PLUMB LINE:
“The Church Makes Visible the Invisible Christ.”
As a boy, I loved superheroes. Truth be told, I still do, but I no longer dress up and run around the neighborhood masquerading as the Dark Knight, the caped crusader, or your friendly neighborhood Spiderman. It creeps the neighbors out.
The one superhero whose disguise I could never quite master as a kid, however, was the Invisible Man. The closest I could come was going into my sister’s room when she was away, messing her stuff up, and telling her the Invisible Man had done it.
On the Invisible Man television show, when someone wanted to make him visible, they would pour paint on him. Then you could see his shape and track his movements. I suggest that the local church is the paint that makes the invisible Christ visible to our community. In its fellowship, its holiness of life, its multicultural diversity, its selfless acts of love, and its forgiveness and boldness, it reveals the contours of the eternal, heavenly Christ that dwells within them. When local churches equip their people to embody the gospel in the streets, they make the movements of an otherwise invisible Christ visible to their community.1
A Church That Needed to Repent
In chapter 2 of this book I explained how returning in 2004 to my city in Southeast Asia made me realize I did not have the right attitude toward my current city, Raleigh-Durham. Our church had the wrong focus: we were trying to use the city to build a big church; instead, we should be trying to reach and bless our city and if we built a big church in the process, so be it. The goal should not be the size of our church; it should be the salvation and blessing of our city. In addition to our planting other churches in the city, that meant discovering where our city was hurting and applying Christ’s healing in those places.
So we began to ask ourselves: “Where can we bring ‘great joy’ (Acts 8:8) to our city as a demonstration of the gospel?” I met with the mayor and asked him to list the five most underserved parts of our city so we could get involved there.
Shortly thereafter, God brought to our attention an underperforming public elementary school in the inner city of Durham. It was the worst-ranked school in our county and scheduled to be shut down within two years. We approached them about getting involved. Schools in our area were generally leery of church involvement because they assumed that meant zealous, smiling Christians passing out tracts, blaring positive, encouraging Christian music and giving away hot dogs at the annual school fair with John 3:16 stenciled in mustard across the top.
Toward the end of 2004, however, an unbelieving teacher from this school, neighbor of one of our pastors, told him that a family in the school had fallen on hard times and that if we were looking for a place to help, this might be a place to start. We helped that family find temporary housing, and one of our church members, about to get married, asked his guests to redirect any wedding presents to this family to stock their house.
Taking care of this family led to an invitation to care for a few others. At the end of that year, the principal, Starr Sampson, came to us and said, “If this school is going to survive, we really need to do well on our ‘end of grade’ [EOG] exams. Could some of your people come and pray over our students while they take them?”
And so several Summit people wandered the halls of this school during exams, praying over students and classrooms. It probably looked weird, but it worked. Their test scores were the best they had been in years. Mrs. Sampson says that those EOG scores marked the beginning of a turnaround in the school’s performance.
That summer we renovated the school, painting classrooms and scrubbing floors. When school started, we brought breakfast to the teachers. Small groups adopted classrooms and teachers and met the physical needs of families in the schools. We provided dental clinics and tutoring after school.
By the fourth year of our involvement, the school ranked near the top for end-of-year exams passed, and the principal was awarded “Principal of the Year.” In a newspaper interview that year she said, “Of course I want to thank the teachers for the hard work . . . but I have to give credit where credit is due. God gets the glory, and he worked specifically through the people of the Summit Church.”2
A couple of years later I was invited to speak at our city’s annual Martin Luther King Jr. rally. Durham is 40 percent African American, so this event is a big deal. Local news televises it, and all of the city and county government officials attend.
Not being the typical candidate to keynote an MLK rally, I asked the lady who extended the invitation what exactly they wanted me to speak on. She said, “Well, you’ll have twenty minutes to say whatever you want, to explain why you love our city like you do. All we ask is that you not be controversial.”
I said, “Can I talk about Jesus?”
She said, “Sure. He won’t be controversial.”
I was tempted to reply, “I’m not sure you know him that well.”
I do enough public speaking that I rarely get nervous in front of crowds anymore, but backstage before the event, I was a nervous wreck. I mean, really nervous — like “Joel Osteen about to address The Gospel Coalition” kind of nervous. The county manager, sensing my anxiety, said, “J.D., do you know why you were asked to speak today?”
“No sir,” I said.
