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Photo by Pavel Danilyuk: https://www.pexels.com/photo/woman-climbing-a-wall-7590954/

 

In America, we like to do it big. We like to push the boundaries of what can be and don’t like to be restricted by anything. It’s easy to get caught up in the American belief in the impossible. 

We love to do things big! The culture says to live life with no limits. That’s what they pumped us up with as kids. The sky was the limit. If we could dream it then we could achieve it.

I see how that’s a load of hot garbage now.

Limitations are just a part of life and it’s hitting me real hard now that I’m 47. The older you get the more you are regularly faced with your limitations. When you’re young you feel like you can do anything. But slowly over time, you begin to see that you are not invincible and there are barriers to you doing a lot of things.

At first, it’s just the barriers you were born with. Your height, your allergies, or the dyslexia you discovered in middle school keep you from doing certain things. Then there are the self-imposed barriers of being married or having kids. You have limitations now on where you can go and how much time you can spend on certain things (that is if you actually care about the quality of these relationships but that’s a whole other essay). 

Then there are the limitations of getting older (especially past 35). For men the testosterone drops. There’s also injuries incurred during youth. This is the wear and tear of the body that comes with constant use and misuse. 

These physical limitations can be more and more restricting with different health challenges due to lack of exercise and eating too many double cheeseburgers and strawberry shakes.

All of these limitations get in the way of us changing careers or even doing basic things like working out at the gym. They either put some things out of reach altogether or they force us to be patient with seeing slower progress instead of quick massive gains.

At the same time, barriers can be blessings in disguise. They can cause us to look for different ways to reach our goals and use our barriers as strengths instead of weaknesses. Our limitations can actually help us reach our goals if we work with them instead of trying to push past them.

Even on a group level you can look at black culture and see a culture that cultivated beauty and life by utilizing limitations. Take soul food for instance. Soul food was created by taking scraps from the slave master given out as daily rations and using traditional African cooking techniques. 

The result: mouth-watering deliciousness. The limitation led to a level-up.

Then there’s hip-hop. The obstacle of not having musical instruments led to djing and eventually breaking and emceeing. The obstacle of government funding being cut off for music in poor neighborhoods like the Bronx became an opportunity that made many into millionaires.

This is the same way we can tackle the barriers to movements in the West. Instead of looking at the barriers as giant obstacles that will take a ton of force to overcome (like a miracle from God), we can look at how we can use “ as opportunities for growth. Here are some of the biggest barriers to movement in the West and how we can overcome them:

Comfort and Convenience

One of the biggest barriers to seeing disciples multiply in the West is comfort and convenience. The opposite is true in the rest of the 2/3rds world. The lack of comfort and convenience is an advantage. This is not just in the realm of persecution, but it touches on every aspect of the Christian life. It’s more of an overall low priority and a low expectation of comfort and convenience.

When you look at the places people are willing to meet for worship in the majority world the one word you can use to describe it is: variety. People meet in houses, gyms, cafes, under trees, and in caves. These are a few places I can think of off the top of my head. 

They are willing to endure heat, bugs, and bad seating as long as they are meeting. On the other hand, we as Westerners have to have the best environment or we will not be attending.

This example of a willingness to meet anywhere versus having just the right conditions exposes the difference between the West and the rest. It’s the reality of suffering. For those not in the West suffering is just a part of life. 

For us in the West, suffering is viewed as an intrusion. We are not willing to suffer or endure pain at all. We are not willing to be inconvenienced.

The inconvenience of clearing the schedule to make time for a DBS meeting is for some a price too high to pay. There is also the inconvenience of hospitality. It is too much of an inconvenience to have people in my home. There is also the inconvenience and discomfort of evangelism. 

Most of us in the West don’t experience any real persecution because we are not bold enough to share the gospel with those who don’t believe. We don’t want to experience friends, family, or coworkers side-eyeing us for sharing the gospel. For us, social ostracism is suffering we don’t want to endure.

This high priority of comfort and convenience is often translated into spiritual laziness. We will get up early in the morning to go to the airport. We will get up early in the morning to go to work. But we will not get up early in the morning to pray. It’s too uncomfortable and inconvenient.

There is also the attitude of spiritual offshoring. We would rather put the responsibility of making disciples on the pastor or church staff than roll up our sleeves and do it ourselves. I mean after all, what am I paying my tithes for?

The attitude of comfort and convenience is not only a barrier to multiplication but it’s also spiritual death. It goes against the words of Jesus when he says discipleship amounts to denying yourself and taking up your cross. It’s those who suffer with him who will also reign with him. So our avoidance of suffering is also an avoidance of true lasting success.

And there’s only one way to overcome it. We have to toughen up. In the West, we don’t have the same amount of natural suffering in our environment. Running water, electricity, climate-controlled homes, refrigeration, and the internet are just a few things that keep us comfy cushy, and isolated from pain. But it’s no different than the Christians in the Roman Empire in the 3rd century. 

They were comfortable and enjoying the privileged status of being a part of the state religion. But some folks knew this wasn’t right and moved into the desert to become athletes in God’s arena. They prayed. They fasted. They got up early. They stayed up all night. They spent time in silence and solitude.

