Intelligent Church

We owe Steve Chalke a great deal for his perseverance with faithworks. Now we discover what motivates him: a combination of Christian faith and works. As St. John of the Cross said: ‘Mission is putting love where love is not.’ This book is full of ideas. It should prompt us all to examine the effectiveness of the way local churches are organized.

– The Most Reverend and Right Honourable

Dr. John Sentamu, Archbishop of York

Everything that Steve Chalke writes is insightful and cutting-edge and this book is no exception. Here he argues in favor of a Church that thinks and acts in ways that actualize the kind of social relevancy that makes the Kingdom of God visible and reasonable in a secular society.

– Tony Campolo, Ph.D. Eastern University

Warm, hopeful, hands-on help, written from a fellow traveler and practitioner and not an armchair theorist. Full of passion and energy. Some books about the church depress me. This impressed and inspired me. Buy it.

– Jeff Lucas, Author, Speaker, and Broadcaster

Steve Chalke is one of the clearest and most passionate voices we have for calling the church to be what we are supposed to be. In his last book, he reveals the ‘lost message of Jesus’ and beckons us back to our movement’s founder. In this new book. Steve Chalke shows how the church can actually be ‘intelligent,’ at a time when many skeptics find that hard to believe. The Intelligent Church is a primer for churches seeking to be lovers of justice, lovers of truth, and a voice of reason in a society that often lacks all three. He describes the values, principles and theology that offer an intelligent and authentic response to people searching for spiritual insight. This is a timely and much needed book.

– Jim Wallis, author of God’s Politics

ALSO BY STEVE CHALKE

The Lost Message of Jesus (by Steve Chalke and Alan Mann)

ZONDERVAN

INTELLIGENT CHURCH

Copyright © 2006 by Steve Chalke

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of Zondervan.

ePub Edition June 2009 ISBN: 0-310-86263-9

Requests for information should be addressed to:

Zondervan, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49530

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Chalke, Steve.

      Intelligent church : a journey towards Christ-centred community /

         Steve Chalke and Anthony Watkis.— 1st ed.

         p. cm.

      ISBN-13: 978-0-310-24884-2

      1. Mission of the church. 2. Church. I. Watkis, Anthony. II. Title.

  BV601.8.C43 2006

  270.8'3 — dc22

2006001097

Steve Chalke and Anthony Watkis assert the moral right to be identified as the authors of this work.

All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible:New International Version®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked (KJV) are taken from the Holy Bible, King James Version.

The website addresses recommended throughout this book are offered as a resource to you. These websites are not intended in any way to be or imply an endorsement on the part of Zondervan, nor do we vouch for their content for the life of this book.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means — electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other — except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.

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CONTENTS

Cover Page

Title Page

Copyright Page

Foreword by Brian McLaren

Introduction

1. Intelligent Church

2. Inclusive Church

3. Messy Church

4. Honest Church

5. Purposeful Church

6. Generous Church

7. Vulnerable Church

8. Political Church

9. Diverse Church

10. Dependent Church

11. Transforming Church

Afterword

Acknowledgements

About Faithworks

Bibliography

About The Publisher

Share Your Thoughts

FOREWORD

BRIAN D. MCLAREN

For those who have never read a book or heard a lecture by Steve Chalke, this is a great place to start. For starters, in Intelligent Church you’ll get a feel for Steve’s intelligence, which is formidable because Steve’s active and creative mind is always reading, always questioning, always wondering, always penetrating. But you’ll be even more struck by how his intelligence, along with that of his absolutely brilliant coauthor, Anthony Watkis, is linked to his passion, how his head works with his heart. Together, their intelligence, like the intelligent church of which they speak, is about wisdom harnessed for service, understanding focused in love.

In these pages you’ll also be introduced to Steve’s skill as a storyteller. He’s one of the best. Like another storyteller who walked this earth about 2000 years ago, Steve’s stories carry a meaning that stays with you and just might change your life.