“It’s because of how your church has blessed our city.” Another city official shared with me later that afternoon, “It seems that everywhere in our city we find a need, we also find people from the Summit Church meeting that need. And we couldn’t think of anyone to better embody the spirit of brotherly love we want to honor on this day than you all at the Summit Church.”
For eighteen of my twenty minutes I explained how the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ transforms self-absorbed people into those who love and pour themselves out for others. We love because we have been first loved. When I was finished, the entire city council, the mayor, and all his staff gave us an extended standing ovation.
We are still learning what it means to serve our community. But as I stood on the stage that day, an idea that had been growing inside me crystalized: the church is God’s demonstration community. Our works don’t replace the verbal preaching of the gospel, but in them we demonstrate, tangibly, the love and grace that we proclaim with our mouths. Effective gospel preaching is explaining with our words what we demonstrate with our lives. In our service, we make visible the invisible Christ. God has called us to bring joy to our city the way Philip brought joy to Samaria (Acts 8:4 – 8), by preaching the gospel of peace to the city and demonstrating its power to heal and bless through acts of extravagant generosity.
The Church Is God’s Demonstration Community
Let me be clear: The church’s primary objective is to preach the gospel, not to beautify the city, care for the poor, or renovate the ghettos. That’s because the gospel testifies to what God has done to save the world, not what we can do to patch it up. The gospel is an announcement about Christ’s finished work.
The Greek word for “gospel” was not originally a religious word — it referred to any announcement of good news. For example, if a Greek general won a battle, he would send back a “gospel” about his victory: “No longer need you live in fear. I have won the battle. You are free.” The Christian gospel is an announcement about the victory Christ has accomplished.
Thus, our ministry begins with, and focuses on, testifying to what Christ has done. Any “service” to our community that does not make that message clear disserves them. Acts of kindness apart from the gospel only make people more comfortable on their way to hell.
Maybe you’ve heard the old adage attributed to Francis of Assisi: “Preach the gospel; if necessary use words.” Quaint and tweetable, but very wrong. You cannot preach the gospel without words. The gospel is an explanation about an act that occurred in history once and for all. We testify through words that Jesus did for us what we could never do for ourselves by living the life we should have lived and dying the death we should have died, in our place, so that others can believe that message and trust in it. Saying, “Preach the gospel; if necessary use words,” is like me saying, “Tell me your phone number; if necessary, use digits.” Apart from digits, there is no phone number. Apart from words, there is no gospel.
Whenever the gospel of words was preached in the New Testament, however, its messengers substantiated those words with signs. Jesus’ miracles were not just cool magic tricks he did to convince listeners he had crazy power. He never said, “Now, for my next trick, I’ll make Peter disappear.” Or “write down a number between one and a billion, and I’ll guess it correctly on the first try.” Rather, he did things that demonstrated salvation. He healed bodies to show that the gospel can restore what sin has destroyed. He multiplied bread to show that those who feast on him will never be hungry. He walked on water to show that God reigns over chaos and walks on top of judgment for us. He raised the dead to show that he makes all things new.
Tim Keller says, “Jesus’ miracles did not merely show off the naked fact of Jesus’ power; they revealed the redemptive purpose of his power.”3 As people saw Jesus’ signs, they understood his message, and they believed it.
In Acts, we see the apostles signify the gospel through miraculous works such as like healing the sick and casting out demons. But we also see the church in Acts signifying the gospel in less “miraculous” ways, as when Tabitha made coats for her community (Acts 9:36 – 42). Stephen’s care for widows signified the gospel to antagonistic Jewish priests, and it won their hearts (Acts 6:1 – 7). The unity between races in the church, Paul said, demonstrated to the world the reality of the power of God (Eph. 3:7 – 11).
In his first epistle, Peter told his church they were to live with such love and grace that the government, their employers, and their spouses would be compelled to ask “Why?” (1 Peter 2:12 – 3:17). In so doing, he said, they would be a sign of the coming age. The church was to be the one place in a broken and fractured world where the seeds of renewal and hope flourished. Encountering the church, it has been said, should be like walking through a city block that has been leveled by an earthquake and finding a flower sprouting out through the rubble. The beautiful flower shows you that there is hope in the chaos, life pressing up through death.
