Tag: house church

The 50/50 Gospel – II

In an effort to recenter church methods debate back onto the gospel, I recently proposed that we should be debating the strength of our gospel, not the effectiveness of our methods. There are varieties of methods from organic house church to attractional mega church that have been used by God to advance the gospel. But what kind of gospel?

The 50/50 Gospel

I attempted to answer that question by suggesting that some church methods operate on a 50/50 gospel, an understanding of the good news that relies on 50% of our behavior and 50% God’s grace. This gospel assumes that people are good enough to chose Christ but that they simply need to be reminded how good Christ is. Broken marriages, patterns of sexual sin, deep-seated anger, and financial hardships are primarily the product of our failure to behave like Jesus. Enter the Church. The church can reminds us, exhort us, even train us to be like Jesus, to make good moral decisions, not bad ones. We need the grace of God’s example and a faithful commitment to behave accordingly. This is the 50/50 gospel, and it is anathema.

50/50 Concoctions: Morality, Community, & Mission

The 50/50 gospel relies, not on the power of grace, but on the power of morality. As a result, the Church becomes a half-way house between our moral failures and our moral successes. We rehabilitate our decision-making under the faithful instruction of a faithless institution. But the 50/50 gospel is sometimes mixed differently. Try 50% mission, 50% grace. We need the grace of Jesus example and the goal of Jesus mission. In this concoction, churches serve as a inspiring non-profit, moving us from missional failure to missional success. We soften our social consciences under the weight of a missional institution. And then there is the 50% community, 50% grace combo. We need the grace of God to become “like the early church,” to have real community, to jettison our individualism in order to truly become “the church.”  The gospel becomes a quick-fix to our lack of community.

100 Proof Gospel

Each concoction of the 50/50 gospel is actually quite dangerous. They propose that churches should attract as many people as possible to their moral-laden messages, missional activities, and communal experiences. The goal of the Church is reduced to converting people to a better way of living, not to better God to be believing. What we need is a gospel that is 100 proof grace, the work of Spirit to violate our dulled taste for what it good, true and beautiful and to get us drunk on God. We need more than changed behaviors; we need changed hearts, new affections, from which a life of worship flows. We need churches that are more concerned about pointing us to the multi-faceted splendor of Jesus Christ, than the innovative ways we can be the church through community or mission. What we need is 100% gospel.

Monologue or Dialogue; Homes or Services?

The Q&A below is intended to provide some answers and stir up more insight regarding some burning questions in the current debates on Sunday gatherings, missional communities, and diaological preaching. This Q&A is adapted from an email exchange I had with Mike Edwards, who kindly lent me his permission to do so.

Dialogical vs. Monological Preaching

Mike: Where are the theological/biblical roots for monological preaching?

JonathanThe Bible does not sanction one method of delivering God’s word over others. In fact, it advocates a variety of ways, monologue being just one of them. See the monological examples of Peter and Paul in Acts 2, 4, 17, and so on. Paul’s letters, which were read aloud were monologues, homiletical deliveries. Throughout the epistles we are told to preach, teach, correct, rebuke which strongly connote a direct address, not so much a conversation. However, I am open to and use dialogical approaches in different settings. Paul used dialogue in the synagogues, with individuals (Lydia), and even on Mars Hill.

The key here, I think, is to minister the Word diversely in ways appropriate to context and audience. Monologue has served the Western church well for some time in a post-Enlightenment, post-Gutenberg age. Yet, with the shift of the center of Globally Xty away from the West to the South and the East, and increase in postmodern values of conversation, changes in technology to visual, aural, and vibration experiences, dialogical increasingly makes cultural sense.

Missional Communities vs. Sunday Gatherings

Mike: If you start your church on missional communities, why have a larger gathering? What does that look like for your church?

Jonathan: Similar to my statement above, the Bible doesn’t sanction any one way. We need to have a dynamic ecclesiology that allows for contextualization; there are many biblically faithful ecclesiologies. That is the brilliance of the gospel and the incarnation; its translatability into community and culture. We started City Groups (Missional communities) before we started the weekend gathering/service. That was good for our context and good for our ecclesiology, gospel-centered, community-focused, and missional.

I think a launch/service model can cultivate good community and mission, but is often more difficult to do so. In suburbs it is difficult to even get a gathering to shepherd into CGs/MCs, so the launch model offers a gathering point. Pentecost was a dramatic launch model that spun out house churches. I am glad we did CGs first and service second. It has made a HUGE difference. Gathering doesn’t need to be weekly, but it should happen regularly to maintain the marks of the church and instructions in Heb 3  & 10 of not forsaking the assembling together. Also, somehow these groups would need elder oversight and auhoritative teadching and leadership for church discipline.