Now I’m not advocating moving out into the wilderness but I am advocating for spiritual disciplines practiced in community. This is the process of toughening up our spiritual muscles and rejecting the padded comfort of the Western world.

Weak or Non Existent Social Networks

Another huge barrier to seeing multiplication is the weak or virtually non-existent social networks of people in the Western world. DMM has taken off in areas where the family and friendship ties are titanium-strong. This is usually the case in rural areas. In urban areas, these same family and friendship ties are either weak or non-existent and not localized. 

So a person can be acquainted with one person from work ten miles away. They can be acquainted with another person from the gym 4 or 5 miles away. They can have some good friends who live 20 miles away in the city where they grew up and their strongest tie of family is eight hours away in another state. None of these connections ever meet or intersect and are far from where a person lives. 

That’s also not counting the non-existent relationships many of us have with our neighbors.

Notice I intentionally used the term acquainted with. Many of us do not truly know people. I take knowing someone as having been in each other’s living spaces. This is a huge barrier connected to the first barrier of comfort and convenience. It’s uncomfortable and inconvenient to know someone according to this standard.

For multiplication to happen the gospel needs to be sown in the good soil of a strong network of people. Overseas that is found in rural villages. Here in the Western world, it’s not as simple as the place where you live. 

This is because the life we live is fragmented. Urban life creates divisions for most people. 

They have their work life. Then there’s their recreational life. Then there’s their family and personal life. That’s just the bare minimum for most people. I’m sure there are other ways to divide life up for a busy urban dweller.

All these lives are lived in different locations with different people. Every place of connection requires its own commute. So that eats up the time we have to truly get to know people and make disciples. 

On top of that, this situation creates not only busyness because of commuting but also weak ties because it’s harder for the gospel to jump over cultural barriers. Since there is no connection between the small amounts of people we know who are not believers then there is a barrier to multiplication.

And then there’s the low number of non-Christian friends in the network of the average believer. After so many years of going to church events and spending most of your free time with Christians, you don’t have any non-Christian friends or available time to make any. So if you are a believer not only is your network small and weak but it’s also probably full of Christians.

The way to overcome this is to intentionally spend time in what David Watson calls a silo. Silos are groups of people who are connected to each other through their work or their hobby. That’s how we form connections in the urban Western world. 

Rodger Shull describes it using the language of an urban village where you can BLT. Build relationships with Lost people and Tell them about Jesus. You can read more about that here

The gravitational pull of the traditional church

One of the biggest things that most people don’t realize when it comes to a barrier is the traditional church. It’s not the church itself but the gravitational pull and the problems that inherently come with that. While disciple-making movements explicitly train people to be obedient traditional church implicitly trains them to be disobedient. 

Let’s break that down. In a disciple-making movement every week there is a push towards specifically obeying the passage at hand. The next week there is accountability for obeying said passage. Obeying Jesus is part and parcel of the group meeting. 

In a traditional church setting, there is an hour-long lecture and a general call to obey the passage at hand from the stage with no acknowledged response of obedience from the congregation. The next week there is no call to accountability for the previous week’s message. Most people are accustomed to this and it makes it hard to build a team from pre-existing Christians.

There is also the gravitational pull the traditional church has on the culture. Let’s just say you share the gospel with someone or do a discovery bible study with them and through the process of discovery come to follow Jesus. Naturally, this person who is excited about Jesus talks about their new relationship with God to their coworker. 

The Christian coworker who attends a traditional church is amazed and asks them where they go to church. 

This excited new believer then says “I go to church every week at my house”. 

The Christian coworker is dumbfounded and lets them know “That’s not a church. I mean where are you plugged in at?” 

This leaves this new disciple dumbfounded and feeling deficient.

 “I guess he’s right. We don’t have a building and we don’t even meet on Sundays.”

That’s one scenario but many other similar scenarios are all based on our culture’s understanding of church and their expectation of what the church should provide. In other words, church is a building you go to on Sundays to hear music and a speech and in no way is supposed to hold you accountable except to give your money.

And this also causes hesitation and fear when a discovery bible study or weekly 3/3rds meeting is challenged to take it to the next level and become a church. For some it’s overwhelming. We can’t be a church. We need a board. We need to file a 501(C) 3. We need to get a worship team. 

They assume these are necessary things although we don’t see these in scripture. We do see them in the church culture around us. This leaves them stuck and fearful. 

Others are underwhelmed. So this is church? I mean we need biblical preaching and qualified elders to pastor this church. And so they may even sign on to become a church but after a few weeks or months, it fizzles because there’s no building, no preaching, no light show. Just disciples being obedient.

So how do we overcome this barrier? We work with the church. We walk alongside pastors and leaders and focus them on scripture and what discipleship to Jesus really means. 

Then they can see where they are measuring up and where they are missing the mark. We don’t bash them or act like we are not a part of the body of Christ in any of its forms. This focus on scripture is an opportunity for growth for all of us.  

For me, it’s been a huge growth process when it comes to practicing spiritual disciplines in community. It’s also been a stretch for me to look for and engage places where I can build relationships with lost people and tell them about Jesus. One of the biggest places of growth is for me to work within and alongside the traditional church paradigm after encountering the movement paradigm and still being convinced it’s the right way to go. 

