The Church and CSR

I am involved in many ongoing conversations around gospel, marketplace and the all-encompassing way of life that Jesus guides us to live.  To live into His truth - that as you are going about your everyday life in whatever you do and with whatever knowledge you have - you are a disciple-maker, is tremendously freeing.

Yet many churches are still not freeing people into this way of life.  Ironic.  Even tragic.

In their own expression of CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility), many churches have contained and restrained the gospel by programming the Way of Jesus into group activities and forays into ‘the world’, rather than equipping and releasing people to live their life in Christ in the 98% of life they spend while NOT in church.

How would our neighbourhoods change if the organized church re-organized itself in this direction?

Less will actually mean more.

Is the Christian Gospel Any Good For the World?

Christians talk a lot about this thing called the Gospel, and that it is ‘good news’.  However, just how good is it when it is often encountered as a demoralizing message of shame and guilt over things people have done wrong, and that behind all this is a God who will punish you if you don’t conform (but hey – accept Jesus and you’ll be saved).  The church as the corporate purveyor of this so-called good news hasn’t had a good run of it lately either.  Public perception of the church (warranted or not) is coloured by many things that detract from the ‘good news’ such as the impact of colonialism, residential schools, anti LGBTQ stances, and in some contexts, Christian nationalism and its related issue-politics. 

This is not His ‘good news’. It makes me sad and frustrated at how far the expression of this Gospel has strayed from its original story. 

It’s only in the last decade I have come to extricate myself from a narrow and truncated version of God’s Grand Story for the world that was so often put forward by some within evangelicalism. Yes, I am deconstructing – and in reality we all should be.  Not to destroy and abandon, but to renew, rebuild and restore.  Our faith is not static.  How can it be if it is focused on the Creator of the Universe????  Can you remain in your knowing, thinking you’ve ‘got it’?

What happened to love?  What happened to inclusion?  What happened to embracing the outcast?  What happened to radical hospitality? What happened to resisting and even challenging the straitjacket that is religion?  What happened to living as a representative of Jesus Christ, who displayed all these things I just mentioned? 

What happened is that instead of living out His ways in the workplace, the neighbourhood, and wherever we go in our lives - and thereby attracting people to that way and truth about real, abundant life -  contemporary Christianity chose to slice and dice the Bible as though it was merely a divine last word theology-text, draw the lines of who can qualify as a Christian, develop the words and the rules of entry into God’s Kingdom and in effect, take on the role of humanity’s judge.

A tragic case of missing the point.

The Gospel is indeed Good News for the world in that ALL THINGS will be restored to God’s original intentions though Christ.  As we live according to His ways, that process of restoration is being enacted in real-time. God’s good news is that in Christ there is a path to abundant living with nature, with each other and with our Creator.

The earth desperately needs good news.  My personal sense is that everyone in this world has a primal sense that things could and should be better.  Don’t we all long for more peace, more love, more abundance and joy?  The Good News is that Christ is the Way to that kind of life.

Let’s show up and show that Way.

Change: Rhetoric vs. Reality

We are in an era of organizational re-design and rebirth.  Whether it’s new working arrangements or new ways of doing business/ministry, things are not what they used to be.  Thank (or blame) the pandemic.  Here we are.

However, the dynamics of how change works has not changed.  Change impacts structures and processes but it’s humans that carry out the change. To declare change without paying attention to the human element of how people process and experience change, is to ultimately struggle through a failed change management process.

Here’s a classic downward spiral that I have seen take place in many organizational change processes.  If you see your organizational experience reflected here, know that it’s quite common.   My question for you is: What have you seen or experienced that has helped to get you out of this downward spiral?  Let’s help each other, and our organizations, move forward.

The Spiral: 

DISCUSSION about a sticky area; a place where everyone senses a need for change.

DECLARATION of the intent to do something about it.  Sometimes there’s even a ‘plan’. 

DELAY in taking action.  This often happens because there wasn’t an actual plan in the first place. Delays usually mean people…

DEFER to the old ways/patterns of acting.  When people realize promised change isn’t happening, the result is often a…

DECLINE of confidence that the system, or leadership’s commitment to change is real. 

DISCOURAGEMENT sets in and sometimes people begin to depart - not necessarily via actual resignation from the job, but a resignation to a status quo environment.  Leave a person in that state too long and it results in a…

DROP in both productivity and engagement[1].  After all, why take the initiative to change and improve if the system you are in, won’t?

 

Please share your thoughts & ideas in the comments.  Help us all move forward toward positive change.

Harv

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[1] 85% of employees are not engaged at work. According to Gallup's recent State of the Workplace report, a significant proportion of employees are not fully engaged in their work. Specifically, 85% of employees are either unengaged or actively disengaged. Dec 22, 2022

That "Deconstruction" Word

Words create worlds. Epic works take you to fantastical places.  A despots' rhetoric can destroy lives in a once-wonderful world.

