The way of Jesus, when properly understood is dangerous, disappointing, and even disturbing.

Many in our country is reeling from the attack at the Emmanuel AME Church in South Carolina. John Stewart’s words ring true in the ears of many: this a terrorist attack, and the result of America’s lackadaisical approach to systemic problems of gun violence and racism.

We want something to fix.

“Take down that Confederate flag!”

“Pass stricter gun laws!”

Or even… “Pastors should carry guns.”

These are real problems, that as John Stewart, and even President Obama have said that we will probably continue to ignore. But even if we did solve those problems, our efforts would have very little power compared to dangerous, disappointing and disturbing hospitality of the Emmanuel Wednesday Night Bible Study.

The Way of Jesus is Dangerous

You’ve probably seen the clip, where alleged shooter Dylann Roof stares blankly while friends of the victims express their grief. The entire scene is heart wrenching, but nothing more than the words of one woman, who speaks of hospitality:

“…as we say in Bible Study, ‘we enjoyed you.’”

The way of Jesus is dangerous because it begins with hospitality. Hospitality, by definition, requires making space for someone or something different.

What is different is unknown. What is unknown could be dangerous.

When the Priest and the Levite passed the beaten man on the road to Jerusalem, they weren’t just avoiding inconvenience, they were avoiding danger. When Ananias opened his home to the angry and zealous Saul of Tarsus, he was taking his life into his hands. When Jewish Christians invited Gentiles into their churches, they were opening doors to the unknown ways, and unknown intentions of a different race.

Paul (the once murderous Saul) describes The Incarnation this way:

Rather, he emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
coming in human likeness;
and found human in appearance,
he humbled himself,
becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross.

Philippians 2

We often want to skip straight to the cross. But to get to the cross, Jesus first had to empty himself. Hospitality is making space for others. For the God of the Universe, it is a personal, dangerous and costly act.

From Hospitality to Forgiveness

The words “we enjoyed you” continue to ring in my ears. They immediately cause that dry heave of tears that never come. But when people look at the men and women of Emmanuel saying “I forgive you,” it doesn’t always bring the same reaction.

The words “I forgive you” often lose their power. We throw them haphazardly at little slights. But to find something to enjoy about someone who hates and has hurt you? It seems unnecessary, unrealistic, or shameful.

Paul describes incarnation as a sort of hospitality. Incarnation is Jesus’ modus operandi. But reconciliation is Jesus purpose.

When we act hospitable, we invite others into our space. When we forgive, we give up what we deserve.

“Every fiber of my being is hurting,” said one of the victim’s friends, “but I forgive you.”

The pain, anger and anguish of having a friend taken away is something that a victim owns. Forgiveness is voluntarily giving that away.

Hospitality says that no space belongs to us alone. Forgiveness says that no feelings, no matter how painful, belong to us either.

Forgiveness alonne should be unreasonable or impossible. That is, unless you’ve practiced hospitality.

Enjoying Others

Hospitality, when practiced, is the art of enjoying others. You cannot open your home selfishly. You cannot put down your phone, close your laptop and talk to another person unselfishly.

You cannot learn another’s language, culture or pain out of selfishness.

You cannot listen to someone else’s story if you are waiting to tell your own.

You cannot take pleasure in a foreign cuisine, learn from a new book or consider another’s opinion while comparing it to what you already like.

Enjoying others comes with no prerequisites and no preferences. Not even your comfort. Not even your safety. Jesus emptied himself. He took the form of a slave, coming in human likeness.

Forgiveness is Teachable

When great acts of forgiveness take place, the outside world stares slack-jawed. We treat Elizabeth Elliot like a saint for returning to those who killed her husband. We look at the stories of truth and reconciliation in South Africa and Rwanda as unimaginable, fairy tales of a far off land. We hear of Amish families embracing the family of the man who killed their children, and we are quick to write it off as another odd Amish trait.

These are extraordinary stories.

But the shouldn’t be. At least, not for followers of Jesus. He took the form of a slave, coming in human likeness. Before he forgave people, he enjoyed them.

But teaching forgiveness must be done at an angle. You can’t address it directly. You can’t say to a grieving woman or man “just forgive them.” You cultivate forgiveness by practicing hospitality.

How does your church community train for hospitality?

The post We Enjoyed You: Forgiveness and the Cost of Hospitality appeared first on Chris Morton.

In the immortal words of Weezer’s Rivers Cuomo, I’m tired of sex.

For those of us trying to live as missionaries in the post-Christendom West, it’s easy to feel like we’re constantly cleaning up other people’s messes.

All countries, in particular the U.S., have a tradition of “Civil Religion” that wants to talk about what it means to “be a good Christian.”

Politicians manipulate well-meaning religious people to talk about what they want to talk about.

The media focuses on flash points, diverting the conversation to what they want to talk about.

Publishers produce new books and micro-celebrities to take advantage of every trend that comes and goes.

The results tend to focus on topics related to violence, moral failures and often seem to lead back to sex.

