Tag: Acts

Becoming More Christlike Than American: Part 3

Part 3: Communities of character

“Do you think God wants us to obey you rather than him? We cannot stop telling about everything we have seen and heard…All the believers were united in heart and mind. And they felt that what they owned was not their own, so they shared everything they had.” Acts 4:19-20,32 NLT

If you’ve never read Acts 4, or haven’t in a while, first go read it.

After Pentecost in Acts 2, we read that the personal encounters with God where the believers are filled with His Spirit continue. Peter is filled with the Spirit and speaks publicly. The believers meet to pray for boldness and the meeting room shakes as the Spirit fills them.

So the deeply personal (and miraculous) “God within them” experience doesn’t stop after the upper room in Acts 2. But rather it continues.

And as it continues The Church begins to form. The earliest expressions of these gatherings of believers (churches) are described in both Acts 2:42-47 and again in Acts 4:32-37. And what is described are communities of character.

Devotion. Boldness. Transparency. Generosity. Unity.

Those are all words we could use to describe the communities of character that formed.

They became full of people who lived out in public who they were in private – speaking about the things God was doing in their midst as their lives were interconnected together.

They displayed for the world around them integrity as they gave themselves fully to a very personal and yet communal relationship with God.

They followed in the example of the apostles as they apprenticed in the ways of Jesus and committed themselves to friendship with one another.

They sacrificially shared with anyone in need – in simple ways like shared meals and in extravagantly generous ways like selling all they owned – and faithfully spent consistent time together in prayer and celebration.

The stories we read in these early chapters of Acts are so simple, and describe profoundly transformed lives.

It’s one thing for someone to say they’re an imitator of the way of Jesus – who had no where to lay his head and taught people to turn the other cheek – and another thing to actually live it amidst a world that celebrates self-centeredness and greed.

If we are honest, self-centeredness and greed are far more common than we would like in an Americanized version of Christianity. We see too many times that those who call themselves Christians use their faith to garner temporary, earthly success. They use it as something to grow their own self-importance rather than growing their humility.

God becomes a means to an end, instead of an end Himself. Working for God ends up merely being about oneself. And the fruit of that labor ends up being money, material things, and even the approval of others.

It’s completely the opposite in the early church. What we see in Acts is the evidence of people who pursue the desires of the eternal Spirit and not the desires of the temporary world. They experience the presence and love of God so deeply that they are then able to be fully present with and fully loving toward those around them.

This sort of life can only happen because of an on-going personal and communal experience of the presence of God.

When that happens, it begins to form a community of character – a people who devote themselves to apprenticeship to Jesus thru the example of the apostles, thru genuine friendship with one another, thru the sacrificial sharing of one’s life with those friends, and thru the consistent rhythms of prayer and celebration both personally and collectively.

What we see form in Acts is undeniable. And it is so very simple.

Have we overcomplicated the Christian life as we’ve “Westernized” it and eventually “Americanized” it?

Have we attempted to take control of the things we should be letting go of and thus remained in our comfort zones instead of living by faith?

Have we pursued dreams Jesus never gave us and built things the Spirit never led us to construct?

Have we become a people that call ourselves “The Church” but would be unrecognizable to those who formed the very first Church on earth?

Have we formed organizations, systems, and processes that produce communities of character or in how we’ve created those things are they potentially working against it and keeping us from seeing the “results” we verbalize that we want?

May the same Spirit in Acts once again fill us, that He might lead us to stop complicating, controlling, and constructing and re-form us into devoted communities of character.

May The Church in our country today begin to look more like Acts than America.

Previous Posts:

Becoming More Christlike Than American: Part 2

Part 2: Personal experience with God’s presence

“And everyone present was filled with the Holy Spirit and began speaking in other languages…How can this be?” Acts 2:4,7 NLT

If you’ve never read Acts 2, or haven’t in a while, first go read it.

And then spend a moment simply reflecting on the power, importance, and personal nature of the story it tells.

God’s Spirit – His very presence – fills His disciples. This is “God with us” to a whole new level.

