Back in the first century, the church of Jesus Christ was born out of the Pentecost reality. It drew together the most diverse and eclectic group of human beings that the Roman Empire (and probably the world) had ever seen.
Transcending the old categories of Jew and Gentile, male and
female, slave and free, and speaking a wide range of mother tongues -
Christianity was a multi-movement. As
these folks came together from diversity into unity, bowing knee to Christ over
Caesar, they threatened the Roman Empire. This partly explains the Roman
response in terms of Christian persecution. Finally Constantine sought to tame
the movement by baptizing himself and his army hijacking the whole thing. Over the following centuries of state-church
collusion, the revolutionary power of the gospel was blunted. And yet new
Spirit movements kept breaking out of the box, century after century.
Among western societies (with centuries of church heritage),
the United States was one of the earliest countries to break the connection of
church and state. Without state
sponsorship, the Spirit was unhindered.
Revivals came one after another.
This freedom yielded a vibrant American church with nimbleness to adapt
to each new people group that arrived on our shores. In the twentieth century, as Christianity
waned in the places with legacy of a state church (Europe, Australia and
Canada), the American church has constantly renewed, innovated and morphed to
reach new people groups and new generations.
Early in my life, Don McGavran at Fuller Seminary took note of this - as
did MLK Jr. McGavran noted that American
churches grew up as socially homogeneous units in a heterogeneous society. MLK noted that "11 am on Sunday is the
most segregated hour of the
week."
This cultural homogeneity in church life is now
long-established in American life. And
while it has contributed to the adaptability of the American church in a
secularizing era, it now endangers the soul of the American church. The Trump years have revealed the latent
racism nesting in white evangelical churches, racism that most white church
members deny, but that almost everyone sees clearly - killing the credibility
of their witness. Among the more
progressive churches, this homogeneity has produced a church unable to shift
from the generational and organizing instincts of people over the age of
60. So that young adults now often find
themselves choosing between grandma culture on one hand and what they perceive
as bigotry on the other. Increasingly
they choose to check out of church entirely. And, as American society has
become more polarized, homogeneous churches are unable to offer healing to the
larger society.
But, the God of Pentecost is birthing a new kind of church
in America. It has roots more than a century
ago in East LA in the Azusa Street Revival - the beginnings of the modern
Pentecostal movement where woman were able to preach alongside the men, and
different races and classes came together in worship. We saw it in the Church of the Savior in
Washington DC in the post WW2 years, where Gordon Cosby's experiment in
heterogeneous church worked in glorious ways.
I saw it in South Alabama just after the turn of this century when, in
interviewing 17 potential church planters, each one independently spoke of
his/her dream of leading a multi-racial church - in South Alabama, of all
places - each one independent of the other!
Now our children grow up in schools, soccer clubs, young
marriages, military divisions and work places that pay little mind to the old
human boundaries. And they are ready for
churches where they can feel at home, and invite their families, their friends,
their neighbors and work colleagues. Most vibrant churches (conservative,
centrist and liberal alike) are places where there is growing diversity of
people, music, worldview, income and even theology. We are witnessing the rise of the multi
church, overtaking the homogeneous church right before our eyes.
My new book Multi is about this new thing God is doing in
our lifetime! It is not about a ministry
tweak for church growth or church survival.
It is about Pentecost, about a rediscovery of the power of the Gospel
for our time!
In a culture that is fragmenting before our eyes,
threatening to un-glue the United States into warring factions - the multi
church offers hope! It is increasingly
clear that the political establishment is unable to heal us. But the multi church can heal us. The multi church is the place where neighbors
become neighbors again, where we are able to hear one another's stories, and to
see one another as sister and brother.
The book looks at a whole range of multi capacities. No church is expected to be good at all of
them. But we can all become better at a
few of them. The book gives special consideration
to the challenges of multi-site church and multi-ethnic church - but we also
look at what it means to be multi-lingual, multi-generational, multi-narrative,
multi-class, multi-liturgical and even multi-theological. We look at how to build leader teams in multi
churches and how to open up the host culture to embrace new people readily.
I invite you to get a copy today (at Pilgrim Press
or at Amazon), and to think about the church(es) you serve and
equip. A free, downloadable study guide
is available.
Except for a few tiny niche churches, most churches will
either shift into multi-mode or cease to exist within the next couple
decades. Sounds like a lot of work! But we must remember that this whole
multi-phenomenon is primarily a work of the Spirit! We are showing up to the work of God in this
moment! And I think we can agree that if
God is for it, it is going to happen - with or without the UCC, the PCUSA, the
UMC, the ABC, the UMC and so on. As for me, I want to get in on what God is up
to!
What hope the multi church can offer for this broken
society! And not a day too soon!
Grace and peace to you in this Multi moment!
No comments:
Post a Comment