City Notes 24 | Barefoot Church: Serving the Least in a Consumer Culture Part 2 of 3

City Notes 24: Books in 30 minutes or less

City Notes are more than a book review. They are meant to provide you with direct quotes from some books I've read in the last year, so you can get a taste of the overall theme of the book and then begin to chew on what your life might look like if you applied what you read. 

Here are links to the previous City Notes books:

2014 | AND; Life Together; A Meal with Jesus; Deep Church; Gospel-Centered Discipleship; The Art of Neighboring; Speaking of Jesus; A Praying Life; Building a Healthy Multi-Ethnic Church; Family on Mission; Leading Missional Communities; Launching Missional Communities; Congregational Leadership in Anxious Times; You Can Change; The Hole in Our Holiness; Encounters with Jesus; One Thousand Gifts

2015 | The Rest of God; Interrupted; Everyday Church; Rhythms of Grace

2016 | Letters to a Birmingham Jail; Barefoot Church Part 1 of 3

Barefoot Church: Serving the Least in a Consumer Culture Part 2 of 3

Chapter 5 | Good News for the Unchurched and Dechurched

Serving can be really messy. It can be frustrating. And at times it can feel thankless. We know God is sharpening us through the experience. We know he’s changing our hearts. We know we’re obeying the commands of Jesus. But when the "newness" of selfless service wears off, it’s hard to keep going. Many give up. While obedience to the commands of Jesus should be enough to motivate us to serve others, it’s often not. Our hearts must be awakened so that we crave more. Why? Because there is more. Deep inside the heart of every believer there is this draw toward something supernatural. We want to see lives radically changed because we know the gospel can radically change lives.” – pgs. 73-74

Austin New Church is a socially active church. Our prayer is that as we serve those in need, we might somehow represent the hands and feet of Christ to them. But we are also a proclaiming church. We hope that somehow, though our preaching and speaking, we might represent the voice of Christ as well. I have found that the three assertions that Tim Chester and Steve Timmis make about the relationship between evangelism and social action in their book Total Church particularly helpful for clarifying our identity as a church body: 

1. Evangelism and social action are distinct activities. 

2. Proclamation is central. 

3. Evangelism and social action are inseparable. 

While we must recognize the different between evangelism and social action, we must make every effort to avoid separating them out, while retaining a priority on proclamation. In short, we need to develop a better understanding of the gospel and how it is both a message we announce and a reality we display to a lost and broken world. We both proclaim and become good news to the broken. As Tim Keller writes in Generous Justice, "A concern for justice in all aspect of life is neither an artificial add-on nor a contradiction to the message of the Bible." We catch glimpses of the gospel in acts of mercy and justice. But when those acts are never connected to the hope of redemption and restoration through the work of Christ, we miss the point. – pgs. 75-76

Tim Keller expresses the three ‘perspectives’ of the gospel as being (1) doctrinal, (2) personal, and (3) social, while suggesting that any one or two of these perspectives emphasized by itself leads to a distortion of the gospel in Christ. In other words, right doctrine without appropriate application is incomplete. Giving our personal story without the reason for our hope and its impact is incomplete. And engaging in social action without the proper biblical motivation and perspective is also incomplete. We simply cannot separate our social responsibility and personal response from a doctrinally sound and holistic gospel. Keller writes, "The gospel, therefore, creates a people with a whole alternate way of being human. … These three 'perspectives' are all biblical and should be kept together. There is a tendency for Christians and churches to focus on just one of these perspectives and ignore the others. However, they are inseparable and inter-dependent on one another. " – pg. 76 

We know we have good news. But that doesn’t automatically mean we are good news. Knowing the difference matters. … The gospel demands both proclamation and incarnation. Proclamation has many forms, but in the end they are all spoken. Incarnation also has many forms, but it is always about how we live. It’s good news when we speak the gospel message and share the offer of redemption that is available through Christ. And it’s good news when we live incarnationally and take on the posture of Christ to others, humbly serving them. – pg. 78