A church’s demonstration of the coming reign of God might look like renovating schools, helping alcoholics, healing marriages, providing job training, offering medical care, or blessing teachers. Which signs are most effective in your community will be based on your context. In cities where spiritism was common, the apostles cast out demons (see Acts 16:16 – 18; 19:11 – 12). Where cruelty and sorrow overshadowed the city, the apostles lived with generosity and joy (Acts 16:19 – 34). In a place where the poor were oppressed, they stuck up for the needy. Where races could not get along, they demonstrated the unity of the gospel.
These “signs” do not replace the preaching of the gospel; they help prove it. Contrary to the popular bumper sticker “Perform random acts of kindness,” our kindness is to be neither random nor senseless. Ours is intentional and logical. We demonstrate by our actions the kingdom that we declare is coming with our lips. As N. T. Wright says, we “sketch out with pencil what Jesus will one day paint in indelible ink.”4
In saying that our primary focus in all that we do is persuading our neighbors to believe the gospel, I do not mean that we serve people only to convert them, as if our acts of love are conditioned on their acceptance of our message. We serve them whether or not they ever show any interest in the gospel, because that’s how Jesus served us. The good we do for them is a good, God-pleasing end in itself. Just as God makes his sun to shine “on the evil and the just,” the light of our kindness should shine upon all, indiscriminately. As I’ve heard said: We don’t serve to convert; we serve because we’re converted.
But if what we believe about the gospel is true, we can never be satisfied to put food in people’s bellies or education in their minds when their souls are in jeopardy. I’m glad we can put “Tom’s Shoes” on people’s feet, but I’m also concerned about Tom’s soul. Shoes can’t fix that; only Jesus can.
At the Summit Church we say, People, not projects, are our mission (another of our plumb lines). Our acts of generosity and healing demonstrate to the world that God so loved us that he gave his only Son so that we could be reconciled to him.
Love on Display Is Our Most Powerful Apologetic
Francis Schaeffer once said that the final apologetic Jesus gives is the observable love of Christians for one another.5 We certainly see this borne out in Acts, particularly in Luke’s account of the gospel’s spread in the Roman colony of Philippi.
In Acts 16 Luke tells the stories of three different people in Philippi who came to faith on Paul’s first missionary journey there. They all came to faith in completely different ways. The first was Lydia, a rich, put-together religious businesswoman who came to Christ through one of Paul’s “seeker” Bible studies (vv. 13 – 15). The second was on the opposite end of the spectrum: a slave girl, poor and demon-possessed. She came to Christ when Paul cast a demon out of her, freeing her from her physical and economic bondage (vv. 16 – 18).
The third was the Philippian jailer. Roman jailers were typically retired soldiers who were given a jail to run by Caesar as a reward for their service. They were battle-hardened, older, and typically cynical. This jailer came to Christ by observing Paul and Silas’s joy in the midst of suffering (Acts 16:19 – 34). Paul and Silas sang psalms of joy that night after being beaten, which the jailer couldn’t understand. And then, when God sent an earthquake, instead of running away Paul went back to the jailer to keep him from killing himself. The jailer, shaken not by the earthquake but by Paul’s kindness, fell to his knees and said, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?”
These three individuals can serve as examples of three very different kinds of people in our cities and the different ways we should go about reaching them:
• “Lydias” are spiritually interested people who will be reached through our evangelistic events (such as discovery Bible studies or Easter services).
• “Slave girls” are physical, economic, or spiritual captives who will likely never come to our seeker Bible studies or Easter services, no matter how good they are. And this girl couldn’t have come to Paul’s seeker Bible study even if she had wanted to! Paul had to go to her, delivering her from bondage.
• “Philippian jailers” are cynics who comprise the ruling, educated, or artistic elite in our society. This jailer was won by seeing Paul’s generosity and joy on display in the midst of persecution.
