You will observe that I am not merely exhorting you “to go to church.” “Going to church” is in any case good. But what I am exhorting you to do is go to your own church—to give your presence and active religious participation to every stated meeting for worship of the institution as an institution. Thus you will do your part to give to the institution an organic religious life, and you will draw out from the organic religious life of the institution a support and inspiration for your own personal religious life which you can get nowhere else, and which you can cannot afford to miss—if, that is, you have a care to your religious quickening and growth. To be an active member of a living religious body is the condition of healthy religious functioning.

~ B. B. Warfield, The Religious Life of Theological Students

The American landscape is dotted with churchless Christianity. Church has been reduced to a weekly event, even a religious institution. Instead of being the church, we have fallen into merely doing church, and far too often our doing is disconnected from being. Church has devolved from Gospel-centered community into man-centered institutions or events that look more like: shopping malls, fortresses, and cemeteries. These aberrations contribute to the confusion regarding “church” in America. In order to better understand Gospel community, it is important that we first understand its abberations.

Shopping Mall Churches

Shopping mall churches dress up the gospel in cultural clothing, dress down the message of Jesus, and try to lure consumers in with their spiritual package—a Sunday “experience.” Every time I drive to Dallas, Texas I pass a church that boldly advertises their Sunday package at the low price of thirty minutes. Their banner reads: “30 Minute Worship.  This innovative service is for anybody who is tired of the way traditional church has been done, has limited time, or has to work Sundays. The high energy, focused package will creatively engage you to personally connect with God.”

How creative and personally connected can you get to God in thirty minutes? We’ve all had a conversation with the person who watches the clock closely. They constantly check their phone during the conversation. Towards the end of the meeting they flinch, shake, or tap some part of their body repeatedly. You feel unwanted, not “personally connected.” Consumer church cuts the relationship with God and one another right out of Christianity replacing it with a spiritual product. It can’t even get its one-third of the gospel right, never mind the other two-thirds, which include community and mission!

Fortress Churches

Fortress churches also distort the gospel. They build their doctrinal towers nice and high, hide behind the walls that separate them from the city, and launch grenades of truth into “the culture”, hoping to scare a few pagans into the safety of their walls. Sometimes the walls these churches erect aren’t doctrinal but moral. They insist on certain level of perceptible morality before allowing the outsiders inside the church. One of my favorite examples of the fortress mentality comes from the church sign down the street from my house. Marking each season with a “gospel message”, they greet the city in the Spring by posting: “Spring is God’s greeting card.” Fine enough. But in Texas, Spring is quickly followed by a long, hot summer, to which they respond: “You think it’s hot out there?” Comforting. Fortress churches cut grace right out of the gospel by insisting we get our morality or doctrine straight before joining the church or we will end up in hell.

Cemetery Churches

Then there are the cemetery churches. The ones that have died. Well, they are alive but they aren’t. It’s difficult to find a pulse. A wandering soul walks into the Sunday service of cemetery church only to be confronted with lifeless, joyless Christianity, a kind of dried up religious community that simply goes through the motions. Church growth isn’t even on the radar. Mission has been reduced to church survival. It’s hard to believe in the Jesus who promised “life abundantly” when you encounter a church that has more in common with zombies than with disciples of Jesus. The fortress church cuts the heart right out of Christianity and replaces it with dead, lifeless religion.

Shopping mall, fortress, and cemetery churches are consumerist, doctrinaire, lifeless institutions that lack Jesus-centered missional community. Why this gross distortion of the church? There are far too many reasons to discuss here, but a fundamental reason is that a one-third Gospel characterizes Christianity in America. This one-third gospel is hardly the Gospel of Christ at all. It focuses on Jesus’ death and resurrection as a product to be sold, a doctrine to be believed, or a religion to be practiced. This one-third gospel is not only incomplete but also contaminated, polluted with the garbage of consumerism, individualism, and religion. Before we can press into the other “two-thirds” of the gospel, we need to get the “one-third” right.

*This is an excerpt from my forthcoming booklet: Gospel-centered Missional Community.

It is impossible to avoid homelessness in Austin, where it is estimated that on any given night up to 6,000 people sleep without a home. In January, at Austin City Life, we talked about renewing our beloved city by moving people from a place of mercy to a place of justice, from temporary hand-outs to permanent transformation. As one City Group discussed the call of the gospel to advocate for justice, they began to ask questions about what it would look like to do this with Austin’s homeless. In a matter of months, a vibrant, viral gospel ministry has begun among Austin’s homeless, moving them from mercy to justice. Here are some stories of transformation among our homeless friends (by Nate Schlueter, a mission leader in one of our City Groups).