No longer is it Jesus – God as man – being with disciples and empowering them. Instead it is now God within them empowering them.

And the people witnessing this miraculous event are in awe: “How can this be?”

How can this be that a group of people who are not educated in our languages could be speaking our languages?

How can this be that they have flames of fire resting upon them as they speak?

How can this be that they are sharing the truths of God with us so directly (as if they are prophets or priests)?

But the power of the story in Acts 2 doesn’t actually lie in the miracle of speaking in tongues. It really lies in the extremely personal nature of God to inhabit – make his habitat – His disciples.

God isn’t merely “filling” them with His Spirit so they can prophesy (like He had done before with His people). God is making His dwelling among them in a whole new way. He is making them His very home. That is why the New Testament goes on to describe the believer individually and the believers together both as the Temple of God.

The deeply personal nature of this event should not surprise us. Nor should it be something we overlook in order to focus on other details. Too many times people are drawn to the speaking in tongues or later the 3,000 being added to the church that day. But the power and simplicity of this group of disciples (and then eventually all those who also were added later) receiving God Himself into their very being is the foundation for what then occurs for the rest of the entire book!

This brings to mind some other “How can it be?” questions for me. As I think about much of the American Church in light of this story I ask:

How can it be that there are those in the American Church who have never had this sort of a deeply personal, powerful experience with God’s Spirit in their life and yet call themselves Christian?

How can it be that we get so focused on the external workings of God (like speaking in tongues, healing, prosperity, numeric growth, etc.) rather than keeping our focus on the world-changing internal miracle of God to live within us?

How can it be that we’ve lost our sense of awe and dependence upon God to do what only He can do – fill people in ways only He can, add to the church those who are being saved in ways only He’s able, grow within us fruits of the Spirit that then display His very heart thru our very life, and so much more?

Other questions might come to your mind too as you reflect upon how these Acts 2 stories compare to many of the modern expressions of church in America…including questions like the one I asked in Part 1 concerning whether we’ve actually (unintentionally) “de-personalized” God thru how we “do church” today…

There are several stories I could share about how God has personally and powerfully shown up in my life:

  • On a mission trip where He stripped me of my emotionalism so I could know it was really Him there with me and not just my heightened feelings
  • At a concert with some friends and He sent an angel (that I visibly saw and physically felt near me) to heal one of my best friends, as we could feel the fullness of His presence around us
  • In the moment, after a church leader had brutally hurt my wife and I, when I wept during one of my seminary classes as I expressed my desire to leave the church while they surrounded me to embrace me and pray for me, showing me how God was so very near to me in my brokenness
  • As God has once again “put on flesh” thru my time this past year with a spiritual director and a small group of people who are journeying together with me in the area of spiritual direction, and has met me in such ways that I never really knew He could be oh so personal…and real…and tangible…

Maybe you have such stories as well. Maybe you don’t.

I actually don’t write any of this with any desire that my experience with this powerful God would be compared with yours. But rather that it would simply echo the story of Acts 2. That this deeply personal God desires to become very real to you, to each of us, if we will wait upon Him as the disciples did and live into the kind of community He forms us to be (that we see His disciples living out immediately).

A personal experience with God’s presence is the main foundation of a journey to becoming more Christlike than American.

As we begin to reflect upon our own experiences with God in relation to the stories in Acts we will hopefully begin to see similarities. And yet we will also see some distinctions – many times because as Americans we’ve added some things to what we see happening in Acts. Mostly out a cultural desire for more or better, or for uniqueness or modernity. And yet it will take identifying those things and stripping them away to really rediscover the simple core commonalities of what a personal relationship with God worked out in community really looks like today. Just as it did in the life of those disciples in Acts.

Becoming more Christlike means being in relationship with a deeply personal God as He sends His Spirit to dwell with us.

It transforms our lives.

And it forms our churches.

May this relationship with God, and these relationships as the church, be the basis of a re-formation of God’s people once again today.

