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The Disease of Conceit. Conceit is a community killer. It is an ever present danger in our lives.

In the book of Romans, Paul presents in extended fashion his understanding of the Gospel of Jesus Christ (Romans 1-11). The book moves explicitly to exhortation in Romans 12. Paul calls the Christians in Rome to present their bodies corporately as a living sacrifice (Romans 12:1-2). Transformation begins with the individual but always involves the community as a whole. God created us to live in authentic community with one another (Genesis 1:26-31). When we experience the salvation that God has offered to us in Jesus Christ, God calls us to be part of the body formed by followers of Jesus Christ. Corporately, we become a “living sacrifice” to God. We are called to no longer be conformed to the patterns of the world, but rather be transformed. The life transformation occurs in community.

It is striking therefore that the first specific direction about the community is a warning:

NIV Romans 12:3 For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the measure of faith God has given you. 4 Just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, 5 so in Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.

1) Paul writes not as a person with positional authority. He writes as a person who has experienced the grace of God. Paul could have written: I am an Apostle and this is what I say, or I saw Jesus Christ personally on the road to Damascus or I have been a student of Scripture for all of my life. But he doesn’t. He writes as one who has received grace. Isn’t this the position of us all? None of us can stand on our own merits. As we begin to think about community, this is the starting point. The community of followers of Jesus Christ is a community who owes its existence to the grace and mercy of God.

Paul reminds us of this elsewhere in 1 Corinthians 1:26-31

1:26 Brothers, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. 27 But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. 28 He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things– and the things that are not– to nullify the things that are, 29 so that no one may boast before him. 30 It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God– that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption. 31 Therefore, as it is written: “Let him who boasts boast in the Lord.”

2) Don’t be self-centered. Paul’s admonition is so basic, but so profound. Too many of us are infected with the disease of conceit. Conceit robs us of our ability to function as healthy members of the body of Christ. If we are puffed up, we will limit our ability to serve. If we happen to be leaders, we will model conceit to our communities and create (unintentionally) centers of narcissism rather than the centers of outreach and evangelism. We need constantly to remember the words of Jesus, “For the son of man did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many.”

3) Conceit is a community killer. Our world is plagued by division: racial, economic, geographic, sex, age, and so on. From early childhood, human beings form insular groups and cliques. The new community created in Jesus Christ, however, is called to be radically different. There is a profound unity in Jesus:

Gal 3:28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

Nothing kills the community that God created us to embody more than conceit. The Church that God dreams about is an oasis in which everyone is welcome to receive God’s grace and find his or her place in the only institution that exists for something greater than itself.

4) Conceit throttles mission. If we don’t value others and privilege our own self-interests, we will never be able to reach out beyond ourselves. All our talk about missional church, missional reading, and radical outreach will prove to be vacuous if our communities are filled with conceit.

How do we move forward as a community?

Value the diverse gifts of the community. Although this is obvious, it is not so easy to practice. It is not merely a matter of mouthing the acceptance of various gifts and talents which persons possess; we must actually invite and unleash each member to deploy his or her gifts fully. We must therefore put away “cookie cutter” and/or “fill in the blank” ways of filling out ministry teams. Instead, we need to ask ourselves constantly, “How does our community need to change in order to utilize fully each member’s gifts?” Leaders need to focus on mobilizing and training.

Recognize that we need one another. In healthy communities of faith, the whole is always greater than the sum of its parts. Too many communities of faith never experience this reality. Too many pastors function as the paid servants of the whole. Yet pastors need every single member more than any single member needs the pastor. We need one another. Consider the words of Bonhoeffer:

Let him who is not in community beware of being alone. Into the community you were called, the call was not meant for you alone; in the community of the called you bear your cross, you struggle, you pray. You are not alone, even in death, and on the Last Day you will be only one member of the great congregation of Jesus Christ. If you scorn the fellowship of the brethren, you reject the call of Jesus Christ and thus your solitude can only be hurtful to you. (Life Together, 77)

Recognize and show gratitude for the contributions of each member. As leaders we need to model gratitude and show value to each person. The cure for conceit is the creation of a culture of gratitude. Saying “Thank you” acknowledges the presence, value, and contribution of another member and pushes the one who shows gratitude further and further away from a self-centered life governed by conceit.

