The Church: The Broken Body (Part 1)

Now, if this were a proper paper written for any class. I'd read up and research the theology, history and cultural variants of the word "The Church". As it is, it's 10:40 p.m. and I frankly don't have the time. Maybe at some point in my life I'll have the opportunity or privilege to research and present an official, justified, evidence-based argument for something (I have no doubts I'll have some case to make, in fact I know I'll probably have trouble determining which case I'd want to make out of all the possibilities that would inevitably come to mind. Making a case or choosing an argument has never been difficult for me.)

What I do know about The Church in the New Testament is that it is referred to as a body (1 Corinthians 12), specifically the Bride of Christ (Ephesians 5, 2 Corinthians and numerous places in Revelation). I want to quote here 1 Corinthians 12:14-26:

For the body does not consist of one member but of many. If the foot should say, "Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body," that would not make it any less a part of the body. And if the ear should say, "Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body," that would not make it any less a part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would be the sense of hearing? If the whole body were an ear, where would be the sense of smell? But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. If all were a single member, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, yet one body.

The eye cannot say to the hand, "I have no need of you," nor again the head to the feet, "I have no need of you." On the contrary, the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and on those parts of the body that we think less honorable we bestow the greater honor, and our unpresentable parts are treated with greater modesty, which our more presentable parts do not require. But God has so composed the body, giving greater honor to the part that lacked it, that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together.

The Church has done a bad job of observing the wisdom in this text and it will, probably, continue to do a bad job of it...for not only is it in our sinful nature—to resent each other, to hold grudges for wrongdoing, for not wanting to forgive, for not wanting to compromise one's pride—but also because it is legitimately very difficult to work together and validate someone else's beliefs which may be near contradictory to your own. In my youthful, general glance across the scene of churches, there are innumerable churches, denominations, organizations and agencies that are all advancing The Kingdom in some manner or another (o this I'm sure), but are split and divided and hold and preach animosity towards each other —whether it be through the refusal to work with others or actual explicit sermons. Many if not most denominations will actually say that salvation can only be attained through their cultural, traditional and exclusive perspective of the gospel and they will claim the exclusive favor of God. To be sure, it's hard to be united with each other when TRUTH is on the line but each denomination has gifts. One may be very good at service, another may be very good at theology, another may be very good at healthcare...but they are divided. Hand refuses to acknowledge the eyes and feet will act as if they are cut off from the ears. The body is broken. The bride of Christ is a hypochondriac and is beset with mental illness and an overreactive, self-harming immune system. Lord have mercy on The Church for she knows not who she is, she does not acknowledge her own beauty or the value in each part--let alone her whole.

Sorry, I'm finding it hard to focus. Again, if this were a paper I'd just continue to freewrite with the knowledge that I'd edit it out and separate it for something else later ...maybe. Again, I don't have that luxury right now.

Maybe this will be a series of posts on this subject since I'm part of the postmodern generation and I like "conversations" as opposed to declarations. Or maybe I'm also just living out my relational tendencies by wanting this to be a conversation—since I learn better using the socratic method.

I recently finished A Theology as Big as the City by Ray Bakke. It was good and harmoniously relevant to where I am. I should devote a separate post to discussing it exclusively. I liked the book because it tied together the need for a holistic/complete conception, acknowledgement and embodiment of what the Gospel, of what the Good News, looks like.

Before Bakke's book, five books before actually, I read Compassion, Justice and the Christian Life: Rethinking Ministry to the Poor by Robert Lupton where he describes an encounter he had at a classroom at a Christian University. He asked the students what the "number-one mandate for followers of Christ?" and the immediate response was "Evangelize!". Lupton pushed back a little and challenged them if that was really Jesus' greatest concern. Someone said it was to make disciples. Finally someone says, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind and soul and strength and you shall love your neighbor as yourself...On this hangs all the law and the prophets."

Lupton then challenged the students and asked them, if Christ identified these as most important for his followers--and for everyone, why did Christian universities not have classes like "Neighboring 101". A student counter-challenged Lupton and asked him if he believed in a literal heaven and literal hell with the argument that if we "believe that either eternal bliss or eternal damnation awaits every person after death, then the most loving act is to present the truth of the gospel to as many people as possible and thus save them from everlasting destruction." In response to this very common argument, I've heard it said before as well...that "the problem, of course, is that it leads towards viewing others as souls instead of people. And we opt for rescuing souls over loving neighbors, compassionate acts can soon degenerate into evangelism techniques; pressing human needs depreciate in importance, and the spirit becomes the only thing worth caring for. Thus, the powerful leaven of unconditional, sacrificial love is diminished in society and the wounded are left beside the road. When we skip over the Great Commandment on the way to fulfilling the Great Commission, we do great harm to the authenticity of the faith."

