Transformation, Not Information
People today, both inside and outside the church, have an apathetic attitude toward organized religion. Most will tell you that it's not working. Perhaps their lack of interest is because we institutional church people have been more skilled at building walls of dogma and exclusivity than at rediscovering ancient paths of life-transformation.
Our society is marked by increased spiritual hunger and activity, yet overall attendance in churches has decreased. The number of people in attendance weekly in United Methodist churches has been declining for years—dramatically so. The same is true in most other mainline denominations. This decline seems to accompany a lack of spiritual power in churches today. As I look around many churches, the situation seems like the movie Night of the Living Dead. Many churches have died, and someone just needs to tell them they're dead. The churches that are still alive are asking, like the prophet Elijah, "Am I the only one left? Is there anyone out there who is being faithful to the purpose of God on planet Earth?" (See 1 Kings 19:1-10.)
Remember the guy who burst into a Baptist church in Texas? If angry people with guns are going to storm into church gatherings and shoot folks for their faith relationship with Jesus Christ, then I want to get shot for being a part of the right thing. I don't want the church I serve to sacrifice lives to something that is not world-changing.
For the earliest Christians, the gospel wasn't about information, but about a revolutionary encounter with God—"what we have heard . . . seen with our eyes . . . and touched with our hands . . . the eternal life that was with the Father and was revealed to us" (1 John 1:1b-2). After his resurrection, Jesus warned his followers not to go out alone, but to "wait there for the promise of the Father" when they would be "baptized with the Holy Spirit" (Acts 1:4-5). Think about the implications of that order. Jesus' followers had been with him for three years. (That's a whole lot better than attending a weeklong church growth conference.) Didn't they learn enough about Jesus by watching and copying his work? Apparently not. Jesus was telling his followers, in effect, that information and imitation were not enough.
UnLearning Moment
What do you need to unLearn in order to make your church a place of transformation and not just information?
As a child in Sunday school, I received information about the man named Jesus. My teacher gave me a little picture of Jesus to carry around in my wallet. It was about the size of a baseball card. You've probably seen this picture, found in many Protestant church buildings in the 1950s and 1960s—the wavy hair, the aura of light around his head. I came to think about Jesus as a player featured on the baseball cards I collected.(Unfortunately, this little picture wasn't worth as much as a baseball card!) I often wonder what would have happened if I had said to my baseball-card-collecting buddies, "I have a '58 Jesus in mint condition; what will you give me for it?" It seemed that faith was measured by the ability to quote facts and memorize trivia about a historical
player. It was just like memorizing the statistics about a baseball legend, based on information on the back of the card.
You probably remember the WWJD fad of the late 1990s and early 2000s. People wore bracelets and displayed bumper stickers all designed to help us ask ourselves, "What would Jesus do?" The idea is to try to determine what Jesus would do in a situation and then to imitate Jesus' response. But knowledge and imitation of Jesus' behavior and are not enough. First John 4:9 says, "God's love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him." The purpose is that we might live through him, not that we might merely believe in him. Living for God is not about imitation or information—it requires transformation. The Spirit of God must live in us.
Vessels of the Spirit
In Old Testament times, fire often signified God's presence. When Moses led the Israelites through the desert, God was as close as a cloud during the day and a pillar of fire during the night. When the people saw the fire, they remembered God's promise of daily provision, protection, and power for living. When God moved, they moved. When God stopped, they stopped, even for months at a time. The idea was to place themselves at the heart of God's leadership and direction.
At the time the fire of God's Holy Spirit was limited to one place, usually above the tent where they met for worship. The Spirit would sometimes come upon Moses, and sometimes others. When Jesus was on planet Earth, the Holy Spirit in him was limited to one physical body. Jesus could be in only one place at a time; but when Jesus ascended to heaven and sent the Holy Spirit to earth in a new way, everything changed. Since Pentecost, the Holy Spirit has been made available to all people. No longer is God merely with us, now God is in us. Jesus can be everywhere we are, all around the world at the same time. We are literally the body of Christ on earth, where people come and experience love, acceptance, forgiveness, freedom from fear, release from guilt and discouragement, delivery from loneliness, and empowerment for living.
At age seventeen I couldn't see the future. All I could focus on was the draft for the Vietnam War. This was about a year after my God-encounter at that gas station in rural Arkansas, but I was still filled with fear and anxiety, rather than with the Holy Spirit. I used to go across the street and play pool with a guy in my neighborhood who was in his fifties and who had studied for the priesthood. There was something different—a peace—about this guy. He knew Jesus in a way I didn't. I'd talk about my fears, and he'd talk about Jesus.
Sometimes you have a better chance of seeing Jesus while shooting pool than you do in the church. I said to this would-be priest, "I am going to be eighteen on my next birthday. I can't see past eighteen, and it really scares me. I think this may be some kind of premonition that I am going to die or something."
My comments opened the door for several conversations about my friend's experience with Jesus. I can't explain what happened because it wasn't like a crisis moment, but somehow during those "close encounters," I began to experience the mystery of the powerful Jesus. My eyes were opened, and I could see the future. Eternal life divinely invaded my body and the Spirit began to live in me. It was strange. My heart began to beat in rhythm with God's heart. My eyes began to see through God's eyes. My mind began to think with God's mind.
I was seventeen, but suddenly I could see my future! I could see how my life was going to be used for God's purpose to touch other people. I could see God's future and plan. It wasn't like I fully understood it, but I trusted the one who did, and tried to follow even when God's plan didn't coincide with my own. During my first two years in college, I studied retail management. I was going to make some serious money. The next thing I knew, I found myself in the School of Social Work, working with Appalachian folks. What happened? Jesus transformed me.
Many people come to Jesus and then expect Jesus to become converted to their worldview. But God is not the one who needs to change. To experience Jesus is to take on Jesus' worldview, to allow ourselves to be radically transformed. We must take on Jesus' outlook, Jesus' perspective, and Jesus' priorities. If we're going to be the church at all, let's be the real thing.
The opening words of 1 John refer to Jesus as the word of life, the Word of God. A lot of people believe that God "spoke" (past tense) only through scripture. True, Scripture is the word of God, but God is still speaking (present tense) through Jesus. The prophets in the Bible never limited God to "God said long ago." They used the phrase "thus saith the Lord." They remind us that God is continually speaking. The living Word of God is in you and me, speaking right now. Jesus continues to speak and to transform you and me. That is the mystery of the powerful Jesus. The world is looking for a radical experience of God.
UnLearning churches will follow God's leading, much as God's people of old did in following the pillar of fire. The body of Christ has a rudder that goes deep into the ways of God as revealed in scripture.