Furthermore, these four very different people, (counting Paul) would never have shared community in the ancient world. According to the Siddur, the first-century Jewish prayer book, Jewish men would thank God each morning that they were not “a woman, a slave, or a Gentile.” Of the many people saved in Philippi, why does Luke record these three? He is demonstrating that the first church in Philippi consisted of three people sitting down together in love and fellowship who would never have done so in any other context! This unity in and of itself was a sign to the Philippians of the power and truth of the gospel.6
Schaeffer, who spent a lifetime developing compelling intellectual arguments for the Christian faith, recognized that Spirit-fueled, gospel-love on display has a power to change the human heart in ways intellectual arguments cannot. The Roman emperor Julian, one of the fiercest second-century persecutors of early Christians (whom the early church aptly referred to as “Julian the Apostate”), admitted in disgust to a friend that he couldn’t stop the church from growing no matter how many he jailed or killed because “these infernal Galileans feed our poor in addition to their own.”7 Historian Eberhard Arnold notes,
Most astounding to the outside observer was the extent to which poverty was overcome in the vicinity of the communities. . . . Christians spent more money in the streets than the followers of other religions spent in their temples.8
Recently I met with a very well-known cultural and academic leader in Durham who had been very antagonistic, publicly, toward our church. She had accused us of bigotry, insensitivity toward the marginalized, and discrimination toward women. As we met together for coffee that afternoon, she told me, however, that her neighbor, a single mother, had fallen on hard times and some people from our church had really come to her aid. She said, “I think I’m going to have tone down some of my rhetoric about you.” Demonstrating the gospel in tangible ways can soften even the most ardent critics.
A Church Empowered to Demonstrate the Message
Earlier I noted that of the 40 miracles in Acts, 39 take place outside of a church gathering. As a pastor, my job is to help our people expect and seek these outpourings in our community. Being a “sending church” means equipping our members to demonstrate the gospel every day in their workplaces, neighborhoods, and schools and to then be prepared to give an answer to those in our community who ask us to “give the reason for the hope that you have” (1 Peter 3:15).
Recently we got this note from a local high school administrator:
Dear Summit Church:
Words cannot begin to express the gratitude with which I compose this message. The students and staff of Cary High have been tremendously blessed by your efforts last week during your “Serve RDU.” Not only have you nourished our bodies by providing food to our staff on multiple occasions, you have truly nourished our hearts and souls by loving our students, wholeheartedly and unconditionally. You have served as mentors to them, becoming role models and actively listening to them. . . . Specifically over the Christmas season, your congregation has deeply touched at least three different families with a variety of gifts. As we have a growing homeless population and a multitude of needy families in our school, this alone has been awe-inspiring to students, their families, and our staff members.
Your love, your faith, your generosity, and your prayers really have impacted us. I am so thankful for all that you have done for our school. Thank you, thank you, thank you!
I have to tell you, I will never get tired of receiving letters like that. We get our share of hate mail, too, so when we also get a letter like this telling us that God has used us as “the fragrance of life,” I know that we are being the conundrum to our community that Jesus commissioned us to be — the fragrance of life to some and the fragrance of death to others (2 Cor. 2:16). During Jesus’ final week on earth, some shouted, “Hosanna!” because of how he had blessed and healed them; others cried out for his execution. The religious and political leaders plotted his death while a former prostitute washed his feet with her tears in gratitude. A gospel-saturated church on mission generates both responses.
That conundrum becomes our greatest evangelistic witness. Gospel ministry is truth wrapped in grace. Truth without grace is fundamentalism; grace without truth is only sentimentality. When truth and grace are divorced, we impede the progress of the gospel. When we unite them, we multiply it.
Some guys in one of our small groups got to know a young man at a gym they frequented. “Mike” was very friendly, but also quite antagonistic toward religion. He told them that he thought their belief system was basically a fairy tale made up by people who couldn’t otherwise cope with life. Still, they befriended Mike, prayed for him, and invited him to church, which for several months he politely declined. A few months later, however, Mike developed a rather serious condition and was admitted to the hospital. Although his condition was treatable, the treatment was quite expensive, and Mike did not have health insurance. So the men in this small group raised over $2,000 to cover Mike’s hospital stay.
Mike, who didn’t have much family to speak of, was overwhelmed by their generosity. “Why are you doing this?” he asked. They answered, “Because we serve a Savior who gave up everything for us when we didn’t care anything about him.”
About three months later, we baptized Mike.
Love on display is our most convincing apologetic.
Where to Start
How do you know where to begin in loving your city? Does “adopting a school” sound intimidating for your church? Or maybe you are a father reading this trying to figure out how to engage your family in the mission. When we started, seeking to bless our city, we didn’t have much of what you might call “a strategy.” We picked up whatever service projects were available to us. We renovated playgrounds, pulled weeds out of flower-beds, and trimmed bushes. Just start with wherever you see a need.
Over time, we have seen our focus shift from projects to people. This past year, we put thousands of our people on the streets in nineteen different city-blessing ministry projects run (primarily) by people in our church who maintain them year-round. It all started with an awkward conversation with a mayor and a relationship with one elementary school principal in which we offered to serve in whatever way we could.
