Bill Easums Observations

In my early years as a pastor (60s-80s) I remember people saying that liberals focused on social justice mostly to the exclusion of evangelism, and evangelical focused on evangelism mostly to the exclusion of social justice.  In fact much of the theological differences during those years were crystallized in the dichotomy between social justice and evangelism as if one was more important than the other.

Well, no more.  Over the past decade we have witnessed a wholesale reverse of these rolls, with two exceptions.  The evangelicals now focus as much on social justice as they do evangelism and the liberals have mostly lost steam on either front due to their free fall decline.

Case in point.

I always record a couple of early Sunday morning programs. One of them is Meet the Press. I can’t make it through the week without watching this program-even if I’m out of the country.  This week Rick Warren and the Gates were featured.

I’ve known Rick long before he was the Rick Warren people know today- saddleback was a one horse church by then (sorry, I couldn’t resist the pun).  I’ve watched him mature in his leadership.  As I watched Meet the Press I could not help but say “Yes.” I loved his response to the question of whether he was right or left wing – “I’m for the whole bird,” he replied.  All the discussions on aids, Africa, abortion, etc. he was a constant witness to Jesus Christ.  He so eloquently tied together social justice and evangelism that only the darkest of hearts could take issue with him- even on an issue one might have a serious disagreement.

The evangelical wing of the church has really come full circle and people like Rick Warren are helping to bring about a marriage of social justice and evangelism the way the Scriptures intended.  You may not like some of this theology but I dare anyone to question the spirit of his ministry.

I salute you Rick.  You are the one God has put here for this hour. Continue to shine your light on social justice and evangelism as two sides of the same coin. It’s time both sides of the table learned the lesson God has taught you.

Bill Easum|
www.churchconsultations.com
easum@aol.com

The term “Black Friday” stems from the 1960s mostly in the East but since 2000 it has caught on throughout the country. The term refers to the day when retailers make their move to being in “the black” financially. Yea, we all know that people go crazy the day after Thanksgiving – it must be in the turkey.  Stores open at ridiculously early hours and people are standing in line to push and shove to get the best bargins before they care gobbled up (sorry turkey).

Now, here is the catch. With the economy the way it is, the more people save, the more likely they are to survive the next round of financial collapse which is someone in the next few months.  However, the more people save, the worse the economy becomes.  It’s sort of a no win at the moment.

So what should we do? Live within our means whatever that means for you. I think Jesus would go for that. For most people it means having one credit card and paying it off every month. That’s right- do charge more than you can pay for at the end of the month.

I was in my forties before I had my first credit card and I did okay.  Didn’t have much, but didn’t know I had to have a lot to be okay. Hopefully, we will return to that understanding now that the shoe has dropped on so many of us.

We’ve all heard it said that Jesus talked more about money than anything else.  That should tell us something. We also know that the love of money is the root of all evil.  There’s nothing wrong with money; but there’s a lot wrong with what it does to us. Black Friday is just one example. I don’t understand people who love to shop so much that they spend hours just shopping even though they have no clue what they are looking for.

I found a wonderful website about Jesus and money (click here). The author has taken the time to chart each reference and what it is about and comes up with a chart.  The interesting thing is that almost 40% of the references are tied to discipleship.  Guess what? How we handle our money says a lot about who we are.

So this Black Friday stay home. And don’t give in to the many Black Friday emails you’ll get today offering you some deal you can’t afford to miss.

Go count your pennies and put them in the bank.

Bill Easum
www.churchconsultations.com
easum@aol.com

To some Donald A. McGavran is one of the greatest missiologist in Christian history. To others his name is almost synonymous with the Devil.  Those who malign McGavran simply have misunderstood him. They say all he is about is numbers. That he is responsible for pastors building large churches around the homogenous model. They say all he was about is church growth.

The title of my first book was The Church Growth Handbook. I had never heard of McGavran at the time. All I knew was that God had called me to change lives in Jesus and when that happened my church or someone else’s church grew and that was what it was all about.

It wasn’t long before I began to receive hate mail from colleagues who said I had sold out to the Devil. I didn’t understand at the time that they were referring to the work of McGavran.  They hated McGavran because in their mind all he and the church growth movement were concerned about was numbers and growing large churches.

Well, that’s only because they hadn’t taken the time to read McGavran. If they had, here is what they would have learned.

