Category — Radical Christianity

Someone asked me why I’m always writing about grace.

The answer is twofold:

1) Grace defines New Testament Christianity.

2) There are plenty of “Christian” writers talking about works.

I will simply never get over it, grace, that is.

And neither should you.

My deepest convictions on the state of the church today are that most of our problems are because we don’t understand grace.

Religious people don’t like it that God loves people so much that He gives eternal life freely to all who believe . . . with no strings attached. The reality that He gives this gift regardless of the strings attached to lives.

Strings like . . .

. . . overeating

. . . gossip

. . . materialism

. . . addictions –even coffee can be an addiction (OUCH!)

We need to be careful with the strings we attach to grace.

In our honest moments, we know deep down, that those same strings are attached to our lives.

And so does God.

That’s why He sent His Son to die for us, with no strings attached.

Being justified freely by His grace through redemption that is in Christ Jesus (Romans 3:23).

Two Guys

There’s this guy I’ve known for decades. He started his Christian life the same way I did. Like me, he was an angry 60s rebel who met Jesus on the streets during the Jesus Movement revival. Like me, some great men and women of the faith took an interest in his life and taught him how to walk with Jesus. Like me, he felt God’s call to serve Christ in vocational ministry. Like me, he is sold out to the Lord Jesus as a devoted disciple.

Unlike me, he went straight into ministry after his studies at a university. Unlike me, he did not go to seminary and never studied the Bible under esteemed theologians and professors of Bible. Unlike me, his work for Christ has never centered in a local church, but has been more regional, nationwide, and even global.

Though we are both convinced that we are walking the path the Lord Jesus is leading us on, our convictions about how to actually reach the world for Him could not be more different!

• He’s into the big splash, the hottest trends, and the latest evango-hero personality. I hate that stuff.

• He devotes a lot of his life doing “think tank” stuff around a table with other “think-tank guys,” strategizing and planning. I think that’s a waste of time.

• He’s really interested in politics and current trends in America, and how the church can do something big to turn our culture around. I think that politics too often distracts Christians from the only real hope for America—authentic churches that make disciples that transform their families, neighborhoods, and communities.

• He’s a top-down authoritarian leader; I’m a team processing communal leader.

• He’s the boss; I’m the player-coach.

• He thinks I’m too vulnerable to my team; I think he lives in a dangerous place.

We disagree on a lot of theological issues too!

• He actually practices some gifts of the Holy Spirit I’m not sure are still around.

• He’s not sure Christians can’t lose their salvation; I’m absolutely convinced that eternal life is a free gift that can never be lost.

Oh yeah, he makes a lot more money than I do, doesn’t suffer from a chronic disease, flies away to exotic getaways with his wife several times a year, and his ministry receives huge gifts from extremely wealthy people.

Not that I’m comparing, competing, or envious.

Yes I am.

And so are you, aren’t you?

Two Gardens

There’s a person like this in your life right now. You can’t understand why God gives them opportunities when they disagree with you about so many things. You can’t understand why God doesn’t straighten out their theology when it’s so obvious to you that they are so wrong. And you really have a problem with God giving them such an easy life when you have to struggle like you do.

Here’s what I’ve decided about this guy. You may want to decide the same about the Christian in your life you’re either competing with, comparing yourself to, or envious of.

He has his garden to tend for God, and that is between him and Jesus.

My garden is Church of the Open Door. Jesus wants me to be the best under-gardener I can be in the garden He gave me to tend.

When Peter looked up from the garden of his life and challenged the Lord Jesus about the “easy garden” He gave to John, the Lord told him what we all need to hear, “If I will that he remain (in a life that doesn’t involve as much suffering as yours) till I come, what is that to you? You follow Me.” –John 21:22

In one of his books, Stu Weber states:

1. He is sure of the truths He understands in the Bible.
2. He is sure of the lessons God has taught him through failure.

I remember the day I read that statement. I remember underlining it, journaling it, meditating on it, and remarking, “That is so true!”

My next thought was a sad one: Most churches are places where failures are shamed, spun, and hidden.

What a tragedy to the next generation!

