How Does Your Yoke Fit?

My nephew got married to a really neat Christian girl last Saturday in Waco, TX. One of my small tasks before the wedding was to pick up his sister's bridesmaid dress from a tailor shop where it was getting altered. My niece was unable to try it on until the day of the rehearsal and when I went to pick it up, the tailor was surprised that I didn't bring my niece back for final adjustments. Thankfully it fit!

That prompted me to think about the only thing Jesus has asked me to wear. In Matthew 11:29-30 Jesus said "Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. {30} For my yoke is easy and my burden is light." That made me think about what it means to be yoked with Jesus in His mission.

Now a yoke doesn't look like an easy thing to me, but that is how the Greek word chrestos is translated. Exploring a bit further I discovered that chrestos can mean "well fitting" or "tailor made" In the Holy Land of Jesus' day, the ox was brought into a carpenter's shop and measurements were made. The carpenter roughed out the yoke and the ox was brought back to have the yoke tried on. The carpenter made careful adjustments to the yoke so the ox could pull without irritating the neck of that ox.

As one who passionately desires to be about the mission of Jesus, it is great to know that the yoke I have been asked to wear was "tailor made" just for me. While living a life of Gospel witness is not easy, I am yoked to Jesus. Because of that, the burden feels light!

That's a great reminder for me because so often I delude myself into thinking that I have to live a life of witness out of my own strength. But that is just not true. I find two vital pieces of good news in these verses.

1. Knowing that I have a "tailor made" yoke from the one who knows all my strengths, weaknesses, sins and idiosyncrasies is great Gospel news to me! God fits that yoke to my uniqueness in a way which makes the yoke one of a kind. It is designed for me to have maximum pulling power with minimum irritation wherever God sends me.
   
2. The One I am yoked to is Jesus...I don't do this Christian walk of witness and mission by myself. Because the one I am yoked to is the Lord of the universe and the Savior of all means that my witness and engagement in His mission will accomplish exactly what He desires.

You also have a well fitting, "tailor made yoke." Try it on for size. Jesus made it just for you to be about His mission of connecting people to Him forever.

Want to Be a Missional Church? Try the 3 "I"s

Churches that are truly are about Christ's mission to have all people "come unto the knowledge of the truth" 1 Timothy 2:4, rightly divide Law and Gospel in their preaching and teaching as well as center their ministry on the Grace of Christ. But, not all churches that do that are missional. There are 3 "I"s that describe churches that are. Ed Stetzer shares these in the foreword to The Multiplying Church.

Incarnational: Missional churches get connected deeply with their local communities. They focus on living, and demonstrating true Biblical community and are not so focused on buildings. They don't shy away from people who are far from God but meet them where they are to listen, understand and apply the love of Jesus.

Indigenous: Missional churches "take root in the soil of their society" and make every effort to relate and speak to their surrounding culture. Indigenous doesn't only refer to a language or ethnic group, but to subcultures in their communities. This leads some to different styles of music, preaching and programming. Have you noticed how many Cowboy churches are turning up in Texas? I wonder if there will be a Lutheran one! Who would have thought that right here in the Texas District of the LCMS we would have so many ethnically indigenous churches even 10 years ago. (Hispanic, Pakistani, Arabic, Indian, Korean, Sudanese, Ethiopian, Eritrean, etc.)

Intentional: In Missional churches, there is a great degree of intentionality about how the eternal truths of God's love and forgiveness in Jesus Christ is shared. The how of Worship style, evangelistic methods, pastor's attire, etc. are determined by their effectiveness in reaching a population in a specific cultural context. Sometimes churches which have made such decisions get criticized for such decisions. They do so anyway, because they are convinced that they have been sent to a particular people group with its own cultural nuances. If you worry about this one, try reading Romans 14:1-15:7. Paul dealt with some of this critique as well.

How could your church become more Incarnational, Indigenous and Intentional in reaching people far from God?

Culturally Relevant Mission is Dangerous to Discuss

Writing about cultural relevance is risky. Some folks think that by advocating that the church is called to culturally relevant mission, one is caving in to popular culture. Others may assume that by writing about cultural relevance your are just trying to demonstrate that you haven't lost touch with that culture. But exploring how the church relates to culture seems a worthwhile endeavor to me.

Cutting Edge, Vol.12:2 p.7 expressed it in a way that caught my attention: "Mission is the objective; cultural relevancy is the process. The purpose of the church is not to be cool, cute, popular, or any other adjective that would indicate we are "in." When the church makes cultural relevance its priority rather than a way of doing mission, it becomes syncretistic and thus sells her soul on the altar of cultural relevance." At the same time, "the church must understand the culture and the people in that culture. She must use the symbols of meaning in the culture she is in to communicate the message of the Gospel, without losing the prophetic role of speaking into the culture."

So the church sits on the edge. We contend for the truth of scripture. Jude 1:3 Dear friends, although I was very eager to write to you about the salvation we share, I felt I had to write and urge you to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints. At the same time we are called to contextualize the truths of scripture. 1 Cor. 9:22-23 To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some. I do all this for the sake of the Gospel, that I may share in its blessings.

Paul in Athens did both. Acts 17:22-29 First he contextualized, saying"Men of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. 23 For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. Then he contended for the truth "Now what you worship as something unknown I am going to proclaim to you." After telling them the truths of God he contextualized and contended once again saying "As some of your own poets have said, 'We are his offspring.' 29 "Therefore since we are God's offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone--an image made by man's design and skill."

We are called to both contend and contextualize to communicate the truth of salvation in Jesus in the culture where God has placed each of us as missionaries and where he has placed each church as a mission outpost. If we desire to be about the mission of God, we never cease being students of our culture as well as Scriptures. Who studies and keeps your church up-to-date about the changes in your culture?

The Gospel Gone Viral

We have been praying for God to begin a Church Planting Movement among the churches, pastors, leaders and lay folks here in the Texas District. One thing I have been learning through my experiences and through my personal reading of leaders like Bob Roberts, author of The Multiplying Church is that a Church Planting Movement (CPM) looks more like a virus than a strategic plan.

In fact, the term Church Planting Movement (CPM) came about as more of a description than a prescription. Bob Roberts described how David Watson coined the phrase. Roberts wrote that "Watson then shared about being at the table with a group of other missionaries when the term crystallized. They were trying to describe what they were seeing take place in the East. 'It was never meant to be the key. It was descriptive.'"

Throughout history, when CPM's are truly taking place they are highly organic in nature. They are actually only the result of lives being transformed through the cross of Christ and by the power of the Holy Spirit. Whole families, villages, cities and societies are changed. It is what happened to he jailer in Acts 16:30-34 . Had not whole households been affected, the Gospel would not have spread at the viral rate it did in the early church. The epidemic spread of the Gospel necessitated the planting of churches to disciple all the new believers! It was a Jesus movement first.

Viruses don't happen by addition but by multiplication and fractaling. In third world countries, it has not been that an individual comes to faith in Jesus Christ and then decides to plant a church. Rather it has been true that Jesus revolutionizes the life of an individual who tells their family and friends with so many people coming to know Jesus that churches become necessary to disciple, care for and equip the new believers who go to the next village and do it all over again.

This kind of growth doesn't happen merely by addition, but by rapid multiplication. Individual disciples share what God has done in their lives through Christ, discipling their their friends and families. In that kind of church learning to tell how God's story of redemption in Christ has intersected our life becomes the norm rather than the exception for church members.

Then the Gospel goes viral.

Looking at where it might next plant a church is always on the agenda of the local church rather than wondering if planting a church is something we might do once in our history.

Then church planting goes epidemic. It can happen!