CM: Young boh-friends say, "Finally!"

“But I can’t preach or play the guitar!” lamented young Mr. Boh. “Poor me!”

Young Mr. Boh(hemian) was very sad because he wanted to serve Jesus through his local church but there were no opportunities that matched his talents and gifts.
The elders of young Mr. Boh's local church thought that he was recalcitrant, difficult to work with (maybe he was) and unwilling to serve (maybe he wasn't). Mr. Boh did lack self-confidence so was not one to propose himself for ministry for which he felt ill-suited.

Elders' perception of Mr. Boh

Mr. Boh's perception of local church opportunities

The Fair Trade Café had been bedouin for about 18 months, traveling from fair to festival and back again, promoting justice through selling coffee. The Café team seeks to do good because Jesus has been good to them.
But the Café had no home to call its own. Then in June God opened a door for the Café and that opened doors of service for Misters and Misses Bohs. Maybe they weren’t teachers or melodious, but they could do pointing on 15th century stone, piping, electrical work, painting and papering.
Modernist people sometimes seek unity that borders on uniformity.
Postmodern people sometimes seek diversity that borders on anarchy.
Jesus seeks unity AND diversity in dynamic tension.
The body metaphor for Jesus' church helps us to understand diversity, giftedness, opportunity, service, and unity. A body of coordinated members serving together with purpose.

Now the body is not made up of one part but of many.
If the foot should say, because I am not a hand, (therefore cannot play guitar) I have no place in this body….
And if the ear should say, because I am not a mouth, (therefore cannot preach) I have no place in this body….

One of the purposes of the Café was to expand opportunities for service for those who could not find a place within the local church structure.
I find it interesting and instructive that just a few months prior, the elders of Mr. Boh's local church were befuddled, saying, "Mr. Boh and his young boh-friends spend too much time together. And they don't think about serving."

Yet, Misters and Misses Bohs are the very ones who have jumped into the Fair Trade project feet first, contributing the most. "Finally," exclaimed young Mr. Boh, "something that I know how to do. And I can do it for Jesus!"
"But in fact God has arranged the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. As it is, there are many parts, with differing functions, but one body."

CM: Young Mr. Boh says "Oh!"

Young Mr. Boh(emian) came up to me after the service, about his 4th time there I think. He said, “It is interesting to see that it is not just the pastor (Franck) who teaches here, but others like yourself as well.”
(The elders of the Dijon church had asked me to do a four-message series on John 17; I had just shared #3 “The Glory and Shame of Mission.”)

So I shared with Mr. Boh about the universal priesthood of believers (1 Peter 2:5), that all followers of Christ (not just the pastor) have the privilege and responsibility to serve, using the talents and gifts God has given them.

“Oh,” said Mr. Boh.

I added,
“And all believers have the privilege and responsibility to look into the Scriptures, interpret and share them. That is why a number of us preach, not just the pastor.”

“Oh,” said Mr. Boh.


Mr. Boh seemed interested, so risking pontification I continued,
“Just as a body has different parts, the local church body has different members. It is not only those who can teach and play guitar that serve, but all of us.

For example, we just found a building for our Fair Trade Café. We’ll need people to help clean, do masonry, plumbing, paint and wallpaper.”

“Oh,” said Mr. Boh. “I am starting to understand how all of this works.”
It turns out that Mr. Boh had worked in a café, and a few weeks ago came to help clean the building; he is now interested in becoming a Fair Trade barista!

Oh yeah, and just two weeks ago Mr. Boh, another twenty-something friend and I started reading the Gospel of John together :-)

CM: Young Miss Boh asks "how"?

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…

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!

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).”

“Sometimes I feel like a wild branch without a trunk,” he replies. "Okay, that makes sense." (“It does?” you wonder, yet continue with your musings on last night’s reading.)
“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.