Jesus. Mission. Church.
We all know these are the priorities. What we don’t understand is this isn’t just a random list of priorities. It’s our priorities in their order of importance.
Jesus- Jesus is Lord. He is God’s final word to mankind about what He is like. He holds everything together by the word of His power. And while the worship of Jesus is central to Christianity, He often can quickly become a lesser priority. The goal is to keep encountering and obeying Him, day after day until days turn to weeks turn to months turn to years. He is the priority.
Mission- The mission described here is the one that Jesus Himself came with–to bring the whole world under His leadership and repair the broken relationship between God and man. Jesus was a man on the move. He constantly was moving from one place to another, declaring the Kingdom of God, casting out demons, healing the sick, and performing signs that invited lost humanity into the newly near Kingdom. But He didn’t turn the crowds into mega-churches. He kept moving. And after the resurrection, His command was still to go and declare the same Gospel He had preached. Acts and the New Testament are the echos of Jesus’ command to continue on in His mission.
Church- Church is the gathering of believers under the leadership of Jesus and in relationship to each other. Jesus said He would build His church and that even the gates of hell would not be able to prevail against it. Nothing could stop it. And so each church that is built by Jesus becomes another weapon in His war against the darkness oppressing humanity.
But great damage happens when we confuse these three priorities:
A church where Jesus isn’t first is quickly in danger of losing it’s place of ministry (Revelation 2:4-5). No one says that Jesus is less important than mission or church. We just continue to show more concern for mission or church than we do for connecting with Christ. The result is usually burnout that ends in moral failure.
Mission comes before church. That’s a controversial statement, but it’s true. Church is the fruit of mission. Emil Brunner said “The church exists by mission as a fire exists by burning.” When Jesus ascended into Heaven, He did not leave a church. He left a mission and that mission was accomplished through the establishment of churches. Every time the church began to get comfortable, Jesus would scatter the church so mission could continue (see Acts 8:4, for example). Mission was the next priority.
And church. Church is incredibly important. Necessary. But when it becomes the object of our affection it becomes an idol. So many of us are quick to put church before mission and because of that mission never gets accomplished. Church must happen. But it happens best as a form of communitas that is forged in response to the mission of Jesus.
The story of Jesus teaches us the same thing. Jesus first was manifested in the flesh. He came to Earth and encountered humanity. His mission motivated Him to move about announcing and demonstrating the Kingdom while he set captives free. And after (and only after) the mission was finished with His death and resurrection, did He form a church that supported the mission.
Over and over again we see it: Jesus, Mission, Church. But often our lives and what makes us comfortable cause us to live differently than what we see. My challenge to you today is to make sure these aren’t just your priorities, but to make sure they are lived outin the right order.
Jesus.
Mission.
Church.
Communitas
Community. We all want it. Some of us want it so much that we’ll chase from church to church, person to person, trying to find it.
But community for community’s sake is flawed. In the end it actually kills us. If we pursue community for the sake of having a community for ourselves, we’re really just pursuing an idol that we hope will take care of our us.
But instead, I want to suggest we search for communitas*. For most of us, communitas is a strange word, but it describes the very essence of community that is formed among a group of peers when they go through a dangerous or disorienting experience.
That’s a lot of jargon for something we all know: When you go through something difficult with a group of people, the experience changes you. And it doesn’t just change you, but every person in the group is linked more tightly because of what they’ve experienced.
Think of the WWII or Vientam vets who haven’t seen their fellow soldiers in decades. Yet you put those same guys in a room and give them a little space and it seems as if only minutes had passed since the last time they were together. It’s the same way with guys who have been part of a stable and healthy recovery group or those friends that went with you on that missions trip that one time.
In each scenario, a group of people find themselves in a risky or unknown situation and work through it. You all learn to depend on each other, compensate for each others’ weaknesses, and know each others’ strengths. You bond with each other because you’ve been through some things together. It’s communitas, and it beats community every single time.
