Acceptance and Transformation

This week, I'm posting what my co-worker, Charles Kiser, had to say following our experiences last Sunday morning. You can read more from Charles about our church planting experiences at charleskiser.wordpress.com.

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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?


--Charles Kiser

1st Anniversary

(picture by Jessica Risinger: www.jessicarisingerphotography.com)




Have you ever gone on a trip and asked several people to take pictures for you, only to get home and discover that they all took poor pictures? Us too.

A couple weeks ago, Claudia and I celebrated our 1st anniversary with a trip to San Antonio. We had a delightful time. The Riverwalk is one of my most favorite places on earth, but it was even better with my favorite person. We ate lunch in the rotating restaurant of the Tower of the Americas, and also took a Riverboat ride. The other picture above is from the Mirror Maze, which was much harder than we were expecting! We had to wear food-preparation gloves so we wouldn’t smudge the mirrors and ruin the experience for others. They also encouraged us to wear 3D glasses--as if the maze wasn’t challenging enough already. I stumbled around the whole time with my arms out in front of me as though it were pitch dark. Claudia and I found our way back to the starting point three times before we ever made any real progress. It was fun.

Other trip highlights include descending ten flights of stairs at 7:30 a.m. when our hotel fire alarm went off, and missing daylight savings time! We also went to a small Presbyterian Church’s production of “Meet Me in St. Louis.” Other than the fact that they couldn’t sing, the performance was okay. Obviously, we made some memories!

Looking back over our first year, there’s a lot to be thankful for. Best of all--we still enjoy being together.

A Time to Invite, and a Time to Be Invited

Lately, my paradigms for outreach have been attacked (and this is a good thing). I used to see outreach as sending people out to invite more people back in. Granted, even in college, I began to see how the invitation “back in” was much better received when it occurred in the context of genuine relationship. But I was still approaching these relationships with the idea that I had everything to give. I know, I know…such humility! Actually, it’s embarrassing.

You see, as Claudia and I have begun making invitations to our Uptown neighbors, we’ve been surprised at how many—in the same instant of introducing themselves—have invited us into their homes for drinks and conversation. But I’m even more surprised at my own resistance to these invitations! After all, this is not what I had in mind! You’re supposed to come to our apartment so we can get to know you. And the words of a friend begin to echo in my head: what if we need to belong to them before we ever ask them to belong to us?

Ah. Now that’s a question. A one-sided relationship is not much of a relationship. I have realized how important it is for me to see the new people I meet as those who have something to offer me, rather than the other way around. So I embark with a new perspective this week: I’m looking for opportunities to learn and to belong. Rather than starting a new group of guys to play hoops at the park, I will join those already gathered. Rather than schedule as many people over for dinner as possible, we will leave margin to accept the invitations from others.

And as I write, my mind floods with stories of Jesus accepting the hospitality of others. May those who show hospitality to the Kisers and the Porches encounter Christ in us.

Happy Pi Day!

Good news, everyone! It's Pi Day. March 14...3.14. And how, you might ask, does one celebrate Pi Day? By eating pie of course!

This is one of my most favorite traditions. This evening, we will eat pie and celebrate all that is good. And you should do the same.

I want to hear your Pi Day stories.

De-programming

(By the way, we’ve had over forty people commit to being prayer partners with us—we are grateful for all of you!)

Over the last few weeks, my deep roots in church culture have become more and more apparent. We are really trying to see ourselves as domestic missionaries—immersing ourselves into the culture of Uptown and seeking to truly incarnate Christ in this environment. So while the attitude and behavior of Christ remains constant, the methodologies of being and doing church will look different than what I'm used to.

Now, I just used the word “methodologies,” so let me come back to earth before I hurt myself. In other words, I keep getting reminded that this new ministry I have embarked upon will never “settle back” into something I’m familiar with. Rather, we want the people of Uptown to have some say in what church “looks like.” We want this church to emerge from authentic relationships that develop over time. We want our justice projects and future worship gatherings to be informed by local colors and flavors.

What if our church never initiates a justice project from within, but instead we simply supply lots of volunteers for community projects that have already been established? Or what if our future worship gatherings take place only during the evening on Sundays, because that time works better for most young professionals? What if spiritual growth doesn’t begin with teaching, but begins with “Hey, we’re going to hand out socks to the homeless, want to come?”