WWJD…WTC Synchroblog

Posted by Jonathan Brink
October 15, 2007

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This synchroblog is about asking what would Jesus do with the church. The question was meant to stimulate our thinking about what we could do bring life to the church, instead of just complaining about it. And as I was thinking about it I kept wondering what Jesus would actually say to us if He were here. And the more I thought about the idea, the more I thought that he probably wouldn’t give us the answers. He’d ask really good questions that would require us to think and engage.

So this is a non-exhaustive list of what I think Jesus would ask if he were here today. This is assuming that we would be listening.

Do you know My Father’s mission?

Jesus understood that God had always been on a mission of restoring all of His creation. And without an understanding of this, everything gets muddled.

Is the church structured in a way to accomplish this mission?

So much of what we think when we say “church” does not exist in Jesus’ ideology. He took ordinary people created an organization that changed the world. Yet so much of our focus is on the outward process. I get this. Getting people into heaven and then turning them into ushers or pew sitters is the easy part, because there will always be people who are looking for this part.

Are you personally taking part in His mission for your own life?

Jesus was always interested in the restoration of the person, the individual. Are we taking part in what it means to follow Jesus so our own hearts can be restored? If we’re not then what’s the point?

What denomination was I?

This is a serious question and I wrestled with it before but it needs to be addressed. If His mission is about reconciliation, we don’t look very good when we are the ones who can’t reconcile.

Are we following the Holy Spirit’s lead?

Jesus provided us complete access to the Father, which gave us His Spirit. This gave us the potential to live as Jesus did. Are we listening and following?

Do you know you are worth it?

The cross was the ultimate evidence of God’s willingness to go to the ends for us. Are we seeing what Jesus saw when He looks in the eyes of everyone He restored.

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I’ve wrestled with these issues in my own life for ages. And yet I recognize that answering them is not easy. Part of the synchroblog was to put these ideas into practice. I’ve been working on these issues for a long time but my work this month is to listen to each question in my own life.

(This post is part of a synchroblog called “What Would Jesus Do… With the Church”. See this post or this post for details.)

WWJDWTC Participants:
Glenn Hager
Gary Means
Alan Knox
The Refuge
Nate Peres
Sally Coleman
Barb
Rick Stillwell
Jeff Greathouse
Dan
Barbara Legere
Jason Ellis
Rainer
Cynthia

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Christianity, Church, Church Leadership, Denominations, Emerging Church, Jesus, Missional, Synchroblog

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  • I hope that you hear the whispers during your time of contemplation.
  • Barbara
    This was so good, plus the photo you chose speaks volumes on its own.
  • Jonathan- I am reminded of something that Rob Bell said about about being about the the kingdom and serving and in the process saving our own souls.
  • hey jonathan, i like your blog and the things you have been writing about. i am glad you participated in the synchroblog thing because otherwise i might not have known about it. i think you may have read the refuge's blog before our wwjdwthc post was up there. we are always writing about this topic so the one from last week kind of fit, too! it's now up there. anyway, i really liked what you said here:

    "He took ordinary people created an organization that changed the world. Yet so much of our focus is on the outward process. I get this. Getting people into heaven and then turning them into ushers or pew sitters is the easy part, because there will always be people who are looking for this part."

    i believe this is so true. we can easily get people to say the right words that convince us they're "in", start to do the right Christian thing and go to church once a week and maybe even eventually hand out a program now and then. that isn't that complicated. but real inward transformation where we teach people to become better lovers, willing to sacrifice ourselves to get in the trenches with other human beings in the mess & the muck, really we're not so great at that.
  • Jonathan,

    You've asked some very important questions. I'm looking forward to how you answer them and live them out over the next month. I've struggled with some of these same questions also. About the only answer I have so far is that sitting and discussing is not the goal.

    -Alan
  • Kathy,

    Let's find a way to be great at that. Eh?
  • Alan,

    Sitting and discussing has been cathartic for me but its kind of like being one of the guys who before the good Samaritan and running across the guy who was robbed. "Gee, I think he's hurt. Yes, he's hurt. What do you think I should do about it? I don't know. Help him. Yeah, that's a good idea." If the conversation ends there we miss getting to be part of the best part of the story.
  • Thanks for joining us in this synchroblog. One thing you said that really spoke to me was about restoration....something I noticed in the past is church talked a lot about getting people healed, and yet so few ever really saw restoration, at least not the way we were approaching it. That's what I want to see more of...true healing.
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