“…Streetwise people are smarter in this regard than law-abiding citizens.  They are on constant alert, looking for angles, surviving by their wits.  I want you to be smart in the same way — but for what is right — using every adversity to stimulate you to creative survival, to concentrate your attention on the bare essentials, so you’ll live, really live, and not complacently just get by on good behavior.”  — Jesus, Luke 16

This Parable of the Crooked Manager has been one that has haunted my Biblical readings all my life, yet has strangely remained absent from the sermons, classes and seminaries I’ve attended.  Yet it comes directly after The Prodigal Son in a series of stories Jesus is sharing dealing with money and relationships and seeking the most important things.  Its a story of a manager who has been embezzling funds from his company.  Soon the owner finds out and fires him.  As the manager is cleaning out his desk, he does some last minute changes to the books, offering clients to settle their debts for less than what they owe.  Jesus praises this guy for his incredible shrewdness.  What’s going on here?  Is Jesus teaching us to be unlawful with our money?

I see Jesus’ summation of the Crooked Manager (quoted above) as a connecting point to the Prodigal Son and to the rest of his teachings.  Think of it through the lens of religion.  How many do you know who “play it safe” with spirituality, who never step outside of the “laws” long enough to ask if it is actually bringing them life and a closer relationship with God?  I have known Catholics, Pagans and even atheists who do this – who never think to ponder if God might actually be calling them into a personal relationship of freedom and outside the confines of “good behavior” or “law-religion” or “me-centeredness.”  They, unlike the manager, would have left their job quietly and discovered what the manager feared – a lifetime of begging.  Or maybe they would have not embezzled in the first place…but then there wouldn’t be much of a story!

Much like the Prodigal Son, we have the choice to simply follow the rules (the older brother) or to find ways each of us are off in a distant country and return to our Father, desperately seeking forgiveness.  We can choose the life of spiritual stability of the 99 sheep and never experience of being sought after as the 1 lost sheep was.

We can live with a love for “an old time religion” or “advanced philosophies and theories” or “laws that keep me in good graces with the Lord” and truly miss being in love with our Father.

But God sees behind appearances.  He knows our hearts.  He wants to guide us into love.  But my question is, do we have to “get fired for embezzling” or “run of to a far away country and spend our money on riotous living” in order to feel the forgiving love of God?  The answer I think is, “Yes…and we have.”

Yes, we have lived the life of the crooked manager and the prodigal son.  But most of us don’t believe it – and therefore most of us refuse to return to Father seeking desperate forgiveness.  Most of us don’t forgive the debts of others because we don’t believe we have debts that need forgiving in our own life.

If we truly knew where our deeds take us – where our lifestyle of me-centeredness leads – all of us would be leading a life “using every adversity to stimulate us to creative survival” not just compacently getting by on good behavior.

We’ve heard plenty about Swine Flu – its potency now seems to be waning, while the media-virus continues to spread like its the only thing the news wants to report on.  That along with a conversation I had the other day with several church planters got me thinking about the nature of the gospel and the American Church.

1st Question: Is the gospel a virus?

2nd Question: If so, is the church in America spreading the contagious gospel virus?

3rd Question: If not, is the American Church really spreading the gospel?

Last Christmas, I wrote about the message of God becoming a “virus of peace” that began in the stables of a Jewish city (no swine there I’m guessing) and the contagion spread into the hearts and minds of people out to the vast reaches of the Roman Empire until it collapsed under its weight.  Even the Emperor Constantine knew his best political strategy was to adopt the virus of love and peace and mutate it into his own version. After the anti-virus, Christians were no longer threats to the Empire, they were the strongest supporters and defenders of it.  The HOLY ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH was born.

But it wasn’t just Constantine who thought he could weild and redirect the voracious gospel disease, we see the gospel spread to other parts of the world, and at times it is derailed and sterilized into a philosophy, or an institution, or a culture (not the kind in a petri dish).  An often referenced quote of mine by Pricilla Shrier,

In the first century in Palestine, Christianity was a community of believers. Then Christianity moved to Greece and became a philosophy. Then it moved to Rome and became an institution. Then it moved to Europe and became a culture. And then it moved to America and became a business.