In John Perkins's With Justice For All indeed touches upon the gap between the preaching of the gospel and the immediate, "now" ramifications of the gospel. (I'm in no way summarizing anything John says but you'll just have to trust me, since the book is ...somewhere in my room, that I'm summarizing the subtle implicit messages he makes) The gospel is not only good news in the sense that it frees us from eternal separation from God, it also frees us to have a relationship with God now and it frees us to love our neighbors right now. Love that is tangible and love that is action. Not just good ideas, but real physical changes to our personal lives and our physical environmental and systemic conditions.

So yeah, back to Bakke. His chapter 18 is titled When Truth & Love Collide and he begins the chapter by looking at Barnabus and Paul's disagreement over what to do with Mark (the guy who's attributed with the Gospel of Mark) when, on his first mission trip as he accompanies Barnabus and Paul he abandons them due to the difficulty. Paul is harsh, however Barnabus treats Mark with grace and gives him a second chance. He uses this as a small launching point to discuss the division of truth and love in churches that occurred first in North Africa and then, as the church grew and expanded, the rest of the world. Bakke writes.

For more than three decades I've watched as today's version of "love" and "truth" churches compete for members and influence. It is very sad, but I understand that it happens. I have made the vow to never disparage any church or its leadership in public, be it liberal or conservative. For whether true or not, Satan has a nasty habit of using such talks to further divide Christ's already fractured body and discredit the gospel in our city of mostly unchurched folks. (page 150)

The division, and the hypocrisy exposed by this division is the reason why many of my peers and individuals from my generation are leaving both traditional forms of church and The Church, en mass (as discussed in the book UnChristian).

Bakke's refusal to publicly attack a fellow Christian/church...is both heartening (it's a message, an idea and an element of character rarely observed these days) and...controversial! One immediately jumps to "But then, where is the line?? Where does Truth stop and begin?". Personally it's an exercise I'm going to try and work at since it's damn near impossible for me, it'll be good and I know that it will challenge me to grow in my conception of grace, love...and perhaps even my understanding of what "truth" is (...can truth be true, without love?).

All of this is just a prelude to what I would like to discuss in a future post (part 2) regarding my attendance of four difference conferences: Intervarsity's Urbana Conference of 2009, Jesus Radicals conference of August 2011, Christian Community Development Association National Conference Indianapolis 2011, and the Newbigin panels on Church Mission in San Francisco where N.T. Wright spoke in November. Before I write the next post and explain how this all ties into my experiences at these conferences/lectures, I'd like to ask my reader some questions:

1) Which is more important? Truth and integrity of the gospel...or love, sacrificial agape love? Are they mutually exclusive? Or are they one and the same?

2) Where have you seen division between truth and love in your Christian life, where do you see it in The [royal] Church?

3) How are you apart of the problem? How do you get in the way of God's mysterious truth and overbearing love in your treatment of others both self-proclaimed Christians (yes, perhaps even Mormons!) and non-Christians? How can you be more loving? How can you let God's truth penetrate your life more?

4) How can you stand in the gap between divisions between churches? How can God use you to be the blood and nerve systems of the body to hold things together? What kind of attitude is necessary to adopt in the simultaneous confessional acknowledgement of truth and embodiment of a self-sacrificing, servant-Master like love?

in grace&peace,

in solidarity and unity,

Living out that Old Newness (Intentional Communities Part 2)

Almost two years ago I wrote a blog post about Intentional Communities. I briefly went over the church of Acts and then launched into a narration of a conversation I had with a professor at Willamette University who had spent some time living in various secular Intentional Communities as part of her research for her doctorate.

One year after having that conversation, I moved into an Intentional Community myself. Our unofficial name is "The Cypress House" and we are located in East Palo Alto, California. You, my reader, can't fathom the joy I have experienced from living here. I have so much to discuss, let me start...somehow...

The Preparation

Things began five years ago with reading the Irresistible Revolution by Shane Claiborne. Before reading the book, I had arrived at certain convictions (pacifism, living a life devoted wholly to God, care for the poor, a profound awareness of problems in The Church) but I was largely ignorant of a synthesis. Shane's words provided a model--a model for caring for the poor, for living life for God in community, for a constructive solution to problems in the Church. Instead of just criticizing Christians and The Church, Shane seemed to acknowledge the cognitive dissonance and hypocrisy without devolving into pure negativity. Instead the book told of how he and his community were trying to embody something old, in a (sort of?) new way.