Usually, I am not one to try to press for change in established groups or organizations. I’d rather just do my own thing but in this season God is calling me to grow in relationships, in partnering with others, and in how I relate to leaders and those in authority. A huge learning curve for sure.

So those are the barriers to movement in the West and how to overcome them. If you think I missed a barrier let me know. If you feel like there are other ways to overcome these barriers I’d love to hear about them as well. Let’s keep our eyes on the growth and not on the barriers and limitations. 

“I almost wish I hadn’t gone down that rabbit-hole—and yet—and yet—it’s rather curious, you know, this sort of life!”-Alice in Alice in Wonderland

Stumbling into DMM

Since the beginning of my faith journey, I have always had a sense of being out of time. Reading the Bible was not a cold distant experience. Whenever I would thumb through its pages I would put myself in the shoes of Paul and Jesus.
The Book of Acts was something we could experience today. This was never a question for me. At the same time, it also made me question the current Christian church and its practices.

Looking at Jesus’ practice and the practice of the New Testament church in Acts made me feel disoriented. The activities we were involved in and the manner in which we did them did not equate to what I read in scripture. Something was missing.

The centrality of the church building and the hierarchy of pastor and parishioner seemed foreign to the original Jesus movement (Acts 2:46, 2:20; Matthew 23:8-9). On top of that, the passivity of the congregation didn’t seem like what Jesus had in mind.

So I began searching. This was in the late nineties and early 2000s when the wonders of the internet became available to the masses and I devoured information about different ways of being church. I consumed it all. From parachurch to emerging to Reformed to Methodist. I knew there was something out there that better mirrored what Christ had in mind for his people.

Eventually, my internet journey intersected with real life when I became involved with Campus Crusade For Christ (now known as Cru) at my local community college. This was all due to a Christian club I started with a few other students called Warrior Christian Fellowship. In those days I learned how to do one-on-one evangelism and lead Bible studies. The camaraderie and sense of God’s presence was something I wanted more of as we all were one in mission and purpose. We wanted to see our friends and fellow students come to know Jesus.

This desire for my friends and family to know Jesus eventually blossomed into seeing people from other nations know Him as well. This all came from reading the scriptures and wanting to obey the words of the Great Commission (Matthew 28:19-20). After searching for months for the right organization to take me to the nations I was recruited to go on a summer mission project to Ethiopia with Campus Crusade.

This summer project exploded my framework of what God could do in this day and time. What I had longed for after reading the scriptures came alive before my very eyes. First with my team from the States and also with the Ethiopian nationals.

We were a multiethnic team from the States and through this team trained by Bobby Herron we became deeply connected and experienced God do amazing things through our group. We were of one heart and one mind and in the hotel where we stayed, we were in one place and on one accord. Everyone on the trip was there to see people saved and find Christ. We were all there to make disciples and God used us to bring healing, exorcisms, and salvations.

I learned the passion and commitment to Christ and obedience to the scriptures from national leaders. We saw people who had dedicated their lives to Jesus without any of the celebrity Christian trappings. They were focused on eternal reward. I saw believers who were content with the little they had and who would worship God in a packed house without air conditioning because they experienced his love for them. In other words, I learned what Christianity could be when it was about following Jesus.

After coming back to the States I was ruined and I’ve been searching for something consciously or unconsciously since then. No matter what church I was leading or was a part of there was a deep hunger and appetite to experience what I experienced there in Ethiopia. It was community and mission.

It was the communitas Alan Hirsch describes in his book The Forgotten Ways. Communitas is the sense of community formed out of the shared experience of an adventure, trial, ordeal, or mission. It’s what soldiers experience after boot camp or combat. This is what I experienced there in Ethiopia with our team and I had been longing for it ever since.

After a couple of starts with different expressions of church (A coffeehouse, missional communities, etc.) I was looking for something more. This coincided with my life coming apart at the seams and me coming to the end of my rope spiritually and professionally (This kind of thing happens in middle age. But that’s another article for another time). I was just ripe for what God dropped into my lap.

About two years ago while working as a limo driver I started noticing a lot of internationals parked in the limo lot at the airport. I couldn’t help but think “How can I introduce them to Christ?” And so I searched online for resources and stumbled on the website of Jeannie Marie an advocate for cross-cultural ministry and missions. A couple of weeks after signing up I received an invitation for a webinar from one of her partners and friends to learn how to have a massive kingdom impact making disciples. I watched the webinar, signed up for the course and two years later I’m still pursuing this approach.

The Blessing of DMM

This approach is called a disciple-making movement or DMM for short. If you haven’t heard of dmms then here’s a simple explanation: small groups of disciples making other disciples who establish churches of disciples. Rinse and repeat.

In other words, it’s about the church doing what it’s supposed to do. This is not a new idea. You can see it in the pages of the New Testament. Christianity was spread from household to household as followers of Jesus gossiped the gospel and full-time workers went into new territory to make disciples.

It’s the opposite of the spectator church. When it comes to disciple-making movements no one can hide in the back row. There is no back row. It’s about the whole church being on mission together.

