The Cloister, The Harvest, and Where the Laborers Are (Part 2)
Yesterday I wrote about how the church (predominantly in the West) has been cloistered.
I see this regularly in our attitude toward the unbelieving world. Most of the church believes either consciously or unconsciously that unbelievers don’t want to follow Jesus. Don’t believe me? Ask someone to go share the Gospel with you on the street. The responses will be telling. Our cloistered attitudes tell us the world has no interest in following Jesus.
But this perception of the harvest comes more from our experiences than from Jesus. Jesus told his disciples, “The harvest is great, but the workers are few.“Jesus never seemed to have a hard time finding people so broken they didn’t need healing. Jesus never had a problem finding people who were outcasts that needed love. He never had a hard time finding those marginalized by society and telling them God has a better Kingdom, a better family where they would be welcomed.
In fact, from Jesus’ perspective, the problem wasn’t the harvest. He actually saw so much untapped potential for harvest that he told them the problem wasn’t with the harvest—it was with the laborers! They didn’t have enough laborers to accommodate the harvest that was coming.
This is a massive perspective change for the church today. Rarely do we spend time praying and raising up laborers for the harvest because we don’t really believe the harvest is that great.
Oh if we only had Jesus’ eyes.
Friends there is a sea of humanity, not just across the seas, but across our fences and streets and cities that have no answers. The John 3:16 sign held up at a professional sporting event wasn’t enough to reach them, nor was the chick tract they found in the bathroom at Walmart. But a living, breathing expression of the gospel that has a testimony of transformation is something they’ve never seen. And while I agree with the church that the world at large doesn’t want traditional religion like they’ve seen, they do want the Kingdom of God. They do want Jesus.
And if you begin to touch this realm just a little, you begin to understand how big the harvest is. One year our house church began to serve food at a local park and play sports with the kids in our neighborhood. Word got out and quickly our house church was filled with people from the neighborhood that had barely ever darkened a church. One of the lessons we learned from that season was that there was no shortage of people who had interest in what we were doing.
The problem with that season was we didn’t have enough laborers. The needs they brought to the table were overwhelming. The amount of discipleship each person needed was more than we were used to. We weren’t ready for the harvest that came in. I think most churches are in the same spot.
One of the lessons I took away from that season is it’s not the harvest that’s in short supply. It’s the laborers.
Photo Credit: Wheat Field by Dennis Behm
An Example of House Churches in Action…in Africa
I found this on Facebook and thought it might be helpful. It’s from Roger Thorman.
Kavorting in Kenya:
Roger and Brooks Thoman have a ministry into Kenya, working a lot with orphans, widows and others.
Below is an amazing story of Karen, and how she is reaching around Kenya with discipling and house church development.:
This Christmas season, Brooks and I celebrate you for the work we share together!
Meet one of your partners: a woman of focus & passion
I (Brooks) sat in their humble home one on one with Karen. This tiny woman, as eloquent as any woman I’ve ever known, spoke with passion and intensity as she told me her story.
We train new converts to become disciples of Jesus Christ so that we can reach the world with the gospel by equipping disciples to make disciples through house church movement. The gospel will be spread at a fast pace as each one wins one.
In 18 months this lady has reached 196 women. She has raised up seven leaders within 14 house churches. She and/or her disciples have baptized 36 women. Inside their one room, dirt floor home where she lives with her husband and 8 children there is one thing hanging on their wall: a worn, large sheet of paper where written out is a listing of counties and subcounties in western Kenya. Beside each one are names and numbers. These are leaders and numbers of people who have been reached. Others are blank and yet to be reached.
She lives and breathes her passion to share the transforming power of the Gospel…
Karen is intense. I look at a woman who would never in a million years spend money on hair, make-up, clothes. She has one focus: Jesus Christ and his commandments.
There’s no doubt about if she lives this out. To make it possible, she gets up every morning early to make mendazi (donut like pastry that Kenyans typically eat with tea in the morning), which she then takes into the village market to sell. Why? To use the proceeds of the sales to pay for her transportation on a boda boda (motorcycle) to share the gospel with those who have not heard or do trainings with leaders or check in on house churches.
Not only does she share God’s love with them, but her intention with so many women left as widows or single moms is to help them. She teaches them farming, making baskets, purses. The needs are enormous and she’s desperate to do what she can. Why?
Because she knows, lives, breathes the love of God. In another culture this dynamo of a woman could possibly be President…of a corporation or a country, but in her world, all of her intellect, her wisdom, her passion is used for her King. The price is enormous.
Because of her focus, her drive, her commitment she can do no less.
Thank you for partnering with us and with amazing people like Karen!
Love,
Roger and Brooks
The Cloister, The Harvest, and Where the Laborers Are (Part I)
A few days back I wrote a post called “Evangelism in an Upside Down Kingdom” that I didn’t really expect people to get or resonate with. However, over on Facebook there was some conversation that was good and I felt like the conversation deserved a follow up post. You can catch the conversation from Facebook below:
First, let’s talk about the situation we find ourselves in. In general, I find that the church in North America still believes they have an answer that the world is looking for. And while I believe that the Gospel is key to transforming every broken heart, I think the church dramatically over-estimates how likely an unbelieving, unrepentant sinner is to walk into a church full of people they don’t know looking for answers they haven’t been able to find.
Frankly, the church in America is cloistered. A cloister is a secluded, religious place*. Whenever we hear someone referred to as cloistered, what we mean is they live in a religious community that has some how cut them off from what the rest of the world thinks. And this is the state that the church finds herself in. The church has become so isolated from the world that we don’t even realize that a large part of our culture doesn’t turn to us for answers any longer, no matter how desperate.
Cloisters (architecturally) were originally designed for monasteries and convents. They were places that monks and nuns could draw away from society and focus on the devout life. And while these were started with good intentions, they did have the affect of taking believers out of the world that they were called to be salt and light in. I believe this has happened with the church as well. We have pulled back from the world in an effort to be pure and not be stained by the world. But the effect has actually taken us out of the world we were designed to make an impact in.
I once heard a fact that I’m now having trouble sourcing, so take what I’m about to say next with a grain of salt. The factoid went like this: In the West, we lead as many unbelievers to Jesus in the first two years of coming to Christ as we will for the rest of our lives after that. Essentially what this stat is saying is that when you become a believer you have about two good years where you live close enough to the world to impact it. Once beyond that, you become drawn into a church community and it becomes hard to get out of it to share the Gospel.
Think about it: When you became a believer, there were so many things to learn. So many classes to attend. You were busy Sunday morning and your unbelieving friends weren’t. You began to grow apart. You married a believing spouse, wanted to raise believing children, etc. etc, and all of these things (as good as they were) pulled you farther and farther away from the world you wanted to impact. It can become hard to move beyond the “Christian bubble.”
My point is this: We have to get over the cloister affect. It’s not okay for the church not to be salt and light in the world. In order to do that, we have to move away from our own tribalism and take the Gospel to people who look like they don’t want it. Jesus had to do the very same thing: Though He lived in Heaven with the Father, to redeem mankind He had to leave the confines of the fellowship with the Father and be willing to preach His Gospel to people who (based on outward appearances) didn’t want it. He overcame the cloister of Heaven and embraced broken humanity, and He calls us to do the same.
Photo Credit: Augsburg interior by barnyz
Cluster Map
Pursuing Glory 