Do you ever get tired of church meetings? Our church leadership team meets once a month and those meetings typically last an agonizing three hours: discussing all sorts of things that, at the moment, seem important to the efficient operation and ministry of the church. Last week’s focus was primarily aimed at things related to the Sunday morning gathering: the children’s sermon, structure of the worship service, an upcoming “40 Days” campaign, janitorial responsibilities, and various special emphases in the morning worship over the next six weeks or so. In other words, we have meetings to talk about other meetings!
I was talking to one of our leaders afterward who pointed out how much time, effort, and money goes into maintaining our once-a-week Sunday gatherings. Then I ran across Mike Bishop’s statement this evening and thought others might like to read it:
One of Church Growth’s primary tools is to coax people into a special place once a week where God is the focus of the entire event (traditionally, a service on Sunday morning). The idea is that if people will think about God for a few hours on Sunday, maybe they’ll also consider him the other 166 hours during the week. All manner of resources are expended to make those few precious hours as efficient and relevant as possible. Countless programs are concocted to try and connect people with God at other times. The amount of blood, sweat, prayer, and tears expended in this paradigm is extraordinary.
What if there’s a nagging sense that it’s just not worth the effort? Is there another option or do we have to continue pouring resources into weekly meetings? Bishop’s article on Subversive Community puts forward an alternative approach:
The Subversive Community’s mission is not to bring the kingdom of God from without; it is to release the kingdom of God from within. Subversives do not “reach outside people and encourage them to come in.” Subversives live and do their work ‘undercover’ where the world lives and breathes. Their goal is not escapism (trying to build a Christian utopia), but to show people how they can lay hold of life as God intended, in his Kingdom.
The Subversive Community understands that the world and its ways are false. It is constantly interacting with people at work, in the grocery store, or at home who are all in the prison of this world’s system. These prisoners are quite happy in their assumed reality (especially the ones who have amassed quite a kingdom of wealth). But some secretly ask the question, “Is this really all there is to life?” The Subversive Community’s answer is not merely to inform them about the Kingdom, but to invite them to become participants in a whole new reality. The training program will be unique and cannot be rushed or broken down into a few ‘principles’ that are easy to swallow. Remember, the kingdom of God deals with every aspect of our lives. This training might just take a lifetime.
The chief aim of the Subversive Community is to train other subversives, which is really what the Great Commission was all about. So what are our tools? Where do we begin in this training? How do we train others?
Drawing from Eugene Peterson’s work, The Contemplative Pastor
Jesus often used the party or feast to represent the kingdom of God. His first miracle was performed at a wedding reception, he feasted with his brand new followers Levi and Zacchaeus, and his most famous parable ended with a huge party for a prodigal son. Often, Christians think true spirituality looks more like fasting than it does feasting. But Jesus responds, “Do wedding guests fast while celebrating with the groom?†(Luke 5:34) The Subversive Community knows how to party.
Our community has organized a few parties, which we call Kingdom Feasts. We invite friends, family, co-workers, people from other churches, and anyone else who wants to come. The last one was held at the beach where we cooked a ton of burgers and played volleyball in perfect South Florida weather. Another time we fried up a bunch of shrimp and worshipped into the night. But each time, our focus as participants is to demonstrate to ourselves and our guests that the kingdom of God is here.
The Subversive Community would never be caught trying to coax the world into a church building. It believes the church (which is you and me) exists primarily out in the world just being itself. But we are not passive observers of a world going to hell. We are here to overthrow the world’s assumptions about life and our hope for the future.
This sounds so reasonable, so New Testament, so powerful! As I think about the typical leadership meeting, it seems “much ado about nothing” in comparison to the possible impact of the subversive approach.
* * * * * * * * * * *
Related articles on this blog:
What happens when you organize ministry?
In my home group we’ve been talking about the Jesus’ notion of “the kingdom of God.” It played a massive role both in His teachings and in the teachings of the original Apostles. As Jesus portrays it in the parables, the kingdom of God is a challenging notion that comes up a lot more when Jesus talks than when we talk.
I tend to think of evangelism as something as an activity that I either do for me (duty, privilege, whatever) or others (love for them, their destiny, etc.) I am trying to think of evangelism in terms of living in the Kingdom of God now. I don’t want the Kingdom of God to be where I go for a respite between opening and closing prayers or when I am talking to a friend about God; I want it to be where I live all the time!
Why not focus on the Kingdom of God– Jesus did!