Better Than Brunch

Missional Churches in Cascadia

Jason Byassee, Ross A. Lockhart

• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781725281196
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Ministry

What could be better than brunch on a Sunday morning? For most people in Portland, Seattle, and Vancouver, the answer of gathering to worship the Triune God and be sent as witnesses would not be top of mind. And yet, across the Pacific Northwest the authors discovered deeply rooted missional communities worshipping God and serving their neighborhoods, offering evidence of unexpected Cascadian treasure in clay jars. Join the authors on a treasure hunt throughout the region as they identify new patterns of post-Christendom Christianity that will inspire and challenge your understanding of church.

1

Holy Urgency and the Worship of the Triune God

In 1965, the Anglican Church of Canada did something that would be hard for any of our churches to conceive of doing today. They enlisted one of their country’s best-known writers to do a report on the state of the church. Pierre Berton had sold millions of copies of books on Canadian history and culture, and now turned his formidable eye to the state of Anglicanism in the Dominion. His report was not complimentary. The Comfortable Pew compared the church to the passengers on a listless cruise ship.1 Activities are announced, but the hearers are so bored they can make out no specifics. Are we going anywhere? I can’t remember. Does it matter? And recall that this was the 1960s, the world was aflame with a hunger for social change. The only good news Berton could find was that the church was so irrelevant it could hardly be accused of holding back the tide.

Contrast this with the image of God’s people in the Scriptures. In the book of Acts, God’s people are blown by the hurricane-force gale of the Holy Spirit toward the four corners of the earth (Acts 1:8). For example, Philip, with no warning, is commanded to go out to a wilderness road in the desert (Acts 8:26). There he meets an Ethiopian eunuch, servant of Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, riding in his chariot home from worshiping in the Jerusalem temple. Told to join the chariot, Philip runs (8:30). This is beyond odd. In our day, people run for fun. In the ancient world, you only ran if something was chasing you. Philip runs alongside a chariot and asks the eunuch what he is reading, presumably while moving his legs at chariot-speed. Thankfully he is invited in, sits, learns the eunuch is perplexed by the prophet Isaiah, and tells the man about Jesus, God’s own suffering servant. When the eunuch spots water (in the desert?!), he exclaims, “Look, here is water, what is to prevent me from being baptized?” Nothing. Not his not being Jewish. Not his rich dark skin. Not his lack of sexual wholeness. Not his (former) lack of knowledge. Not even his wealth or power. So, both Philip and the eunuch dive down into the water for baptism (8:38). You can almost physically hear later Christians objecting, “wait, this isn’t how we do things, he needs years of preparation, the pastor doesn’t go down in the water too . . .” but before you can get the complaint voiced, the deed is done. Philip is “snatched” by the Spirit of God and finds himself hundreds of miles away, and the eunuch goes back to Africa, rejoicing. He is that continent’s first convert, the one to whom hundreds of millions of African Christians today trace their spiritual descent. The story has not an ounce of fat on it, it is a blur, no time to lose.2

Contrast this with the last mainline Protestant worship service you attended, or even led. Did it feel like anything was at stake? Even if what the pastor was saying was true, would it matter? Did the timber of her voice suggest urgency? Could you imagine someone running to get in, so urgent was the subject matter?

Let us try another biblical example. Abraham is sitting by his tent in the heat of the day (Gen 18:1). And three strangers appear. Neglecting the temperature, and the ache in his ninety-year-old bones, and his own dignity, Abraham runs, meets them, and bows to the ground (18:2). He offers them an underwhelming menu: a little water, a little bread, prison fare nearly (18:4–5). Then he proceeds to run again (18:6). Sarah must quickly make cakes. He runs to the herd to have a calf prepared (how long would slaughter-to-plate take?!). Then he presents his guests with a magnificent meal and stands while they eat (18:8). It is fit for kings. Not Jewish kings necessarily. This mixture of milk and meat is a clear violation of kosher laws. Lucky for Abraham, those laws have not yet been given to Moses. But later rabbis, out of their respect for the patriarchs, have to figure out how Abraham would have served a meal in violation of coming laws that he had to have intuited. Christians would come to see this as a glimpse of God the holy Trinity. These three are spoken of as one Lord (19:2). Jews speak of Abraham’s extravagant hospitality to strangers. They announce God’s plan to birth the family through which God will repair the world through Abraham and Sarah’s barren marriage. Sarah laughs. Scripture does not here record Abraham’s reaction. Perhaps by then he’d collapsed from all the running. He’d been in a hurry all day. And heard a world-saving word from the Lord for his efforts. Careful how you treat strangers. They just might be God.