Last year, we had seventeen families and young professionals move out of wealthier neighborhoods into an under-resourced one so they could incarnate the gospel there together. Sometimes I look out from the pulpit and see these families sitting together, usually with people they have brought from that neighborhood. At other places in the auditorium I see small groups sitting together with rehabilitating prisoners they have incorporated into their lives. I see a family that brings half a dozen unwed mothers from a pregnancy support ministry they run. I know that this is beginning to approach what Jesus said a church should look like.
A couple of months ago, one of our pastors received a call from the central office of the public schools about “a potential ministry opportunity.” When he arrived at the school official’s office, he was escorted into a conference room in which a large county map had been spread across the table. The representative asked our pastor, “Does the Summit have plans to launch a campus in this part of the county?” Our pastor said, “Uhh . . . I’m not sure . . . why?”
The representative replied, “There is a school in the eastern part of our county where 70 percent of the students receive free or reduced lunch. The school is failing, and nothing we’ve done has been able to help. We were hoping that the Summit Church could plant a campus nearby and adopt this school.”
Ten years ago they would hardly let us onto a school campus. Now they are rolling out maps in front of us and asking us to help them.
Some of our most exciting stories of redemption come out of these community-engaging ministries. A couple of years ago a few folks at our church got involved in a prison ministry. It started out small — just a couple of our church members leading a Bible study in the prison. While doing it, they learned that the prison has a program in which inmates, for the months leading up to their release, can get out of prison for a few hours once a week with a “sponsor” family. Several of these prisoners opt to come to our church during those few hours with families from our church.
I have baptized many of those prisoners. A few of them have started Summit small groups in their cellblock, and this past year we launched our first campus in the Wake County correctional prison. Earlier this year I baptized the imam of the Islamic community from that prison, who had been brought to Christ by the faithful love, prayer, and outreach of our brothers there in the prison. He now helps facilitate a Summit campus in that prison.
Some of the prisoners have begun to ask how God might use them in the mission after they are released. One recently testified to our church:
I always viewed God as somewhere “out there.” . . . I knew that he was real, but I didn’t really take him seriously. Now, since experiencing Christ at the Summit Church, I feel like my purpose isn’t just to stay here after I am released. I love The Summit, but I think God wants to send me overseas.
Another told me how friendship with a family from our church had changed his life — “They showed me for the first time in my life that I mattered to someone — at least to God and his people.” He told me that the first thing he was going to do when he got out of prison was get his family to join the church, and his plan is to have them adopt a prisoner so that he could show someone else that they mattered, too.
From prisoner to missionary. From “taking from” society to seeking to bless it. “So there was much joy in that city” (Acts 8:8 ESV).
The gospel creates a culture in which people leave their comfort to demonstrate the beauty and power of the gospel “outside the camp” (Heb. 13:13 ESV). As they do, people you would never expect to step foot in a church, like the Philippian jailer, begin to ask the reason for the hope and generosity at work within us (see 1 Peter 3:15). Soon enough, by God’s grace, they will be asking, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” (Acts 16:30).
Jesus truly is beautiful. When he is lifted up, he draws people to himself. Jesus always had crowds of thieves, prostitutes, tax collectors, and down-and-outs gathered around him, even before they had reformed their lives. Sinners far from God will still gather around the Jesus of grace and truth today, and they will throng to our churches to hear more about him as they experience his healing touch through our people.
Are you painting the invisible Christ for the homeless, the orphan, the international student, the Muslim cleric, the prisoner, the unwed mother, and the at-risk teen? Are you painting his love for the gay and lesbian community in your city?
Do you expect these groups to walk into your church and want to hear the message just because of your engaging style and great music? Likely, the only way to reach these kinds of people will be through radical demonstrations of love, grace, relationship, and Spirit power in the community.
If you are a leader, give your people “permission” to listen for what the Spirit of God wants to do in and through them about the needs they encounter every day in their community. Teach them to yearn for those 39 of 40 miracles that God wants to do through them, to see their city through the lens of the gospel, and to yearn for the “vast and endless sea” of gospel-expanse in their community.
Encourage them to begin ministries — ministries that they, not their pastors, will own.
Give them vision, and then stay out of their way.
Our journey toward that vision started with one simple question: Where can we bring “much joy” to our city as a demonstration of the gospel?
Ask it, and then sit back and watch what happens.