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
Why I Want Christians to Move to the Inner City
My wife and I were talking before bed a few nights ago. We were reminiscing about the day and she told me about one of the neighborhood kids that had come to our house. Now, it’s not unusual for a neighborhood kid to have made their way into our house. But today, there were several. So, we have a rule at our house: we read before we get any screen time. And because we treat the kids that come over the same as our kids, they were reading with her too.
The short version of this story is one of the kids that was over was the same age as one of our kids. As she read reading with him it became obvious he was significantly behind in his reading skills. SIGNIFICANTLY. Then she moved on to another great ministry opportunity that our daughter had as she walked one of the kids from our house back to theirs. It was obvious that the day was full of both need and ministry opportunities.
And that’s what got us talking. I stood their, almost in shock. I’ve told many friends about the ministry opportunities we see in our lower income, struggling neighborhood. They always seem blown away by how many opportunities we have to serve and love people. And yet, at the end of this day, I was blown away that people could be surprised either at the need or the amount of opportunities. Having lived in this neighborhood for almost a decade, both realities had finally sunk in.
I turned to my wife and said, “You know, if the Lord hadn’t called us to plant churches, I could easily spend the rest of my life going around recruiting believers and teaching them how to do ministry in an inner city context.” And we talked. We talked about how serving in our neighborhood is really easy. We just live life and love people along the way. We open our hearts and our homes. Needs naturally show up and we meet them where God gives us the ability.
We talked about the ministry that many try to do in our neighborhood. We talked about how Christians come to our neighborhood to serve and then leave. We’re thankful for their heart, but we know how they don’t really touch the true need here. How they don’t provide male role models for the boys that don’t have any. How they don’t teach the kids that don’t know how to read. How they don’t mentor the single mom who is stressed from working a job how to love and care for her kids. How they can’t show and sow the Gospel in a way that relates to the people, mostly because they can’t earn trust in such a short amount of time.
I’m not claiming to be an expert. I’ve had a ridiculously poor success rate at reaching people in my neighborhood. But I do see the need. And I’ve learned that I have more opportunities when I’m here more. The more I become part of this neighborhood, the more opportunities I have.
So I dreamed with my wife. I talked about going around to many of the other churches in my city and maybe even other cities to tell them about what I see: about the epidemic fatherlessness that is plaguing our inner cities; about the power that love and faithfulness can have on small children when they see it regularly and not once or twice or even 12 times a year; about how believers in Jesus can help. And then I would call them to come and live there. Notice I didn’t say do something. I would call them to come and live.
And as they live and experience life and pray about what they see, they would be able to respond to the Holy Spirit and meet needs where they could. They could become the guy that reads with a seven year old who should be farther along. They could work with the guy struggling to get off drugs or teach the 19-year-old who was never parented well how to drive her first car. And before they knew it, they would be sharing life and sowing the Gospel.
That’s when reality hit. As weird as it may sound, recruiting people to live in the inner city is not my calling. Planting house churches that embody apostolic Christianity is. So while I can do my part with those around me, spending my life recruiting others to live and serve the inner city would be stepping out of God’s will for my life. I can’t afford to do that.
But what I can do is say this: Some of you this will resonate with this. Some of you reading this will sense the Holy Spirit tapping you on the shoulder as I describe the need. Some of you already know that Jesus has been talking to you about this very subject. If that’s you, then my advice to you is to give in to Him. For most, that will mean selling your current house and moving to a needier neighborhood to do what I’ve described. I say “most” because the kind of ministry I’m describing is not a drive-by type of ministry. It’s not something you can do one Saturday afternoon a month. For most it will involve leaving one place and joining another. It’s a costly and time consuming process.
This is where many will start to argue with me. Having nodded your head through the entire post, you’ll immediately begin to defend your status quo. You could be right, God could be wanting you to be where you are to do ministry there. If so, let this spur you toward be awakened to the need around you. But be very clear that the Lord has called you in this direction. It’s always tempting to play it safe and call that decision “the Lord’s,” but my experience has been safety and the Lord’s calling rarely go hand in hand.
For those who have heard the Lord clearly enough to surrender the arguments, come join me, not in my city, but in the context of need that plagues our inner cities. God will meet us there.
I leave you with a quote from Theresa of Calcutta (better known as Mother Theresa):
Find your own Calcutta. Find the sick, the suffering, and the lonely right where you are…You can find Calcutta all over the world, if you have the eyes to see. Everywhere, wherever you go, you find people who are unwanted, unloved, uncared for, just rejected by society – completely forgotten, completely left alone.
Photo Credit: MISHPO Detroit Survey by Michigan State Historic Preservation Office
Cluster Map
Pursuing Glory 