The focus is on making disciples and not planting churches. It’s been said that Jesus’ command was to make disciples and not to plant churches. The twelve apostles obeyed this and made disciples and as a result, churches were formed. This is quite the opposite of the standard mindset in the West. We go out to plant or start a church. What we mean by this is to start a church service. After doing this no matter how big and flashy this weekly event gets we aren’t guaranteed many disciples.

This begs the question: What is a disciple? A disciple is a learner of Jesus who submits to him in obedience. This is what Peter and the boys gave their lives to. Jesus was a rabbi and rabbis in those days didn’t just preach or teach with words but with their life. In order to be a disciple of a rabbi you wouldn’t just show up weekly to hear him speak. You would get close to him and follow his life.

This is not what we see in the current Western church. What we usually see are people who give an hour and a half of their time to a weekly event and sing songs but who are not necessarily following Jesus in any measurable form. By measurable form I mean we can track what we have done to obey Jesus’ word substantially. By track, I don’t mean we get deep into the weeds of data analytics. I just mean have accountability for our obedience and we can point back to our journey with God regularly and see how our relationship with him brought about transformation. Most of what we consider following Jesus is actually just fulfilling religious requirements set up by the church. Attend once a week. Go to a small group. Tithe 10%.

These are all good things but you can do these things without following Jesus. You can do these things in order to stay in a good social position with other churchgoers and the leaders of the church. There should be a specific way you personally are following Jesus every week.

This means you need to hear from Jesus. Jesus must speak to us in order for us to obey. I love what Jim one of my friends and mentors always says when I present him with a dilemma or upcoming decision “What do you hear Jesus saying?” And this is where our churchgoing and following rules exhaust themselves. We can do all of these things and have no intention of obeying Jesus and that’s the opposite of discipleship. Discipleship is experiencing a love relationship with Jesus which results in obedience to Him out of gratitude.

I believe DMMs help to foster environments that produce discipleship. The contemporary church in the Western world is not doing this because it lacks the smaller structure and accountability for true obedience and reproduction of discipleship DNA. When any group gets bigger the original DNA—the values, principles, and ethos— of the group gets lost by the introduction of other members. Part of this watering down of the original Jesus discipleship DNA is due to the focus on the Sunday morning event. As much as there has been an emphasis on small groups the intention of most of those groups is pastoral care and less about accountability and multiplication.

The overall goal and intention to get more people into the building override any motivation for making disciples. There is a misguided notion that bringing people into the building is the primary method of making disciples. I say misguided because Jesus had no buildings and Paul had no buildings and yet they changed the world through intentional disciple-making.

Disciple-making movements can do this because they are small and reproducing. In spite of their smallness, the fact that they are made to reproduce means although the basic unit is small the movement has the potential to be big. Huge results can be gained quantitatively and qualitatively from going small. In other words, focusing on quality with a small group of disciples leads to massive results in both the quality and quantity of future disciples. It just makes sense in terms of resiliency and reproduction to go small with disciple-making movements.

Not only that, I’ve spent close to two years pursuing a disciple-making movement. I have yet to see the numbers and rapid growth I hear about overseas. I have seen the young people I’m investing in step out in faith and lead their friends to Christ. They even cast out a demon. I have seen others take steps of obedience that I know God is pleased and delighted in. But most of all I have seen my faith and love for Jesus increase dramatically knowing I’m more aligned with the Bible than at any other time in my life. This has been a radically transforming journey and I can’t wait to see where it takes me next.

Revisions are the worst. One thing I hate doing is going over work I’ve already done. But if it weren’t for revisions we’d be putting out crap into the world. One of the revisions I had to make focused on what we often get wrong about Constantine.

Josh Hopping who writes over at  Wild Goose Chase pointed out to me how I kept saying Constantine made Christianity the official religion of the Roman empire. And this is totally false. I know this is not the case. We went over this in seminary but popular ideas are hard to kill. 

Whenever you read a book you get the idea that if it wasn’t for Constantine Christianity would be pure and undiluted from formality, politics, legalism, and anything else that plagues us today. The truth is Constantine gets a bad rap.

The good things Constantine did

Constantine did not make Christianity the official religion. Constantine was a promoter of religious tolerance. He issued the Edict of Milan which gave Christians and others the right to worship freely. Contrary to what many have accused him of he did not make Christianity the state religion. He made freedom of religion the state religion.

Christians would no longer be persecuted for their beliefs. And Constantine also went above and beyond as an advocate for Christians. Through his rule, Christians would also have their property returned and would be permitted to build houses of worship. 

So Constantine was an advocate for religious tolerance and also an advocate for justice as he promoted the welfare of Christianity. That’s hero stuff to me.

The mystery behind Constantine

So why do we always hear that Constantine made Christianity the official religion? Well, Constantine did favor Christianity and he gave prominent political offices to Christians. During the reign of Constantine, the marriage between church and state was in its dating stage. There was nothing officially on the books but it was the beginning of the relationship we would see later on.

There’s also always been a question of Constantine’s conversion. One of the reasons people think Christianity was made the official religion is that Constantine would be the first Christian emperor. However, this is highly contested since many historians believe he only accepted Christ on his deathbed and refused to be baptized.