And you’ll also be introduced to Steve’s deep faith. Steve and I share a friendship with a number of other Christian leaders around the world who have gained a reputation for being unconventional, sometimes controversial. But anyone who is upset with how Steve might cross a theological ‘i’ or dot a theological ‘t’ (the mistake was intentional) will see in these pages how Steve is truly a Jesus-man, dedicated to following Jesus in both word and deed. Steve wants to teach what Jesus taught in the manner Jesus taught it, and he wants to do what Jesus did too. No, I’m not aware of him walking on water or multiplying loaves and fishes or raising the dead. But I know he has traveled across the world’s oceans to share the good news of Jesus, and I know he is constantly raising funds and personnel so that those in need can be fed and cared for, and I know that he leads people into needy neighborhoods where there is too much death in order to bring hope and life.

Steve is an example to me of integral mission. He understands, as you’ll better understand through this book, that the good news of Jesus encompasses and integrates all of life—how we treat a person of a different race, religion, or sexual orientation, how we think about politics or the environment, how we face our intellectual doubts, how we structure our church so that outsiders can become insiders.

And he is also an example to me of reflective or contemplative activism. His chapters on intelligence and dependence show how thought and prayer—and prayerful thought and thoughtful prayer—must undergird all we do. But the activism and energy that pulsate on every page remind us that Steve’s life hasn’t been about forming committees to study problems from a distance so that reports could be written. No, Steve has been about getting out on the streets and making a difference—and bringing others along with him for the adventure.

So, in these pages you’ll be exposed to some of the best ideas of an amazing leader whom I feel deeply privileged to know and from whom I have learned much. But Steve’s not just interested in us learning a lot. He’s interested in us getting out on the streets and making a difference. That’s why he has written about the church.

Steve and Anthony know, as many of us do, that too often our churches have become human warehouses, where people are gathered and stored so that they can be delivered after death to heaven with minimum loss, spoilage, rust, rot, or breakage. These air-conditioned warehouses are equipped with every comfort—from padded seats to a kind of religious muzak—so that those who enter will be happy and never want to leave until they are shipped to their final destination.

But like salt that has gotten too comfortable living in a saltshaker, we need to be shaken up and shaken out of our religious boxes. So our churches need to rediscover their missional calling and move from being defensive and closed to outgoing and open.

Those of us who are pastors or committed members of churches know that this kind of inside-out transformation is not easy. Resistance is widespread and strong for a whole host of reasons. Those of us who see that the status quo is unacceptable sometimes feel that we’re beating our heads against a church wall, and the wall is holding firm. Sometimes, frankly, it’s discouraging.

That’s where Steve Chalke and Anthony Watkis come in. Their gift of encouragement helps me feel that more and more of those walls can come down if we just don’t give up. And I know they’re right.

So enjoy this book, and let’s be collaborators with Steve and Anthony in putting it into practice, wherever we are. This world needs an explosion of churches that are passionately involved in what Steve calls faithworks.

— Brian McLaren,Washington, DC

INTRODUCTION:

CHALLENGE OF THE AGES

Albert Einstein once commented that ‘the kind of thinking that will solve the world’s problems will be of a different order to the kind of thinking that created those problems in the first place.’ At the beginning of the third millennium the church in the West needs a different order of thinking. Our task must be to consider what we believe to be the nonnegotiables of our faith and, in the light of this understanding of God’s mission and purpose for his people, reimagine our purpose and mission, allowing them to shape the way we do church for the twenty-first century. To put it in technical language, our theology (our understanding of God) must unpack itself through our missiology (our understanding of mission) which must shape our ecclesiology (our understanding of church).

The challenge of the ages is set before us all. What will be our epitaph? Will we be the generation that began to rebuild the church in the West, or will we simply preside over its further demise? My very great hope is that we will rise to the challenge. Not in order to preserve a crumbling institution the way the National Trust restores old castles and stately homes in the UK — the interesting relics of a bygone age, historically important but of little modern relevance — but instead to build Christ’s church anew that we might bring genuinely good news to God’s world.

