor not far from me had had affairs with five women; he crashed and burned.  Another guy north of me had a megachurch, but he was going to the pen for embezzlement.  I told God, ‘God, I’ve got my pants on.  I’ve got my hands out of the offering plate.  You’ve got these guys over here doing all this stuff.  Why aren’t you blessing me?’

All of a sudden this little question came to my mind: When will Jesus be enough for you? Sometimes, I think that’s when I became a Christian.  I just began to weep, because I realized he wasn’t.  I was miserable because of our attendance the day before. That’s wrong…

Why is my joy based on having to grow my church as big as Rick Warren’s or Bill Hybels’s?”

So, pastor, the question for you & me: what is your joy based on? When will Jesus be enough?

I have given you authority… However, do not rejoice that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven. -Jesus, Luke 10:19-20

A month ago I read an article on DesiringGod.org called “What does it mean practically to keep the Sabbath holy?” I would suggest reading it. In the article John Piper explains what that possibly looks like for different types of people and what it has looked like for his family over the years. Reading this article I began to examine practically what this looks like for me.

As a young Christian I felt like all days were holy and should be lived for God’s glory in our worship of him.  Hebrews chapter 3-4 explains that “Today” is the day to rest from our works just as God did from his works at creation, and enter that rest which is owned by God. The way in which I have done that is by daily Sabbath. You may know it as quiet time. And as I learned from a great book Practice of the Presence, by Brother Lawrence to somehow carry that rest throughout the day just as Moses’ face continued to show God’s glory after he left God’s presence. To some degree this is at the core of missional living, in that we are submitting our lives, our days, to God’s mission on earth.

I was recently given the “opportunity” to reassess these values. My family had a chance to use a friend’s lake house, which was a two hour drive south of Kansas City, for a week. As we began to drive, the first half hour was filled with constant phone calls, email and text notifications but soon those sounds stopped, and it was clear we had left the service area. I wasn’t worried because that’s normal as you drive through central Missouri. I knew that as we got closer to Bolivar we would pick up a signal and I could check my email and set my fantasy football roster. No problem.  It was true that as we approached the lake my phone found service again but not for long. About three miles from our destination my phone lost its last bar for good.

We got to the house and my first order of business after we unloaded all the gear was to get the TV running. Don’t judge me! I had to check the weather for the kids, IT WAS FOR THE KIDS! I had to check the weather so we could see if we could swim. After trying everything in the world we realized that the TV was old and they didn’t have a digital converter. So we had no TV. I thought to myself, “no problem or at least it’s no problem until Saturday when the Missouri Tigers play or Sunday when the Chiefs play. At least I can listen on the radio”. I checked the radio, but the radio was barely picking up a station. So no phone, emails, texts, twitter, facebook, voicemail, TV, news or scores. I’m completely unplugged.

The next morning my wife, Amy, and I began to talk about the idea of a Sabbath rest, more specifically a certain day of the week to rest. We talked about how that really works when you are serving on Sundays. If you’re a church planter you may be setting up equipment / classrooms, teaching, tearing down and loading out to a trailer. How can you do all that, rest for a few hours in the afternoon and consider that a Sabbath?

During the discussion I was painfully aware of my discomfort with being “unplugged” from the matrix. My wife encouraged me that I do a good job of taking time daily to marinate in prayer, scripture and study. But she also challenged me to find longer periods each week to disconnect and recharge the batteries. I thought about mounting a defense but the discomfort I was feeling weighed too heavily on me to pretend that I did that well. I have all the excuses in the world like a new church plant work load, off-hours pastoral care and meetings, meetings, meetings. I mean, I’m so important – what would happen without me?

“I’m so important – what would happen without me?”

Our family trip made me realize some realities. One of them is although I’m a big proponent of a regular quiet time, I think I may be falling short of really entering that rest from my works.  The discomfort I was feeling only served to reveal my desperate need to lay down who I am and abide in him more. For me that is going to take more than 30 minutes every day. It’s going to take me stopping, disconnecting and getting off the mission I am on and connecting to God’s true Missio Dei, and that’s wrapped up in my restful surrender to His glory.

Although I struggled that week with not knowing the weather, news or current events, I spent some much needed time with family and friends. And I breathed in deeply God’s glory as an amazing creator and savior. The busier I get as a church planter the more I see Sabbath as a joyful necessity rather than a law and I am still trying to understand practically what Sabbath looks like for me.

