I found this on my computer today in a walk down memory lane. I wrote this back in 2009…

The city of San Francisco is a unique place. A place unlike anything I’ve ever before experienced: a place filled with limitless hopes and dreams, ideas bursting with creativity and a people with just enough reckless gumption to make it happen. Never before have I been surrounded by such an educated, spirited, “go for broke” community as what I’ve experienced here. I love this city.

As I sit in coffee shops and benches in the park I see a city full of people united under a common ethos: an ethos driven in large part by success and a hope that their success will lead to making this world a better place for all people. You don’t have to be in the city long to overhear a conversation about someone’s newest idea for making people’s lives easier, or to experience your first protest of the system of injustice that continues to clamp down on “the least of these.” It doesn’t take long to recognize that both of California’s Senators and the Speaker of the House come from San Francisco with aspirations of transforming this country into a nation that takes care of all people at all times. This fight against injustice is fought on the doorsteps of City Hall, in the 9th Circuit of Appeals, the State Supreme Court and the United Nations Consulate, all located within a block of each other in the heart of the city. Politics is the religion of San Francisco.

As we, in San Francisco, stand up to the political leaders of our day to fight against injustice, so too did Jesus. As wealth and greed work to oppress the minority, the widow, the orphan, (the “least of these”), so too was the environment surrounding Jesus in his day. Good News from the lips of Jesus was simply this:

“The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” (Luke 4.18-19)

The city of San Francisco has lost its faith in the justice of God. For too long the Church has sat idly by and allowed injustice after injustice to pile on the shoulders of the people, and the church is to be held responsible for cheating this city of its faith (a faith in the tradition of St. Francis). It is time for the church to awaken from its slumber, to once again fight for the objectified and oppressed, to come together and allow God to prove his justice here once again in and through the name of Jesus and his Holy Spirit. It is time for the Church to once again prove that there is real hope in the name of Jesus, and the hope found in Him is far greater than that found in the religion of politics.

The Good News is simply this: Jesus has come and all are welcome to join in His Kingdom movement to turn the tide of injustice and reveal the new reality that awaits. It is through this endeavor that together the Church can make Jesus famous once again.

“The gospel is socially embodied in the people called the church. As its members we are incorporated and engrafted into the body of Christ by our baptism, by our receiving of the Lord’s Supper, by our hearing and doing of his Word, not by a chatty and sentimental private relationship with our divine buddy.”

Ralph C. Wood, Preaching and Professing

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There has been a great shift in the church, a shift that I believe Wood is raging against with his statement above. It is a shift away or rather a pull away from the church–away from community and into a secluded individualistic faith that disallows communal discernment and testing. This, I believe, is extremely dangerous and detrimental not only to faith, but to the living body of Christ (a.k.a. The Church).

This move towards “chatty, sentimental, private relationships with our Divine Buddy” is a fairly recent move in the faith of Christianity, experiencing its heyday during the rise of Evangelicalism; itself a rage against a lackluster experience of God beyond the church and into our everyday lives. It arose out of a belief that there was a lack of deep faith within the church. Hence, daily Bible reading, journaling, prayer, quiet times, and the like sprung up along with devotionals with flowery language talking about “God being as sweet as apple-pie.” (Not that there’s anything wrong with that.)

Wood’s quote, his rage, represents a pendulum swing–and a lot of hyperbole to get his point across.

We mustn’t walk away from experiencing relationship with God/Jesus on an everyday basis in how we pray, in how we approach and understand Scripture, in how we journal, but at the same time we absolutely must be sure to continually engage with the community of believers. Faith is not an individualistic expression. You see, the church is the engine God designed to be the change in the world. It isn’t about you, rather it’s about us. It’s about us doing life together and bringing about change together in the name of Jesus through the power of the Holy Spirit.

Wood is raging against individualism in favor of the empowered body of Christ, the engine of change God designed us to be. Because together we can do so much more than we can on our own. This is what it means to be the church.

[introduction]

What is the gospel? This is the million dollar question and if we as a church are to truly begin to understand the implications of revival and bring about the possibility and atmosphere of such a world transforming experience, then answering this question must be at the front of our minds. Often times we have understood the gospel, too simply, as praying a prayer to receive forgiveness so that one may enter into heaven upon his/her death. But this does not bring about a sense of joy, or happiness to much of today’s culture. We are not occupied with the notions or implications of death in our lives, rather we’re more consumed with the thoughts of here and now—the injustice of war and poverty, the social brokenness of our families and relationships, global warming and our relationship to creation.

Our understanding of the gospel has been shortened, just as we have also shortened the term. Dallas Willard in his book Divine Conspiracy offers up a concept of the gospel that brings about a broader understanding. It is not simply “the gospel,” rather it is the “Gospel of the Kingdom of God.” It’s a gospel that is really big, different, something to be experienced and entered into in the here and now. It’s about an aspect of God’s divine life that is now, not just after death.

I like how Halter & Smay sum up our current understanding of the gospel (page 88 The Tangible Kingdom):

The gospel—that is, the huge, life-reorienting story that has had such massive drawing power to just about any spiritual seeker over the centuries—has been reduced to a pathetically simple, doctrinal Podcast that no one is interested in.

When Jesus came proclaiming his gospel, the Gospel of the Kingdom of God, he offered up that it was available now, the gospel is a present reality that we can actively participate in and that we are expected to participate in!

Until we recover a holistic understanding of the gospel as something that is not just available after death but is to be lived in and experienced now, we will not be able to enter into a type of revival that can transform the world. Until then, we will continue to be stuck in the dogmatic sort of “pray the prayer” type of religion that inspires… no one.

This recovery is an instrument of the Spirit… it is what the Spirit will use to cause an outbreak of revival, however it is in our control to move in this direction. A nice little paradox isn’t it?