1. He challenged people to think in terms of reaching “people groups” with the Gospel instead of individuals.
2. He called for converts to immerse themselves in the culture rather than be extracted from the culture into mission stations as many churches do today.
3. He emphasized calling people groups and individuals to faith in Christ rather than building large churches (most of his work was done on the mission field where large churches didn’t exist).
4. The term “church growth” and the emphasis on numbers were always used in relationship to salvation.
5. The ultimate goal of the Gospel is not building churches but advancing the Kingdom of God.
6. Most of his ministry was done outside any relationship to a congregation.

What many don’t know about McGavran is that much of his work was done in the field totally apart from any form of institutional church. So numbers were never his concern- fulfilling the Great Commission was what drove the man to all that he did.

It’s time we recognized one of the great men of the faith- Donald McGavran- and quit saying all he was interested in was numbers.

Bill Easum
www.churchconsultations.com
easum@aol.com

I began reading seriously about the Missional Church in the 90s with books like God’s Missionary People by Van Egan, The Continuing Conversion of the Church by Guder. I resonated deeply with their writings and saw many of the things they wrote about being lived out in my ministry while a pastor as well as in the ministry of many of the great churches with whom God has privileged me to work over the past twenty years.

But in this decade many of the writings on the Missional Church have unintentionally opened up a huge can of worms that many books have exploited. The can of worms simply put is “Is there any validity to the institutional local church?” Books by authors like Frank Viola and George Barna have picked up on the can of worms and have basically denied the biblical validity to the institutional form of the church. I think theyhave gone  too far.

Although I still resonate with much of what is being written today on the Missional as well as the Incarnational Church (and much of Viola’s material), I’m turned off by the conclusions of many of these writers. I simply refuse to believe the only missional church is the one that abandons all forms of the institutional local church in favor of informal gatherings throughout the neighborhood.

That’s why I resonate with Roxburgh and Boren’s book Introducing the Missional Church.  They don’t throw the baby (local church) out with the bath water (Missional).

I’m a simple person, so I boil books down to their absolute minimum. When I do that with this book, here’s what I come up with – The Missional Church is one that asks a basic question –“What is God up to in our neighborhood,” rather than “How can we improve what we’re doing so we can attract more people to worship?”

In one of my seminars (I can’t remember which one) I shared this prayer with the group:

“God show us what you’re up to and run over us with it until we become a part of it.”

In my mind that’s being missional.

Anyone with any sense knows that Christianity is far more than any local church; it is a movement that wishes to transform the entire creation.  And one of the ways it does so is through the institutional local church. Even in the first few centuries before Constantine, local congregations began formalizing the entrance into membership which suggests the beginnings of a formal group of people.

Still, we should take to heart the critics of the institutional church.  They have much to teach us about what is wrong with 80-90% of the churches in the West. Those who have followed me over the years know that I was one of the earliest critics of the institutional church. As early as the 70’s I was seen by many as a maverick in my tribe (United Methodist Church). The title of my third book, Dancing with Dinosaurs, clearly stated how I felt about what Christianity had become.  But still I’m not willing to through the baby out with the bath water and neither should you.

Instead we should all take notice of the reproductive movement under way today- churches planting churches and multi site churches. Churches that reproduce themselves are rapidly taking the place of denominations and will become the norm by the midpoint of the 20^th century. Nay-Sayers take notice; the institutional local church is here to stay in the West; it’s just morphing into something you don’t understand. So pay attention.

Bill Easum
www.churchconsultations.com
easum@aol.com

I sat watching my recorded session of Meet The Press. I had a tear in my eye. 20 years ago the Berlin Wall came down and freedom was returned to East Germany.  It was a great site to watch again how the people from both sides of the Wall celebrated its destruction. Hammers, picks, screwdrivers, you name it, were used to do away with one of the most brutal symbols of evil in our lifetime.

Then a horrible feeling crept into my heart- the more freedom people have the more complacent they become.  Nowhere is this truth more pronounced than in our faith. It seems the more freedom people have the less they understand the importance of their faith and begin to take it forgranted. But bring in persecution, as we have seen around the world (take the Mao regime for example), and the more faith people begin to exhibit.

Bonhoeffer, in his book, The Cost of Discipleship, called it cheap grace- Grace which is presumed upon, taken for granted, and in the worse cases spit upon.

God help us Americans not to take either our freedom or our faith for granted. Both are precious and both should be worth giving our all.