Manifesto

“There is a beautiful and powerful grassroots Kingdom movement arising all over the globe …. Millions of people are abandoning the Christendom paradigm of the traditional Christian faith in order to become more authentic followers of Jesus. From the Emergent Church movement to the Urban Monastic Movement to a thousand other independent groups and movements, people are waking up to the truth that the Kingdom of God looks like Jesus and that the heart of Christianity is simply imitating him. -Greg Boyd

When we use the word “Christian,” we mistakenly give the impression that obeying Jesus’ teachings is something that can be put off until later, like dieting or changing the oil in the car…We tend to communicate, “First you become a Christian, and after that you can work at becoming a disciple.” Discipleship is treated sort of like honors courses in high school. They’re not essential for graduation but a good thing to do if you so choose. According to Jesus, discipleship begins at conversion. Trusting Christ to forgive your sins and getting baptized are simply the first steps of a lifetime of “discipleship.” With the word disciple, life change is expected. Transformation is assumed from the beginning of one’s spiritual journey. -Brian Jones

I only insist that Jesus Himself, who was a true 1st century Jew, and not a time traveler from 16th century Marburg or Trent, framed and intended his utterances using conceptual furniture available to HIM in the upper room in AD 33. He meant to communicate to His disciples, in terms that would be comprehensible to them after His resurrection, if not over the table in the upper room. He did not present His disciples with locked doors that were waiting for Thomas Aquinas or Luther or Zwingli to provide the interpretative key. —Matt Colvin

Our central lie is in the discrepancy between the language of worship and the actions of worship. We confess “Jesus is Lord” but only submit to the part of Christ’s authority that fits our grand personal designs, doesn’t cause pain, doesn’t disrupt the American dream, doesn’t draw us across ethnic and racial divisions, doesn’t add the pressure of too much guilt, doesn’t mean forgiving as we have been forgiven, doesn’t ask for more than a check to show compassion. We “sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs” expressing our desire to know Jesus, but the Jesus we want to know is the sanitized Jesus that looks a lot like us when we think we are at our best. Despite God’s Word to the contrary, we think we can say that we love God and yet hate our neighbor, neglect the widow, forget the orphan, fail to visit the prisoner, ignore the oppressed. Its the sign of disordered love. When we do this, our worship becomes a lie to God. -Mark Labberton