New Church Rising

My own insights on the church and her history have emerged through my experience as the pastor of Church of All Nations, a local Presbyterian Church (USA) multicultural congregation with over twenty-five different nations represented, along with tremendous socio-economic, generational, ideological, and denominational diversity.  From our founding in 2004, our commitment has been to become an intimate and diverse church that serves as a parable of reconciliation in a church, society and world that is deeply alienated and divided.  Out of this commitment at the local level, we have been led into greater denominational, ecumenical and global engagement.  From this vantage point, here are a few of the lessons we have learned.

Confess Our Histories and Traditions:

There is a tendency amongst Christians to either take history and tradition seriously as a bulwark of their faith, or else distance themselves from tradition given the obvious failings of the church throughout history.  My kids are named Claire Nicea (“clearly orthodox”) and Austin [Augustine] Athanasius, after two of my favorite early Church Fathers.  I love church history and am committed to historic Christian orthodoxy.  In our new member class, we spend twelve hours together studying church history and our place within it as Reformed Presbyterian Christians.  The answer is not to separate ourselves from the past, but to study it, claim it as our own (including all that continues to haunt us), and work to reclaim the best of our respective traditions.  As Reformed Christians, how can we recover the Reformation emphasis on the priesthood of all believers, or Calvin’s emphasis on the sovereignty of God over all of creation?  Calvin worked tirelessly amongst refugees in Geneva; surely this impacted his understanding of the church as reformed and always being reformed according to the Word of God, especially when he saw that the established church did very little for these marginalized people.

Out of love for our traditions and the global church, however, we also need to name the idolatries, shortcomings and failures of our traditions.  At Church of All Nations we call ourselves “penitently Presbyterian” because we recognize the many ways our tradition has contributed to the brokenness of the body of Christ.  For example, I name on a regular basis the ways that we have contributed to and participated in the racist history of the United States, while also confessing my complicity in this as a Korean American.  When we confess personally and corporately we create space for genuine dialogue and reconciliation to take place.  One of the reasons we have people from so many different cultural, generational, and denominational backgrounds at our church is because, although we each are proud of our tradition, we are not afraid to hear and speak hard truths about ourselves, which then invites others to do the same.  In this way we can enter into non-exploitative relationships of mutuality that generate new life out of old wounds.

Follow the Way of Jesus Christ:

One of the greatest temptations in the Western church, given the way it has been influenced by Greek dualism, is the Docetic heresy—worshiping a Christ who is divine, but not fully human.  God however did not become incarnate as an idea, but as a real person who invited others to follow him in his way of being and relating in the world.  As a result, we prioritize Christian discipleship in our life together as a community, trusting that entering into the way of Jesus in the world will open us to the truth and the life of Jesus.  What does it mean to have orthodox theology or to be committed to social justice if our temperament is anxious, controlling, manipulative or violent?  Or how do we dare claim spiritual unity under the cover of the “invisible church” idea if we are unable to reconcile and have communion with one another visibly, materially and bodily?  This means that my primary task as a pastor is not the execution of particular duties such as preaching, teaching, and administering the sacraments, but living with and shepherding congregation members day in and day out, modeling to them the way of God’s kingdom out of my own commitment to Christian discipleship.  This does not mean a grasping at perfection.  It means that I need to set an example of what it means to follow the way of Christ as the shepherd appointed to them.  Even in my failure I must serve as a model.  Did I confess and repent quickly, deeply and fully, whether it be to an individual or to the whole church?  Did I model for the congregation that, however fallible we Christians are, when we trust God and choose to trust the church, we can fail redemptively?  Does God not trust us in this way, and because he does, does God not fail again and again?

