Let's make the next ten years a Jubilee decade, within a re-invigorated and unified Christ Culture.
Jesus Followers can do this by claiming the untapped Presence of the Holy Spirit, allowing the Holy Spirit to energize us and lead us - in whatever organization and/or group we're currently members of - working evangelically and missionally across congregational lines - to re-establish a first century-like Christ Culture - a Gospel that wraps around all sub cultures, which touch all that Jesus Christ touched, taught and lived, including (but not limited to) the unnecessary distinctions between empire and province; nation and state; religious and secular; politico and consumer; healed and unhealed; 99% and 1%; ruler and laity; homeless poor and coping middleclass; families and singles; married and divorced; adolescent and child.
If we as Christians are active in any one of these sub-cultures, and we want to be part of positive changes by modeling Christ's behavior, we need solid program design, hard work, and the Holy Spirit's guidance. Because all sub-cultures are connected to each other, a change in one pushes and pulls the others. A good example is the Season of Service here in Portland Oregon (led by the Luis Palau Association).
How do we start? By understanding the Gospel rollout in the first century and how it influenced the inter-connected sub-cultures of its day. Our models are very clear: each of the four Gospels addressed all sub-cultures, yet each exhibits its own special Christology. Goals for us today:
(1) Understand the meaning (hermeneutic) of the Gospel words our Lord spoke, which were then inspirationally scribed by four of His disciples and canonized in the first century to become the Gospel Culture of Jesus Christ (e.g.,Christ Culture), containing evidence of:
(a) Jesus the Messiah fulfilling the promise to Israel as a basis for forming the Christ Culture (Matthew),
(b) Christ Culture to emphasize Jesus Follower missional activism and prediction of apocalypse (Mark),
(c) Christ Culture to include Jesus Follower discipling praxis, including Jesus' governance of the Christ Culture formed by Paul's evangelical/missional journeys (Luke and Acts), and
(d) Christ Culture to include Jesus Follower Holy Spirit Presence including the prediction of eternal life for Jesus Followers (John).
(2) Use this Gospel, these words, verses and parables of Jesus
(a) to understand and be transformed by a Holy Spirit led, born again disciple-ready life, and
(b) to confront Satan and his evils, missionally, in each of our daily lives, as well as in the formation of world life events.
These Gospel realities informed and regenerated souls, giving renewed life to the ancients in the first century and giving renewed life to us moderns in twenty-first century.
The Parable of the Messiah Scrolls illustrates both the writing of the New Testament, and the way the first century Jesus Followers lived the Word; forming God's Mission within the Christ Culture. If they could do that, so can we with each other.
As present-day believers, we are too often distracted by resemblance; even when we try to be "rational", too often our "intuitive" resemblances have already led to judgment of a fellow Christian based on stereotypes of other Christians' sub-cultural approach, or formed out of insular conversations that we may have led us to either revere or abhor other Christians. Our intuitive resemblances govern our rationality and hinder our living, working and worshipping in a unified (but not uniform sub-cultural) Christ Culture. Christ Culture demands born again discipleship mentoring to yoke the intuitions of new Jesus Followers with the Gospel. Without such discipleship they may be born again but will lack missional faculties for maturing in the faith.
Like the first Christians, we too could live within a Christ Culture firmly based in the Word and Service of God. Instead, we find ourselves intuitively sucked into sub-cultures such as: discipleship culture, missional culture, salvation culture, attractional culture, incarnational culture, success culture, new ethnic cultures, gospel culture or post-Christian culture (to list just a few of the many cultural fractures in our time). Christ Culture must encompass and include the "wounded healers" (to use Rick McKinley's term) in all sub-cultures.
Christ Culture is God's Word infused into the burning bush in Moses of the Exodus, into the incarnate human Jesus of the Resurrection, into the victorious Lamb of the Second Coming, and into the Four Apostles of the Gospel. Jesus Followers can tell and re-tell these evangelical and missional stories, in order to shape the gestalt wrap-around Christ Culture from now until we are all united in New Heaven and New Earth.
Christ said to the Father, “Sanctify them (Followers) in Truth; Thy Word is Truth.” (John 17:17) While Follower leading by the Holy Spirit will never be as definite as the original inspiration given to the first disciple scribes, let us as workmen and workwomen, “rightly divide this [God-breathed] Word of Truth” ... being then “complete, equipped for every good work.” (2 Timothy 2:15, 3:17) “Therefore we (e.g., our intuitions) must pay close attention to what we have heard (have absorbed rationally), lest we drift away (veer off mission) from it.” (Hebrews 2:1).
In our present world of social media and attention deficits, can we support and tastefully project the Gospel on-line, and help shape the evangelical and missional substance of social media (using the hashtag #ChristCulture)? Can we do this? Land based, evangelical and missional initiatives are already being supported online. But can all of us working for Christ Culture in cyberspace collaborate to bring our message to the 21st century world? The Messiah Scrolls on-line web-book is one example dramatizing how both evangelism and mission were conducted in the first Christian community, and I have asked my readers to annotate as they read.
Above, I referred to Portland's Season of Service (1st of six cities) where local churches (representing every stripe of Jesus Follower) work on projects and collaborate with public agencies to "love" and "justice" the city in every sub-cultural area, even presenting the city with a check for $100,000, to be applied in service to the goals of the collaboration. Another example is the 38-year history of OPCC: the largest integrated social service agency of its kind in West Los Angeles County, OPCC and its ten missional projects serve 8,000 individuals each year. I am sure there are many other projects and stories that could be told here.
With the plethora of Christian sub-cultures and 10s of thousands of various denominations, I have used the wrap around term Christ Culture as presented in this position paper, as an ethos to unify all Christian sub-cultures, churches, non-profits and missional project groups desiring to bring the whole Gospel to the whole world. As Season of Service (http://seasonofservice.com/) and OPCCLA (www.opcc.net/) have demonstrated, let the Christ Culture unify us - on what we care about.
In summary: When we lock onto a resemblance to a cultural stereotype, we predict dire outcomes, and shut off any opportunity for authentic incarnational connection and/or revolutionary missional collaboration. Can we pray that the Holy Spirit Presence within us, will infuse these sub-cultural resemblances with His Word and His Justice, uplift and transform our predictions, and nourish a unified #ChristCulture? If we can't do this - even though the Gospel remains - Christian community will remain shredded and divided.
Within authentic Christ Culture, evangelical concerns about discipling witnesses and eternal life (John 17:1-3) and social justice concerns about "world's colliding" (Michael Frost) and eternal/earthly mission (Micah 6:8, Galatians 2:20) may just be alternate beats of the Christian heart. Regardless of current debates, both beats are critical, not only for the heart of the Christ Culture to function, but for our personal and collective mission in carrying forward both the proclaimed Word and social justice/peacemaking.
Let us not let holy huddles, internecine warfare, consumer culture, contextual scholarship or amassed wealth define our worth, de-activate our faith, or dictate our service. Pray that Lord God, the absolute owner of all, will inspire and direct us through His Christ Culture, in making the next ten years a Jubilee decade of born again discipleship, Holy Spiritual transformation, Christian church plants and social justice. Amen.
Don Chatelain
The Messiah Scrolls Project
December 2011