Previous Posts:

Becoming More Christlike Than American: Part 1

Part 1: Questions about why

“Why are you standing here staring into heaven?” Acts 1:11 NLT

If you’ve read Acts 1, this is such a pointed and powerful question. [If you haven’t read Acts 1, go read it now]

The disciples have just finished 40 days with the resurrected Jesus, which concludes with one “final” recorded conversation with him about the kingdom of God. This is where he reminds them that they will be his witnesses [martyrs is the Greek word] all over the world after they receive the Holy Spirit.

And then he ascends. Right in front of them.

And there they are. Standing. Staring into heaven. When two “white-robed” messengers ask them this simple, and yet profound, question: Why?

This “Why?” question has always gripped my attention every time I’ve read the story. And it makes me wonder if I too have found myself staring up to heaven instead of looking to what’s right in front of me – to people right around me and most of all to God who is with me.

This “Why?” question centers me upon potentially the most important part of the Gospel: the incarnation – that God “took on flesh” in Jesus, and is still “taking on flesh” today thru His Spirit within His people. This truth of the Gospel really changes everything.

This “Why?” question sets the trajectory for the disciples living out this reality of incarnation in their day. And it can do the same for us today.

And it’s really less about answering the question (I’m sure we could psychoanalyze why we think the disciples were staring into heaven) than it is about that asking of it to bring about awareness – awareness to what we find ourselves doing.

If you haven’t noticed, there are a lot of questions being asked right now in our culture. Especially among the younger generation of Christians in America.

Questions about faith. Questions about life. Questions about how faith works itself out in the midst of life.

Questions about the church. Questions about society. Questions about how the church lives out it’s values in the midst of society.

And on we could go.

Almost everything is being questioned. And most of the questions are really “Why?” questions.

And that scares some people, or at least unsettles them. But I don’t think it does God. Jesus himself asked many questions. And God fields questions constantly from those we read about in the Bible.

Questions are important. Questions can bring awareness. Questions can cause self-reflection. Questions can set a trajectory for the journey ahead.

And the questions being asked right now – especially the “Why?” questions – will shape the way forward for many people.

And even more so, the posture of asking questions – and the journey to understanding that comes from asking them – is shaping the church for the next generation more than even the answers themselves will.

As I observe the questions that are being asked today, they all seem to be about identity.

Which really relates to what this question in Acts 1 is getting at.

Are we people who are standing and staring toward the heavens? If so, why?

For many of us, it feels like much of our lives have been shaped by a teaching that says God is personal (God is with us) but also by practices that depersonalize God (“staring into heaven”).

Does being invited into a “relationship with God” in a non-relational context where you “pray a prayer” during an “altar call” really connect us with a personal God?

Does prayer being treated as how we “talk at God” and Scripture being used for how we “receive a word from God” really connect us with a personal God?

Does the church being so concerned with attendance and attraction, with buildings and budgets, and with numbers and nomenclature, really connect us with a personal God?

As myself and others have been asking these kinds of questions, I’ve found myself returning consistently to the book of Acts. Which always brings me to this question: “Why?”

And as we look to the stories of Acts as our guide, we will find the answers to so many of the questions we’re asking.

But, even more so, as we look to the stories of Acts, we will rediscover the posture of disciples and of a church that concerns itself far more with “God with us” than the desires and scorecards of this world – or even just our staring up to heaven.

The simplicity of the question asked of the disciples in Acts 1 is only matched by the simplicity of the community we see God form throughout the rest of the book.

And it’s that simplicity – that clarity – that questions like “Why?” can bring to our lives, to our faith, and to our churches. 

If we let them.

If we don’t run from them.

And it’s those sorts of questions we will be exploring as we navigate thru the stories in Acts in this blog series.

Let’s become more Christlike than American together.

*This post is the beginning of a series of reflections I have written that focus on “Becoming more Christlike than American.” They are based specifically upon the examples of the disciples of Jesus we read about in Acts. It is a follow-up series to one I did previously asking the question: “Do we look more American than Christian?” [Click here to read the first blog in that series]

I’ve spent over 15 years with that question, and have also walked with people who have been asking similar questions as well. I’ve found that the “crisis” we are in is really about our definition of Christlikeness. Many of us grew up in a church culture that gave us a lot of information about Jesus, and taught us to live moral lives, but we were mostly formed by religious programming more than a personal relationship with Jesus. A relationship that works itself out in personal relationships with those around us.