Constantine also convened the Council of Nicea. This is the government meddling in the affairs of the church. But still, it doesn’t make Christianity the official religion of the Roman empire. For all practical purposes, Constantine convened the council because he wanted to put an end to church debates and have peace within his empire and within the one religion he took a liking to.

So who made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire?

Well that honor should go to Theodosius I or Theodosius the Great. Theodosius was not a fan of religious tolerance. He banned the Olympic games because of their pagan origins. He also stopped worship at Roman temples. He allowed no other worship except Christian worship within the boundaries of the Roman Empire. Because of Theodosius the Roman empire became “Christian”. He blended the church with the state and the impact of his decisions is still being felt right now. So instead of a post-Constantinian church we should change it to post post-Theodosian.

And so that’s what we get wrong about Constantine and why he’s my hero. Not necessarily because he was a great theologian. Not because he made the Roman empire Christian (which he didn’t). No. Constantine is my new hero because he was an advocate for religious tolerance and pluralism. 

God can work in all kinds of environments but the environment that most supports the “whosoever will” nature of the gospel is an environment where people are free to choose who they will serve and Constantine made that available for all within the empire.

Authentic discipleship is hard. Bonhoeffer’s book The Cost of Discipleship highlights the reality of how “when Christ calls a man he bids him come and die”. Anything other than this dying to self is a cheap substitute built on a foundation of cheap grace. Here are three things that hinder authentic discipleship:

As they were walking along the road, a man said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go.” Jesus replied, “Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.” He said to another man, “Follow me.” But he replied, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.” Jesus said to him, “Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and proclaim the kingdom of God.” Still another said, “I will follow you, Lord; but first let me go back and say goodbye to my family.” Jesus replied, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God.”

Jesus encountered three men who expressed an interest in following him. In his encounters with these men, Jesus addressed three things that can hinder a life of authentic discipleship.

Comfort

The first was an attachment to comfort. The first man approached Jesus and said “I will follow you wherever you go”. He was confident he would be able to follow Jesus wherever Jesus went in terms of geography. Here’s the catch. He didn’t fully understand Jesus does not always go to places of comfort and status. Jesus says he has no place to lay his head. He doesn’t have a home. Following Jesus means being uncomfortable.

Disloyalty

The second man responds to Jesus’ invitation by saying “Lord let me first go and bury my father.” It sounds like a reasonable request. After all, burying your father is a part of your family duty. In this ancient Jewish culture this is a holy and sacred duty for a son. For Jesus, it is secondary to following him. What he says to the man is telling “Let the dead bury their own dead.” Jesus says you’re alive and part of a new family. This is your highest loyalty.

Distraction

The last request doesn’t sound that unreasonable. Before following Jesus a man wishes to go and say goodbye to his family. This makes sense especially if you are familiar with the Old Testament call of Elisha. Before Elisha dropped everything to follow Elijah he went home to his family. He killed his oxen and burned their yokes and invited his entire village to a feast before he set off. Jesus says this won’t do.

Why? The nature of following him is urgent and turning back would be a distraction. “No one who puts his hand to the plough and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.” Plowing land required focus on what was ahead of you. To turn back and look at the furrow you plowed would inadvertently cause you to make the next part crooked. Jesus is saying do not be distracted by the cares and the worries of this age. Set your sights on the kingdom of God.

I have heard from multiple sources that Christianity was forced on slaves-that it was the white man’s religion. It was only given to black slaves to make them more docile. This is not the truth. The truth is religion is much more complex than that. The truth is the gospel is much more powerful than that. The conversion and embracing of Christianity by black slaves is not as clear-cut as white slave owners trying to keep blacks docile. Daniel Payne the Bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church from 1852-1893 paints a very different picture in his 1839 speech Slavery Brutalizes A Man:

In the year 1834, several colored brethren, who were also exhorters in the Methodist Episcopal Church commenced preaching to several destitute white families, who gained a subsistence by cultivating some poor lands about three or four miles from Charleston. The first Sunday I was present; the house was nearly filled with these poor white farmers. The master of the house was awakened to a sense of his lost condition. During the following week he was converted. On the third Sunday from the day he was convinced of sin he died in the triumphs of faith, and went to heaven.

The black slaves preached to poor white farmers. It wasn’t just a one-way transmission. The gospel is much bigger than class and race. The message is big enough and transcendent enough for free men to accept it from those who are in bondage. And then he adds something else that clearly shows that preaching Christianity as a way to get slaves to submit was not popular in the antebellum South:

The objector may reply, that at the present moment, there are four Methodist missionaries, and one Lutheran, laboring among the slave population of South Carolina. We answer, that this is true, and we are glad of it; but this fact does not overthrow our proposition, nor falsify what we have stated, for although a few planters have permitted the Gospel to be preached to their slaves, the majority of them prohibit it, and this permission is extraneous to slavery and is no part of its creed or code. Slavery never legislates for the religious instruction of slaves, but, on the contrary, legislates to perpetuate their ignorance; and there are laws this very moment in the statute books of South Carolina and other states, prohibiting the religious instruction of slaves. But this is not all that slavery does to subvert the moral government of God. The slaves are sensible of the oppression exercised by their masters; and they see these masters on the Lord’s day worshiping in his holy Sanctuary. They hear their masters professing Christianity; they see their masters preaching the Gospel; they hear these masters praying in their families, and they know that oppression and slavery are inconsistent with the Christian religion; therefore they scoff at religion itself-mock their masters, and distrust both the goodness and justice of God. Yes, I have known them even to question His existence. I speak not of what others have told me, but of what I have both seen and heard from the slaves themselves