As I went through college and came across peers who were also struggling to reconcile their faith in the midst of The Church's war on the World (I'm bolding and italicizing this, because I need to write exclusively on this topic) ...I came across more and more folks who had also read the book and felt it resounded with their struggle and also gave them hope.

During those four years I gained more exposure to different forms of church and Christianity.

I became more familiar (...than I was before) with the history of the Christianity.

My faith and relationship with God deepened in mystery and wonder.

I became friends with, and learned from, certain older, more beautiful, wiser individuals who had decided that their lives would revolve around caring for "the least of these".

Lastly, during those four years I clarified for myself my political ideas--a refining process which also left me at the feet of Jesus.

All this to say that I became wholly convicted that I was called to live in an Intentional Community in some manner or form, to the best of my ability, for the rest of my life.

Life at Cypress House

One of the safest things one can say about Intentional Communities (that aren't Catholic--ie Monasteries or Nunneries) is that they are all unique. Most obviously this is because they are comprised of unique individuals, and every mixture of people will invariably fall into slightly different rhythms of living and agreements with one another.

For the moment the Cypress House consists of four men and two women living under one roof. We have a structured way of live that has been dictated by our covenant...which is a mutually constructed and agreed upon contract that we observe and are governed by. I would like to write another time about what our covenant explicitly says and how it is arranged but for now I'm just going to be real brief.

We have set times of prayer together. We have set times for meals together. We take turns with chores and cleaning. We share expenses. We spend time with our neighbors and are involved in the community.

We have yet to parse and explicitly write about our values and our theology, but we all feel called by God to live together in this house.

My reasons for living here are the following--

• To live a life of constant worship and prayer. I can't do this on my own, at least not right now. I need to be in community with people who can hold me accountable, who can inspire me through their own devotion, who can encourage me and support me when I slack off or fail.

• To try and live sustainably. Again, it's so much easier to do this in community than by myself, and there's more motivation to do so (huge difference between 6 people living sustainably than 1 person doing so).

• To love my neighbor and take care of those around me. Living in community has made me more sensitive to my character flaws and shortcomings. It's made me aware of my pride and has prompted me to be more sensitive. It's opened my eyes to the necessity of grace. It's easier to reach out and serve the "least of these" when there is a community involved in the process.

• The conversations. The simple day-to-day stuff. Everyone in this house...is quite introverted (I'm...not as much), but because we have become friends with each other we are able to share in the ways God moves in each of our lives. We are able to have regular conversations on deep and profound subjects. Our individual joys becomes the community's joys and vice versa. I can tell you off the bat how each person in the house has grown in the past few months. The Rabbi's Gift, is a great little story that captures the spirit of what I'm trying to say...and sometimes I feel like I'm living out that story in a small but joyfully wondrous way.

Resources for the Curious

I've found that Irresistible Revolution doesn't seem to resonate with the older crowd and I believe it's Shane's attitude and, at times, his youthfulness. Lots of idealism, but the book consists of stories and at that one has to at least give him credit. If you think you have the ability to look past a person's misgivings and are willing to find the hidden treasure, I'd recommend starting here. Follow me to Freedom, is a book that you must buy and read in conjunction with Irresistible. The book is a recording of conversations between Shane and John Perkins (who is an older, wiser hero of our time). It's a great balance to Irresistible but at the same time it builds on it in a way. For older readers, you may appreciate Irresistible more with the added lens of Follow and for the younger generation, Follow is the book that'll bring you more down to earth and you'll be left off less naive and more understanding.

New Friars: The Emerging Movement Serving the Poor, chronicles Intentional Community's since the book of Acts, or at least it does a great beginning step. It covers how the Dominicans, the Franciscans and the Jesuits all started out (and...some still are) as living intentionally in communities of believers. It discusses the roots of the Moravian church and Nestorians as well as St. Patrick and the Celts. All the while discussing how families and people and organizations are living lives centered on serving God and neighbor in today's time, around the world.

Punk Monk, is an inspiring book. It discusses modern day communities that revolve around prayer...and it chronicles some of the amazing things that have happened when these communities are founded. I really liked this book and it challenged me to dig deeper into prayer.