(Hugh Halter and Matt Smay) write about our posture ... in The Tangible Kingdom: "When your posture is wrong, you’ll always be perceived to be an enemy or judge. When your posture is correct, you’ll be perceived to be an advocate, a person who supports and speaks in favor of or pleads for another. … we step across from our religious side into their all-too-real world and ask how we can help." Peter is direct (in I Peter 3:13-18) in telling us that if we do good, we will also need to be prepared to field questions. People will be curious. They will want what we have. In the words of Halter and Smay, "When you are as concerned about your posture as much as your message, people will move toward you." ... As Darrell Guder wrote in his book Missional Church, "Churches that listen to sermons deploring crime may be faithful in attending to God’s call for right relationships among humanity. But the church that sets up victim-offender reconciliation programs and promotes equitable economic opportunities for communities where crime is the main escape route from financial despair is not only faithful but a remarkable light to the world, a city on a hill." – pg. 83, 90-91

Chapter 6: Expanding Our Understanding of Discipleship

We truly are an imperfect people hanging desperately to a perfect Christ. We need to stop clinging to the "idea" of being transformed, and honestly, mournfully, and humbly ask him to break our hearts for the thing that breaks his. The effort of our pursuit has to match the gravity of the idea. That’s the place where we can be used and transformation begins. When Jesus told us to go and make disciples, he meant that we would begin a new way of life. Yet most of us do not feel made new. Many of us feel like we’re on the hamster wheel of spiritual formation, and nothing is changing. We’re learning a lot, but we’re not experiencing an equal amount of transformation. 

Greg Ogden offers seven marks of discipleship that can be used to identify the gap between the biblical standard and the reality of faith: 

(1) From passive participants to proactive ministers,  

(2) From spiritually undisciplined to spiritually disciplined,  

(3) From private faith to holistic discipleship,  

(4) From blending in to a countercultural force,  

(5) From church is optional to church is essential,  

(6) From biblically illiterate to biblically informed,  

(7) From shrinking from personal witness to sharing our faith. 

We’ve lowered the bar far too much, failing to embrace even one or two of these marks, much less all seven. If these are even a semblance of what truly marks a disciple, it’s time to ask if what we’re doing is really working. "Only as we soberly assess the way things are, can we have any hope of getting to the way things were designed to be. We have hope because Jesus as the Lord of the church seeks for his bride to be without spot and blemish, for through his church his life will be manifest. Christianity would be incredibly influential in our culture if Christians consistently lived their faith. Most non-Christians don’t read the Bible, so they judge Christianity by the lives of the Christians they see. The problem is that millions of Christians don’t live like Christians. ... It’s more common to see our discipleship processes create the spiritually arrogant than a transformed people living on mission. We still feel the urge to "go deeper" and "be fed" although we may be in Bible studies three to four times a week. It’s as if we’re spinning our tires with the throttle to the floor, but we’re not going anywhere. Yet, "his divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life throughout our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness" (2 Peter 1:3). There was a similar situation revealed in the church at Corinth (see 1 Corinthians 3:1-3) …Paul reveals to them that whatever they were doing to grow their faith, it was not working. The evidence was not that they didn’t know the law or their religious duty; it was the remainder of jealousy and quarreling in their community. Both are juvenile and selfish and are evidences of the flesh, not of the Spirit. The very fact that there was division in the church showed Paul that they were not ready to tackle the significant issues of mission. – pgs. 102-103

Hebrews reminds us that growing up is good. But there are some deficiencies we have that might stunt our growth. We lack a sense of urgency … as believers we are so consumed by everything else "church" that we neglect the time it takes to meditate on God’s Word. Many of us only pick up the Bible once a week (if that) on Sunday mornings. "We have much to say about this, but it is hard to make it clear to you because you no longer try to understand" (Hebrews 5:11). We lack the ability to feed ourselves. The goal of every disciple should be to learn how to feast on the Word of God without being completely dependent on an outside teacher. We should become so familiar with it that we become teachers ourselves. Most of our current discipleship rhythms create dependency, not trust and release. "In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God’s word all over again" (Hebrews 5:12). We feast too infrequently. When we are completely dependent on others, we’re only getting a portion of what they have to offer. And we only get what they offer, when they offer it, nothing more. We consume what they have. … If we were to take the time to sit down and feast on Scripture ourselves, in addition to being under the teaching of other godly leaders, there is no limit to what we could digest. The fruit of this repetition is the fruit of the Spirit and an ability to discern right from wrong. Believer, you have access to a Bible. Prayerfully read it, and keep reading it. Ask the Spirit to lead you and do whatever it says. It will change your life. ‘But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil’ (Hebrews 5:14). – pgs. 104-105