In a matter of months, a vibrant, viral gospel ministry has begun among Austin’s homeless, moving them from mercy to justice.

Reflecting Christ in Relationship with the Homeless

We decided that to effectively engage the homeless we would not be able to judge our success based on tangible help. There are plenty of excellent organizations in our city that can feed or clothe homeless people with way more resources than a small group like ours could ever expect to have. Instead, success in our mission is based only on two things: 1) What kind of friends we are to the homeless and 2) How well we reflect Christ’s love to them. Simply said our mission is: To Reflect Christ through genuine relationships with homeless people. We treat them with the same love, dignity, and respect that we would our closest friends. As we began to build these relationships, it became very clear to us that our new friends were in fact very talented and interested in working, especially in the idea of micro-enterprise.

Micro-enterprise Among the Homeless

We worked with them to discover their skills and develop a plan for them to create art, crafts, and contemporary home furnishings to sell at Austin’s weekly art shows. We create all of the items from recycled or renewed material. Our slogan is RENEW: Recycle, Restore, Repurpose- this is what we do when making the items and what we fully expect Christ to do in their lives and in ours. The results have been incredible.

We have seen people that were initially scared and skeptical of homeless people loving them, sharing meals with them, opening their homes to them for showers, and sitting in the woods for hours talking to them about Christ and life.

In the first five weeks, through the art shows and part time jobs we facilitated for them, we have been able to build platforms for them to earn over $1600. They are spend it wisely. Many of their lives are beginning to  change dramatically and, maybe even more so, our lives are changing. We have seen people that were initially scared and skeptical of homeless people loving them, sharing meals with them, opening their homes to them for showers, and sitting in the woods for hours talking to them about Christ and life. There are many amazing stories of how God is moving, Here are just a few that I have personally witnessed.

From Bitter Religion to Gospel Dignity

About a month ago I came out to their camp to check up on them and discovered that Dan was the only one there. He seemed like something was on his mind so I asked him what it was. He told me that everyday he wakes up thinking about how his parents got divorced and how angry he still is about it. He told me they got divorced when he was 13, he is now 46. He was raised in a strict Roman Catholic home and does not understand how his parents could break God’s commandments like that. It became apparent that the very religion and legalism that he believed to bind him to God was actually keeping him from forgiving and living in grace. He judges himself with the same standards he judges his parents because he too has broken several commandments. He has woken up every day for 33 years angry about what happened.

We talked, we prayed, we shared life, we cried, and we shared our dreams for over two hours. Dan is now working on operating daily through Christ’s forgiveness and grace instead of through anger. Dan is a very talented craftsman and mechanic and we are currently working with him to get him a job as a mechanics helper or lube technician. We are also helping him open up a savings account so that he can start saving to buy a camper and rent a place to put it at an RV park.

Master Craftsmen Discipling Urban Christians

When we first started hanging out with our friends the subject came up about what I would be doing on that Saturday. I told them that I was going to help some some people from my church replace a very old deck in their backyard that had become unsafe for their children to play on. They immediately said that they wanted to come and to pick them up at 9 that Saturday. I graciously explained that this was volunteer work and nobody had budgeted to pay anyone to help. They looked offended and said they just wanted to help.

It isn’t just a one-way street anymore, people from total opposite ends of society are starting to live life together and everything is changing for all of us.

When we got their they immediately started taking apart the things that we hard started to assemble and began reconstructing and revising our initial plans for the deck. Apparently the deck we were planning on building would not be any safer than the old one and would not be up to code. I watched amused as these homeless craftsmen gently pushed us middle-class urbanites out of the way and built this totally amazing deck for some people they hardly knew. It became apparent that not only did they have amazing skills, but that we were all learning from them. Here were three men with nothing giving there time to people with way more than them. As I watched them give back and minister to us that day, I realized that we were crossing into an area that none of us had ever been before. They truly loved us back and thought of us as their friends and they were just trying to be good friends. It isn’t just a one-way street anymore, people from total opposite ends of society are starting to live life together and everything is changing for all of us.

The High Calling is running my article “What Defines a Great Leader“, reflections on the life and leadership of Saul and David. Here’s an excerpt:

Saul tried to manage and control everyone around him. He relied on bribes to get others to fight Goliath (17:25). Saul discouraged young leaders like David (to not fight Goliath) because he was threatened by their leadership. The problem wasn’t that Saul lacked vision for what David could become; it was that he feared what David could become. He sought to manage, not empower the leaders around him. David, on the other hand, was constantly surrounded by “mighty men.”

We can lead our company, church, and organizations through empowerment. Rather than insist on control, we can relinquish control to let other leaders rise up in faith. Often we are too doubtful about some and too confident about others.