Note to subscribers: Origin Church begins a series through the book of James this weekend. I’m providing an introduction to the series here:
HI Originals — We are getting ready to study the book of James together. And here’s the theme for our life together over the next two months. : Cultivating Community for Good.
James writes:
“Don’t be deceived, my dear brothers and sisters. Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows. He chose to give us birth through the word of truth, that we might be a kind of first fruits of all he created.” James 1:16-18
Community in the Church is a gift from the Father. It is produced, it is birthed, by the word of truth, the Gospel in our hearts. He has made us brothers and sisters in this new family. And it’s meant to be good! I’m convinced that community is a good gift and that God wants us to be a community for good. I’m excited about that and terrified at the same time. I’m excited because being a community that produces good fruit is what Jesus envisioned for the church. Goodness characterizes all that God makes. The good quality of God’s Creation is summarized in Genesis 1. After each day of Creation, God says, “It is good” and of people, “It is very good.”
In good community diverse people are brought together by Jesus to become like Him and act like His family. lLves are restored, souls are saved, people are healed, kindness and generosity are common and gifts are redeemed. That’s exciting!
But I’m terrified because I know we are not perfect. I know that goodness may not be the dominant memory or experience of the church for some people. With Jesus we know expectations are high. The followers of Jesus’ church are to be like trees producing good fruit. We must be realistic though — people are a mess and can be desperately wicked right at the core of who we are. Yes, to be in Christ is to know Jesus is changing us, Yes He has made us a new creation, but we let plenty of deathly rot creep back in.
For every Christian leader that has abused their position, for the Christian parent who has resorted to violence or abandoned their spouse and children in neglect, for every church that has tried to cover up sexual abuse, for every community that has tolerated angry controlling malicious leaders, for every committee that has attacked, ignored, or discredited the messengers who were blowing the whistle— I’m sorry. It pains me. We should all be pained.
We have to be realistic about our situation. It’s not just that people are sinful. As Scot McKnight and Laura Barringer rightly observe in A Church Called TOV, church cultures, can become toxic. We know pollution kills. A toxic environment poisons the tree and therefore the tree yields bad fruit. And here’s the rub, toxic environments are not equipped to deal with sinful hearts and with leaders who are behaving badly.
Jesus had plenty to say about trees and bad fruit. In Matthew 12 he says,
33 “Make a tree good and its fruit will be good, or make a tree bad and its fruit will be bad, for a tree is recognized by its fruit. 34You brood of vipers, how can you who are evil say anything good? For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of. 35A good man brings good things out of the good stored up in him, and an evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in him. 36But I tell you that everyone will have to give account on the day of judgment for every empty word they have spoken. 37For by your words you will be acquitted, and by your words you will be condemned.”
Look, a church community is like a tree and the good person— we bring good things out of what is stored up in us and we are judged by what say and what we do. Sisters and brothers, a church that is cultivating community for good, that is cultivating good community is going to have to attend to the heart! But more than that — we are going to have to attend to the Father of Lights who reveals hearts, and who gives good gifts, He can “make a tree good.” But, he invites us to be participants in the process. Did you notice that? Jesus holds to the common capacity of the farming community to make a tree good or to make a tree bad. The community is a system that feeds into itself. He says, “Make a tree good and its fruit will be good. Make a tree bad and its fruit will be bad.” What about our “making?”
What if we have allowed toxicity to infiltrate our cultures at home, at work, and even in church? Are we done for? Should we pack it in, chop it down and burn the orchard? One more tree parable offers hope to me. Changing culture requires continual prayer, nurture, truth telling, and action. Changing culture is not just one sermon series and then done! We know that — our adventure in 2021 is to Be More Like Jesus Together — but none of us believe that one series is going to complete that work. Cultivating Christ-likeness is an ongoing response to the grace of God in Christ and the whispers of His Spirit.
That’s why I’m encouraged by this parable from Luke 13 — God gives new chances to people and the church. When it comes to church and community do you come at it with an axe or with a spade? Here’s Jesus parable of hope but also urgency:
6Then he told this parable: “A man had a fig tree growing in his vineyard, and he went to look for fruit on it but did not find any. 7So he said to the man who took care of the vineyard, ‘For three years now I’ve been coming to look for fruit on this fig tree and haven’t found any. Cut it down! Why should it use up the soil?’
8 “ ‘Sir,’ the man replied, ‘leave it alone for one more year, and I’ll dig around it and fertilize it. 9If it bears fruit next year, fine! If not, then cut it down.’ ”
(Luke 13:6-9)
The person tending the vineyard hoped that changing the environment of the tree would ultimately change the tree. That’s cultivation. That’s what we could be doing for each other in the church. We could be cultivating goodness in the way we relate to each other. We can cooperating with the Holy Spirit to cultivating goodness in our hearts, so we yield or produce goodness in our community. But only if we will take the actions that cultivate our church culture towards goodness.
There’s so much available to us in the book of James — but here’s what we are going to focus on over the next two months. Church that cultivates goodness is able:
to Listen
to Include
to Act in Faith
to Speak
to Make Peace
to Humble Ourselves
to Pray and
to Restore.
It looks like we have a few more months of gathering online here in Vancouver. Our experience of christian community has been good but variable over the past year. For some of us we have grown with Jesus by leaps and bounds ( we feel rich with Jesus), others of us have languished, and some have almost given up. (these feel impoverished). But James in the first part of Chapter One encourages us to not give up on Jesus or each other—instead we are called to persevere even though we are under pressure and facing trials of many kinds.
Here’s what I’m trusting — even through this pandemic and the contraction of our liberties we can grow with Jesus! We can enjoy the gift of community that has been born among us through the Word of God sown into our hearts. God is creating good community in Jesus name now — if only we will remain open and responsive to Him and to each other.
Like this:
Like Loading...
