The Vision of this Blog

The Vision of this Blog
For two millennia man has been grappling with the cost and practical application of following Jesus Christ. The vision of the authors is that we would encourage one another in this journey as we share what we are learning from Jesus through our daily experiences of life. This is not a forum to parade empty knowledge nor is it a place for prideful arguments. Instead, it is for the humble and sincere to learn together from Jesus who invites us into the kingdom of God and teaches us how to live according to this kingdom.

Aug 8, 2007

Introduction (Part 2) Eugene Peterson's The Jesus Way

The American Way

Here is a text, words spoken by Jesus, that keeps this in clear focus: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life” (John 14:6). The Jesus way wedded to the truth brings about the Jesus life. We can’t proclaim the Jesus truth but then do it any old way we like. Nor can we follow the Jesus way without speaking the Jesus truth.

But Jesus as the truth gets far more attention than Jesus as the way. Jesus as the way is the most frequently evaded metaphor among the Christians with whom I have worked for fifty years in as a North American pastor. In the text that Jesus sets before us so clearly and definitively, way comes first. We cannot skip the way of Jesus in our hurry to get the truth of Jesus as he is worshipped and proclaimed. The way of Jesus is the way that we practice and come to understand the truth of Jesus, living Jesus in our homes and workplaces, with our friends and family.

A Christian congregation, the church in your neighborhood, has always been the primary location for getting this way and truth and life of Jesus believed and embodied in the places and among the people with whom we most have to do day in and day out. There is more to the church than this local congregation. There is the church continuous through the centuries, our fathers and mothers who continue to influence and teach us. There is the church spread out throughout the world, communities that we are in touch with through prayer and suffering and mission. There is the church invisible, dimensions and instances of the Spirit’s work that we know nothing about. There is the church triumphant, the “great cloud of witnesses” who continue to surround us (Heb. 12:1). But the local congregation is the place where we get all of this integrated and practiced in the immediate circumstances and among the men, women, and children we live with. This is where it becomes local and personal.

The local congregation is the place and community for listening to and obeying Christ’s commands, for inviting people to consider and respond to Jesus’ invitation, “follow me,” a place and community for worshipping God. It is the place and community where we are baptized into a Trinitarian identity and go on to mature “to the measure of the full stature of Christ” (Eph. 4:13), where we can be taught the Scriptures and learn to discern the ways that we follow Jesus, the Way.

The local congregation is the primary place for dealing with the particulars and people we live with. As created and sustained by the Holy Spirit, it is insistently local and personal. Unfortunately, the more popular American church strategies in respect to congregation are not friendly to the local and the personal. The American way with its penchant for catchy slogans and stirring visions denigrates the local, and its programmatic way of dealing with people erode the personal, replacing intimacies with functions. The North American church at present is conspicuous for replacing the Jesus way with the American way. For Christians who are serious about following Jesus by understanding and pursuing the ways that Jesus is the Way, this deconstruction of the Christian congregation is particularly distressing and a looming distraction from the way of Jesus.

A Christian congregation is a company of praying men and women who gather, usually on Sundays, for worship, who then go into the world as salt and light. God’s Holy Spirit calls and forms this people. God means to do something with us, and he means to do it all in community. We are in on what God is doing, and we are in on it together.

And here is how we are in on it: we become present to what God intends to do with and for us through worship, become present to the God who is present to us. The operating biblical metaphor regarding worship is sacrifice—we bring ourselves to the altar and let God do with us what he will. We bring ourselves to the Eucharistic table and enter into that grand fourfold shape of the liturgy that shapes us: taking, blessing, breaking, and giving—the life of Jesus taken and blessed broken and distributed. That Eucharistic life now shapes our lives as we give ourselves, Christ in us, to be taken, blessed, broken, and distributed in lives of witness and service, justice and healing.

But that is not the American way. The great American innovation in congregation is to turn it into a consumer enterprise. We Americans have developed a culture of acquisition, an economy that is dependent on wanting more, requiring more. We have a huge advertising industry designed to stir up appetites we didn’t even know we had. We are insatiable.

It didn’t take long for some of our Christian brothers and sisters to develop consumer congregations. If we have a nation of consumers obviously the quickest and most effective way to get them into our congregations is to identify what they want and offer it to them, satisfy their fantasies, promise them the moon, recast the gospel in consumer terms: entertainment, satisfaction, excitement, adventure, problem solving, whatever. This is the language we Americans grow up on, the language we understand. We are the world’s champion consumers, so why shouldn’t we have state-of-the-art consumer churches?


Given the conditions prevailing in our culture, this is the best and most effective way that has ever been devised for gathering large and prosperous congregations. Americans lead the world in showing how to do it. There is only one thing wrong: This is not the way in which God brings us into conformity with the life of Jesus and sets us on the way of Jesus’ salvation. This is not the way in which we become less and Jesus becomes more. This is not the way in which our sacrificed lives become available to other in justice and service. The cultivation of consumer spirituality is the antithesis of a sacrificial, “deny yourself” congregation. A consumer church is an antichrist church.

We can’t gather a God-fearing, God-worshipping congregation by cultivating a consumer-pleasing, commodity-oriented congregation. When we do, the wheels start falling off the wagon. And they are falling off the wagon. We cant suppress the Jesus way in order to sell the Jesus truth. The Jesus way and the Jesus truth must be congruent. Only when the Jesus way is organically joined with the Jesus truth do we get the Jesus life.

1 comment:

John Rhodes said...

Aug 12, 2007
So, where do I start? As much as I totally get where Gene is coming from in his heart, I think his approach may be a little extreme and could be more appropriately directed to the church leadership (which in all fairness, probably is) and questioning their motives in needing a mega church. I think God would have no trouble at all meeting a broken spirit in the numerous pews of one of these "antichrist" consumer church buildings. Or, it may be in the small group for single mothers as a program of one of the corporate churches where a lost soul hears about the mercy of Jesus.I realize that Eugene is generalizing a bit here, but still, the small humble environment of a 1st century church can be steeped in self righteous, desouled church leaders and members.And culture is a huge factor in presenting the Word. Jesus did sit down in the homes of the elite and rich and haughty; broke bread in some of the Tabernacles as well as down by the river. I feel that Eugene's concern could relate to any group of people gathering to worship in many different circumstances.Again, I get what he is driving at, but I see a lot more hope in the power of God to reach the unreached in some of the most remote places; be they lofty or lowly. I wonder, and without having read any of this book, this isn't a response to more of the Universal Life type churches. I have listened to this Joel Olsteen guy out of Houston on TV. Some people are put off by his lack of attention to the scriptures and his "New agey" approach to feel good sermons that attract the masses. When I have listened to him I have heard lots of scriptural references and lots of practical applications. It distresses me a bit to see the Big Show but I am also aware that in the midst of chaos, regardless of our intent, the Holy Spirit reigns.More later, maybe, Brother John

Posted by John Rhodes 0 comments