Tuesday, May 28, 2019

Grace Crumbs; chaplaincy to culture or freely responsible pastoring for Christ?

I’ve enjoyed an interesting journey back to Illinois as I work towards finding another call in ministry. During this time, I was able to venture into experience Evangelical “mega” church worship.  In a spirit of keeping this article an open critique and observation, I will not be naming the church visited in my article.  What first came to mind when I came to the first service is the idea and concept that there is no such thing {{really}} as a non-denominational church.  According to many a colleague conversation, all “non-denom’s” are more or less “quiet” Baptists. I did think of my brief finishing studies at TEDS occasionally attending the chapel there and wondering about the interlinking chain of non-stop praise music and prayer.

As a product of church planting, there’s something to be said about both speaking to creating worship in light of some “bells and smells,” as well as incorporating or fine-tuning existing rubrics of spiritual transition to enhance the theological and spiritual strength of a service.  Stepping into an oddly shaped or perhaps intentionally designed giant structure that both incorporated an almost iconic white steeple and Colonial front, alongside a factory sheet metal warehouse, made you think about where their priorities are set.  The inside of the structure is set up much like a mall with interconnecting rooms or hallways highlighting different ministries and meetings.  Their youth set up reminded me of stepping into a movie theatre box office.  Everything, in essence, spoke to the secular culture with an accent of speaking to what people should consider “doing” after their multifaceted Sunday experience panorama.

What I found myself questioning and reflecting a lot upon was if this set up of church was faithfully including the marks of the church in spiritual practice being Koinonia, Didache, Diakonia, Kerygma and Lietourgia.  This past Summer I wrote an extensive paper on Lutheran worship based upon my studies, experiments and appreciation of it.  Was this popular mega-church speaking faithfully enough to community, teaching, service, witnessing the Word and worship? What I experienced in both services was primarily a vertical sense of instilling, stirring up faith and some abstract moralistic principles but the horizontal, being our sharing in the world, seemed truncated. It was like thinking of the cross that had its sides only reaching so far.  Is this a reflection of appealing too much to culture?  The finely polished auditorium or amphitheater donned no cross yet alone was set up and ready to go for loud interlinking traditional and modern Christian hymns, rock songs and related. I’ve never been someone to “flick a lighter to Jesus” in any setting, (though I really do like K Love, in my car!) but I held back overly criticizing this to see how clear and solid their theology was.

Echoing that thought again, are some of these churches appealing too much to culture(?); had me think of Bonhoeffer and his quest to clarify discipleship as an obedience that can only really come from realizing costly Grace.  This Costly grace, the great pearl of Christ given to the heart of those who truly come to believe, receive, incorporate said Grace, Word of God and share it.  Much like the mega Lutheran church I went to in Las Vegas, I saw myself thinking of a giant Sundae with all things wonderfully put in place except for the Grace which seemed like little crumbs just cautiously sprinkled on top.  Why were these churches doing something like this? Both churches had million-dollar coffers regularly filled… Strong enough pastors to at least teach simple concepts very well but neither place would touch the full Monty call of Grace with a 10-foot pole.

There is a fine line to witnessing the Word of God as a faith-filled disciple in the 21st century.  The radical call of the Gospel of Christ to ‘Be-the-Attitude’ should be something that is timeless, inspiring and truly motivating to be as Luther’s favorite author James said: ‘Doers of the Word.’  When I think of my own discipleship journey to where I am now, I’ve never stopped learning and growing with God’s Word and what He needs my heart to realize as a pastor to His church.  The artist in me can and did appreciate the non-denom’s abstract art behind the worship stage.  The image captured both a sense of the cross as well as an arrow pointing straight up.  While we’re to be looking up to hear God’s Word speak to and commission our hearts to service, what are we seeing right next to us?  What are we to see beyond the auditorium and theater-like interlinking hallways? That aspect was not made clear for me.

Being a disciple is a very real, standing on solid ground reality. Bonhoeffer had this understanding most beautifully and profoundly realized in his own mission to help save the German church.  We can not truthfully “grow and go” upon moralistic abstractions to help us with the nitty gritty of response to the world as His disciples.  Costly Grace is neither to be considered a moralistic abstraction or be diluted to palatable nuggets of “comfort” for the disciple’s growth.  It is our hearts turning to God, knocking on God’s door and really asking, growing, seeking, believing in what the awesome Grace of God does: NEW LIFE.
New Life in a Chronos-bent 9 to 5 world encapsulates the problem in expression, wisdom and commissioning.  Worship is the fuel to gathering together as the Body in the world (but not to be of it).  We forget that last part all too easily during this time of transition in society, culture and context. Much like art, one needs to think of the elemental aspects of its design.  For me what has always been important to composing worship is its solid spiritual formation’s design alongside of course, good theology.  Music is the “sound” to burgeon our natural charismatic reflections to God.  You can’t just throw Advent hymnary off to the side for Christmas hymns, just because someone wants it that way... Well, partly because: Jesus isn’t supposed to be born yet! I thought about this in connection to when I went to this first service.  I thought to myself, ok, K-Love top 40 greatest hits…  As much as I liked that music, was it relevant to the expository sermon series the pastors were preaching upon? ‘Satisfied.’

The main theological nugget to take away from this first service was witnessing wisdom. They look to a snippet from St. Paul’s letter to the Colossians 4:2-6. They basically extrapolate four nuggets of discipline St. Paul seeks for the flock at Colossae to accept: Pray intentionally, communicate clearly, live wisely and speak graciously.  In regard to marketing the teaching element here, they made bookmarks that were handed out at the end of the service for those to reflect on the message more on their own. I’ve tried something similar with ‘Sermon Nuggets’ inserts in some bulletins during the church year. These are four solid statements but how do we take those “life-instructions” internally to change the disciple’s heart most concretely to God? These statements can be seen as the mirror of the Law but what about Gospel? This is probably the problem I find with expository preaching.  It is very mechanical and precise in exegeting a particular slice of the moment in Paul’s pastoral journey, but it stops short or is made to seem to stop short here and become purely instruction.

If this particular community was following any kind of lectionary perhaps reflecting upon this calendar years’ days of Easter, the monumental impact of the resurrection upon the disciples from that day forward would’ve spoken more towards agape love and metanoia.  The heart of the Gospel is the love of Christ being the conquering force against sin, death and evil.  If we lay claim daily in remembering our Baptism to this truth as His disciples, why aren’t we speaking more directly to it? This goes beyond my Lutheran shading here: Do we faithfully teach the process and progress of the heart turning to God as an aspect of aspiring to incorporate, understand agape love?  I’ll close this article by sharing a wonderful dream I had thinking of talking to Him and asking Him how I was doing as His disciple.  He said: “Nicole, my daughter, I know the artist in you is trying to see me as the Jesus from Franco Zefferelli’s movie with a touch of St. Catherine of Sienna’s monastery painting of my human self… but think of me as the light in the world, the light in your very heart and my face will show within many you come to minister to.”

That was a powerful dream for me and was recent.  I may have been trying to ask from my heart what God wants me to do next… but what I saw was just His mouth, and I thought prayerfully of His Word in every day that past week. This is what “church” should be doing for us every day after the Sunday time of gathering. God’s Word becomes ubiquitous to being challenged to thrive or flourish within the problem of the human condition.  God’s purpose and instruction needs to be realized through costly grace.  We must be careful of offering or accepting the crumbs.

Rev. Nicole A.M. Collins


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