Much has been said of late about the concept of ‘emerging church’ — the phrase itself speaks the language of change and transition. But the truth is, of course, that the church has been emerging for two thousand years. We have constantly been in transition — each generation is called to reinvent or rediscover what it is to model accessible and authentic church within its surrounding culture. The problem is that of late we have seen more churches closing (in the sense of both dying communities and redundant buildings) than ever before. In this age more than any that preceded it, we need to ask what an intelligent and biblical response to our culture looks like. What is an intelligent church?

In the coming pages we will consider some of the hallmarks that I believe our churches should bear — those of authentic Christian spirituality. The method will be simple: in each chapter we will consider the relationship between theology, missiology and ecclesiology.

The content of too many books ends up as a distant memory for the busy practitioner. We end up doing the same with what we have read as what we often do with what the preacher has said. We hear it all and agree with much of it but simply don’t know how to apply it to our lives. Though we may resoundingly shout ‘Yes’ with our hearts, our heads shout ‘But how?’ How do we make this work? How do we help the people in our congregation grasp this?

These are important questions, and for that reason, every chapter of this book ends with a brief section called ‘Yes, But How?’ In it, you’ll find five practical ideas on how to move from reading it to doing it and being it. The sections are deliberately brief so that you can get a handle on what you have read and do something with it. They are designed to start your thinking on how to translate the principles of this book into practice. They are not prescriptive. They are simply a selection of ideas to get you started or to keep you going, whichever best fits your situation. And, if you need to get help with any of the ideas, remember you can contact Faithworks for more information and support at [email protected] or through our Web site, www.faithworks.info.

CHAPTER 1

INTELLIGENT

CHURCH

I had a strange experience recently. I was at a weekend retreat in the Wiltshire countryside with some of the leadership team of my church. At lunchtime on Saturday a few of us ventured to the supermarket in the nearest town to buy food. As we walked up to the doors of the shop, we noticed a few people standing outside the building with a banner announcing Saint Luke’s Church. Thinking that this was part of the church’s mission to the local community, we decided to stop for a chat and to offer some encouragement. Incredibly, though, as we approached, a man in clerical dress started shaking a collection tin in our faces. He was, it seems, of the belief that we (and, presumably, the rest of those out shopping for groceries) should make a donation to Saint Luke’s organ refurbishment fund. We stopped and talked, but however hard we tried to change the conversation, they were only interested in discussing keyboards, pedals and pipes. As we wandered off I was overcome by the sad realisation that the only message the shoppers heard from the church that day was, ‘We’re broke. Please save us!’

This story is a modern-day parable. I can almost hear it — told with style — on the lips of Jesus. It triggers me to consider again the purpose of the church. Have we concentrated our efforts in the right place? Are we trying so hard to save ourselves that we’ve forgotten what we are really here to do? Who are we? Why do we exist? How do we develop an intelligent response to the communities in which we find ourselves living?

REDEFINITION

Intelligent churches in the twenty-first century will take many different forms, but window dressing is not our concern here. Rather, the task ahead is to nail down what it means to be church — to discern what core values, principles, and theology should be the hallmarks of our churches. We will determine not what shape churches should take as much as from what substance they should be formed.

A former archbishop of Canterbury, William Temple, prophetically warned, ‘If a man’s concept of God is at error, the more fundamentally committed he is to it, the more damage he will do.’With that in mind, we need to consider again the way in which we approach the task of being church by reflecting on who God is. What we believe about God fundamentally shapes our view of the church, and that, in turn, determines how we live out its mission. Our behaviour, both personally and communally, is simply an outworking of our beliefs.

It is critical that our generation redefine what the church has to say to the world, engaging with and critiquing our culture as many of the generations before us have engaged with theirs. But we will not recapture the success of the church of ages past simply by replicating