Now for all this running by God’s people—the evangelist Philip and the patriarch Abraham—we don’t mean to suggest that God hurries. In fact, as anyone who has ever prayed for divine intervention knows, God can take his sweet time about things. This is a God who waited for the crown of creation, human beings, to evolve over millions, nay, billions of years. Christians think of the doctrine of the Trinity as our key belief, yet God waited for four centuries for us to work out the biblical math ourselves, rather than delivering it to us fully baked on a platter (to illustrate the time period, I sometimes ask churches what they were up to four hundred years ago, say, in 1620. See?). Fr. Matthew of Annunciation Orthodox Church outside Portland knows full well that sometimes the church errs in its teaching. But God will rehabilitate us out of that error. Might not be quick. Could take years, decades, or even, he says, a century or more. Don’t worry. The Holy Spirit will press us to get the gospel that God wants. God never hurries.3 God is patient. Jesus of Nazareth spent a mere thirty-year life among us.4 For 90 percent of that life, we have no record of what he did. Went to synagogue. Helped his family. Prayed and fasted. One would think he had a world to save and ought to get to it. An eternal God will get the world God wants, short time or long.

But God’s people are called to be about God’s business of saving the world. There is not a moment to lose. St. Mark’s favorite word in describing Jesus’s ministry is “immediately.” There is a cross to get to, a world to save. St. Paul is desperate to have a community witnessing to the resurrection in every part of the known world, so he is trying to get to Spain before the emperor’s sword falls. These new covenant saints learn their zeal from Israel’s history. David’s downfall begins in the spring of the year, when kings go out to battle (2 Sam 11:1). David, instead, lounged. Rape and murder and ruin ensue. Other kings of Israel are evaluated on two things: do they allow false worship? The few good kings in Israel—Hezekiah, Josiah, Jehosophat—cut down the idolatrous poles in high places, and insist, in shrill and prophetic hoarse voices, that the God of Israel alone will be worshiped. And, good kings in Israel insist that justice will be done for the widow, the orphan, the stranger. These two—right worship and proper justice—are always twins. The kings learn this vital pairing from the Torah. Moses’s laws combine an insistence on the oneness of God with a mandate to care for the vulnerable. No sooner than the laws come down the mountain and we, God’s people, are defying both. Moses reacts with hot-blooded anger, breaks the tablets, melts the golden calves, grinds up their remains and makes us drink it. Many die, but the lesson is unforgettable. You eat, digest, and become what you worship. Moses trudges back up the mountain for more tablets. We human beings cannot live without a word from the Lord.

As leaders and observers of churches, we sometimes see this holy urgency more clearly outside the historic mainline. Evangelicals want to reach every person with the gospel. The joy of life in God cannot be kept to themselves, it must be shared. So, they will adapt technology, shift once-cherished ways of worship, seek creative ways to invite or even disrupt—whatever it takes to reach the next person. Social-justice churches recognize that human beings cannot wait for the basic needs of life. Someone not housed or fed or otherwise in danger cannot be sent away and advised to come back tomorrow. The Black church in the US is used to being told that justice can wait. “These things take time,” those in power say with a patronizing pat on the head. No. They cannot wait. Justice must happen now. Lives are at stake. Perhaps listlessness then is a product of Christendom, a sense that all is well with the world, why rush? That’s the world Pierre Berton described so well. Evangelicals and social-justice advocates alike would insist that all is not right with the world. The gospel does not wait because lives are at stake.

Worship is urgent. These missional churches in Cascadia show that in their life together.

When Ken Shigematsu5 arrived at Tenth Church in Vancouver, he was the congregation’s twentieth pastor in twenty years. An administrative assistant pointed out the obvious—if the church closed on his watch, he would be blamed. As unfair as that would be, she was right. As a former corporate employee, Ken did what he knew how to do. He threw his whole self into the job. He worked long hours, he shifted worship around, he survived a coup attempt and the departure of long-time leaders and givers, by sheer force of will he turned the ship around.

He does not advise pastoring this way, mind you.6

Ken is a master of spinning the mythology of Tenth. He never tires of telling his key stories. His staff teases him for this. One skit at an anniversary celebration of Ken’s ministry had his staff members play “Ken Shigs bingo.” They laid out his twenty to twenty-five favorite stories, and someone shouted “bingo” when they had them all: the shoplifting-as-a-kid story, the temptation-to-adultery story, and so on. Ken has shown us not to be afraid to repeat ourselves as preachers. Eventually the stories seep down in their bones. Perhaps only when they tease us for telling them too much have we told the key stories enough.

Some of those repeat stories are core to Tenth’s identity. One is of a homeless man named Robert who was sleeping underneath the windows right outside Ken’s office. A parishioner offered to let Robert live in his laneway house rent-free for the rest of his life (Jesus’s people, doing Jesus things). Robert preferred the outdoors....