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
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
Evangelism in an Upside Down Kingdom
20 years ago a young, awkward, lanky teenager gave his life to Jesus. Without much direction or personal instruction, he consumed whatever material he could afford to buy out of his charismatic church’s bookstore. In the bookstore he found what looked to be a twenty year old copy of a book containing dreams and visions by a prophet named Rick Joyner. The book would affect the lanky teenager in profound ways by imparting a desire to know God and become more like Christ.
That lanky teenager, if you haven’t figured it out yet, was me. The book was actually only written two years previous. (In my defense, two years seemed like a long time back then.) 
It was called “The Final Quest.” In many ways the theme was very similar to “The Pilgrim’s Progress” in that Rick was expounding on deep truths of the Christian life as he progressed in an allegory portrayed as a physical journey.
The book starts out as a horrible army of demons are attacking Christians and Rick has to climb a mountain (“The Mountain of the Lord”), first for safety, but then as he begins to understand each level of mountain represents a different stage of maturity, out of a desire to know Christ more. As he climbs higher up the mountain he becomes more mature and more effective in the battle against the demonic forces.
Lately, the following section has been on my mind. In this stage of the vision, he is being lead up and down the Mountain of the Lord by the personification of Wisdom, aptly named “Wisdom.”
Wisdom led me down the mountain to the very lowest level, which was named ‘Salvation.’ ‘You think that this is the lowest level,’ declared Wisdom, ‘but this is the foundation of the whole mountain. In any journey, the first step is the most important and it is usually the most difficult. Without ‘Salvation’ there would be no mountain.’
I was appalled by the carnage on this level. Every soldier was very badly wounded, but none of them were dead. Multitudes were barely clinging to the edge. Many seemed ready to fall off, but none did. Angels were everywhere ministering to the soldiers with such great joy that I had to ask, ‘Why are they so happy?’
‘These angels have beheld the courage that it took for these to hold on. They may not have gone any further, but neither did they give up. They will soon be healed, and then they will behold the glory of the rest of the mountain, and they will begin to climb. These will be great warriors for the battle to come.’
‘But wouldn’t they have been better off to climb the mountain with the rest of us?’ I protested, seeing their present condition.
‘It would have been better for them, but not for you. By staying here they made it easier for you to climb by keeping most of your enemies occupied. Very few from the higher levels ever reached out to help others come to the mountain, but these did. Even when these were barely clinging to the mountain themselves, they would reach out to pull others up. In fact, most of the mighty warriors were led to the mountain by these faithful ones. These are no less heroes than those who have made it to the top. They have brought great joy to heaven by leading others to Salvation…
Again I felt shame for my previous attitude toward these great saints. Many of us had scorned them as we had climbed to the higher levels. They had made many mistakes during the battle, but they had also displayed more of the Shepherd’s heart than the rest of us. The Lord would leave the ninety-nine to go after the one who was lost. These had stayed in the place where they could still reach the lost, and they paid a dear price for it….
(The Final Quest*, Rick Joyner, pp. 51-53)
My point in retelling this part of the story is this: In some parts of the church, those who reach out to the lost, the broken, and the hurting are seen as less spiritual. Often they are perceived as a mile wide but an inch deep. In order to relate to the lost and the broken, the evangelists among us chose a different path than the cloistered life that supposedly produces maturity. And while we desperately need people coming to Jesus in this hour, our attitude towards those who can and do lead people to Jesus is often one of disdain for their lack of depth.
But Jesus thinks differently than we do. We live in an upside-down Kingdom. What that means is that things that seem very important to us now (money, popularity, worldly success) mean very little to God and the things that mean much to God (humility, honor, self-sacrificing love) mean very little to men. God’s Kingdom is upside down compared to ours. To be specific to our context, Jesus says, “But many who are the greatest now will be least important then, and those who seem least important now will be the greatest then,” (Mark 10:31).
The church teaches us that the mega-church pastor, the preacher on a book tour, and the ascetic are all important and spiritual. But in this upside-down Kingdom, those that live lives near the broken to bring them to salvation are honored. They bear the price of relating to the brokeness of humanity and remaining close enough to the lost to be able to communicate the Gospel. Because of this, they may never write a book or draw a huge crowd, but they have God’s attention.
I write all this, not just so we appreciate evangelists more. That’s a good start. But I also write it so that we consider, very seriously, the idea that God may value an earthy, more mission minded version of Christianity than many think. Maybe according to the upside-down values of the Kingdom, Jesus assigns honor to those who make it their aim to live among and lead lost souls to the Mountain of the Lord. And if this the case, maybe we should make it more of our aim to be like those guys, and less like the mega church pastor, the writer, or ascetic. Maybe part of our journey into maturity is to become more like your lost co-worker and less like a monk, all for the purpose of reaching him and helping him know Jesus. Maybe instead of avoiding the world, we embrace it with the love of Christ and let that love transform us into more of who He is.
If we live in an upside-down Kingdom, I think it might be more important than we realize.
Photo Credit**: Un nuevo visitante llega al castillo by Oscar Gende Villar
*It probably goes without saying, but I do not consider the revelation contained within the Final Quest to have anywhere near the level of authority of Scripture. I believe Scripture is a far more reliable witness than any personal revelation and I quote this section as springboard for conversation.
** Also note that this photography was altered from its original version: A duck was cropped out and the picture was flipped upside down.
Cluster Map
Pursuing Glory 