Common grounds

Common Grounds is a fashionable name for coffee shops these days. What's behind that?

First, COFFEE. For some inexplicable reason people like to give me books about coffee. Examples: A chacun son café (for each one his café), La dolce vita: coffee, The Devil's Cup: coffee, the driving force in history, and the list goes on. In light of the plethora of books on the subject, I am obviously not the only one who imbibes this nectar of life.

Coffee: the aroma, the warmth and reassuring solidity of the cup (note: styrofoam is evil) in one's hand, and… the flavor! Sumptuous.

Second, COMMON ground. Ideologies polarized people. For example:

Politically: In Russia, not simply bourgeois vs. proletariate, but trotsky-ism vs. stalin-ism.
Economically: In the West, Karl Marx-ism vs. Adam Smith-ism.
Religiously: Since Hus, Luther and Calvin, Catholic-ism vs. Protestant-ism.
Philosophically: Since the French revolution, the-ism vs. human-ism.
Musically: In the '60s, classical music vs. the British rock invasion.

This group reappeared at the half-time show of the 2010 Superbowl. The edge of youthful rebellion seemed a bit tarnished and dull coming from a 66-year old man.

I think the Common Grounds spirit asks, can't we all get along long enough to drink a coffee together to discuss our differences?

The château of St. Albain (see previous entry) was a place that brought down the "us" vs. "them" walls, so that believers could interact with unbelievers in a safe, convivial ambiance.

But that was the '60s and '70s in the French countryside.

At the beginning of the 21st century I wondered, "What would a château-in-the-city look like?" Obviously, one cannot just plop a castle down in the midst of the urban sprawl.

And these places are not exactly affordable even if one were for sale

The church that my wife and I had helped to start was doing well and reaching out to families with young children. But what venue existed to help singles, couples without kids, families with grown children, share Christ with people who would not attend church (most of the people we knew)?

One day, my wife was reading La Vie (yes, a Protestant reading a Catholic magazine!) where she stumbled across an article about a group of ex-hippies who had started a fair trade café in Lyon, France. She thought, "We could do something like that."

Four years later… the Mustard-ville Fair Trade Café was born!

The café looks a lot better in its post-renovation stage

Fair Trade militates against exploitation, attempting to ensure that the coffee producers in the two-thirds world receive a fair wage for their labors. In that way, a coffee-bean-harvesting-father can feed, clothe, house and educate his children.

Fair Trade is concerned about justice. So are Christians. So is Jesus. As a matter of fact Jesus died so that we might be pardoned our injustices.

The Mustard-ville Fair Trade Café provides common ground where people who like coffee, who are concerned about justice in the world, can do good for someone in another part of the world simply by purchasing a cup of Joe. And it allows believers, who are desperately concerned about justice, both personal and corporate, to meet and interact with others upon this common ground.

For example, my wife was part of a literature club. They would read a book, then get together to discuss it. After one of the sessions a man from the group saw a poster for the next InterVaristy Christian Fellowship meeting at the café.

He asked my wife, "Can anyone attend that?"

She replied, "No, it is really just for students."

"Oh that's too bad, because I would be interested in that and have a couple of friends who would be as well."

InterVarsity students at the Fair Trade Café

Subsequently we were able to start up a reading group in the Gospel of Luke. The first night we had 15 people and only 3 were believers! My wife and I simply facilitated the discussion. We read about a half chapter and then asked three questions:

What does the text say?
What do you think about that?
How do you feel about that?

Great discussions ensued. People were reading the Bible for themselves. My wife and I had plenty of opportunity to interact with them. Good News seed was sown.

All thanks to common ground… and coffee.

Neutrally yours

I met a group of business people for breakfast to exchange ideas about "making disciples" in Western cultures.

As we talked I shared my teammates' experiences in evangelism in France since the 1950s. Since Tom did not speak much French, but wanted to get the gospel out, he decided to employ a hi-tech, cutting edge approach.

THE IMPERSONAL ATTEMPTS

TRUE STORY 1: Way back when, Tom knocked on doors and asked, «Est-ce que vous voudriez écouter ce message, s'il vous plaît ?» ("Would you mind listening to this, please?" ) If they responded positively, he hit the play button on his spanking new cassette player and began the recorded gospel message.

I guess today this would be a bit like doing door-t-door with an iPad with a YouTube clip from the Jesus film 8-)

Ok, so this impersonal approach is a strawman. Or is it? Two more examples.

TRUE STORY 2: The evangelical protestant church that I helped to plant, organized a “Year-of-the-Bible” multimedia conference. Five thousand invitations were distributed to homes surrounding the church’s facility. No one came as a result of the distribution. 

One woman came because she had seen the half-page article in the local newspaper. Eight people (out of about 40 total) came because they had been invited by a friend from the church.

TRUE STORY 3: Anne-Marie, a Campus Crusade worker distributed invitations during the World Cup. She reported: “10,000 tracts were distributed in the streets to invite people to the event ‘Succeed.’ Only two people came, and they did not come because of the distributed publicity but because two of their friends had invited them.” (reference: David Brown, Une église pour aujourd’hui, 67.)