In my own journey with the questions in this series, I’ve found that ultimately I had learned to depersonalize God. And I find many are struggling with the same experience – and thus, why they are “deconstructing” with their faith and “disconnecting” with the church. For them (and for me) too many times the church has not “put flesh on” Jesus, but has just been a “place” (a building or time during the week) of looking to the heavens.

I hope this series will help others, who are on the same path as I am, to see God be fully “incarnate” in our lives once again.

God is with us. May we have the eyes to see Him and the ears to hear Him.

Previous Posts:

This is a Reformation

I’m going to make a seemingly bold (and yet not really all that bold claim):
We are in a Reformation.

In actuality, we are always in “reformation.” This is why the reformers of the 16th century variety coined the phrase “semper reformanda” or “the church reformed, always reforming.”

It’s the reality that we are always being re-formed, if we are active in a relationship with God. On an individual level, being formed continuously into the likeness of Jesus. On a church level, being formed continuously into the body of Jesus for the sake of the world.

However, there are also times in history where there is noticeable change to how The Church organizes itself and is present in the world (or in actuality usually ends up divided in the goal of bringing change). It usually happens alongside noticeable societal change – which is many times indirectly related.

We have seen Reformations (big “R”) like this about every 500 years according to most church historians (it’s not a science, but it’s pretty close to being predictable).

And I would like to suggest that we are in the beginnings of another Reformation right now.

Years ago I heard people claim this was true about the different “nondenominational,” mega-church, or emergent church movements we were seeing. But that didn’t really pan out as an actual Reformation. All of that was really just progressions of what currently existed (whether organizationally or intellectually).

But what’s happening now.
Along all sorts of lines – the failures of celebrity leaders, the issues of racial disharmony, the seeming frailty of the current church models to withstand persecution, and the rise of The Church in the global South and East.
In pretty much every church, denomination, or network.
It looks like a Reformation to me.

The intense and widespread deconstruction that is happening (specifically among many American Christians) must be followed by a massive reconstruction that must look a lot different than what was in many ways falling apart anyways. And what is reconstructed must look more like the early church we read about in Acts.

That was then, this is now

The last Reformation in the 16th century was about The Church in the West returning to God’s intention, but the thing that needed to be addressed most immediately was a problem of right teaching.

This Reformation today is also about The Church in the West returning to God’s intention, but the thing that needs to be addressed most immediately is a problem of  right relationship(s).

It has the same end: to return us to the original Scriptural vision of God’s New Testament people (see the book of Acts).
But it does not have the same means.

Right teaching is important, of course. We should never diminish that. And teaching and relationships are ultimately tied together. And so in the 16th century Reformation there was much to say about doctrinal issues – or what The Church taught. However, the context we are working with today is different than the context of the previous Reformation. And thus, the focus of the Reformation needs to focus on relational issues – how The Church lives.

Part of this is likely because we are in the age of information. Anyone can gain access to all the orthodox teachings of Scripture from excellent communicators of the truth (like The Bible Project). So what people need from The Church right now is less around the forming of correct ideas (though incorrect ideas need to be confronted) and more around the forming of right relationships – to God, to one another, and also to the world.

One leads to the other. And both things must ultimately be held together. But (to use a medical analogy) The Church in the West is hemorrhaging (specifically in America) – and not just numerically, spiritually as well. And to “stop the bleeding,” we must start with right relationship in order to be able to address right teaching as well.

Too many seem to have more of a relationship with their preferred idealized version of church than with the very God who establishes The Church. Too many purport to “know” the Truth without the evidence of being “known” by the Teacher.

And when teaching is placed above relationship (and not alongside of it), and then the correct value of relationship is also lost – it can morph the Gospel into a transactional proposition and not a transforming presence.