Words create and shape your world.  Never underestimate their power over you or others.

Here’s a sample from my world. The buzz word/reality among many people of the Christian faith these days is ‘deconstruction’. For many that word creates a world of destruction, of tearing down, of assuming what was built is no longer functionary. It infers that ‘what I believed was wrong’.  Moving forward from that world, what’s the motivation to re-construct?  Your world becomes one of tearing down, with no other goal in mind.

Carefully chosen words shape your world and your approach to it.  They open new vistas (good & bad) and point in new directions.  It’s one reason why they are powerful. I am going to suggest an alternate word/world to 'deconstruction' later in this blog.  However, let’s first look at the power of some words that have shaped the evangelical Christian world: 

• Punishment vs. Sacrifice - Viewing the cross as God’s punishment of Jesus in our stead vs. His willing sacrifice to put the world right, has led to a punitive faith narrative where God is angry and requires punishment to assuage that anger. It results in a faith relationship informed by rules and perhaps some fear. 
• The Bible is the Word of God vs. The Living Word - In reality, Jesus Christ is the only true Word.  The Bible (Scripture) is a narrative script of God’s working in the world.  Though divinely inspired, it isn’t without its anomalies, contradictions, and inconsistencies.  (inspiration is another word to deal with). Yet everything in it points to and is subject to, the real Living Word.  Yet the world created by the words “the Bible is the Word of God” results in the words of the Bible interpreted and taught as though they were an unchanging, perfect legal document vs. the dynamic revelation/script of God’s working in the world.  Many have felt the shaming and the power exercised by those who ‘preach’ this approach to the Bible.  Jesus ironically becomes a secondary agent to the Bible. 
• Mission vs. Salt, Light, Yeast, Seed, Sent… (I could go on and on with more of the Scriptures' descriptors). ‘Mission’ (not even a strictly ‘Biblical' word) has carried with it a sense that we have a superior message.  It creates a world where we need to draw you and bring you into our understanding & expression of that message.  It leads to words like “outreach”, which infers a reaching TO the other to bring them IN to something. The truly Biblical words of salt, yeast, etc. instead create a world of participation with and among people vs. executing forays to spread the gospel. ‘Mission’ can truncate a message of global world restoration into a fixed point of light represented by a ‘decision for Christ’ and a joining with a church.

Oh and another word to examine: Gospel. What actually is it?

These and many other words have shaped the world of Christians for generations.  They are scripts, and we become so accustomed to these scripts, we often don’t even hear them anymore when spoken. While Christendom is still the dominant script for too many western churches, it’s clear that it’s over – except in our minds and attitudes, which are fueled by words & scripts that perpetuate our worlds.  So, do we need to deconstruct all of this?  Is it all wrong? 

Perhaps there’s a better way to view this by allowing a new word to shape our world of perception and inquiry;  a new word to help shape a faith that is so under scrutiny and reflection these days. 

I suggest that rather than de-construct, we rediscover in order to re-script the story.

Walter Brueggemann (bio below) uses this language to help us understand that we are a part of a STORY, a SCRIPT, and that we have to often examine it, and potentially re-script.  He once said that “This script turns out to be an alternative way of life. (But) we’re being seduced by bad melodies”.  NT Wright (bio below) often says that like the Israelites who had to get outside everyday to collect the manna God provided for them, we too need to refresh our relationship to God (which includes our understanding) on a regular basis.  In a sense, everyone at all times is a newcomer to faith.

Many of you are not singing the evangelical melody any longer.  I am one of those.  Yet it does not have to mean a rejection of the greatest story.  It could be that instead of de-constructing, you need to re-script. There is more to God’s Grand Story than we have been told.  Time perhaps to believe Jesus Christ when He said the Spirit will lead you into all Truth. 

Revisit and refresh the Script.

Harv Matchullis

 

Walter Bruegemann is the William Marcellus McPheeters professor emeritus of Old Testament at Columbia Theological Seminary, Decatur, Ga. https://www.walterbrueggemann.com/

NT Wright is Research Professor Emeritus of New Testament and Early Christianity
at St Mary’s College in the University of St Andrews and Senior Research Fellow at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford.  https://ntwrightpage.com/

 

Searching to Belong

Took someone to a church the other week who was looking for a place to belong.  Had to search around to find the right community, as there were some unique needs this person had for belonging.  You see, they were part of the LGBTQS community.

It was striking to me that I had to shop around to find in the Church (the community that represents Christ), a specific community that would accept, welcome, and affirm/love them just as they were.  Rather than this being a hallmark of the communities of faith called the ‘church’, it’s the exception.  Thus the careful search.

