I just spoke at Vintage Faith Church in our Clash series about the exclusive claims of Jesus and the New Testament in the midst of a pluralistic culture. Pluralistic cultures are nothing new, and at the time of Jesus and when the New Testament was written it was very pluralistic religiously. But I shared that even though that was the case, Jesus and His disciples throughout the New Testament did not shy away from proclaiming truth. They did however, pay attention and even changed how they spoke about truth depending on who they were speaking to.
I fully believe that we can teach truths from Scripture that even go against cultural norm, yet how we do it makes all the difference. With global faiths I believe we need to not shy from speaking what the Scriptures say - but doing so with compassion, understanding, listening and studying. In the teaching I walked through how the concept that all religions lead to God, wouldn't make sense when you really examine what each faith actually believes. They each lead to very different "gods" or "God", so they cannot be the same as often is stated. In the sermon I also wanted to give the biblical storyline and then pieced in when and where the primary world faiths developed. I nervously had a sociology professor who is studying our church from the local university look at my notes before I spoke and she gave me confidence as I went up there - thank you! (I know she reads this blog).
At the end of the message, I brought up a UCSC (University of California Santa Cruz) student who is getting her PhD. She was raised in a very strong Buddhist family. She grew up mainly in the USA but also had some time living over in Taiwan. She shared her story of growing up Buddhist and knowing nothing about Christianity. But then someone who was a Christian took interest in her and eventually invited her to church and then she began hearing about the stories of the Bible and began wrestling with the claims of Jesus and Christianity, and she eventually became a Christian. One of the things she said which stuck in my mind and heart was how glad she was that a Christian took the effort to befriend her and introduce her to Jesus and the Bible. And how much her life now feels purposeful as she believes she is here to be living her life as a disciple of Jesus and sharing about the joy of knowing Jesus in this life. It was obvious she lives this out, as while she was speaking she mentioned that 6 of her non-Christian friends were there in the church gathering to support her as she shared. It was really a beautiful thing.
We had a prayer area set up where we Revelation 7:9-10 on butcher paper and there were 5 world maps set up and people could go into the area to pray for specific parts of the world and that they would hear about the gospel of Jesus and put faith in Him. People put green dots on the countries they prayed for. Everything hinges not on human effort alone, but through the Spirit of God moving in people's hearts and minds - we have to be praying.
Standing there listening to my UCSC friend share about how her life has changed was very moving. She expressed how incredibly glad she is that someone took the effort to tell her about Jesus and invite her into church community. Her story and life is exactly why I am thrilled to be part of this new network being formed (new "community" might be a better term). That really is at the heart of why we are doing this. I am getting asked a lot about this network/community - so I thought I would share a little more about it. It began with a conversation I had with Erwin McManus back in 2003.
Erwin and I were speaking at an event in Ventura, California and we took a walk around downtown Ventura that night and talked about the emerging church and evangelism. We both observed that evangelism was not something spoken about too much. We both agreed that there are plenty of people who have been turned off by what "church" has been known for, but we both still loved the church and the church is the bride of Jesus and an essential part of what Jesus set up for His followers. We connected in having common hearts about evangelism.
A few years went by and we met up again when we were both main session speakers at Willow Creek for a conference. We hung out again and had another energizing conversation about evangelism, our high view of Scripture and about innovation. At the same time I was also in conversations with my friend Scot McKnight who is unapologetically an "evangelical" in terms of theology, like myself (Although, the term evangelical is a mixed bag of what that means depending on who you ask). Scot has been used by God tremendously in my life to help me think through theology and not feel alone theologically. Simultaneously, I have been having some great discussions with friends like Rick McKinley from Imago Dei in Portland about this very thing. And then had some meetings with Erwin and Eric Bryant from Mosaic again, and Dave Gibbons from New Song Church, and Mark Batterson and Margaret Feinberg and Skye Jethani and it all just started moving in a way as we all had a passion for the gospel, Scripture, innovation and evangelism.
The more I felt myself not connecting to the theological direction and arguments happening in some of the emerging world - the more I felt the natural desire to be formally linking up with these friends who had the same passion. I also kept hearing over and over and over again when I was speaking places around the country, that many people still wanted to be discussing evangelism, especially amongst emerging generations. Yet many people were understandably confused by what was being noticed as streams of "the emerging church" as Ed Stetzer, Scot McKnight and Mark Driscoll were communicating about them in various articles and talks. So it was getting quite confusing as people were hearing all these things with so much variation occuring within the emerging church circles. I just know I was originally drawn into the emerging church world to be in it for mission, for evangelism, for seeing new followers of Jesus and whatever it takes innovatively without compromising the teachings of Jesus and Scripture.
So it just felt right to begin talking together with others to be encouraged, to be reminded of mission, to be fueled in creativity for the mission. Yet we all were theologically committed to the importance of doctrines like in the globally and multi-denominationally shaped Lausanne Covenant. (We are using this covenant as our statement of faith, so to speak, so from the beginning although we are diverse in many things we do, we are in alignment about the things within that).
I am someone who thrives on relationships with other leaders who are in this whole crazy mission together. So I have lately had such a boost of energy being around this group and dreaming about how we could all be partnering together in fueling this passion we all have. We are a diverse group for sure, but I believe there are a lot of people like this. So as we have been praying and thinking, we want to be extending this conversation and community to be together figuring out how to support, energize, dream and forge ahead on this evangelistic mission of Jesus.
As I was listening to the UCSC student share how Jesus has changed her life, my prayer is that this new network/community we are beginning to develop will be an community which helps us all pray, dream and innovate together as missionaries in our world today. I learn by being around others who also have this passion. I believe there are a lot of others who feel this way too. So I think being together will accelerate this mission. And our prayer is as a result we will see many, many, many people like the UCSC student's life changed.
We have put up a basic web page where we are using the Origins Project as our home base. We will be developing a web site, coming up with a name and a lot of other things. We are just at the birthing stage of this right now. But we will be sending out email updates and wanting to hear from those interested in this. You can go to the web page and sign up here to get the updates.
Right now we are forming a Creative Team (more names will be shared soon) and various other teams as part of this.
I would love to hear any input, or questions or ideas. Maybe it will just be the few of us, but if you are interested in joining in however this is going to look like - sign up for updates and we will keep everyone posted as things develop and get input from you. I know that I am already feeling thrilled about teaming up with others who have this passion for the gospel of Jesus, evangelism, innovation, a high view of Scripture - and doing this for the sake of others. So that's the link to get more updates and hope this makes sense. I tend to write long blog posts, especially when I am passionate about something.
