Young Miss Boh blurted out, "Yes, but when someone asks me the question to which Jesus is the answer, I don't know how to answer!"
This past Sunday I had asked people to share difficulties in talking about faith with their friends, work colleagues, family and neighbors. We were considering the question, "How might we live and speak in a way that causes people to ask the question to which Jesus is the answer?"
Miss Boh has little problem talking to anyone about anything. But she is a new believer and said, “I don’t know enough about the Bible to give a good answer.”
How would you respond to Miss Boh?
Mine was a two-part answer. I said,
“Well, we need to remember that evangelism is a team sport. Remember the METAPHOR (yep, we’re back to that) of the field in 1 Corinthians 3? Paul said, 'My job is to plant the seed in people's hearts, and Apollos waters it, but it is God, not we, who makes it grow.' You see Miss Boh, you don’t need to and weren’t meant to do it all yourself.”
I didn’t want to blow her out of the water with the long-term answer which I later shared with her — spend lots of time in the Bible. Miss Boh looked a bit relieved, because you see, she wants to share Jesus with people now :-)
I springboarded to illustrate the application of the metaphor for the whole church group, replying,
“Do you remember Miss Boh? You, my wife and I were at that county fair in your village. Louise and I went to check out some of the stands; when we came back, you were talking about God with one of the merchants. You didn’t know what else to say, but you introduced me to him, passed me the baton, and I took the discussion from there. Planting. Watering. Together.”
P.S. Thought I would pass on this fresh example of a real life application of metaphor…
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Tuesday, May 05, 2009
CM: Young Mr. Boh asks why… church?
It was his first time in church; you could tell by his actions and reactions during your innovative, wit-filled, thought provoking, oh yes, biblical message!
Feeling confident that this bohemian-looking, twenty-something would want to talk with you after that oh-so-cool presentation, you introduce yourself after the service. He says, “I’ve never experienced anything quite like this.”
“This is going well,” you say to yourself.
“How so,” you inquire.
He says to you, “Well, I don’t know. I mean, I didn’t understand anything that was going on. Why people were doing the stuff they did when they did it?”
“Oh,” you reply deflatedly.
“But I liked the vibes.”
“Oh,” you mutter.
Regaining composure, you propose, “Would you like to get together for coffee to unpack your experience?”
“Sure.”
You are sitting in Peet’s sipping your latte, and he an Organic Pu-erh tea (your second indicator that he is not fitting into categories with which you are familiar).
His first question is, “Okay, so what is church all about anyway? Why church?” Whew, he’s brought the ball back into your court. You’ve structured your church for growth and its working. Even just last night you listened to an Acts 29 (or fill in your church growth specialist of predilection __________) pod-cast.
You reply phlegmatically, “Well, we taylor our church service to connect with people like you.” (“Oops,” you wonder, “will that make him feel like a target market? And why didn’t he understand what was going on?”)
But this guy is unflappable, “No, I mean what is it all about, you know, epistemologically and ontologically, the stuff the really matters, the core, the essence. Why church? And what is church?” “Sip,” went the Pu-erh tea. “Gulp,” went the coffee!
Fortuitously, last night before bed, you read an article in the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia where Geoffrey Bromiley asserted that the Church can be “described in several pregnant phrases!”
So rather than explaining to young Mr. Boh what the local church does, you dive in…
“The Church is:
“These pictures overlap and approach essential issues from different angles. Rather than canceling each other out (e.g. “Do we focus on evangelism or fellowship?”), they provide parallax to promote the birth and growth of vigorous, fertile churches.”
“Got it,” responds young Mr. Boh. “So how was what the Bible describes as 'church' reflected in what you did last Sunday morning?” “Sip.” “Gulp."
Why we do what we do is quite important to our ecclesiology.
Because the imagination is heavily involved in metaphor-based church living and evaluation—one pictures a palette of ideal possibilities—the modernist church leader will tend to imagine, for example, the ideal modern "temple," while the postmodernist will imagine, well, postmodern ways of being "temple," a gathered people possessed by the Living God. And the imagination is engaged, whether modernist or postmodernist, always seeking to live not like living stones or ambassadors, but both concomitantly.
One-size-does-not-fit-all yet forms must always embody Scriptural essence.
Pastors, elders and all disciples who build upon the foundation of the Church—Jesus Himself—should use the Biblical metaphors to guide and evaluate their work. I.e. does the form of church we are living embody the essence embedded in the pictures Jesus gave to us?