It is particularly challenging to emphasize following the way of Jesus Christ in the United States because of our radical individualism.  If each person is his or her own locus of authority, how does an individual submit to and receive correction from another person or community?  This is the reason we began our internship program, which places character formation at the forefront of pastoral training.  To do so, we have learned from the older apprenticeship model of pastoral formation, which was eventually replaced with an academic model.  Seminaries do a great job instilling biblical and theological knowledge, but they don’t make disciples capable of building community.  We become disciples by living intimately with one another day in and day out, speaking into one another’s lives in love, renouncing all forms of violence (e.g., physical, emotional, psychological, spiritual), learning to bear each other’s burdens, and moving beyond our need for control and autonomy.  This liberates us to relate to God and to other people out of a hermeneutic of trust, not concerned about our own safety and security, but instead able to transform suffering and betrayal into new life.  To believe that Jesus is the Great Physician who heals our wounds is precisely what allows Christians to risk betrayal for the sake of building a reconciling community.  If God is truly sovereign, what is there to fear or defend?  So we aim to follow Jesus by becoming “high risk, low anxiety” Christians in a high risk, low anxiety church.

Testify to a Vulnerable God:

Another challenge I face on a regular basis as a local church pastor is reshaping the view of God held by congregation members.  Their doctrinal beliefs may highlight the goodness of God, but their emotional response is often to perceive God as a jerk.  If this is the underlying feeling about God, then even God’s sovereignty is interpreted as controlling, demanding, and distant.  Many truly believe that God only begrudgingly provides for our needs—in other words, they see God in the image of many male authority figures.  This not only makes it impossible to trust God, but also to trust other human beings and the church.  The problem is that when we are unable to trust, it is impossible to enter into deep Christian discipleship.  Instead, our primary concern becomes our own protection and self-preservation, which blinds us to the needs of those around us.

What is the difference between being human and animal if we do not or cannot trust another, but seek merely to protect ourselves from others to survive, whether physically or emotionally?  But how do we trust others when people are so inherently untrustworthy?  How do we construct an intimate and diverse Christian community when everybody is suspicious of everybody else, rooted in a fundamental mistrust of God?  My own longing to be known, to be understood, in other words, to be trusted, while remaining inherently untrustworthy, gives me insight into this human dilemma which is simultaneously an invitation to God’s loving intervention in human relations.  The Reformed tradition’s understanding of the sovereignty of God is one of the gifts of our tradition to the entire Christian communion.  But God’s sovereignty is not revealed through fiat; it is revealed in Jesus Christ’s becoming vulnerable to creation and taking responsibility for it to the point of suffering, persecution and death. In Jesus’ vulnerable power, he reconciles all things back to God.

To lead our congregation members into an experience of this God, we have borrowed from the African American church tradition and led our congregation members into the practice of testimony, often in place of the Sunday morning sermon.  Almost always, these have been profound moments of an outpouring of compassion, tears, laughter, understanding and transformation.  Many of our members have taken great risks to reveal their brokenness and shame before the entire church, wondering if this act of vulnerability would become one more wound.  Happily, this has not been the case.  If people had judged others for being poor, black, white, barren, pregnant out of wedlock, alcoholic, depressed or diseased, judgment was replaced quickly with hospitality and reconciliation through the power inherent in testimony, through the strength to be vulnerable.  Once this risk of trust before the community is taken, pastors, elders and congregants gather round, lay hands on, and lift up in prayer the one testifying.  Jesus died naked on a cross.  A core teaching of our congregation in this regard has been: Go and do likewise, and we, through Christ, will cover your nakedness with compassion, forgiveness and love.  In this way, the crucified and risen Christ becomes Immanuel to the members of Christ’s body, bringing new life out of their shared brokenness and pain.

Conclusion

Is it possible that intimate and diverse, reconciling communities can point the way forward for mainline denominations and Protestantism as a whole?  Our hope is that more congregations and communities will emerge that will own their past and tradition, contending with them as openings to the future; embrace the discipline of confession and repentance, both personal and corporate; place discipleship and character formation at the forefront of their concerns; and liberate all of God’s people to testify honestly to who they are to one another.  What new possibilities for collaboration, fellowship and communion would emerge if these practices were adopted at the local, national and global levels—especially in our post-colonial, post-modern, and post-Western reality?  Could the church become a place of rootedness once again where a hermeneutic of trust is established, where out of barrenness comes new life?  Is it possible that we would discover a New Church Rising that is a deeply rooted embodiment of the good news of Jesus Christ to an uprooted, alienated and divided world?