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Between my teething, insomniac son and my seething, ergomaniac preaching lab (wink, wink), I haven’t had time to post much in the last week. Coming up are the last couple pieces in the Church Planting with Small Groups series… But for the moment, here’s a favorite G.K. Chesterton quote:

It is always simple to fall; there are an infinity of angles at which one falls, only one at which one stands… In my vision, the heavenly chariot flies thundering through the ages, the dull heresies sprawling and prostrate, the wild truth reeling but erect. - G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

Gist: The gospel advances faster when we avoid even the “little” heresies.

In Water from a Deep Well, Gerald Sittser makes the following suggestion:

Never before has the church had such opportunities for influence. The biggest problem it faces is its own complacency and worldliness. Here church leaders must take charge, not by doing more but by doing less. They must surrender all desire for political, economic, social and cultural influence in larger society to devote their energies to enabling the church to become a community of belonging. Church leaders are called to serve the church; the church in turn is called to serve the world. (emphasis mine)

I agree with the main drift of Sittser’s thought here. Leaders in today’s churches will usually be better served by slowing down to speed up, cutting programs and expenditures in order to do a few things well. In the sentence I italicized, I don’t think many people would question Sittzer’s first two entries–political and economic influence. In fact, decrying Christian Republicanism (equating Christianity with Conservative values) and Corporate Christianity (running the church for profit, like a business, with the lead pastor as CEO) is commonplace these days, and rightly so.

However, there’s currently a groundswell of interest in the church exerting cultural and social influence. Consider the social/cultural agendas of guys like Donald Miller and Shane Claiborne, the popularity of Relevant Magazine (and various similar publications), and books like Andy Crouch’s Culture Making. Renewing culture and transforming society are rallying cries in many circles right now–and I’m usually one of the guys yelling.

I think the church does have a mandate to live in such a way that there’s an outward ripple effect. But Sittser’s comment, which I hope he elaborates on, does make me pause. Twenty years from now, will people be shaking their heads at the way the Western church became obsessed with becoming new monastics and finger painters for Jesus? Kind of like the way we shake our heads now at the way an earlier generation became obsessed with politics and successful business models?

We need to remember that whatever effects an honest Christian life has on the surrounding people and culture, our primary job is spiritual transformation. Love and service are the hallmarks of Christian community. To the extent that that job description is embraced, new artistry and social justice will emerge. Jesus changes lives and heals sinners before he transforms society and stirs creative juices.

An anemic artistic subculture and the lack of involvement in social causes are signs of a deficient church. But the New Testament doesn’t equate vibrant Christianity with a Web 2.0 Renaissance or New Urbanism. We have to be careful not to make secondary effects like Art and Activism the primary goal.

Anyone else have thoughts on this?

More from Acts for Everyone Part One by N.T. Wright. I’ve quoted and referenced Wright so much that when I actually post a review of this book, it may be redundant. Here he talks about Dorcas, the resurrected widow-heroine from Acts 9. Unfortunate name, but what a story and what a take-away:

Dorcas…stands as it were for all those unsung heroines who have got on with what they can do best and have done it to the glory of God. Had it not been for Peter, she might never have made it into the pages of the New Testament, and we have to assume that there were dozens in the early years, and thousands in later years, who, like her, lived their lives in faith and hope, bearing the sorrows of life no doubt as well as celebrating its joys, and finding in the small acts of service to others a fulfillment of the gospel within their own sphere, using traditional skills to the glory of God.

Luke is right to draw out eyes down to the small-scale and immediate, in case we should ever forget that these are the people who form the heart of the church, while the apostles and evangelists go about making important decisions, getting locked up, stoned or shipwrecked, preaching great sermons, writing great letters, and generally being great and good all over the place. I am privileged to know plenty of Dorcases… When I meet such people I greet them as what they are, the beating heart of the people of God. - N.T. Wright, Acts for Everyone Part One

Leaders get the limelight, the book deals, and the wide-eyed acolytes, but the kingdom of God is innervated by unsung heroes. Anyone serious about seeing new churches grow would give his right arm for people like Dorcas.

We have as much control over “in a minute” as we do over a random moment in the next millenium, so our best bet is to pray, then happily flail away:

The next moment is as much beyond our grasp, and as much in God’s care, as that a hundred years away. Care for the next minute is just as foolish as care for a day in the next thousand years. In neither can we do anything, in both God is doing everything. - C.S. Lewis

Here’s an excerpt from an interview with Gary Page, the founder of Google. He was asked how to get more people thinking about doing things that might actually change the world:

There are a number of barriers in place. Let me give an example. In our first founders’ letter in 2004, we talked about the risk profile with respect to doing new innovations. We said we would do some things that would have only a 10% chance of making $1 billion over the long term. But we don’t put many people on those things; 90% work on everything else. So that’s not a big risk. And if you look at where many of our new features come from, it’s from these riskier investments.

Even when we started Google, we thought, “Oh, we might fail,” and we almost didn’t do it. The reason we started is that Stanford said, “You guys can come back and finish your Ph.D.s if you don’t succeed.” Probably that one decision caused Google to be created. It’s not clear we would have done it otherwise. We had all this internal risk we had just invented. It’s not that we were going to starve or not get jobs or not have a good life or whatever, but you have this fear of failing and of doing something new, which is very natural. In order to do stuff that matters, you need to overcome that.

This is solid gold–even if Gary didn’t precisely have church planting in mind. I can’t think of anything that would “change the world” more than new culturally-situated, Jesus-loving churches. By the same token, when it comes to church planting, there’s tons of risk just waiting to be invented–and heck, some of it’s even real. But to actually plant a church, you have to push past that fear of failure and just go for it. Fortunately, Jesus is intimately involved in that process.

HT: Daniel Scocco