The goal is to continuously move toward church-ness, how Jesus imagines His Church, whatever form that might take. And we want to use forms recognizable even to people like young Mr. Boh so that when he asks, why church? the answer—Jesus' presence among his people in the world—rings resoundingly true.
The Thinker by Nayer
Feeling confident that this bohemian-looking, twenty-something would want to talk with you after that oh-so-cool presentation, you introduce yourself after the service. He says, “I’ve never experienced anything quite like this.”
“This is going well,” you say to yourself.
“How so,” you inquire.
He says to you, “Well, I don’t know. I mean, I didn’t understand anything that was going on. Why people were doing the stuff they did when they did it?”
“Oh,” you reply deflatedly.
“But I liked the vibes.”
“Oh,” you mutter.
Regaining composure, you propose, “Would you like to get together for coffee to unpack your experience?”
“Sure.”
You are sitting in Peet’s sipping your latte, and he an Organic Pu-erh tea (your second indicator that he is not fitting into categories with which you are familiar).
His first question is, “Okay, so what is church all about anyway? Why church?” Whew, he’s brought the ball back into your court. You’ve structured your church for growth and its working. Even just last night you listened to an Acts 29 (or fill in your church growth specialist of predilection __________) pod-cast.
You reply phlegmatically, “Well, we taylor our church service to connect with people like you.” (“Oops,” you wonder, “will that make him feel like a target market? And why didn’t he understand what was going on?”)
But this guy is unflappable, “No, I mean what is it all about, you know, epistemologically and ontologically, the stuff the really matters, the core, the essence. Why church? And what is church?” “Sip,” went the Pu-erh tea. “Gulp,” went the coffee!
Fortuitously, last night before bed, you read an article in the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia where Geoffrey Bromiley asserted that the Church can be “described in several pregnant phrases!”
So rather than explaining to young Mr. Boh what the local church does, you dive in…
“The Church is:
- the people or Israel of God (Eph. 2:12; 1 Pet. 2:9-10),
- the household or family of God (Eph. 2:19; 3:15; 4:6),
- the planting of God to bring forth fruit to His glory (1 Cor. 3:9; Jn. 15:1),
- the temple of God (Eph. 2:21; Jn. 2:19; 1 Cor. 3:9; 1 Pet. 2:4),
- the bride of Christ (Eph. 5:25),
- the body of Christ (Eph. 4:15, 1 Cor. 12:12, 27)
- a building (1 Cor. 3:10-15; Eph. 2:21),
- a spiritual house (1 Pet. 2:5),
- living stones (1 Pet 2:5),
- a city on a hill,
- salt and light (Mt. 5:13),
- a shepherd and his flock (John 10:1-18),
- a wild olive branch (Ro. 11:17),
- dough (1 Cor 5:6-7),
- an ambassador (2 Cor. 5:20),
- a virgin (2 Cor. 11:2),
- a golden lampstand (Rev. 1:20),
- a chosen lady (2 Jn. 1),
- a royal priesthood
- and a holy nation (1 Pet. 2:9).”
“These pictures overlap and approach essential issues from different angles. Rather than canceling each other out (e.g. “Do we focus on evangelism or fellowship?”), they provide parallax to promote the birth and growth of vigorous, fertile churches.”
“Got it,” responds young Mr. Boh. “So how was what the Bible describes as 'church' reflected in what you did last Sunday morning?” “Sip.” “Gulp."
Why we do what we do is quite important to our ecclesiology.
Because the imagination is heavily involved in metaphor-based church living and evaluation—one pictures a palette of ideal possibilities—the modernist church leader will tend to imagine, for example, the ideal modern "temple," while the postmodernist will imagine, well, postmodern ways of being "temple," a gathered people possessed by the Living God. And the imagination is engaged, whether modernist or postmodernist, always seeking to live not like living stones or ambassadors, but both concomitantly.
One-size-does-not-fit-all yet forms must always embody Scriptural essence.
Pastors, elders and all disciples who build upon the foundation of the Church—Jesus Himself—should use the Biblical metaphors to guide and evaluate their work. I.e. does the form of church we are living embody the essence embedded in the pictures Jesus gave to us?
The goal is to continuously move toward church-ness, how Jesus imagines His Church, whatever form that might take. And we want to use forms recognizable even to people like young Mr. Boh so that when he asks, why church? the answer—Jesus' presence among his people in the world—rings resoundingly true.
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