Biblical examples suggest that discipleship is both relational and intentional, both a position and a process. We become disciples by turning from sin through repentance and turning to God through faith. … The process of discipleship is played out in a vital life-giving relationship to God that enables us to walk in the light as He is in the light, and do the will of the Father (1 John 1:7; John 4:34). Jesus said if we hold to His teaching, then we are really His disciples (John 8:31), and we demonstrate this through one another (John 13:34-35). … We acknowledge that perfection will not be achieved until we see Him face to face. True disciples do fail and are marked by humble repentance in response to personal failure, but recognize God’s forgiveness and restoration in the journey. – pg. 106

The problem with our current forms of discipleship is not necessarily found in what we do well; it’s found in what we’ve neglected. In many of our cases, it’s the lack of chasing the Spirit and the compassionate service that follows. Without them, we will ultimately fail at both transformation and personal holiness. We need to keep studying and memorizing Scripture. We need to keep praying and holding each other accountable. We need to continue spending seasons in topical and equipping Bible studies. And in addition to those things, we need to figure out how to delight in the ways of Jesus more often. We need to commit more of our ways to him (I suggest all of them). It’s literally impossible to do so and choose the way of self. – pgs. 109-110

Jesus saved every church considerable time and effort when he wrote the mission statement that gives us our marching orders: "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations" (Matthew 28:19). What is a disciple of Jesus but one who is self-initiating, reproducing and fully devoted to him? What seems unattainable is that there would be churches filled with disciples who do not have to be pushed, motivated and cajoled. This brings us back to our first point. Is it possible that we’re not seeing the spiritual fruit of transformation resulting in self-motivation and devotion because we’re not making true disciples? Are we creating codependent disciples? Codependency does not blossom; it does not reproduce; it only creates more codependency. … The greatest enemy of reproducing disciples is our desire to consume. More times than not, we don’t want to be released for ministry. We’d rather someone else provide what we need and just consume it. And it’d be nice to have some hot coffee waiting there too. It’s a love-hate relationship, and it’s killing any chance of our helping someone else experience what we’ve experienced. It’s killing our hope of becoming disciples who make disciples. – pgs. 110-111

Paul labeled Tabitha a disciple. Here are the marks of her discipleship: "In Joppa there was a disciple named Tabitha. … she was always doing good and helping the poor" (Acts 9:36). The angel who came to Cornelius, the first Gentile convert reported in Scripture, claimed that the very reason he was there was because God not only heard his prayers, but remembered his service to the poor: "Cornelius answered: "Three days ago I was in my house praying at this hour, at three in the afternoon. Suddenly, a man in shining clothes stood before me and said, ‘Cornelius, God has heard your prayer and remembered your gifts to the poor'’’ (Acts 10:30-31). The apostles, pioneers of the New Testament church, knew that if they did anything of value, they should continue to serve the poor: "James, Cephas and John, those esteemed as pillars, gave me and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship when they recognized the grace given to me. They agreed that we should go to the Gentiles, and they to the circumcised. All they asked was that we should continue to remember the poor, the very thing I had been eager to do all along" (Galatians 2:9-10). – pg. 112 

Believing is not just a matter of knowing. "Believing is also a matter of doing. Believing is trusting that Jesus’ way of living is the right way, and trusting it enough that one is willing to live that way – and die that way." … Bible study, surrender, the Holy Spirit, giving back – no one would disagree with these marks of a disciple – but most people never transfer these practices from the church campus to an actual life. According to our role model, Jesus, surrender meant death in every possibly way: materially, relationally, and physically. Surrender until there was nothing left but redemption for a broken world. The Holy Spirit is a blazing fire, charring every remnant of selfishness and pride left in our souls, an unquenchable fire that cannot be ignored or denied. Giving back means giving all; any inferior definition is pure deception. Our money, our resources, our gifts, our time, our dreams, our selfish ambitions, our comfort – these we give back in their entirety. Anything less is not discipleship at all. It is simply a clever substitution by a crafty enemy who has figured out how to use our own weaknesses against us, rocking us to complacent sleep with a consumer version of the gospel and knowing all the while he is making goats out of sheep. – pg. 113 

