Inter-Varsity Press

CONTENTS

1. What’s this ‘new-humanity’ thing?
2. It’s more than race: other major diversities overcome
3. Underpinnings: doctrinal confirmations
4. An idea whose hour has come: into the world of today
5. It’s happened before: the first-century world
6. Widening the view: other dimensions of community
7. Down to earth: worship and leadership in the new-humanity church
8. Down to earth: discipleship and fellowship in the new-humanity church
9. A heart for the world: mission and evangelism in a new-humanity congregation
10. Riding the wave: the challenges and opportunities of new-humanity churches in today’s and tomorrow’s worlds

Preface

We are all familiar with a Mexican wave. A sports event is under way in a large stadium. The action on the field is rather boring, when suddenly the spectators in one section of the audience jump to their feet and throw their arms in the air. The next section follows on, and then the next, until the wave has travelled all around the stadium, and back to the beginning, where it may well set off all over again. It’s great fun, and often notably more memorable than what’s happening on the field of play.

Every Sunday of the year a ‘Mexican wave of worship’ travels all around the world. Let me tell you about it. It begins about the time many in the United Kingdom are heading off for bed on Saturday night (and not a few of its pastors are staggering wearily out of their studies). For many North Americans the wave is launched while we are fast asleep. But, just then, in some South Pacific islands, like the ancient Christian Kingdom of Tonga, it’s Sunday morning, and already Christians are up and heading for church, where they are called to worship. They get on their feet, many thousands of them, throwing their hands in the air, as it were, praising God, and crying, ‘Jesus is Lord!’ The wave has begun.

At the very same time, thousands of miles to the north, in the eastern reaches of the former Soviet empire, other groups of believers are doing the same – fewer in number but with no less zeal. Then the wave begins to spread westwards; into New Zealand, and across Australia, through time zone after time zone, millions are now on their feet and joining in. Meanwhile, the worship wave is sweeping down eastern Asia; reaching to the smaller churches of Japan, the teeming congregations of South Korea, the Philippines and Indonesia. The living God is being worshipped and his name exalted. Now the wave is into China – how many Christians in China? Only God knows; perhaps a hundred million, province after province, as the wave of worship sweeps on its way around the world.

Now the wave is into India and the great historic churches there, and then surging on through the other southern Asian nations. On and on it moves, across the vast territories of Central Asia and the former Soviet republics, into the Middle East, where little groups of believers are uniting in worship and bravely lifting heart and hand in praise. Now the wave has entered Africa; the ancient churches of Egypt and Ethiopia, and the massive, modern congregations of Uganda, Kenya and Zambia; on down into Southern Africa as millions more are on their feet and the Lord is being exalted. Now the wave is across central Africa and sweeping through the burgeoning congregations in Nigeria, Ghana and the adjoining nations. And all the while Europe has been caught up in it, through time zone after time zone – the Scandinavian lands to the north, the Balkans, Central Europe and the Mediterranean countries to the south, all with their long centuries of faith and tradition; then it’s into Spain and Portugal.

Meanwhile, the worship wave is moving through Britain, by way of congregations large and small, in city and countryside, as UK Christians in turn rise to their feet and join the global throng of worshippers, lifting high the name of Jesus. Now the wave is leaping across the sea to Ireland, Iceland and Greenland, finally arriving on North American soil in the maritime provinces of Canada; and, at the same moment, thousands of kilometres to the south, it is making its landfall in Latin America by way of the bulging projection of Brazil, where it is soon swelled by that nation’s thronging multitudes of exuberant worshippers.

Like an irresistible tide the wave sweeps on, gathering millions more in its train as our ever-blessed, triune God is exalted in praise. On and on it goes, as the sunny islands of the Caribbean get with the beat, down the east coast of the USA amid its teeming populations. Meanwhile, to the south, the wave envelops in turn all the nations of central and western Latin America, Argentina, Chile, Peru, Bolivia,

Mexico and the swelling churches of Central America. Across the Canadian prairies it moves, and the Midwest of the USA, and through the Deep South. Finally it arrives at the western states, California, Oregon, Washington, and, within that time zone, at our apparently ‘lazy lot’ in Vancouver, as we too get out of our beds, and assemble in worship, and lift Jesus’ name, and pour out our praises.

And then the wave of worship is on its way again, up to Alaska, and across the Pacific to Hawaii, and, in a final surge, back to the South Sea Islands – and it is over for another week: the worship wave!

It happens without fail every single Sunday, of every month of every year, and all I have done in these paragraphs is to draw attention to it – the international celebration of the global people of God. To be a Christian means to be part of that – somewhere between one and two billion men, women and children, from every nation under the sun, united in a worship experience that encircles the globe. How could anyone miss out on it by choosing to stay in bed?