THE RELATIONAL IMPERATIVE

Tom was and is insightful. In spite of the pressure to "get the message out" and into people's auditory canals, he sought ways to get the Good News into people's hearts. So he went to L'Abri and spoke with Francis Schaefer, came back to France and purchased a castle!

During the hay day of the hippy movement, young people traveled all across the French countryside, stopping at places like the Château at St. Albain. Here there was no "us" and "them," like there was when a "longhair" walked into a church building.

The Château was (and is) a neutral meeting place where unbelievers and believers could talk about superficial and deep issues, about life and the afterlife. 

A camera clinic at one of the Château's "artistic days"

The working principal of the Château of St. Albain was, "the effectiveness of the evangelism is in direct proportion to its relational context." People came to Christ and churches were started from that innovative ministry. 

Relational = cutting edge. 

Cooking class at the Château

In the 21st century, having contributed to a successful church plant, my wife and I began to wonder, how might we adapt the Château's relational principle to an urban context? What would a "château-in-the-city" look like? 

More to come…

Passive participation?

As part of the research for my doctoral thesis I conducted qualitative interviews with 17 church planters who have started churches in France by focusing on youth. In this way, I was able to distill principles from their praxis, methods, & approaches. 

One of the leitmotifs that emerged from those interviews was › youth do not want to watch, they want to PARTICIPATE in church. 

The French evangelical alliance’s final principle — number 6 — for churches attempting to be fully biblical and full witnesses in this perpetually fluctuating world, is “participation and transformation.”

By way of reminder, the navigational principles (found in David Brown's book: «Servir à nos Français»:

Principle #1: doctrine of warm welcome

1/ “We believe we need to bring together the biblical convictions of a professing church with warm welcome toward those who come in contact with that church.”

Principle #2: incarnation and reflection

“The church is as much the church when she is dispersed in society as when she is assembled.”

Principle #3: truth and coherence

"A major part of the work of the Church, guided by the Holy Spirit, is… to give form to the 'reality' [the Truth of God's eternal story] by providing a concrete expression of its existence, and that through the life of its members."

Principle #4: simplicity and creativity

"We seek to encourage a form of piety and spirituality that allows Christians to develop their relationship with God,” a simple spirituality that "will engender creativity among its participants. Mindless repetition, memorized phrases, and platitudes do not constitute an authentic relationship, either with God or with others." 

Principle #5: encounter and calling

“Without rejecting the importance of events and the use of electronic communication, we believe that the church must remain a place of true encounter, a source of happiness and growth. This is because loneliness and the difficulty of personal encounter are today, all too present.”

Principle #6: participation and transformation

Essentially this principle refers to the doctrine of the “priesthood of believers.” I often refer to this doctrine and my wife reminds me that “people don’t know what you are talking about.”

What I mean by the “priesthood of believers” is: 

a community of lay people (men and women) who have received the Holy Spirit by faith in Christ, who serve both the church and humanity; in this way, they serve God Himself.

Martin Luther put it this way: “The pastorate is not a priesthood, but only one of the functions of the Church of which all of the members are priests.… When it comes down to it, clergy and lay people only differ in function, not in rank, because they are all, in their spiritual status, true priests, bishops and popes.”° No wonder Luther had troubles with the Roman Church!

But the great doctrine of the universal priesthood of believers, says Alfred Kuen, never really found practical application within the evangelical church. Swiss theologian Emil Brunner commented,  “The protestant churches essentially remained pastor’s Churches.” 

Why? The evangelical alliance workgroup observes areas in which transformation must take place, where and why leaders do not entrust ministry to members. 

1) Pastors may fear theological unfaithfulness to immutable doctrines (a legitimate concern). 

But there may also a fear of unfaithfulness to denominational convictions and values that are not absolute. Missionaries and pastors, therefore, may be hesitant to delegate responsibilities to people not interested in perpetuating historical traditions.

2) The adherence to inappropriate foreign (anglo-saxons are specifically mentioned) methods that are not adapted to the local context. These methods may not make sense to locals or may simply feel strange to them. The nationals therefore may not adhere to or buy into such approaches.°° Missionaries and pastors may suspect this reaction and therefore not entrust lay people with responsibility. 

3) Finally, the training of new pastors and leaders must include, not only a strong theological formation, but equipping in savoir faire, hands-on training. (French education is notoriously theoretical.) 

David Brown writes, “Our [French] churches are filled with members who do not give fully their potential, and with pastors who are exhausted from the task.” 

I recently spoke to a French church’s youth group. The young people were anxious and nervous throughout the weekend as they awaited news from their pastor. Would he stay or would he resign? (He did in fact submit his resignation.) A church counsel member had attacked him (not physically) and the pastor went into depression. Even though that person left the church the pastor had been so marred by the incident that he withdrew himself from the ministry. 