In South Carolina slaves were prohibited from receiving religious instruction. The masters wanted to keep Christianity away from them. Maybe because following Christ encourages you to read and think for yourself. Maybe because following Christ places all men as equals. Maybe because following Christ flies totally in the face of oppression and injustice. Maybe just maybe we have this whole “Christianity was forced on the slaves” idea wrong.

The sword of God’s word cuts both ways. It does not discriminate. In fact it knows no cultural or ethnic boundaries. The same word that was used to justify slaveholding can also convict the hearts of slaveholders. Many folks know about the Great Awakening and the preaching of George Whitefield but what many don’t know is that many of the preachers who promoted the revival began to preach to whites and blacks.

This was unprecedented. Most slaveowners at the time did not want their slaves to hear the gospel. This is because the genuine authentic gospel is liberating and does not condone kidnapping and slave trading (yes contrary to popular belief. Read the actual text and don’t take verses out of context). Eventually what happened is that the slaves began to believe the gospel and not only believe it but to preach it. In his book Inventing the “Great Awakening” historian Frank Lambert has an insightful narrative that illustrates the newfound faith of the slaves as well as the power of the gospel:

“Supplying his friends with pipes and glasses all around he instructed his slave to mount a stool in the center of the room and preach as he had the day before. As he began, the company laughed heartily but when he warned against blaspheming the Holy Spirit and proclaimed the necessity of the new birth, ‘the Negro spoke with such Authority that struck the Gentlemen to heart.’ To their hosts dismay the men began to listen intently, and many, as a result of that day’s ‘entertainment,’ became ‘pious sober Men.’”

The word of God changed their hearts. It was embraced by a slave who didn’t get it shoved down his throat. It wasn’t used to make him a “better slave” but it made him a “bolder slave”. That’s the gospel I believe. Not the caricature that so many have been exposed to and use as a reason to reject Jesus. It is not just a proof text to get slaves to behave. If it was just another brainwashing technique then these men would not have been convicted by the Holy Spirit to change their lives.

Jesus is for everybody!

Yeah, I said it. I’m sorry y’all but I’ve been holding my peace on this subject for years and I can’t hold it much longer. The truth must be told. The opposite has been said for so many years that people take it for granted. I understand how somebody can come up with this conclusion. If you have a very narrow or shallow view of history then seeing Christianity as the white man’s religion and Jesus as the white man’s god makes sense. The formula usually goes like this:

1. White Jesus died for all the poor black, brown, and yellow people

2. He gave all the other white people the job of spreading the news that he died and now they can go to heaven when they die where they will grow wings and play harps

3. To do their job right White Jesus allowed them to use guns and slavery to force the black, brown, and yellow people to believe it (they are mostly too dumb to just believe it on their own)

4. White people got a free pass from white Jesus to own slaves, claim other people’s land for their own, and pretty much be racist greedy warmongers

5. Non-white people who believe this today are delusional, uneducated, and led to be passive and wait for their pie in the sky

This is the general myth that many believe today and it is spreading and gaining ground with a lot of black folk nowadays and it’s time for us to officially kill this lie. Let’s put it to bed before it further twists people up.

Let’s start by blowing that first assumption out of the water: There is no such thing as White Jesus!

Jesus was a Palestinian Jew. He lived at least a dozen centuries before the invention of whiteness. Yes! I know you thought that this whole racial thing has been going on since the beginning of time but newsflash: racism was invented during the Renaissance around the time of Columbus discovering of America. It became a pretext to steal people’s land and unite European nations to conquer the world. Before this people were divided more by language and culture. Racial categories as we know them did not exist before this time. So let’s just say it together: Racism is a modern invention. Racism is a modern invention. Racism is a modern invention.

So that picture of White Jesus is not Jesus. Some say it’s a picture of Michelangelo’s cousin or the Pope’s cousin or something like that. But let’s get it straight nobody knows where that image came from. Newsflash: There were no cameras in first-century Palestine. So we don’t know exactly how he looked (Please do not use Revelation 1 to explain to me how Jesus looked. If you do you not know about how to read the genre Revelation was written in).

Jesus was a first-century Palestinian Jew. Have you taken a look at a map to see where Palestine is located? It’s right above Egypt. It is the center of 3 continents (if you count Europe). He came from a people who spent 400 years in Egypt and mingled with a dark-skinned race, and then he spent his early years in Egypt to hide from King Herod. You can’t be white and hide in the Middle East. Newsflash: Blond hair and blue eyes stand out.

So let’s get it straight. Christianity is not the White Man’s Religion. We do not worship a white god because Jesus wasn’t white. Why is this important? Because people make Christianity out to be some kind of conspiracy theory. They try to make it like a group of white men in a secret room invented this to dominate the world. It’s hogwash.

