Risky Church Business

I've had opportunities to describe the church we want to start up here in Juneau. Most everyone, especially churched people respond with blank expressions. I don't necessarily blame them.

Alaskans take great pride in their freedoms. Alaskans seem to be Alaskan first, and US citizens second. Alaskans revel in their independence, their ability to do things themselves, their relative autonomy. Starting a church on the foundation of gospel community is foreign to many. Church attendance comes with little personal risk. But covenant gospel community where lives are shared is very risky.

The writer Jean Vanier said, "Community is where our limitations and our egoism are revealed to us." On a similar theme Mark Sayers has written,  "Humans need covenant. Without it we drown in our freedoms." Covenant gospel community is the antithesis of 'commodification' where we each treat people as commodities, using them for our own felt needs instead of valuing committed relationships and the associated responsibility toward others as the classroom in which God molds our character. Covenant gospel community is like marriage; both are arenas where we are shaped and disciplined, where we learn to lay down our own agendas. All of this is risky.

I dream of and am working toward a church that emphasizes community over individualism; mission over complacency; covenant over consumerism; multiplication over stasis; Jesus over self. The Church must be both a present reality and a preview of coming attractions. The intentional witness and observable worship of the church must inhabit the places between heaven and earth, a taste of  what it will be like when heaven and earth are reunited by God, with creation rallied around the God of the gospel.

All of this is risky as I call myself and others to risk losing much to gain so much more.