SimpleChurch Journal aka House Church Blog

The Jake Book

I am probably the last person left on the planet who had not read So You Do Not Want to Go to Church Anymore by Wayne Jacobsen aka Jake Colsen.  I finally tackled it in its entirety last weekend.  In case there are one or two of you left who have not read it, it is available online free here.

Jacobsen’s tour de force is his ability to deliver crushing blows to religious systems.  He may not always give us clear direction into the Promised Land, but he certainly helps free us from the Egypt of religious and institutional thinking.

Here are a couple of excerpts.

On religious institutions:

“Once you build an institution together you have to protect it and its assets to be good stewards. It confuses everything. Even love gets redefined as that which protects the institution and unloving as that which does not. It will turn some of the nicest people in the world into raging maniacs and they never stop to think that all the name-calling and accusations are the opposite of love…

It’s love with a hook. If you do what we want, we reward you. If not we punish you. It doesn’t turn out to be about love at all. We give our affection only to those who serve our interests and withhold it from those who do not.”

“Institutionalism breeds task-based friendships. As long as you’re on the same task together, you can be friends. When you’re not, people tend to treat you like damaged goods.”

On living in the Father’s love as more important than church models:

“Nothing we as believers can ever do together will make up for the lack of our own relationship with God. When we put the church in that place we make it an idol and others will always end up disappointing us.”

“No church model will produce God’s life in you. It works the other way around.  Our life in God, shared together, expresses itself as the church. It is the overflow of his life in us. You can tinker with church principles forever and still miss out on what it means to live deeply in Father’s love and know how to share it with others.”

On living free of dependency on leaders:

“That’s where religion has done the most damage. By making people dependent on its leaders, it has made God’s people passive in their own spiritual growth. We wait for others to show us how, or even just follow them in hopes that they’re getting it right. Jesus wants this relationship with you and he wants you to be an active part in that process.”

“But can we do it on our own? Don’t we need some help?” Marsha asked.

“Who said you’re alone? Jesus is the way to the Father. As you learn to yield to his Spirit and depend on his power, you’ll discover how to live in the fullness of his life. Yes, he’ll often use other people to encourage or equip you in that process, but the people he uses won’t let you grow dependent on them. They wouldn’t dare crawl between you and the greatest joy of this family—a growing relationship with the Father himself.”

On developing a healthy community:

“People learning to live in relationship to Father in freedom from shame is the core of body life. Find out how to share that life and you’ll be the body.”

This book also has an excellent chapter on children… take a look for yourself if you’re interested.

The Compulsive Minister

Reading Henri Nouwen’s “The Way of the Heart” was the beginning of moving me and my wife toward simple church.  His chapter, entitled “The Compulsive Minister” provoked the start of a longing for an inner transformation.  Years later, when God blasted us out of our traditional church roles, we were searching not so much for a new way to “do” church but a spiritual life that was free of the compulsiveness that Nouwen describes.

I reflect on this today because it reminds me that the heart of the matter is always inner transformation… not just a switch to a different form of church.  I am also reminded that I need to continue to hold up Nouwen’s words as a mirror to my soul to keep me free of the false motivations that can still sneak up on me.

Our society is not a community radiant with the love of Christ, but a dangerous network of domination and manipulation in which we can easily get entangled and lose our soul. The basic question is whether we ministers of Jesus Christ have not already been so deeply molded by the seductive powers of our dark world that we have become blind to our own and other people’s fatal state.

Just look for a moment at our daily routine. In general, we are very busy people. We have many meetings to attend, many visits to make, many services to lead. Our calendars are filled with appointments, our days and weeks are filled with engagements, and our years filled with plans and projects. There is seldom a period in which we do not know what to do and we move through life in such a distracted way that we do not ever take the time and rest to wonder if any of the things we think, say or do are worth thinking, saying or doing. We simply go along with the many “musts” and “oughts” that have been handed on to us. People must be motivated to come to Church, youth must be entertained, money must be raised and, above all, everyone must be happy. Moreover, we ought to be on good terms with the Church and civil authorities; we ought to be liked or at least respected by a fair majority of our parishioners; we ought to move up in the ranks according to schedule; and we ought to have enough vacation and salary to live a comfortable life. Thus we are busy people just like all other busy people, rewarded with the rewards which are rewarded to busy people.

All this is simply to suggest how horrendously secular our ministerial lives tend to be. Why is this so? The answer is quite simple. Our identity, our sense of self, is at stake. Secularity is a way of being dependent on the responses of our milieu. The secular or false self is the self which is fabricated by social compulsions. “Compulsive” is indeed the best adjective for the false self. It points to the need for ongoing and increasing affirmation. Who am I? Whether I am a pianist, a businessman or a minister, what matters is how I am perceived by my world...

Nouwen goes on to suggest that solitude provides the primary furnace of transformation that can free us from the compulsions of the world by allowing us to find our true identity in an encounter with a loving God.  Out of this transformation comes a ministry life based solely on compassion.

Now that would be going straight to the heart of the matter.