It also then influences the way we form relationships with other believers (inside the organized church especially). Churches end up connected by their ideology or vision statement or pithy sayings or denominational perspective, as opposed to by the Spirit that inhabits and knits them together.

We end up forming “Bible studies,” “Sunday schools” and “small groups” in highly transactional ways (not relational ways) and call those transactions “community” or “discipleship.” Of which they are rarely either.

Dissonance and Discipleship

This is a difficult critique of one’s faith or faith community. And I recognize that, because I’ve been living in this difficulty and leading in the church amidst this dissonance now for well over a decade.

I’ve seen how transactional I was taught faith was. I’ve experienced how transactional I was modeled church to be. I’ve noticed how transactional I was trained evangelism should go.

A dissonance has been created. In many cases, as The Church in America, we aren’t who we say we are. Which causes all sorts of discomfort.

That’s the problem with a Reformation really: it disrupts our comfort.

The current Reformation, while targeting ideas as well, is not as much about reforming the teaching of the church – as the most recent one was.

Instead, it’s targeting the values and lifestyle of the church, and is primarily about reforming us to live beyond the shallow and even nonexistent relationships the church has allowed to be counted as “discipleship” for far too long.

Jesus may very well have been after The Church’s “mind” in the last Reformation.

But it seems like Jesus is after The Church’s “heart” in this one.

Jesus may very well have been after The Church’s “mind” in the last Reformation.
But it seems like Jesus is after The Church’s “heart” in this one.

What must change?

The mind will need to be renewed as well, no doubt. But the heart needs a complete reformation this time around.

Too many in The Church have allowed our hearts to be wooed by other lovers.

Politics. Business. Popularity. Comfort. Pride. Greed. Power.

And The Church has too often followed suit in idolizing the lovers of the hearts of its people and leaders.

Thus the need for a Reformation focused firstly upon right relationships.

And our brothers and sisters from The Church in the East and global South should be our guides. We must learn from them how to again live faithfully amidst the difficulties of this world. Leadership for this Reformation in The West will have to continue to emerge. But our best hope for recovering what we have lost is to mutually submit ourselves to our Church family that is thriving all over the world – and stop looking pridefully to ourselves for all the answers.

We must return again to the fullness of a love relationship with God – Father, Son, and Spirit; not merely a conversion transaction for the purpose of going to Heaven one day.

We must return again to the unity of a love relationship with one another – The Church actually being the church across a community, not merely allegiance to “my church.”

We must return again to the calling of a love relationship with our neighbors – for God so loved the entire world, not just the ones we perceive to be “like us.”

And the depth of spirituality that these right relationships will produce can be seen throughout the history of The Church, and is still seen all over the world in the places Scriptural Christianity is thriving. We see it evidenced in the church in Acts, in the early church mothers and fathers, in the monastic communities, in the awakenings and revivals in the West of the last several centuries, and continuing in the global South and the East:

  • Organic relationships that lead to spiritual family being valued over organizational leadership principles.
  • Rhythms of a shared life together being valued over religious services offered by religious professionals.
  • Spirit-led conversations that take place in the context of genuine friendships being valued over strategic “gospel presentations.”
  • Equipping believers to disciple those around them being valued over entertaining church attendees who simply “invite their friends” to a religious experience.
  • Grace-filled and generous servant leaders who model empathy and patience being valued over goal-oriented and gregarious influencers who rarely enter into the mess of the brokenness of their own life nor the lives of others.

Jesus is calling The Church in the West to once again walk thru the wilderness of a Reformation in order to return to the right relationship(s) He’s desired for us all along.

Will we follow Him there?

With that in mind, read the words of God to His people thru the prophet Hosea, as they are still no doubt His words to us today:

And now, here’s what I’m going to do:

    I’m going to start all over again.

I’m taking you back out into the wilderness

    where we had our first date, and I’ll court you.

I’ll give you bouquets of roses.

    I’ll turn Heartbreak Valley into Acres of Hope.

You’ll respond like you did as a young girl,

    those days when you were fresh out of Egypt.

HOSEA 2:14-15 [The Message; emphasis added]

Exit mobile version
%%footer%%