Practice a gift-based ministry. We must learn to encourage, equip, and empower each individual in our communities to unleash his or her gifts. This is a more difficult leadership challenge than merely trying to fill-in the blanks on some pre-packaged leadership structure, but in the long run, it will yield much more fruit. You will gain a maximum benefit from each member. This is the heart of Paul’s exhortation in Romans 12:6-8 –

We have different gifts, according to the grace given us. If a man’s gift is prophesying, let him use it in proportion to his faith. If it is serving, let him serve; if it is teaching, let him teach; if it is encouraging, let him encourage; if it is contributing to the needs of others, let him give generously; if it is leadership, let him govern diligently; if it is showing mercy, let him do it cheerfully.

What do you think?

Bob Dylan has a killer song titled “The Disease of Conceit”. Read the lyrics. Listen to an audio sample.

Here is a poignant and understated cover of Dylan’s The Disease of Conceit

© 2006 Brian D. Russell (Revised 10/2010)

I am looking forward to participating in the Catapult Conference in a a couple of weeks. There is a great lineup of speakers: Alan and Deb Hirsch, Michael Slaughter, Reggie McNeal plus a wide variety of Breakout Sessions. I am looking forward for the opportunity to meet some of these authors, thinkers, and practitioners from whom I’ve already learned much.

I have been asked to teach about missional hermeneutics. This is exciting. I have focused my recent research, writing, and teaching on a missional approach to reading the Bible (see my essay “What is a Missional Hermeneutic?“). I’ve never considered this an academic exercise. Instead, I have worked to help pastors and other Christ followers to read Scripture through the lens of mission because I believe that this approach to Scripture arises out of a close reading of the Bible itself and is absolutely necessary for our post-Christendom contexts in the Western world.

As such I will be making three different presentations at Catupult:
1) A Bible Study on Matt 4:17-22. Introducing a missional hermeneutic as a call to (re)align continually with God.

2) Breakout Session: “Reading Scripture in the Mission Field”
What does it mean to read Scripture in light of our 21st century post-Christian context? How do we interpret the Bible in ways that both unleashed God’s people to live missionally in the world and at the same time invite preChristians to join the Christ-following movement? Brian will teach a practical session that will introduce a missional approach to engaging both the Church and the World with the message of the Old and New Testaments.

3) Plenary Session: (re)Aligning with God: Reading Scripture for the Church and the World

Here is the full schedule for Catapult

I hope that some of you can join us for this event. Registration remains open.

Thanks to the generosity of Asbury Theological Seminary I am enjoying a sabbatical from teaching and administrative duties for the remainder of 2010 in order to focus on completing a book on missional hermeneutics. I will be posting regular updates as well as sharing bits and pieces of the work in its draft form.

Why am I writing “(re)Aligning with God: Reading Scripture for the Church and the World”?

Four years ago, my friend Alex McManus offered this observation: The Western world has lost its faith in the shadow of church steeples. Christianity in the Western world has reached a crossroad. Statistics suggest that there are 5000 less Christ followers every single 24 hour period in the Western world. This contrasts with the exponential growth of the Gospel in sub-Saharan Africa and China in which tens of thousands of conversions occur daily.

The response of evangelicalism and even of some streams of mainline Protestantism has coalesced around the word “missional.” In our post-Christendom context of the 21st century, we have to learn to “do church differently”, to “become outward focused”, to shift to a “missional mindset.” This is what the experts tell us. I agree with this sentiment, but the question that has nagged at me is this: What role does Scripture serve in renewing the Church for the sake of God’s mission in the world?

There are numerous books that describe missional church and offer portraits of what a “missional church” ought to look like. There are countless conferences, podcasts, and essays on the subject. I continue to be helped and inspired by these. But there is not much reflection on what it means to read Scripture within the missional movement. But my conviction remains this: We must unleash the Scriptures in the power of the Holy Spirit as the fuel for mission. A missional hermeneutic or approach to the Bible is primarily interested in this reality.

The central idea of (re)Aligning with God is this: The Scriptures call for a realignment of humanity to live and serve as a missional community that reflects and embodies God’s character to/for/in the world. This was the original vocation for humanity at Creation. It was lost tragically and totally through the entrance of sin into the world and its ongoing infestation. In the rest of the Old Testament, God began a new work by calling a people Israel to himself through which he would bless the nations. In the New Testament, God the Father sent the Son Jesus the Messiah to born into this people. Through his life, death, and resurrection, Jesus modeled and shaped this new humanity, defeated the powers of sin and death on the cross, and unleashed his people the Church to engage the world and make disciples of the nations. The biblical story ends in a fully restored New Creation.