It’s clear when you look at the spread of the gospel and the movement of the early church. Was this a white movement? Was it begun and established in Europe? Did it thrive in Caucasian soil? I think not.

In Acts 1:8 Jesus tells the apostles that they will be empowered by the Holy Spirit to be witnesses in Judea, Samaria, and the uttermost parts of the earth.

The early church was super diverse. When you talk of the early church you can’t even talk about it as Christianity. It was more like “christianities” shaped by the different cultures the gospel found itself in. During the first three centuries of the church Christianity could be found in places like Persia (modern-day Iran) and Numidia (modern-day Tunisia and Algeria).

Some of the greatest theologians and pastors hailed from Africa: Tertullian, Cyprian, Athanasius, Origen, and Moses of Ethiopia. Some of the greatest martyrs gave their lives in devotion to Christ and they did this on African soil! They didn’t do this to support some lie about White Jesus because for them Jesus wasn’t white and they had no concept of race as we now understand it.

The Hebrews thought of the world as composed of two types of people or races: Jews and Gentiles. These two groups were separated by a distinct culture and heritage. They fought over a claim to land that is still today the most hotly contested piece of property in the whole world. Then come the Christians. In Antioch one of the most diverse cities in the 1st century Roman empire the people were divided according to ethnicity and culture. Then came the followers of Jesus who consisted of people from different cultures and tribes and it baffles those on the outside. They don’t know whether to call them Jews, Syrians, Libyans, or Ethiopians. They just knew that these different people came together to worship Christ and decided they should be called Christians. Christians came to be known as a third race.

Here’s what the Epistle to Diognetus says about these people called Christians:

“For the Christians are distinguished from other men neither by country, nor language, nor the customs which they observe. For they neither inhabit cities of their own, nor employ a peculiar form of speech, nor lead a life which is marked out by any singularity…But, inhabiting Greek as well as barbarian cities, according the lot of each of them has determined and following the customs of the natives in respect to clothing, food, and the rest of their ordinary conduct, they display to us their wonderful and confessedly striking method of life. They dwell in their own countries, but simply as sojourners…Every foreign land is to them as their native country, and every land of their birth as a land of strangers.”

Christianity is the white man’s religion? That’s not what the Bible or history tells us. Jesus is for everybody!

Growing up in a black church I was used to getting preached at. The loud cries and shouts from the front of the church encouraged propositions and declarations. It wasn’t until I was a young adult considering ministry that I discovered sometimes the answer is in the question.

I don’t remember what I said or what particular youth night or revival service it was but Elder Dwayne Loughridge (He wasn’t quite “eld” but in COGIC when you pass the exam you get to be called an elder) stumped me with a question. I was getting so used to religious cliches and slogans being thrown around I started saying them too. Dwayne helped me to critique these cliches and some of the faulty theology behind them with questions.

And then my world opened. I stopped reading the Bible and spitting out an unexamined theology. The questions gave me a sense of pause and thrust me into a lifelong pursuit of learning. In other words, questions showed me I haven’t and never will arrive.

Throughout the gospels, Jesus serves up questions. Sometimes he poses questions as answers to other people’s questions. There are questions about fasting and praying and inclusion/exclusion and there are even questions regarding his identity. 

Jesus brings questions and therefore Jesus brings tension. This is the total opposite of the Jesus presented in the modern-day Western church. For the common churchgoer, Jesus is seen as the one who eases the tension and brings comfort to the tension of life. Jesus does ease tension and bring comfort but the truth is in order to do that he brings more tension and makes things more uncomfortable.

Most people go to Sunday morning service or a small group Bible study to get answers and not necessarily questions. If they do get questions it’s regarding things they already know. Nothing challenging or uncomfortable. Most times questions are open-ended or rhetorical. They don’t move us to search our hearts and lives for contradictions. They don’t call us to look in the mirror and face the tension in our hearts and in our lives. 

Those aren’t Jesus’ questions. Jesus wasn’t about giving easy answers. And that’s what the typical church usually gives. Easy answers. No wonder our young people are bored and unmotivated regarding church attendance and participation. The world isn’t that easy. The world doesn’t let us off the hook when it comes to the discomfort life brings. So why does the church avoid wrestling with questions?

Part of the reason is that we think we are God. We want to declare and decree. We want to be the authoritative voice. This kind of thinking and mindset makes life easier. If we want to know what to do or how to think, just turn to the voice of authority in our lives. Just like children. But God doesn’t want us to remain children. He wants us to be adults. He wants us to grow up. And growing up requires wrestling with questions.

In Communication theory for Christian Witness, Chuck Kraft talks about the ways different types of communication land on us. Some things are just not designed to transform us. One of the things not designed to transform us is…drumroll please…the traditional church sermon. 

Yes, it’s a shocker but the traditional sermon does not necessarily transform us. It only serves to rally us around things we already agree on. It’s the verbal glue that holds a church together socially. That’s why when you rock the boat and tackle a tough topic you get so much pushback. That’s not what your average church parishioner came to service for. They came to hear something they already agreed with. In other words, they came for socializing entertainment. 