Following Christ should change our lives. We should not be the same. Discipleship should be transforming. Yet when we think about our spiritual development, it’s easier to see a change in our practices than in our passions. We continue to add things and replace things, yet our hearts remain the same. We seem to think discipleship is an agreement to knowledge instead of a commitment to a gospel that makes all things new.… Most of us change over the years. Yet few can look back and identify supernatural God-level transformation and link it to a clear and concise discipleship process. When we add serving the least into the mix of our passion for God’s Word, worship, and community, we take something already great and make it better. – pg. 114 

“Well, how did I get here?" Something happens when you serve. Something you cannot control. You start with all sorts of obstacles, fear, incompetence, and even a desire to avoid the hopelessness that occurs when you realize that you do not have the power within you to fix people. Something changes and you stop seeing people and you see a person. Maybe even for a fleeting second you see a person through God’s eyes. And you see their heart and they see yours. And you see them see your heart and that is when you get it. Serving was never about them. Serving is about getting gripped in the heart by God. And he touches you heart through the ones you serve. I am not who I was. And it has nothing to do with anything I did. It is the heart connection to individuals as you serve with no agenda other than telling them, "I see you, you are a person and I accept you for who you are in this moment." – pgs. 115-116

We all know how to increase our knowledge. We’ve grown up in a culture that values learning. But when we fail to engage the Spirit and live out what we’re learning, we will fail to be transformed. We must come to a new understanding of what it means to be a Christ follower in the Spirit and new willingness to be on mission together. Transformation is our goal, not serving for the sake of checking the box of service. "Transformation is facilitated by the godly influence of people who understand and integrate their faith and are willing to get involved in the lives of other people.” – pg. 116

Chapter 7: Embracing the Tension

Whenever there is something powerful on the horizon, something truly of God, we can pretty much expect it to come with or create some tension. It may not even be in us, but it will exist in someone else. – pg. 121

A congregation that is being led by the Spirit will sometimes experience as much change from interruption, disruption, and surprise as though planning and strategizing. The problem is that we rarely focus our attention on the right thing. Tension always accompanies an opportunity, a challenge, or a thing to consider. When we place our focus on eliminating the tension, our focus becomes the tension itself instead of the thing we should be considering. This reveals our nature to eliminate the thing causing the tension instead of dealing with much-needed change. – pgs. 123-124

Sometimes it's better to help someone see their tension than it is to help them eliminate their tension ... "the actual growth and development of the church (in Acts) under the leading of the Spirit was often introduced as a result of conflict, disruption, interruption, and surprise." We are the church. It makes sense that our personal growth and development would come by the same means. Tension is not a sign of God's absence. In fact, it's the opposite. Tension is most likely the evidence of his presence. Only when we recognize his presence do we grow in his presence. – pg. 125

(1) The wrong kind of tension occurs when we protect what we do. The right kind of tension occurs when we proclaim what God does. 

(2) The wrong kind of tension comes when we make it about us and our kingdom. The right kind of tension comes when we make it about God and his kingdom. 

(3) The wrong kind of tension comes from using Scripture to defend our lives. The right kind of tension comes from letting Scripture define our lives.

It's risky to be different in the church. The life of a disciple comes at a cost. A life on mission comes with being misunderstood. ... We must always guard the line between doing what we do to please ourselves, to please others, or to please Christ. Peter reminds us that, "If you are insulted because of the name of Christ, you are blessed, for the Spirit of glory and of God rests on you" (1 Peter 4:14). When it's the right kind of tension, from the right motivation, we can be sure it's a tension worth living in. – pgs. 126-127

(Jeff Vanderstelt) " … the Spirit changes the way we view tension. We can take pleasure in tension when it comes from 'wanting to want to do something good.' One of the reasons we need to do it in community. … we're in it together, we can remind each other what is right. We're there for each other in our moment of need, doubt, and struggle. And we find our joy in those relationships. We don't lead from the safety of the fringe. We take up residence in the fray where change is happening, where change is necessary. There we find ourselves in a tug-of-war between what was, what is, and what could be. We are faced with the reality that we are the catalyst in the moment. A tension ensues between ambitions and fears. We are tempted to bail on our goals but discover that under pressure our vision becomes remarkably crystallized. A hundred voices attempt to sway us. And we find we must lean into God with a faith deeper than we have ever known. Change happens in the very place where many leaders flinch, fear, and fail. The tension we resist is actually by design. It tests us, it tries us, it conforms us to His image. The tension is necessary. The tension makes us strong. The tension is good." – pgs. 127-128

Next post: City Notes 24 | Barefoot Church Part 3 of 3

– Sully

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