• /
    • Archives /
  • November 30, 1999

Archives For November 30, 1999

Acceptance and Transformation

Charles Kiser —  March 31, 2008 — 13 Comments

Yesterday we visited an American Baptist/United Church of Christ/Alliance of Baptists/Emergent church that’s meeting in a Presbyterian church building in North Oak Cliff. It’s obviously quite a diverse community of faith.

I really enjoyed the service. It’s hard to describe it—kind of a contemporary-high church hybrid. In the pastor’s words, the church has one foot in Mainline Protestant churches (high church) and one foot in Emergent churches (contemporary). We listened to a jazz solo, sang an a cappella African song and followed a liturgy. The sermon was an actual conversation between the pastor and church members. Claudia Porche guessed that it might have been the most significant church experience we’ve had yet in our eight weeks of participant-observation.

At the heart of this experience’s significance for me was dealing with the tension of acceptance and transformation. This little eclectic church majored in the gospel value of acceptance. Everyone is welcomed and embraced, regardless of background, race, or even sexual orientation. We experienced this welcome and acceptance ourselves from church members after the service.

The church’s stance on sexual orientation got us talking at brunch afterwards. Though we hold different theological convictions on the subject of sexual orientation, we found ourselves drawn to the culture of acceptance there. We found ourselves asking: How do foster a culture of acceptance and at the same time value life transformation that results when the gospel is appropriated? How can we avoid judging people without loosening our grip on our theological convictions?

It’s a delicate balance. I recently read a book by John Burke addressing these questions called No Perfect People Allowed: Creating a Come as You Are Culture in the Church. Burke said a couple things that stuck out to me. First, unbelievers can’t be expected to fall in line with the transformative values of the gospel until they make a commitment to Jesus. Second, unbelievers don’t make a commitment to Jesus and experience life change without the power of the Holy Spirit at work in their lives. Ministers can’t engineer conviction and transformation.

On a practical level I think Burke’s observations mean that we love people unconditionally and leave conversion and life change to the work of the Holy Spirit. He is the only one, after all, who can convict the human heart and bring about transformation. Unbelievers see the values of the gospel as they are lived out in the Christian community and the Holy Spirit uses that modeling as fodder for change.

That’s about as far as I’ve gotten. I’m curious for your feedback on this matter.

How do you / your church community live in the tension between acceptance and transformation?

In Books, Gay & Lesbian, Spiritual Formation, Values
permalink

What are we all about?

Charles Kiser —  March 10, 2008 — 4 Comments

We’re in the process of drafting our initial purpose and values for the new church. When we’ve finished the process in a couple weeks, we’ll be ready to choose a name for the church that reflects the language of our values and purpose. The Kisers and Porches have had some fun times brainstorming with a dry-erase board and listening to the Scriptures. I’ve been learning several things along the way, a few worthy of mention:

1) Adaptation is a key value. We’ve been reminded from several different mentors that we are decidedly NOT going to “get it right” in the first two months. Some of our language won’t resonate with Dallas people; some of our values we’ll want to delete later; we’ll forget others that will become important to us later.

All of this is reminding us to be committed to a culture of change and adaptability. Who says we can’t add a value in three months? Who says we can’t tweak our purpose statement six months from now? We want to be responsive to our environment as we start this new church.

2) Listening to Scripture. It seems obvious, but it’s been so tempting just to rip off somebody else’s values or purpose, rather than go through the more laborious process of reading lots of Scripture and listening for what comes alive in our Dallas context.

3) Listening to Insiders. To be truthful, we’re actually the outsiders. Dallas residents are the insiders. We are wanna-be insiders. If we’re going to start a church for Dallas people, it makes sense that we would listen to Dallas people, particularly those who aren’t a part of a church. Their input will help us determine the way this church will take shape.

I’ve been inspired by the good listening Rick Warren did nearly 30 years ago as he was starting a church in Southern California. For twelve weeks he went door to door taking an opinion poll. He would say, “Hi, my name is Rick. I’m taking an opinion poll of the community. I’m not trying to sell anything or sign you up for anything. It should only take about 2 minutes. Will you participate?” Then he asked 5 questions:

  • What is the greatest need in this area?
  • Are you actively attending any church? [If yes, he’d say “Thank you, have a great day” and end his survey there; if no, he’d continue to the next question]
  • Why do you think most people don’t attend church?
  • If you were to look for a church, what kind of things would you look for?
  • What advice can you give to a minister who really wants to be helpful to people?

What powerful questions! We intend to adapt Warren’s survey and use it for our own context as a way of listening to insiders. Their answers will inform the way we craft our purpose and values language.

Please pray that God will give us discernment and clarity as we draft the initial values and purpose of this new church.

In Values
permalink