What does it look like for you?
-

Orion is a former charismaniac youth pastor turned church planter, and missional strategist. He lives in Kansas City with His wife Amy, daughter Riley and son Luke. You can follow him on Twitter here.

by Jake Johnson

Scriptural and Ecclesiological Considerations

The last post explored the physical limitations of the Internet as well as the “digital divide,” the disenfranchisement of the poor and minority from the digital environment.

In this last post, I want to consider the scriptures and what they say about church.

In my study, I’ve come to believe that the church is defined by:

• The preaching/teaching/proclamation of the word
• The administration of the sacraments (in my view communion and baptism)
• And the fellowship of the saints

As seen in Acts 2:42, “And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.”

I don’t think there are too many people who would argue with such a definition. The real debate comes when we start asking whether this type of community can be done in the digital world.

Can the sacraments, for instance, be rightly administered online? Some people think so, as evidenced by Flamingo Road’s Internet baptism as posted on Church Crunch. How about communion? Can that be administered online and still embody the New Testament concept of “breaking bread together”?

To this Doug says, “Every virtual church I’ve encountered has worked hard to put into place ‘regular’ aspects – from baptisms to small groups to mission trips – in order to help build real community across the board. Critics aside, no virtual church I’ve ever met is trying to be virtual-only.”

If Doug is truly implying that virtual church is really not virtual at all but rather a mixture of online teaching and physical community, then I’m on board. But I’m pretty sure that is not the end of the line for virtual church, but rather the beginning of an erosion of physical community all together. There will be a day when virtual church is just that, a completely autonomous congregation interacting solely on the Internet. And Doug seems to leave room for this as a valid expression of church. I cannot disagree more. As John Stott said over 27 years ago:

“In such a dehumanized society the fellowship of the local church will become increasingly important, whose members meet one another, and talk and listen to one another in person rather than on screen. In this human context of mutual love the speaking and hearing of the Word of God is also likely to become more necessary for the preservation of our humanness, not less.” (Thanks to Justin Taylor for pointing me to this quote via his blog.)

The Purpose of the Church?

In looking at the purpose of the Church, I believe that it exists primarily to:

• Equip the saints for the work of the ministry (Ephesians 4:11-16)
• To make disciples (Matthew 28:16-20)

These commissions are best accomplished by preaching, teaching, and proclaiming the word and by doing the word. As James says, you cannot do one without the other, “But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.” And while some are called expressly to do the teaching and preaching (Ephesians 4:11-12), we are all called to proclaim the gospel and to do it.

When thinking of the purpose of the church in the context of Internet ministry, it’s easy to see how it is useful for proclamation – the preaching of the gospel. In that sense it is an excellent tool. It becomes harder to think of its usefulness in discipleship and in being a catalyst for bringing people beyond hearing the word to doing the word. This is because the Internet is an uncarnate environment that is inherently geared towards engendering a people who consume rather than pour out. Yet, as a community of believers, we are called to do just the opposite – we are called to incarnate the gospel to the world.

The biggest challenge I see in the future of ministry is the pervasive acceptance of digital interaction as true community, replacing, not supplementing, physical community. Yet, in a Christian context, it is the daily interactions between believers that leads to discipleship. As Tim Chester and Steve Timmis write in their book, Total Church, “In becoming a Christian I am a disciple, but that is an identity, not an event. I never stop being a disciple, and I never reach a point where I no longer require daily discipleship by the gospel word in the gospel community.”

Event Driven Church vs. Rhythm Living

Ministries that are diving full force into the Internet by forming Internet campuses, doing online administrations of the sacraments, and more, are indicative to me of the more American expression of Christianity and church, which is an event driven model. For many people, church is just one of a many obligations or events that must be attended, consumed, and completed – an X on the calendar. It’s easy to say you go to church and believe you are part of a church in an online forum if you believe that church is about the Sunday event where you sing some songs and hear a sermon.

But that is not church. If anything that is evangelism, which to be clear is very important. But it is not true Christian community. It provides no true venue for discipleship, or the rhythms of Christian life that are depicted in the New Testament (eating together, praying together, serving together, etc.).

