Nice.

The cross … a barrier to “coming.” But, according to Jesus, necessary for being his follower, his apprentice.

Hmmmmmmmm … Can I be honest here for a moment without trying to sound like I have all the answers? Can I tell you something that comes from my own “inability to bullshit anymore?”

Please don’t tell me that there’s nothing wrong with the current model of “church growth.” Please. Let’s just be honest for a moment, put down our Christian niceties, and the pursuit of eternal harmony.

Let’s bust out a can of “Get Real” for a moment.

The model does not work.

It does a lot of stuff well. But making disciples is not its forte’.

I love my baby boomer friends … but this is primarily their model. McLaren says it best:

“I’m not surprised that mega churches developed in late modernity. In a culture that believed secular science and secular government could solve most of our problems, a culture that assumed religion in general and the church in particular were declining industries, it made sense that Christians would find comfort and confidence in large herds.

“See? We’re significant! We’re big and strong!” our large numbers said to an unbelieving culture that tried to dismiss us.”

Can I just want to say that I’m quite content with being dismissed as being insignificant.

Show me one metaphor for the kingdom of the Heavens where Jesus used our significance, our size, or our legitimacy as the starting point for comparison to what life is like with him in the kingdom that he was inaugurating.

We are the mustard seed. Insignificant and subversive.

Grown - really - without much help from any of us. Growing while we’re not even paying attention (If you believe Jesus. and stuff) But grows nonetheless “so that the birds of the air come and build nests in its branches.”

The legacy of Jesus is not more schools, books, seminars, strategies, philosophies or rhetoric … his legacy is a Way lived in community.

Disagree if you want. But show me where I’ve missed it. Please. And if I have not missed it …then what in the world are we doing pursuing something else?

Also … Here are a couple of things to consider as we try evangelizing and discipling the first post-Christian culture in the West since Constantine made us all whores to the State.

Fist, Modernity was not real nice to people of the Way. If Postmodernism “scares” you … I encourage you to look at Christianity’s fascination with empirical evidence and materialism and its marriage to a Cartesiam paradigm and remain calm. We’ve had a nice little ride with hitching our wagon the progress of the nation-stat ;… butI hate to be the buzz-kill here, but we were never meant to be significant. At least not as the world undertands “significance.”

Secondly, it has been my experience that most thinking people see right through our religiosity and they are just not all that impressed with our weekly shows and unflinching committment of capital to keeping the machine going.

They feel used.

And guess what? In our current model … we do use them. They are a means to some greater end … more people. The prevailing message we give them is that God really cares about them - so that they can go out and get those “other people” about whom he really cares (attache out of context scripture about ‘being a warrior’ or ‘counting the cost’ here).

Look … call it postmodernism, post-evangelicalism, emerging church … whatever.

But there is an entire generation simmering under the surface of the perpetual consumers that sees right through our proposal of “inoffensive” religion and says … “What’s the point?”

They don’t go to church and they don’t care about the god we package for them.

Most thinking people actually get the gist of our Story. God created, he called Israel, parted some seas and then sent Jesus to die on the cross and give us life.

They get that.

They just wonder we don’t believe it.

I mean … really believe it to the point that our finances, our leisure time, our relationships are built around it.

They read the same statistics that we all do. They just don’t gloss over them as quickly as we do. What stats? Well, how about the fact that the divorce rate in the church is the same as outside the church. How about the fact we are just as heavily indebted as the “world.” Not convinced that there is something wrong with our model (and not the transforming power of Jesus)yet? How about the fact that we download the same amount of porn as the “world.”

Uh-huh.

We do all of this.

Fact.

And it shows.

The model doesn’t work. We know this, right? I mean …. we’re talking as friends here. We can say this. When we get untethered from the system long enough, we can admit that the model is a model whose survival is based on its own survival … It feeds on itself. Is that kingdom?

New models intent on being subversive and truly for the benefit of others do not need an apologetic.

These models tend to speak for themselves.

We need “models” that are energized to bless the inbreaking of the kingdom outside our meeting halls. Where life happens. Without regard to significance or size.

As churchy as it sounds: Taking the church to people and not people to church.

As impractical as it sounds: Participating in an organic expansion of the kingdom without growing church meetings as our primary focus.

And look … I don’t have all the answers. Don’t even claim to. But I’m in the game … not trying to be a critic, but how can we be honest about what we’re doing if we can’t acknowledge the 5 ton elephant in the room?

This whole “thing” we’re doing is not to be cool, postmodern edgy, or emerging. It’s because the model we’ve inherited (as it currently is handed to us) needs to be tweaked. I’d say “blown up” but hey, man … I don’t want to be all revolutionary. and stuff.