UNOFFICIAL SOURCES AND KINGDOM MENTALITY

Last night at the rehearsal for Tommy Walker Worship Concert Choir, I sat in the back of the Fellowship Hall admiring the beautiful sound and the sheer number of singers from two major churches in our area- GCF and CCF. It's interesting to note that except for a few locations where there is a GCF satellite there's a CCF branch. CCF at one point considered purchasing the piece of property right behind our ministry center, to the dismay of some evangelical leaders. Additionally, some of their members attend our services, some of our attendees go to theirs. The guest director mentioned about what seems to be an unspoken or perhaps a spirit of competition between the two megachurches. In a rather serendipitous conversation with one of their elders a couple of years ago, he mentioned to me that we're like Jollibee and McDonald's, Target and Walmart, CNN and Fox! Seriously, that wasn't something I expected to hear because it sort of gave flesh to what just seemed to exist.

The guest director comes from a Conservative Baptist church who later moved to CCF Alabang said, "We must break that spirit! In this choir rehearsal, we will show our churches that we are united under the Lordship of one Christ!" That for me was groundbreaking, even more powerful than the words of the elder I spoke with.

I can never be happier to see local churches- given their unique identities, diverse strategies, polities- uniting for a common cause to glorify the Lord's name.

But there are those who just won't join. Later in the evening, I met with another Pastor from the Union Church of Manila who shared with me and another friend from GCF his passion for the Young Adults, and fostering partnership among large evangelical churches in the area for a joint fellowship that gears to kick off a movement among the country's X and Y Generations! He mentioned however, that there are churches in Metro Manila that are very guarded and territorial to the point of disassociation with other like-minded communities. Others are threatened by the inter-church meetings and movements with fears of losing their "parishioners" to other churches.

In my experience as a pastor, some basic reasons why people leave their churches include: distance, disagreement with teaching and lack of nourishment and a sense of community. If people are well fed in their local churches distance and even personality differences won't matter, and some folks won't bother about the chairs they sit on or the color of the carpet! Warm fellowship isn't even a enough a basis for staying church. It all lies in the teaching ministry of the church and its commitment to the Word. We have people from as far as a two two-hour-drive who come to worship with us, while some attend our services and bring whatever they learn from us to their local churches! One man I recently met in our midweek service told me that he is a worship leader in a church several miles east and he comes to our midweek service to be fed and get ideas.

What am I driving at? Being powered by the unofficial sources and kingdom thinking!

We boast of our achievements, and take pride in our organization and the system we follow that we end up believing that what we have come up with is what's best for all others. We are powered by our own official sources and believe we are THE kingdom of God.

In our different evangelical traditions, we have operating systems that have become official sources of authority. We have our councils, sessions, consistories, classes. we have manuals and books of order, vision statements and strategies. But –appropriately organized as our organized religion may be, as important as official sources really are – the Christian faith is always at its best when it dares to remember that God is bigger than any system. At its best, our faith insists that no matter how refined the theology, no matter how eloquent the words, none of it is ever big enough to hold God. Nothing can box God because God is bigger than all the boxes. While I believe that God will not contradict what He chose to reveal about Himself in Scripture, I do believe that sometimes we misinterpret His revelation of Himself to satisfy the system we have created!

So, do attend to the “unofficial sources.” But remember that the spirit of God may come to us in whatever way God chooses. God may also come at us from unofficial sources as well. After all, a God you can control is, by definition, not God at all.

If you have not heard, the Lord is doing something extraordinary in Jena, Louisiana, population 2,971. On Sunday evening, March 9, the community will start its fourth week of revival services. The meetings, now being held in the Jena High School gymnasium, are bringing together more people from the community than any church auditorium in the area can handle. The location seems ironic. More than one person has asked, "Isn't that the high school where all the troubles started that wounded this town?"God often uses such things to confound those who see themselves as wise. On Feb. 17, the pastorless Midway Baptist Church started a regular "annual" spring revival meeting and, in answer to prayer, the Holy Spirit moved in power. Led by their interim pastor, Bill Robertson, confession of sin, worship, prayer and seeking forgiveness has become the "new normal" for this church. Every service, people are surrendering their lives to Christ and the majority of them are adults. The Jena community buzzes with the news about the meetings and people are reaching out to each other across racial lines in love and prayer. That's Kingdom mentality at its fairest!

Aside perhaps from Charles Dickens, Leo Tolstoy was doubtless the most influential writer of the 19th Century. Tolstoy understood himself to be a follower of Jesus Christ, and many of his works reflect his faith. But he was an idiosyncratic Christian long at odds with the Russian Orthodox Church, which notoriously excommunicated him in 1901, not long before his death.

Tolstoy wrote a short story named “The Three Hermits.”

Here’s the gist of it: A certain rather pompously pious bishop is traveling by ship to visit a remote monastery in the White Sea in the far north of Russia. On the way, he learns of a tiny island that locals say is inhabited by three ancient hermits. Local stories represent them as odd, but gentle and generous holy men. The bishop wants to visit, but the captain explains that he cannot get very close to the island. The bishop would have to be rowed ashore. The ship anchors at a distance and the bishop goes ashore in all his episcopal regalia. He’s greeted by the three ragged hermits standing on the beach. The bishop discovers that their isolation has left them stunningly ignorant of official theology, so ignorant that they are veritable heretics. They don’t even know the proper set prayers.

The Bishop spends the day teaching it to them. They are profoundly grateful and seem to love the prayer. As evening approaches, the Bishop returns to the anchored ship. A lovely night falls. Crew and passengers are walking the deck when someone spies a light advancing toward them from the island.

Here’s the end of the tale in Tolstoy’s own words: “‘Look there, what is that?...’ The Bishop repeated, though he could now see plainly what it was – three hermits running upon the water, all gleaming white, their gray beards shining… The steersman looked and let go in terror. ‘Oh Lord, the hermits are running after us on the water as though it were land…’ The passengers hearing him jumped up and crowded to the stern. They saw the hermits come along hand in hand, and the two outer ones beckoning the ship to stop. All three were gliding along upon the water without moving their feet. Before the ship could be stopped, the hermits reached it, and raising their heads, all three as with one voice began to say: ‘We have forgotten your teaching… We can remember nothing of it. Teach us again.’”

The Spirit of the Living God is not yours or mine to control. Sometimes it comes from official sources, sometimes it comes from the direction you least expect it, from quite unofficial sources. You never know. So listen hard to everyone, look closely at everything; attend closely to even the least likely sources.

You never know how the Present Tense of God might become God present to you.

j.las.m.lindvall.gcf.