The New Conspirators. Every Christian should read this book. It's an excellent summary of the positive directions that the church is going (in fact, the ONLY directions in which they are growing). It's a book that honestly discusses the problems The Church but gives hope by pointing to individual churches that are growing and explains why they are. These directions are churches that are: monastic, mosaic, missional, and emergent. The author is knowledgable it's evident that he speaks with some wisdom of experience (a little bit which Shane lacks in Irresistible).

Friendship at the Margins. Written by two authors who (I believe) are a part of Word Made Flesh organization. Using scripture, stories from the poorest communities in the world and gracefully sharp insight and words the authors discuss the heartbreaking challenges of serving the poor. The sharp contrast between Western materialism and plenty, and the poor in India or Bangladesh who are stuck in a cycle of sex slavery or lack of (...everything...). It's a well written book. It's a terribly difficult book to read. The truth convicts and wrenches at the soul...but a necessary truth. Sometimes I wonder if when I die, God will put me next to the poorest of the poor and ask me how I helped them (you know, because that's what He said would happen in Matthew 25). When one thinks of missionary and mission work, they don't think of what this brother Christopher and sister Christine describe...but I think it's exactly, more or less, what we're called to do.

Loaves and Fishes. Have you heard of the Catholic Worker? If you are living in a major American city, there is probably a Catholic Worker communities somewhere around there. Catholic Worker communities are intentional communities that have existed across America since the 30s. They serve the poor, the hungry, the homeless, the immigrants. They were active in anti-Vietnam movements, anti-war movements and are of the opinion that we'd solve a lot of our problems if we could spend the same amount of resources that we do on War, on the impoverished communities at home and abroad. Not to mention, we'd be following Christ's example to take care of the least of these. Not everyone is Catholic in these communities and not everyone is Christian, however they've been publishing newspapers since the 30s and serving the "least of these" for 80 years. Loaves and Fishes tells of some of the beginning history (and more) and explores some of the motives and characters involved in it's founding...specifically Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin.

There are more books but I'll stop here.

Other resources I'd recommend.

Of Gods and Men

A movie about a group of french Trappist monks in Algeria during the civil war there. The monks have faithfully served their community (which is a muslim village in the countryside) for decades and decades by providing free medical care. When the civil war breaks out they must choose to leave for France or stay and risk death.

Brother Sun, Sister Moon

This movie actually probably planted the seed for me living in an intentional community when I was but a kid, which is when I first saw it. The movie is about St. Francis' life. It's got amazing music. It's very artistic and what dialogue there is, it succinctly captures the motives and reasons for simple devotion to God and the necessity to mirror God's care for those who are unable to support and care for themselves.

Podcast interview with Carolyn Griffeth and Teka Childress

Carolyn and Teka are apart of two Catholic Worker communities in northern St. Louis and they describe the houses, their lives and some of the reasons for their living the lives that they do (fun fact, I actually met Carolyn this August!)

Two part podcast with Murphy Davis and Ed Loring

Murphy and Edi are founding partners of the Open Door Community and for 30 years they have lived and served the homeless poor, former prisoners all while speaking out against injustice.

Additional thoughts

I have a lot to say on this topic, but I need to break it up into manageable chunks for people. One of the reasons I'm living in an intentional community is that I'm trying to live out the gospel. I'm trying to live out the good news. I don't feel that can preach the gospel if I'm not living it out, if I'm not embodying it, if I'm not letting it penetrate every aspect of my life (and believe me, there are plenty parts of my life I want all to myself and no one else, thank you very much!). I want to "Preach the gospel always, and if necessary use words." (as Francesco of Assisi said)...here is a quote I'd like to finish with. It's by Dr. Cornel West from a podcast interview I just transcripted.

How do you create examples? People would rather see sermons than hear sermons. Consecrated lives, committed lives and then those lives coalescing with one another in order to create a massive example. And I think we just, we just don’t have that presence, that our churches are just too spiritually anemic and too cowardly, too well-adjusted to injustice, too well-adapted to indifference towards people who are suffering and youth. And of course that’s part of the prosperity gospel, that’s part of the market spirituality, that’s part of the Chamber of Commerce religion that has been hegemonic in America for so long.

There's a lot wrong in the world. There's a lot wrong with The Church. But I can't let the failures of churches, and my own shortcomings (one of which is my easy tendency for harsh criticism of what is wrong) prevent me from living out the Victory that has been secured for me. While things are a mess now I know that they won't be in end, and that hope and promise of a New Heaven on/and New Earth allows me to love and serve with great joy and peace of mind.