This experience is similar for others who suffer marginalization of any kind, for whatever reason.  Do they live alternative lifestyles, do they suffer mental illness, are they from a culture/religion we fear, are they disruptive to our comfort zone…?  Fill in your own blank:_______

I’m not on a high horse here.  I am among the guilty who in the past had internalized (and then acted out) an ‘othering’.  I allowed doctrinal, moral and church-culture alignment to influence belonging and acceptance, rather than the wide embrace of love and grace that is the hallmark and the very essence of Christ.  I am so sorry that I did not think more deeply about what my tradition was demonstrating.  I went with the flow because it was what the community practiced.

I was fresh out of seminary and in my first church when I first faced this dilemma head on as a church leader.  Have to say that I failed the test.  My office was in the downtown area of a small Alberta town.  I’d sit in my office and think: “There’s a bar down the street.  I should head in there, have a coke and start meeting some of the people who gather there”.  But I didn’t, even though the Spirit was pushing me to go.  Jesus would have gone.  But I was conditioned into a thinking that declared it wasn’t the ‘right’ place for a pastor to be.  Not a good place for other Christians either.  (You can tell I am old and this was a long time ago given the social mores among Christians now).  What would my congregation say?  Would I be called on the carpet or even lose my job for associating with ‘that crowd’ or going into 'that place'?  The reality was that anyone in that bar probably would not come to my church anyway given they surely had already experienced the Christian cold shoulder.  There would be no welcome from us especially if we knew their ‘story’ was as someone who sat in bars. So there I was – not going TO them and then leading a community that would not let them IN either. 

So much for belonging.  So much for a love that embraces all.   So much for incarnation of the gospel into my neighbourhood and relationships.  And, so much for Jesus being 'good news' to them.

A big win for religion.

By the way, the church we went to the other week was fantastic.  A warm embrace, felt through the teaching, the atmosphere and the welcome.  Just like Jesus would have done. 

I Lost a Friend Today

I lost a friend today.  Found at home dead.  No explanation yet.  Just prior to that I had conversations with 2 families who are suffering through similar family circumstance that have been our experience the past 12 years.  My heart and soul became overwhelmed.  Went to my room and cried, almost uncontrollably, for a long time.  Wave after wave of what felt like the weight of the worlds suffering crashing on me.  Seemed out of proportion, yet it kept coming.

I have experienced this a few times.  An identification with, and realization of the suffering of people in this world.  I don’t ever feel much emotion in my relationship with God, but this comes to me every once in a while, unannounced and definitely uninvited.  And I am wrecked.  Interestingly (to me) it is not about agonizing over the “Why, God?” question.  It is about just entering into the loss, suffering and human experience of pain, and how unjust, unnecessary, and unexplained it is.

My emotion doesn’t need an answer.  I am always sad, but not angry.  It is as though God has me there to just sit in the pain & loss.  The experience comes on me and I cannot control it.  It’s as though Christ just wants me to know it and perhaps feel what He feels. This is the closest I get to feeling intimacy in my relationship with Christ.

Suffering is unjust and frankly, unnatural.  We were not made for suffering, so when it occurs it feels wrong – precisely because according to God’s created intent for us, this was never meant to be.  We feel this deep within us, in the recesses of our souls.  It is the image of God within us crying out for our true state of being all the while we are suffering.

I don’t subscribe to those who seek to glorify suffering as a means to deeper spirituality.  Bull****.  However, we must deal with it as part of the human condition on earth.  I do know that in Christ, who also suffered, I can endure and find strength and hope.  But to glorify suffering itself as though we should seek it, is warped religion.  Christ endured the Cross but He didn’t go looking for it.  Never glorify suffering.  Endure it.  Place your hope and perspective in Christ during your suffering, but never elevate it to some superior state of spiritual experience.  We were made for blessing, love, abundance and eternal life.  Suffering and death and pain are in the way, and while ultimately are resolved and defeated in Christ, in the interim we are left to endure and cope, mitigating the pain (ours and others’) through the strength and promises we have in Christ, that we will be restored to our created being as God intended.

This also why we must be engaged in our world, to alleviate pain, poverty and suffering of all kinds.  It is why we are to ‘show up’ and come alongside with human suffering.  This is how the Kingdom of God (the created intent of God) comes to earth and does its restorative, redemptive work.  Who the hell cares about your theology of salvation if it has little or nothing to do with the state of human life in the here and now?  That’s not gospel.  If your deeper life pursuits and your Christian church experience does not have an immediate & demonstrable relationship of love and grace to the need of the world, you are nothing but noise.

I lost a friend today and I am pissed at the suffering of this world.