Years and years ago, I was pastoring the church in Dijon that I helped to plant. I vividly remember two different church attenders tell me, on two separate occasions, that whenever a new pastor came they would either not follow him or would try to “cut the grass out from under his feet,” i.e. knock his legs out from under him. They explained to me that this is how one deals with leaders. 

(Today I view this as a form of hazing to test the mettle of an emerging French leader.) 

A few years back the Geneva Bible Institute changed their program. Why? They had discovered that 3-out-of-5 men entering the ministry had left during the first 5 years. The Institute has moved to a three-cycle program that involves theological training as well as two internships in different churches, with different mentors. This exposure to real church life and leadership under the guidance of experienced pastors has seen good fruit. (This is how the Dijon church received its first French pastor; Franck was my intern from the Geneva Bible Institute.)

For multiple reasons, the ministry can nor should depend on or revolve around one man. 

The biblical model is a “church composed of active members, not only in the sense of active doing, but also with the ambition to live holy lives in a world that encourages everything except that.” “There is need for a spirit of teamwork, with mutual listening and encouragement” (Brown, 255). 

Jesus wants, not just the participation of the pastor, but of all believers, both old and young.

° Quoted in A. Kuen, Je bâtirai mon église, 272.

°° These concerns are valid and are answered by application of the Four missiological “self-principles”: self-governance, self-financing, self-reproduction and self-theologizing. 

Church, a remedy for loneliness?

“Loneliness breeds in large groups of people” reads a postcard that I received from a teammate in London. I use my postcards as bookmarks, and selected that one for my current (airplane) read, Douglas Coupland’s, Eleanor Rigby. Yep, like the Beatles’ song, “Ah, look at all the lonely people….” 

I’ve read a number of Coupland’s books (he’s the one who coined the term “Generation X”) and this one, as usual, is insightful. It’s the story of “Liz Dunn who was too lonely to live, and too frightened to die.” The blurb on the back jacket says: “funny heartbreaking… a haunting exploration of the ways in which loneliness affects us all.”

Loneliness? I don’t believe that I have ever heard a sermon on loneliness, tangential references, yes, but not a treatment of the subject. And certainly that is not the best way to deal with the autonomous individual’s sense of isolation. The best remedy for loneliness is, not explaining how not to be lonely, not being in the same room with a large group of people, but in entering into relationship with people. 

The French evangelical alliance’s fifth principle for churches attempting to be fully biblical and full witnesses in this perpetually fluctuating world, is “encounter and calling.” They write:

“We believe that we pursue our calling as the people of God through the regular activities in the life of a local church, activities that promote true encounters. Without rejecting the importance of events and the use of electronic communication, we believe that the church must remain a place of true encounter, a source of happiness and growth. This is because loneliness and the difficulty of personal encounter are today, all too present” (David Brown, Servir à nos Français, 253.

In my travels I end up attending a lot of different churches. After having said “hello” & chit chatted with people (if I happen to speak a local language enough to do that) comes the uncomfortable moment when I wait around for my host, who is invariably engaged in conversation. 

I preached at this church in Stuttgart in March. My caveman German did not allow for much chit chat :-)

Now you may think that I’m about to criticize and say that the church members should be more welcoming toward me. Nope. I’m glad that this is more than an habitual meeting for the people who are there. They are generally welcoming enough for me realize that, were I present a bit more, I too could enjoy similar Christian friendship.

I facilitated Bible dialogue with the youth group of the Trinity International Church in Strasbourg for their ski weekend in February.

David Brown and company observe:

“If we want our preaching of the gospel to be authentic in the eyes of the world around us, and that it involves a true acceptance of others, we are called to first live these values in our local churches as a new humanity. Isolation and loneliness are realities of our age; we seek to live otherwise in the midst of our communities” (Brown, 254).

The warning the French Evangelical Alliance group issues is to be careful not to perpetuate activities simply because of tradition and obligation, activities that do not help us pursue our calling as the people of God. This calling that is concomitantly to-ward and outward — toward Jesus and one another, and outward to others who do not yet know Jesus.

David Brown reports:

Life lived in the local church community “seeks each person’s betterment in a spirit of mutual encouragement. It transforms us individually and collectively.… This transformational community moves outward, carrying the good news of reconciliation with God and of the restoration of all things in Jesus Christ. This double call to live the reality of the gospel in our communities and to make it known all around us” unites to create a dynamic interplay (Brown, 254).

Sounds good; the hard part is living it.

“If we announce to the entire world the coming of the reign of God, we are called to live this reign in our communities. If we emphasize spiritual journeying that promotes a true transformational encounter with God, we also emphasize the impact that the gospel has within our communities.” 

While worship experiences can be transcendent, sermons motivating & enriching, two questions we should ask about our church activities are:  “Does this activity promote true encounter with God and with others?” And “does it reduce the loneliness that people feel?” 

Because there are a lot of Eleanor Rigbys out there, both outside and inside the church.