The Humanitarian Jesus Interview Series  

Mark Batterson founded and pastors National Community Church (NCC) in DC and authored three major books: Primal, Wild Goose Chase, and In a Pit with a Lion.  But I wanted to talk with him because his church meets in theaters across the city, operates a coffee house called Ebenezers (which happens to be next to the old row home that houses the church offices), and close to 70% of the congregation are single 20-something DC singles – almost half of which change every year.  Safe to say this is not your typical church.  Mark’s daily blogs are read that thousands more than attend the church and he sits within a block of Union Station, the SEC, and the Federal Courts building.  From that vantage point it is also safe to say that he might have a unique perspective on what is going on in the hearts and minds of Christians traditionally interested in social issues.  But NCC is not a cause driven church – and it stays that way on purpose.  We talked about it in his office…

I grew up in a church that celebrated the Fourth of July every year with a big patriotic musical. That was the one Sunday of the year when everyone was encouraged to "dress casual," the service included a lot of patriotic songs, and the preaching focused on how America needs to get back to her Christian roots. Songs were sung about how we are one nation under God. Military veterens dressed in their uniforms. There was a color guard that marched in with the American flag and led us through the Pledge of Allegiance. Come to think of it, the entire sanctuary was decked out in American flags, and everyone dressed in red, white and blue. Following the worship service, there was always a church picnic on the grounds.

If you are at all plugged-in to the evangelical twitterverse or blogosphere, you’ve likely been bombarded by links to the unavoidable video, “Sunday’s Coming,” produced by North Point Church. If you haven’t seen it, watch it here now.

The video, which launched a buzzword (“Contemporvant”), cleverly capitalizes on the recent fervor for evangelical self-parody (see the massive success of Stuff Christians Like, for e.g.) and conveniently resulted in exactly the sort of viral buzz promotion for North Point that its creators doubtless intended. That’s all well and good, but what are we to make of the whole thing?

The Christian Science Institute (CSI) shocked the world Tuesday when they announced that they have successfully cloned human beings, and have also perfected a way to pass on knowledge, experience and personality to the clones.

“The loss of some of our greatest pastors and Christian leaders concerned us,” said Ron Boldbee, head scientist at CSI.  “We looked around and realized that the young Christians who remained showed no evidence of stepping up and filling the gap.  Then we thought, ‘If the secular world can clone sheep, why can’t we clone some shepherds?’”

Boldbee points out that CSI has already introduced cloned pastors into several locations with little or no complaints.  Congregants at Bayside Baptist say they prefer their new, cloned pastor to their previous “natural” pastor.  “For once I don’t have to do any work,” said one congregant, on the condition of anonymity.  “Laypeople can finally let the clergy do everything without feeling guilty.  If our pastor burns out we can grow another one.”

There seems to be a serious conflict with our current lives and strongly held concepts about church and ministry.

So many churches that I know of, which are actually great churches, hold to a local church-centric view of ministry. This means that the goal of the staff is to get the lay people involved in ministry, which is defined as either volunteering at the physical church location or through church organized service projects in the community.

Undoubtedly both of those are valuable and needed avenues. However, this is really what I call "faith addition", living your faith means 'adding' certain activities to your already busy life.

The contrast to this is "faith integration', living your faith means integrating your faith into whatever you are doing.

Last week I had occasion to attend two Christian conferences—Together for the Gospel (T4G) in Louisville, KY and the Wheaton College Theology Conference in Wheaton, IL, which focused on the work of New Testament scholar and Bishop of Durham N.T. Wright.

The conferences were very different, and I would venture to guess that I was one of a few if not the only person to attend both. Aside from both being gatherings of evangelical Christians and both covering the hot topic of justification to some degree, I felt like the groups were desperately far from one another in so many ways. Louisville and Wheaton are not that far from each other geographically, but my experiences in both places last week felt like two different worlds.

I'm getting ready to study the passage for this coming Sunday about the ten virgins, five of whom had oil in their lamps and five who didn't.  On the surface of it, the whole story seems to run contrary to the golden rule. "Do for others what you'd want others to do for you."  If I was out of oil, I'd want you to give me some oil - so if I have oil, and you don't, I need to give you some oil.  That's generosity.  That's charity.  That's the gospel.

Instead, Jesus confounds things for us by having the story unfold in exactly the opposite way.  When the bridegroom came, the five who didn't have enough oil asked for help.  The answer they received was, in essence, "Get your own oil.  If we help you, none of us will have enough.  Better that some of us get into the party (i.e. we who had the good sense to prepare).