In trying to impress the white sepulchered religious bullies, we’re withholding the critical insights that would protect those who are watching.

It’s time those of us who view ourselves as mature Christians prove it by telling the truth about ourselves, including, or maybe especially, our failures.

If you don’t think that’s wise or biblical, read the stories of the heroes of the Bible. Then ask yourself, “What did I learn from their life?” I bet you that some of the most critical insights were from the honest and open account of their failures and weaknesses. And how the Lord redeemed it all to actually use them anyway.

The second half of last week’s Tipping Point—the raw truth about Church of the Open Door. I read this during our Easter services.

We’re Here to Tell You

We’re here to encourage you by telling you over and over again that the life you’ve been living is not the life Jesus wants you to have. To help you believe that you are worth far more than what the voices of this world tell you you’re worth.

We’re here to tell you that life is more than the weekly lineup of reality shows, the vacations you go on, the restaurants you eat in, the fine wine you drink, the golf courses you play on or the sports teams you follow.

We’re here to tell you that your worth is not limited or even defined by the car you drive, the home you live in, your fitness factor, your significant career, your education in a prestigious university, your political party, or your status in some sick codependent performance-based religious tradition.

We’re here to tell you that you do not need to medicate the pain of life with booze, drugs, exercise, materialism, portfolios, education, career, control, or even theology.

What We Know!

We know that we live in a world where few people keep their promises or remain faithful to anything or anyone. We want to introduce you to Jesus, who does keep His promises and will remain faithful. And we beg Him to strengthen us so that we can become the exception to your experience by keeping our promises to Him, you, and one another.

We know that you need a new vision for your life. We know from God’s Word and from personal experience with Christ that you do not have to hang onto this hurtful world with the death grip of someone who isn’t aware of a better option.

We know that you may feel like the better options are for others.

Donald Miller, in one of my favorite books, Blue Like Jazz, tells the story of a group of hostages taken by terrorists in a remote corner of the world and held there in a dark room for over a year. When the Navy Seals got to the building – opened the door – and announced, “You’re rescued; you’re free. Come out into the light!” Not one of the hostages, huddled in a mass on the floor, moved a muscle. They had been in the dark for so long they didn’t believe in the light anymore. Or, like most of those who live outside the grace and mercy of God, didn’t think it was for them. So one of the seals took off his gear, got down on the floor, wrapped himself around the nearest hostage, held onto them tightly, whispering over and over and over, “It’s all right. You have been rescued. You’re safe. You’re free. You can walk out into the light.”

What We Want To Do

That’s what we want to do. We want to take off all of our religious gear, announce to you the love, forgiveness, and power that can be yours in Christ Jesus, put our arms around you, and say to you over and over again, and for the rest of your life here on earth, “It’s all right. You’re safe here. If you trust in Jesus He will give you life and you will become a child of the Living God with power from on high. From that moment and for the rest of your life, you are not destined to live like this. You are destined for the light. When you believe in Him, He rescues you; He sets you free.”

We want to take you by the hand and walk with you toward the light of resurrection life in Christ Jesus.

The Choice

Leaders of churches have a choice. We can try to impress people by describing their church in glowing nuanced terms that present a picture of what they think people want to hear or what they secretly wish were true about their church. Or we can just tell the truth and trust God for the results.

I’m at the stage in life where I’d rather tell the truth. The truth is that a “perfect” church is not a healthy church because we all suspect what the leaders and God know—there’s a lot of stuff they’re not telling us. Spiritual health, by its very definition, insists on truth. Healthy churches admit that we’re struggling toward spiritual maturity together—that it’s a messy but wondrously redemptive process.

So, you want to know what’s really going on in the healthy community of faith we call Church of the Open Door? Here’s the raw truth—in all its messy glory!

The Raw Truth—What You’ll Discover

If you become a part of this faith community, you’ll discover that we’re extremely excited about what God is doing here as He releases the resurrection power from our lives. But also notice that we often fail, that we devote a lot of energy to planning the life of our church to maximize the releasing of this resurrection power, but sometimes, nothing goes according to our plan. Sometimes God exposes our plans as lacking, and that we’ve learned to admit that and live with the consequences.