It uncannily resembles the words about Israel spoken by the prophet Ezekiel about how they come to him like they are there to hear a beautiful concert but not obey the word (Ezekiel 33:30-33). It’s also similar to Paul’s warning to Timothy of people with itching ears gathering teachers who will tell them whatever they want to hear (2 Timothy 4:3-4).

Kraft compares several other communication methods with the sermon. Media communication actually comes in dead last in terms of affecting change in the receptors. Preaching is next in terms of creating change of behavior. 

The two methods that align with the goals of transformation the most are small groups and life on life interaction. Both of these methods imply questions. It’s not just the lone teacher providing students with answers. It’s a person encountering questions in a group. It’s a person learning through the questions emerging from the intimate contact with another person’s life. 

In other words, expecting behavioral change solely through the Sunday morning sermon is misguided. This kind of mindset is based on the model of banking education. Paulo Freire describes this aptly in his book Pedagogy of the Oppressed. In this model the teacher deposits information in the “banks” of the students for future withdrawal. This is not transformative at all. It’s just a way to socialize and bring the student to an agreement with the information being presented. 

This is the way we were “educated” in school. The teacher presented the information and we absorbed it enough to spit it out during the test. The result: a nation of people with degrees who know nothing. If I surveyed the American public and asked them to solve a trigonometry problem or the role Venice played during the early Renaissance they would come up short. Why? Because they didn’t truly learn these things. They were just bits of information they hung on to just long enough to pass an exam. 

Which begs the question: What does it mean to be educated? There are tons of people with degrees who are considered by the standards of this world educated. Many of them follow conspiracy theories. Many of them could not tell you how our government works or what constitutes thorough scientific or historical research. 

They are victims of the banking system of education. GIGO=Garbage In Garbage Out. WYSIWYG=What You See Is What You Get. In other words, the garbage went in and the garbage went out. Now what you see is what you get and all that is are a bunch of hollow shells that crammed for the test.

This is the total opposite of asking questions and participating in a dialogue. This banking system of education is the opposite of transformative learning. Transformative learning as pioneered by Jack Mezirow says people don’t learn unless they are questioning and critiquing their assumptions. In other words, you can’t truly learn and be transformed unless you’re asking questions.

So what really can get people to change behavior? Change of behavior usually comes from experiencing difficulty. Facing things that jar us out of our familiar routine puts us in a position to question what we already know or think we already know. Those questions are the seeds of change. 

This has huge implications for discipleship. Discipleship is about more than just facts and figures. Most discipleship programs espoused by churches advocate for going through a discipleship curriculum. These curriculums are designed to take you through the doctrines of the faith and the essential practices. 

You don’t actually do these practices during the curriculum. You only are required to talk about them. You don’t actually attempt to implement them in your life. No. It’s enough to study them and agree that they are good to do.

This is far from the usual way people learn for behavior change. Behavior change is accomplished through one thing: Disorienting dilemmas. Disorienting dilemmas shake us out of our comfort zone. We are presented with an overwhelming or puzzling situation and we are left to make sense of it.

How do we make sense of situations like this? Through questions. These questions are either presented to us by a teacher or a friend or they emerge from our own hearts. Questions help us to look at the situation from an entirely different perspective.

These are the kinds of situations Jesus presented to his disciples. In fact, you could say their whole three years with Jesus was one disorienting dilemma after another. The cross and the resurrection would be the ultimate disorienting dilemma for the twelve.

You can track many of these in the gospels.  The calming of the storm was a disorienting dilemma (Mark 5:45-52). The feeding of the five thousand was a disorienting dilemma (Mark 5:30-43). The feeding of the four thousand was a disorienting dilemma Mark 8:1-10, 14-21). The healing of the boy with the unclean spirit was a disorienting dilemma (Mark 9:14-29).

The conversion of Saul in Acts 9 also contains a disorienting dilemma. Here Saul is going off to persecute Christians and believes he is right in doing so. Then he gets knocked off his horse and is surrounded by light and hears a voice. The voice doesn’t present him with a declaration at first but with a question. “Saul, Saul, Why are you persecuting me?” 

This question upends everything Saul knew about God and about being a Jew and about these Christian he is going after. His perspective would be different for the rest of his life. We wouldn’t have the passion, fervor, and impact Paul had on the world without this disorienting dilemma.

Jesus also presents us with disorienting dilemmas and it’s up to us to listen for the questions. Many times we are faced with circumstances that are out of our control or go against what we have always thought to be true. In these moments we have a choice. Will we keep going along stubbornly with what we’ve already believed or will we ask questions of our experience and seek a different perspective?

This is all for our growth and true growth doesn’t happen in a classroom sucking up facts. It happens in the mess and the mayhem of life. As we encounter situations and have to bring our whole selves to them we will ultimately come to questions that require more than easy answers. 

These questions are what truly matters when it comes to growth and learning. Jesus could have sat the disciples down and spoon-fed them how he was the Son of God but he didn’t. He gave it to them little by little in the form of disorienting dilemmas and insightful questions. Jesus helps us grow in the same way and I’m guessing he probably wants us to help others grow in that way too.