When you approach church as an event, it is easy to leave that church if the pastor says something that pisses you off. It’s even easier when all it takes is a click of a mouse, where no actual physical connection is severed. A rhythm centered approach to church where people are eating together in homes, giving to and taking care of those with need, discussing the scriptures in late night gatherings over coffee or a pint, serving arm-in-arm in doing the word and incarnating the gospel, creates bonds that are not easily broken – and ensures that if a fellow believer is straying, you have a real, valid, and tangible means to confront him or her in love.  Above all, it presents a visible, incarnate, and clearly counter-cultural community that provides hope in an increasingly individualistic and consumerist culture.

“A rhythm centered approach to church where people are eating together in homes, giving to and taking care of those with need, discussing the scriptures in late night gatherings over coffee or a pint, serving arm-in-arm in doing the word and incarnating the gospel, creates bonds that are not easily broken…”

Conclusion

Steve Knight has written about the importance of reverse incarnation in the digital age. In that sense, the Internet is useful. But in reality, reverse incarnation is simply a fancy word for what we’ve already discussed is part and parcel with being the church – proclamation. We are to preach the word and proclaim the gospel in the digital world. But the digital world cannot replace the incarnate body of believers gathering together in community. You must have both.

I find it hard to understand how we can theologically justify purely online Internet campuses as autonomous and fully functioning churches – if they never gather together physically (and no, Doug, I don’t mean a building when I say that). Many will speak to practicality, but we must be cautious when we move to speaking pragmatically without undergirding our pragmatism with theology.

In the end, the Internet is useful, but it can also lead to a disembodiment of the church that is not biblical. It is my prayer that as we move forward we don’t wholesale dive into new technologies because our culture demands it, but that we carefully, prayerfully, and with measure engage new technology in a way that continues the Church’s long and grand tradition of being in the world but not of it.
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See: In Defense of Physical Community – Part One, Part Two, & Part Three.

Jake is the Communications Director at Praxis Church in Tempe, Arizona, and a freelance writer and editor. He enjoys long walks in the park, glorious sunsets, romantic poetry, and snarky bios that make people wonder if he’s serious. He’s also trying by God’s grace to be a good dad and great husband. He blogs at www.thejakers.com.

The Physical Limitations

The last post discussed the cultural implications of the Internet as a communications medium, and proposed that we think more carefully about how it may be a tool that marries Christianity and Western culture, effectively rebirthing colonialism in a new digital format.

This post is concerned with the very real physical limitations of the Internet and the growing “digital divide”.

I think most of us would agree that one of the biggest challenges the Western Evangelical church faces is one of comfort. Many of our churches (not all!) are very wealthy and rarely expose themselves to the outcast, poor, and dejected of society. We build large, sickly expensive buildings (compounds) in suburban enclaves and interact with people who are much like us: middle-class.

Practically speaking, how does Internet church fix this?

The reality is that the disenfranchised of our society have little-to-no access to a computer on a regular basis. Forget about access to dial-up or broadband Internet access (which is a necessity for Internet church).

Consider these top factors positively correlated with access to broadband Internet according to PEW Internet:

• Income (household incomes greater than $75,000 annually)
• Having a college degree or more
• Parent of a minor child in household
• Married or living with partner
• Employed full-time

And now the top negative factors:

• Having less than a high school degree
• Senior citizen
• Living in rural America
• Having only a high school degree
• Being African-American

According to an article from the Buffalo News, “Internet use in particular and technology use in general are lower among the elderly, the poor, those who didn’t attend college and those who live in rural communities, data shows. ‘There are socioeconomic and demographic factors that are intertwined in people’s use of the Internet,’ said Aaron W. Smith, a research specialist with the Pew Internet and American Life Project. Experts say this gap in technology use, often referred to as the ‘digital divide,’ makes it more difficult for those groups to participate in modern society and the global economy.”

I don’t think I have to go into proof texts on the Church’s mission to the poor and disenfranchised. Does holding church in an “environment” that is inherently exclusive (and will continue to be so for the foreseeable future) help or hurt the church’s ability to fulfill its mission?

The implications of this apply not only to online churches but also churches that are by their nature intimidating and exclusionary in a physical sense to those same disenfranchised people groups.

That these churches exist in the physical world is again not reason to justify the conception of Internet churches. It is a call to reform the way we do church in the physical world.
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See: In Defense of Physical Community – Part One, Part Two & Part Four.

Jake is the Communications Director at Praxis Church in Tempe, Arizona, and a freelance writer and editor. He enjoys long walks in the park, glorious sunsets, romantic poetry, and snarky bios that make people wonder if he’s serious. He’s also trying by God’s grace to be a good dad and great husband. He blogs at www.thejakers.com.