mgpcpastor's blog

Mark Buchanan has two qualities you want in a Christian author: wise and constructive insight and skilled wordcraft.
His latest book, Your Church Is Too Safe, releases soon and Buchanan’s blog has featured two chapters as recent posts.
If you’ve got some time have a read of these.
They’ll challenge and refresh you, all at once.
Grace does that.
The first is from Chapter 5, Going To Mordor.
Here’s a brief taste, go and read the rest.

I love that the church of late has discovered the power of life together. Or, at least, we talk about it a lot. It’s deeply right that we seek to nurture that life together over lingering meals, rambling conversations, leisurely walks, dropping in on one another unannounced.
But if we’re not careful, we’ll have a perfect life in Rivendell and forget about Mordor. We’ll prefer fellowship to mission. We won’t ride up to the gates of hell and demand they give way. We won’t invade the heart of darkness and overthrow it. And, in the end, the depth of our life together will show it: we’ll be acquaintances but not soul mates, buddies and girlfriends but not brothers and sisters, willing to help each other out in a pinch with a meal or two, a little housework, the loan of a car for a few days, but not “sharing all things in common,” not “considering others better than ourselves.”
Any church too safe became that way because somewhere, somehow, they started wanting to dwell in Rivendell more than travel to Mordor. They started caring about fellowship more than mission, and in the end lost both.
I often hear talk that pits fellowship and mission against one another, treats them as competing imperatives. “Why are we caring for all those people when we’re not caring for our own?” The logic here is that pursuing mission means neglecting fellowship. But the opposite is true: to neglect mission is to destroy fellowship. Mission enhances fellowship, and fellowship strengthens mission. This isn’t to say that our fellowship becomes easier when we take seriously our mission. In significant ways, it becomes more difficult. It just becomes necessary. It changes from a middle-class luxury to a working-class necessity. We stop being picky and get desperate. We probably argue with one another even more when we’re on a dangerous mission together – after all, the stakes are so high – but we usually argue about things that matter. We laugh harder, cry more often, fight more fiercely, and endure greater hardship. We risk much, and give much, and suffer much, and love much.
Has your church lost its mission? I can guarantee that, if it has, it’s also lost, or soon will, any meaningful fellowship. It might look like Rivendell around the place, but each will keep increasingly to his own. No one really needs anyone else, and if they did, they’d never say. After losing your mission, it’s only a matter of time before your fellowship become that in name only.
Read the whole chapter at Buchanan’s blog.

The second post features Chapter 13, Jesus And The Three Spirits.

I’m learning the art of holy indifference. One of John Wesley’s biographers described the man’s “regal disdain for trifles.” That’s brilliant: a kingly contempt for trivialities. Most of what the religious spirit cooks up is too petty to waste a moment on, too paltry to dignify with a response. And too toxic. This spirit’s offerings are not just flighty things pretending to be weighty things, but rancid things posing as sacred things. It’s bile passed off as holy water. Poison hidden in a chalice.
What I’m learning is that we don`t have to drink it. This is one cup you can let pass. In my early days of pastoring, I didn`t heed that. I drank from the cup every time it was offered to me. I drank, and it rankled, twisted, and inflamed me. I allowed it to eat me alive. And always I would find that the more I fought against the religious spirit, the more I became it. I fought bile with bile, pettiness with pettiness. I rarely did this openly. But that’s part of the way it works: rarely is anything done openly. Instead, it`s done secretly, furtively, in a sideways manner.
Wisdom refuses to stoop to this.
Which isn`t to say I just ignore it. We still need to confront the religious spirit. Jesus did this repeatedly. He called it out of the shadows, named it for what it was, and made it clear that the Kingdom of God will not be beggared by this spirit. It will not be held ransom. It will continue its work of healing and liberating and proclaiming.
Read the rest of the chapter here.