At the same time, there is a growing number of people who are committed to reimagining the church for the unique time and place that is the 21st century. This group believes that the gospel has not changed, but the role of the Church must constantly shift for its particular time and place. This group is deconstructing what came before and prayerfully seeking ways to make disciples that work today.

Unfortunately, the monumental mission of this group often gets thrown off course by other conversations.

Boots on the Ground is a growing cohort of in-the-field missionaries dealing with the real life challenges of being the church right now. On Tuesday, May 13, we’ll host our second Synchroblog. All are welcome to participate by writing a blog post to answer the question:

As a missionary, what should we be talking about?

This could be anything. What social issues are being ignored? What are the practical realities of discipleship, finances or even event planning you deal with? What is the most exciting thing happening in the church that never gets press?

Where have we seen God move? Where are we desperately waiting for his help?

To participate, simply publish a post on this topic and share it in the Facebook group on Tuesday, May 13. Please RSVP here or by leaving a comment below.

Please check out the previous synchroblog The Day it Felt Like Church.

The post Bloggers Needed: What should we REALLY be talking about? appeared first on Chris Morton.

The night it felt like Church to me happened in the Summer of 2002. I was a sophomore in college and I had given my summer to working with Dry Bones: Denver, a newly launched ministry to the homeless youth that congregate to panhandle and roughhouse on Denver’s 16th Street Mall.

My reasons for being there weren’t completely altruistic, evangelistic or justice driven. That was a part of it, but the main reason I wanted to be there was because it seemed pretty cool.

My eagerness to participate in the new and strange ministry makes a little more sense if you know about the mishmash of sectarian Christianity and left-of-center politics that had formed me.

I grew up in Denver (i.e., where marijuana would eventually be legalized), a blue dot in a red state. My family was intellectual in a PBS sort of way. Our politics were more influenced by labor unions and the Civil Rights movement than anything happening up the road at Focus on the Family. However, I was also brought up in a conservative church tradition that had spread out of the Bible Belt and taken it’s southern manners with it.

In 2001, this led me to a little Christian Liberal Arts University in a dry county, 50 miles from the nearest landmark in Arkansas. Needless to say, my punk rock liberty spikes haircut were not warmly greeted.

In the land of big hair and big church buildings, I found myself wondering how any of what I was surrounded  by was connected to Jesus. When I was home visiting my folks in Denver. I met up with a guy whose goatee turned into a 10 inch long beard. He told me about swapping stories for cigarettes with teenagers who slept on the streets. He told me that he thought “the brethren” should have something to say to those kids. Immediately, I knew I wanted to be one of those “brethren.”

That summer I, along with about a dozen other interns and volunteers, spent 4-6 hours a day sitting around with the gutterpunks. The beard defined our approach this way:

“Never offer a homeless person a sandwich. Sit down and ask them to share half of your sandwich.”

Over that summer, I got to know a 14 year old who had pulled her overdosed mom out of a full bathtub and called 911. She had decided it was safer to live on the streets. One day, I watched a guy brand an anarchy symbol into his arm using a paper clip and a lighter.

One night, I was witness to a funeral procession.

Two friends had been sitting on the street drinking. They got into an argument. One friend stabbed the other in the heart. The wounded man died on the spot.

A few nights later, dozens of street kids lined up holding candles, walked in a single file line, and through their tears occasionally shouted the punk rock cry “oi! oi!” Our team stood there along in silent observance. We had no right to join the procession, but our faith gave us the responsibility to observe it.

One kid, a pot-smoking, philosophizing skateboarder with a warm bed in the suburbs rolled up next to me and said. “This is really f*%ked up man. What do you believe in a world where sh*t like this happens?”

With a lifetime of churchy language restrictions suddenly seeming useless I looked away and agreed “Yeah man. Pretty f#%ked up.”

That night felt more like church than anything else I had ever experienced.

That summer on the streets, and that night in particular was a clarion moment that created my paradigm for what “feels” like “Church.” It’s important to note that I say “feels like,” because it was only a beginning.

Dry Bones wrecked me for an average church experience and I’ve been trying to rediscover what I learned that summer ever since. It provided a framework of three incarnational concepts that has defined “church” for me ever since.

1. Share your sandwich.

The beard’s lesson to “share your sandwich” is provides a definitive difference between Church and charity. There were lots of places that the gutterpunks could find food. There were not a lot of places where they could be greeted as friends and listened to without an agenda.

By sharing your sandwich you are immediately elevating someone to equal status, and wanting nothing in return. What has surprised me since (although it should not have) is the extent to which this should be applied across races and classes.

Everyone wants to feel accepted and included. Sharing your sandwich allows you to do that without an agenda.

2. Presence is everything.

Perhaps the key to the Christian faith isn’t Easter, it’s Christmas. Jesus-followers are those who believe that the eternal unknowable divine logos became a flesh and blood baby who lived in certain time and place.

Presence was the key to everything our ministry did. We spent more time together as a team and with those we were hoping to reach than any ministry I’ve seen before or since. The staff there has now been doing it now for over a decade.

Eventually, some kids decide they want help getting off the streets. Many eventually came to faith in Jesus. Change only came after being present for a very long time.