This global Sunday community is of course staggeringly diverse. What contrasts of race and ethnicity are here! What ranges of generation and gender, language and culture, customs and worship styles, social status and wealth indices, educational levels and forms of employment; what degrees of freedom, involving in some places intrusive restrictions and even persecution; what varieties of personal faith stories, and levels of comprehension and commitment! Yet all of that incredible diversity has a single, authentic point of unity: Jesus Christ. In the supernatural reality of his risen presence through the Holy Spirit, that multi-faceted community is one as his body on earth. In Jesus they are one people, one life.

This book is written in the conviction that that divine mystery, the diversity in unity of the people of God in Christ, need not be confined to the global stage, nor need it be deferred to the future age of glory (Dan. 7:14; Rev. 7:9). Rather, it can be experienced today, in embryo, in every local Christian congregation on the face of the earth, as major forms of human diversity are transcended in the supernatural unity of the body of Christ. And, further, to set about, under God, consciously to create such localized expressions of diversity in unity is a major means of bringing glory to the Lord Jesus Christ in our generation, as well as being a supreme missional attraction in our twenty-first century cultures.

Nor is that an extravagant claim, becauseit has in fact happened before – in the fledgling congregations that burst into life across the Roman Empire in the decades immediately following the ministry, death and rising of Jesus Christ. While never perfect, as the New Testament bears witness, these congregations nevertheless discovered a radically new quality of communal life in which natural diversities of ethnicity, race and every other major human diversity were overcome in a way that astonished, fascinated and finally won a multitude of followers from the watching world around them.

It is my conviction that this feature of first-century history is recoverable today; that there is a way of ‘doing church’ in these early years of the third millennium that can capture the vibrancy of global community and unite Christians locally across the threatening polarities that bedevil our world. In the process it offers a form of Christian faith that is both deeply relevant and hugely attractive.

I refer to such congregations as ‘new-humanity’ churches (Eph. 2:15), for reasons that will become apparent in the chapters that follow.

Congregations come, of course, in different shapes and sizes, for, in our highly diverse society, rather as in the variegated communities we meet in the pages of the New Testament, one size can never fit all. But there is a series of common characteristics, arising out of a quite specific vision of what local churches are intended by God to be, which permits a common label, and which accordingly makes this book possible. I invite you to accompany me as I attempt to justify that claim in the following pages.

Lest all this appear dangerously theoretical, may I note that the chapters that follow emerge out of first-hand experience. In the goodness of God, during a seventeen-year ministry at the heart of North America’s most secularized community, I had the privilege, along with a special congregation, of glimpsing that vision and fleshing out some of its more basic features, as many hundreds of lost and lonely people found the deepest longings of their hearts met in Jesus Christ and his church. For, incredible as it may sound to a generation where ‘church’ is commonly our greatest evangelistic liability, during these years in Vancouver, the congregation was actually our best evangelist.

Not that this little volume is yet another ‘Do it my way’ church blueprint. Transferability between congregations is, in my judgment, a vastly overrated commodity. Hence, the occasions on which our Vancouver experience is cited in the following pages will be relatively few.

What is much more important than one local church’s experience is the fact, as I will seek to demonstrate below, that the principles underlying a new-humanity congregation are actually underwritten in the Scriptures, as well as by the great historic doctrines of the faith.

On that universally relevant basis the case will be argued.

In the later chapters I will attempt to bring the new-humanity model down to earth by noting its contribution in the areas of worship, leadership, discipleship, fellowship and evangelism.

The book is written primarily for pastors and other church leaders who face the challenge of providing input to the vision and direction of their congregations. However, many of the issues discussed will resonate with, and hopefully be helpful to, any concerned and thinking church member.

An early version of the theme was presented as the Dr George Beasley-Murray Memorial Lecture in Birmingham, England, during the Baptist World Alliance Congress in July 2005. I am deeply appreciative of the trustees of that lectureship for the opportunity to contribute to the honour of a great Christian scholar and leader, who was one of my supreme life mentors.

My thanks are due to the many who have stimulated and influenced me over the years, most obviously our congregation in Vancouver. Within that company may I express particular appreciation to my prayer-support group of many years, Phyllis Metcalfe, Bill Patey, Nancy Scambler and Gord Taylor, who, as well as being ever-faithful intercessors, acted as research associates. I have benefited also from the reflections of Paul Pearce and Vic Arneill in the later stages of the production of this manuscript. Eleanor Trotter of IVP was a helpful and caring support during the process of its production. My wife, Valerie, was, as she always has been, a source of unfailing encouragement throughout. To these, and other friends too numerous to name, I dedicate these pages.

Bruce Milne
Vancouver
Ascension, 2006