The past few weeks have been tough. I won't go into details, but I have noticed that the enemy is really going after me to try to take me off track from participating in God's mission. I know that God is victorious in all things, that God wins, and that good triumphs over evil. Still, that does not mean that this life is supposed to be easy or comfortable. That is especially true knowing God has called me to the front lines as a pastor in a complex urban environment.
Advancing the kingdom of God is messy business. Jesus modeled this as the ultra religious leaders and the political leaders of his day decided to crucify him for living and speaking such a subversive yet hope filled gospel message. Jesus rolled up his sleeves and entered into the human condition so that we might all find eternal life through his life, death, and resurrection. Most of Jesus' closest friends, his disciples, suffered tremendously while they lived before dying violently at the hands of human beings who rejected them. In the first 300 years of the Christian church, the time when it grew the fastest throughout the past 2,000 years, the followers of Jesus experienced tremendous persecution and suffering. Many followers of Jesus were martyred under Roman rule. Only when the Roman emperor Constantine endorsed Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire did the early Christians experience relief from the persecution. Unfortunately, Christianity began to decline when it was married to the powerful systems of the Roman Empire (political, economic, etc.).
In looking back over 2,000 years of Christian history, we see that Christianity often declines when it becomes too closely associated with popularity, comfort, and power. On the flip side, we see that Christianity thrives among marginalized people groups, when it is a subversive gospel message. This is true today. 100 years ago, 80% of the world's Christians lived in the west (Europe and North America). Today, only 20% of the world's Christians reside in the west. 80% of today's Christians live in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Christianity is growing the fastest among marginalized people groups who often experience tremendous persecution because of their faith in Jesus. Most of Europe is already considered post-Christian, and America is well on its way to being a post-Christian nation. Could this be because western Christians have tried to marry a life of comfort, prosperity, power, and upward mobility with a gospel of Jesus Christ that was intended to be subversive and counterculture?
These concepts remind me that if I'm experiencing suffering or discomfort related to radically following Jesus Christ, then I must be doing what God is asking of me in terms of advancing his mission to redeem the world. God has set me apart to reach cities, to reach people who are often marginalized by mainstream society, and to live in authentic Christian community while radically loving my neighbors. This is why I am so wary of top-down, success oriented leadership styles being infused into Christian churches in America. The prosperity, or wealth and health, doctrine that has infiltrated many churches is heresy, plain and simple. The kingdom of God is an upside-down kingdom. It's not about producing programs or results. The kingdom of God is about following Jesus into the arms of hurting people in a broken world. We experience God's grace as it pools in low places. Mysteriously, God's love shines most powerfully through us when we take the focus off our own personal or corporate success, and God works through us to fulfill his mission to the lost through our downward mobility. There is great victory in Christ when we die to our selves. I get to experience the joy of victory in Christ when I enter fully into the difficult things that God requires of me on a daily basis.
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