Thus, (re)Aligning with God: Reading Scripture for the Church and the World will provide, first of all, an overview of the broad contours of the biblical narrative from Genesis—Revelation. Secondly, Part II of (re)Aligning with God will guide the readers on how to read the Bible from the perspective of God’s mission.

(re)Aligning with God will be available in 2011 from Cascade Books.

© 2010 Brian D Russell

The following is a list of topics and speakers:

* Culture Making and the Local Church with Mark Batterson & Matt Chandler
* Diversity and Church Planting with Efrem Smith, Mark DeYmaz, & Janet McMahon
* Creating Movements & Networks with Dave Gibbons
* Being Present with the City with Alan Hirsch, Shane Claiborne, & Neil Cole
* Compassionate Justice: Ideation to Implementation with Dave Ferguson & Armando Fullwood

Here is the Hirsch, Claiborne, and Cole video:

The Ideacamp at Exponential 2010 with Shane Claireborne, Neil Cole and Alan Hirsch from The Idea Camp on Vimeo.

Watch the videos here.

Ecclesia Press under the leadership of J.R. Woodward has published its first book, ViralHope: Good News from the Urbs to the Burbs (and everything in between).

ViralHope is a collection of essays by key missional leaders from around the Western World. Each contributor has written an announcement of the good news to his or her city of residence.

Here is my contribution: “The Good News for Orlando”
One of Walt Disney’s core maxims reads: “If you can dream it, you can do it.” Over the last forty years, Orlando has morphed from a sleepy Central Florida town centered on the citrus industry and World War Two era military bases into a gateway city that welcomes the world with top-notch resorts and attractions. Orlando is in the business of fun and offering its visitors a respite from the suffocating status quo of the daily grind of life. The dream of carving out an international city in the midst of former wetlands and citrus groves has largely been achieved. Orlando is known as the City Beautiful. At least, this is what the marketing campaigns proclaim. But as an almost decade long resident of the area, I wonder if perhaps we haven’t dreamed big enough?

It is undeniable that millions of persons enjoy their vacations in Central Florida. But is an existence rooted in manufacturing memories for others of mouse ears, sun tan lotion, roller coasters, chain restaurants, and convention centers truly a dream worthy of our lives? What if instead we were in the business of life transformation? What if people came to Central Florida for a vacation and instead found life? What if vacationers did not encounter only employees of Orlando’s extensive service industry but women and men joyously serving as part of a radically different Kingdom? What if Orlando embraced a bold and daring vision for what it might become—a gateway city that welcomed and ushered the world into a radical new reality?

For this to be possible, we will need a new story to ignite a fresh vision for our community. Let me suggest an encounter with a largely forgotten storyline.

The Bible offers an audacious narrative of a God who is looking for a people with whom to partner to extend blessing and good, life and wholeness, and hope and reconciliation to all peoples, nations, and tongues. This God is the creator of a world in which the final words are Rest, Love, Justice, Mercy, and Peace. In the life of Jesus, this God came to live among us. Jesus modeled true humanity while at the same time subverting strongly held misconceptions about divinity and religion. Jesus came to invite us back to life the way that God had intended. To this end, Jesus announced a liberating message that can be summarized this way: “(Re)align yourselves because the long awaited good future has now arrived in me.” Jesus immediately called into being a new community to embody his life and teaching and freely sacrificed his life for this new vision.

But this isn’t the whole story. Jesus was no mere martyr who inspires us and serves an example to emulate. The full story is this: Jesus is alive. The Creator God of all that exists delivered Jesus from the grave so that he stands today fully alive as the triumphant Lord of a new Kingdom. If we have ears to hear, we can still hear him calling to us today to dream new dreams and envision new possibilities. But most all of all he promises to stand as the vanguard who will lead us to become the women and men whom we were created us to be—a people that exist to reflect and embody the character and nature of the God in and for the world.

What if following Jesus was the way to taste and experience true life—the life that God alone dreams for you and has acted in Jesus to make possible? That would be good news indeed. What would our lives and city look like if we (re)aligned our lives in response to this good news?

Here is a new video to help promote the Catapult Conference in Mobile, Alabama (9/22-9/24 2010). Hope to see you there!