Now, I believe that the gospel has picked up important things along the way, but I think too often it has adopted to the culture, instead of adapting to the culture.  Here in America, if we as a culture assume a position of business, then the gospel virus should subvert and infuse the business world with all the revolutionary power of the first century gospel – not simply become a consumer-religion.

The virus, to spread, must learn to adapt – meaning those infected with God’s good news must learn to reimagine what it means to be contagious. If the gospel isn’t spreading, we should wonder if the church has not become itself the anti-virus.  I hear all the time those who say, “I love Jesus – but I hate the Church.”  I don’t think there should even be a difference between the two.

My question I ask myself and those who are part of the underground network is: “What if it works?” What if the way we live for Christ now works – and people’s lives are changed forever.  What if it works – and a cascading population of millions becomes sick with the virus of God’s peace in this city… What IF its a movement that cannot be contained by the religious elite, the scholars, or the politicians of our world today?  It no longer is a tame, resting lion, but a fierce beast charging after darkness and like Aslan, covering the world in Good.

Here are a few thoughts on the shape of this new, strange virus, this Kingdom Flu I’m seeing beginning to take out unsuspecting Americans:

• a cooperative spirit – willing to work side-by-side with others, Christian and otherwise, to see God’s work accomplished in this city.
• a fever of boldness – bravery and abandonment to a cause that transcends fearfulness.
• not sweating the small stuff – God’s mission to transform the whole city is the primary goal that brings together God’s Church.  The Whole Church brings the Whole Gospel to the Whole City.
• a sneeze of churches – churches that spread not by addition (one church planting another church every 3-5 years) but one church’s love becoming so contagious that it’s people are penetrating every nook and cranny of society, and seeing myriad churches begin simultaneously.

Am I really here in Chicago to plant churches?  Is that really a passion in my heart that trumps all others?  Any job that was worthy of Christ’s attention is something I’d be willing to stake my life on, and yet he doesn’t plant a single church in his lifetime.  He doesn’t even try.  Instead he cultivates the transformed lives of 12 missionaries – 12 world changers – out of the most common people.

Maybe my paradigm is about to change again.  Maybe this has more to do with inspiring world changers than about gathering people together.  If its just about putting people in a room, which is typically what has defined successful “church planting” and “missions” for the last 3 centuries, and especially during the Church Growth Movement of the last generation.  We think that gatherings are important, but they shouldn’t be obligatory.

If someone had just one hour to give to this mission each week, (in today’s hyper-busy world that’s not uncommon), I’d rather them spend it intentionally being Jesus in the world rather than filling a seat in our larger gatherings.  This isn’t me bashing on large gatherings, I’m simply thinking about why we gather.  Gathering Christians should happen as a natural result of the need to resource each other’s common vision for greater impact – not about coming to receive my spiritual goods and services.  (I’ve been hearing about the Divine Commodity, by Skye Jethani, a book about consumer religion in America.  I might check it out as I think through this.)

If my role is to “make disciples/missionaries/apprentices” rather than planting churches, and expecting churches to grow organically out of the mission of these disciples, then this must be at the forefront of my thoughts and praxis.

There are so many Christians in America ready to do something meaningful – something world changing.  But they don’t feel ready because they’ve never been initiated into the missionary life.  Therefore they continue to come crawling back to the Sunday service looking for sustenance to keep them going for another week.  Mentors and profs in graduate school gave me the tools to learn about God, and thankfully pointed me to a ever-flowing relationship with God himself…but now I’ve got to take that to the streets – what about a “Street Seminary” that offers the world-changing, peace-bringing, Jesus-living life to everyday Christians?

The first step is persuading them that living as a Christian in the big, bad city is not about survival, its about challenging the Darkness.  After that, I’m still thinking…