The problem with church is that it can look a lot more like a book club than a mission trip. There’s no risky venture attempted with a group of people. Many churches lack the faith of leap. And so they can have as many potlucks and Bible studies as they want to, but community never forms.
I’ve watched house churches struggle with this as well. They’ve pursued perfecting their community before they try to reach out to the lost. They really wanted to be united and built up to the place where they feel they can go on mission together. They pursued community and missed communitas.
But I’ve also seen house churches catch the Lord’s heart for the lost in a way that compels them to take the gospel to dangerous places. These people probably are just as young and immature, but they leap together, putting their trust in Jesus to fill in the gaps. Do things always go perfectly? Rarely. But communitas–the true spirit of community–gets formed in those house churches and a lost world gets reached in the process.
There is a world out there looking for community. They’ll do anything they can to get it. Jesus promised us that if we tried to keep/save our lives we would lose them, but if we laid down our lives for His sake and the sake of the Gospel, we would find it. I believe if we seek community for its own sake we will never find it. But if we lay down our lives and do the dangerous work of bringing Jesus’ message to those who are far from Him, we will find community in deep and rich ways we never thought possible.
So don’t look for community, look for communitas.
Photo Credit: Kfir Brigade Soldiers Practice Urban Warfare by Israel Defense Force
* I am again indebted to Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch for their profound book on this subject: The Faith of Leap (affiliate link).
The Faith of Leap
Stagnancy can kill your walk with Jesus.
We can get to a place where we know the love of the Father, understand the sacrifice of the Jesus on the cross, encounter the Spirit, know the word, and have confidence that we’re really saved and stop. And while all these things are essential, if they fail to touch the trust you showed when you first threw yourself at Jesus and asked Him to save you, your spiritual life can grow cold.
The cure for this stagnancy is to regain “the faith of leap.”* This is the kind of faith that causes us to stick out our neck and live on the daring adventure that Christ calls us to. It’s not safe, but it’s the kind of faith that God called Abraham to when he told him to “Leave your native country, your relatives, and your father’s family, and go to the land that I will show you,” (Genesis 12:1). It’s this kind of faith that takes risks that culminates in Romans 4:22: “And because of Abraham’s faith, God counted him as righteous.“
Two friends are modeling this for me really well right now.
One is a mentor with a long history in his job. He took a buyout from his company that was closing down and at the leading of the Lord, he got a college education and moved to a state he had never lived in. Two or so years later, he’s still waiting on the provision of the Lord, but he never waivers in his faith. In fact, you’d never know he was jobless by talking to him. In that place having heard from the Lord and but not yet knowing where the Lord’s answer will come from, he’s living out the faith of leap.
Another friend of mine went and got some training in North Carolina about planting churches. He loved it and came back and shared some of the content of the training with me. As we talked, he looked at me and said “I need you to intentionally stretch me. Can we get together every so often and have you challenge me to stretch myself?” Since that time I’ve watched my friend get out of his comfort zone repeatedly. He’s started hosting gatherings, he’s started reaching out to lost people, he’s started to challenge people where they need to be challenged. Every time I see him look at something outside of his old comfort zone that the Lord is asking him to do and say yes to it, he’s living out the faith of leap.
None of this makes either of these two guys super spiritual. In fact, at first glance, you might be tempted to think there is nothing remarkable about either of these guys. But they are learning to meet Jesus in the leap. And because of that, they are becoming more and more remarkable in a way that only a few living close to them can see.
Can I ask? Can I probe just a little? Are you living out the faith of leap? When was the last time you did something in your Christian walk that you weren’t sure was going to work out, but you were sure God was leading you into? If it’s been a while, go back and ask the Father for the faith of leap. I’m sure He’s willing to talk.
*Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch wrote a phenomenal book called The Faith of Leap (affiliate link). The premise of the book is that there is a kind of faith and community that can only be regained by tackling risky tasks for the glory of God. I would encourage you to read the book, but the title alone communicates volumes.
Cluster Map
Pursuing Glory 