Perhaps the reason it felt like Church wasn’t because we were doing things right. Perhaps it was just because we were there. Because we were there, we were a witness that these invisible people had stories, hopes, pains, dreams and worth. Because we had been their witnesses, we had the right to share with them our own witness to the saving power of Jesus Christ.

3. Good things hurt, too.

Deep experiences with the poor leave marks on anyone who participates in them. Many leave with a broader vision of what God is doing in the world. Other leave with a new found ability to see those in need all around them.

Some leave confused, because there aren’t very many expressions of Church that can have room for what they experienced in the world. When I returned to my little Bible Belt college and tried to share my experience, many were confused and some were even offended.

Part of the reason I wanted to spend the summer with the homeless because I had something to prove. I wanted to prove to those who controlled my narrow little world that there was more to the gospel than their outdated codes of conduct.

That summer killed punk rock for me. I hoped to prove some point to the gatekeepers and institutions that would make me accept them and my spiky hair. By the time it was over I was loosing interest in those institutions, because I couldn’t imagine them ever making space for people I had met.

That summer also sent me on a mission to find something that “felt like Church.” I’m convinced that the words of Jesus were meant to be taken seriously. My daydreams are about a group of people that get together and try to do what he said.

Doing that doesn’t mean we’ll sit outside all day with the homeless, although I hope that some days we will. It does mean we’ll share sandwiches, experience presence and work through good and bad pain.

Who knows? Maybe we’ll be able to inspire punk-rockers and institutional gatekeepers along the way.

You can donate to the incomparable good stuff going on at Dry Bones here.

Other Synchroblog Posts include:

• Tyler Tully—The Day that Felt Like Church
• Ty Grigg—It Starts With Us Lamenting
• Robert Anthony Martin—Laundry
• Sarah Dinka—(re)defining: church
• Kevin Bell—House of the Peaceful Heart
• Daniel M. Rose—The Day it Felt Like Church

The post Synchroblog: The Day it Felt Like Church appeared first on Chris Morton.

Parachurch ministries are, at their best, a tool for focusing passion. Some people have a passion working with students, others have a passion for providing clean water. These are good works that not only help people, but they bring glory to God.

My only significant experience with a parachurch organization was attending a Christian University for undergrad. It was there when I started noticing some subtle limitations that parachurches had to deal navigate.

My school was known for promoting a conservative approach to Christianity that still holds some power in the Bible Belt. Being conservative in our denomination, as Nadia Bolz-Webber has said, primarily means “being good at not doing stuff.”

This meant we had endless rules around a formally stated moral code. Such as “no one can wear shorts before 2pm,” “no drinking” and “no mixed bathing.”

Every once in a while someone would disappear for a semester or two, and rumors would abound. Were they caught drinking? Naked?
We saw grace-less dismissals. We watched people jump through unbelievable hoops just to stick to the letter of the law.

The problem was that my university had two responsibilities, to be a “university” and to be “Christian.” They had to abide by the practices that allowed them to remain accredited, please donors and raise money.

Jesus teaching was incredibly social. The Sermon on the Mount and other texts were dedicated to answering the question “what kind of people should we be?”

The answer came from his first followers. They went out made disciples and planted churches. Jesus laid out a framework for a new type of society and churches are the place where people find ways to do what Jesus said.

The Church is an experiment in creating a society that plays by the rules of Jesus.

This is why it is hard to be a parachurch. These groups will always have to deal with being “Christian” and “_____.” A parachurch can never say “we are this” or “we are that” because the “we” is defined by outside forces like industry standards or donors or bloggers.

How, then do we live in a world where there are kids that need help, like Worldvision brings? When Jesus wanted to help us, he came and lived among us. The church was founded on caring for one another, at the expense of personal wealth. Perhaps the answer to so many crises is found in this unrelentingly relational approach.

We can’t be surprised when groups like Worldvision run into these difficulties. We can support good things when we see them, whether or not they carry the name “Christian.” Along the way, let’s continue to plant more churches and better churches. Then maybe we won’t need so many of these groups.

The post Worldvision and the Subtle Limitations of the Parachurch appeared first on Chris Morton.

There’s nothing necessarily wrong with any of those. I’ve been guilty of writing all three on this blog.

What I think we need is a third type of discussion, which I’m calling “Boots on the Ground.” By that, I mean sharing real life stories and practical, actionable ideas. This probably won’t gather as much traffic, but maybe it will provide some missionaries the encouragement they need to keep going.

Last week, a Facebook group was launched to share these stories. Now, we’re prepping for our first ever synchroblog. Here’s how you can participate:

1. Write a post on the prompt “Share a story about one moment where you experienced what you think Jesus had in mind for ‘the church'”.
2. RSVP here, or email Chris Morton if you want to participate.
3. Use the graphics here.
4. Publish the post on April 8.
5. Post your URL on the Boots on the Ground Facebook page.
6. Promote each other’s posts via email & social media on April 8.

I hope you’ll join in!

The post Bloggers Needed! Synchroblog April 8 appeared first on Chris Morton.