You’ll discover that our leaders really take our assignment from God seriously—to love care for His people as selfless shepherds, to lay down our lives for the people we lead. But, you’ll also notice that our leaders—beginning with me—have problems, shortcomings, weaknesses, and limitations. We sometimes slip back into sin patterns and relational dysfunction we have been battling for years, even decades. God helps us through the white water of our failures as we open our lives to the protective love of Him and one another. We count on this love to tell us the truth in ways that keep our deficiencies and imperfections from severely harming those we lead or wounding them too deeply.

You’ll discover that the marriages, families, and friendships in our community of faith are valued and often extremely close, that we gather in smaller groups to love support and pray for one another earnestly. You’ll meet people at Church of the Open Door who will tell you that if it wasn’t for what Christ is doing in their lives and the encouragement and support they receive from their friends in this church, their marriage never would have made it. They will wonder at the power of God’s truth we teach here, and the loving support they receive to believe those truths. They know that His Word and love expressed through this fellowship have made every difference in moving their family toward health or turning their children around. You will meet some who will tell you that the healing of their marriage or family or friendships has been nothing short of miraculous.

But you will also realize that some of our marriages suffer from lack of love and attention, that some of our children walk away from God and live lives that break our hearts. Husbands and wives even walk away from their homes, destroying the hope of their abandoned families and bruising their souls severely.

You will meet addicts who are living clean and sober because of the power of Jesus’ resurrection life in a safe and healing community. They will tell you that if it weren’t for the grace of God as they have experienced it here, they would probably be dead…or worse.

And yet, we’re not going to hide the fact that some of our addicts straining toward sobriety relapse and use again and again. Some never get better; a few have died from the consequences of their addiction…or worse.

There are people sitting in our worship service that have been healed from horrible diseases or have lived when the doctors said there was no hope—I’m one of those. We have wonderful stories of how this church prayed for us earnestly and persistently, and how God turned our health around, or saved us from certain death.

But, sadly, some of our most faithful followers of Christ we beg God to heal suffer terribly with vicious diseases and chronic health problems, many die too soon, and we don’t know why.

The friendships here are deep and meaningful and satisfying. We tell each other hard things, stand with one another through the hardest days of life, and find in the fabric of the relationships of this faith community the sustaining energy that only resurrection-powered friendships will ever know.

But of course we have Christians here—from the very immature to the ones who should have grown up years ago, who continue to hurt one another terribly, demand their rights, and in moments of weakness for the immature believer, and in patterns of persistent sin for the ones who should have grown up, gossip and strike out at one another, even get mad, walk away from our sustaining relationships, and leave the church. We grieve their leaving the protective love of this fellowship of followers of Christ.

Yet somehow, in the messy mixture of victories, celebrations, worship, and hope, with failure, disappointments, sin and the pain and chaos of everyday life, the gospel takes root and we see the resurrection life of Jesus taking hold in the lives of those who will trust Him enough to stay engaged with Him and with us.

That’s what happens in this church—failure, confusion, even sin and pain, become ways to learn God’s grace and grow in our trust of Him and one another. Healing, victories, hope, encouragement, and love are also explained by God’s grace working in this community as we grow together by trusting Him and one another.

People just like you take Jesus at His word and receive God’s mercy and grace. Their recovery and transformation depend primarily on whether these people believe what Jesus says about life, about God, about them—that He loves them passionately and will run them down with His love. But they must also believe what He says about us—that the safest place to receive and grow in His love is not a perfect church full of people who either believe or are acting like they have it all together and that they have this Jesus thing figured out, but a healthy church full of imperfect people just like them who are struggling together trusting Jesus for all that they know and are learning about Him.

As these trusting followers of Christ discover that God forgives them and continues to love them no matter how badly we fail Him, and as we determine to forgive one another and continue to love one another no matter how badly we fail each another, Christ’s resurrection power creates the space we need to be healed.

We’re humbled by both the successes and the failures in this spiritual family we call Church of the Open Door; we’re humbled by the grace of God that privileges us to be a part of one another’s life in this way.