CHAPTER 4
YOU WILL RECEIVE POWER
Want God’s power? Do something that requires it.
You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses.
JESUS (ACTS 1:8)
Lightning . . . fire . . . power of God sort of stuff.
INDIANA JONES TO G-MEN
Few from this current generation will ever understand how cool Evel Knievel was to millions of people during the 1970s. If you like extreme sports, you have Evel and my generation to thank for it. Every kid growing up in the 70s owned the Evel Knievel stunt cycle, and we carried on his legacy by imitating his many jumps on our BMX bikes, landing us in the emergency room, just like our hero. Knievel was the infamous motorcycle legend who jumped over buses, through rings of fire, and attempted to jump the Snake River canyon. Yes. That really happened. He became a household name—for no other reason than he was willing to do what nobody else thought possible—and risk multiple fractures. Over his career, he made seventy-five ramp jumps, held the world’s record for the most jumped cars, and suffered 433 bone fractures. Knievel admitted that he wasn’t the best motorcycle rider in the world. He’d built his entire career on risk. He once said, “Nobody wants to see me die. They just don’t want to miss it when I do.” Like missionaries through the ages, Knievel flung himself into the air, convinced that the glory of it was worth the broken bones.*
The difference between the missionary and the daredevil is whose glory they’re flying for. When we commit to reaching the unreached, risk is inevitable. It could be the risk of rejection, being misunderstood, or losing friends. Alternatively, the risk could pay off, bringing God glory, winning souls, and seeing the kingdom come into your neighborhood. Flinging yourself out into the unknown, like a punk doing a stage dive, means you believe God will be there to catch you. We’re not talking jumping off of any temples, and tempting God to act to the tune of rock and roll suicide bravado. We’re talking about doing the things Jesus asked. Preaching the gospel. Making disciples. The early church was willing to embark on front-line mission work in the confidence that his acts through their acts would lead to the effects recorded in the book of Acts. The British Special Air Service commandos’ slogan is “Who Dares, Wins.” It’s true in modern warfare and its truth echoes in the kingdom.
Risk. Adventure. Power. They are all connected. The power of God often comes after prayerfully seeking him, and then stepping out to do the impossible. Without that flair of adventure that comes with the risk of failure, there is no place for faith. God generally works his power in response to faith. The good news is that even the bestowing of God’s power comes from his presence, and his presence is always guaranteed by his grace. He wants to pour his grace out on you as badly as he wants to pour it out on those who are lost.
JACKED UP
Making my way across the grounds of the “Next Hippest Thing” Christian conference to meet with a colleague, I’d already made up my mind about this conference. I couldn’t stand it. Despite so much effort poured into making it seem hip, hopping, and happening, it was so lame it needed somebody to lower it down through the roof to Jesus. Although I like my music hard, fast, and furious, I craved a dose of mental Dramamine simply because what the conference lacked in musical taste, it compensated with volume.*
I was still suffering from “mission hangover,” a condition commonly experienced by anybody who’s returned home after a significant time on the mission field. Returning from a twelve-year overseas mission bender, my head struggled to process America’s Burger King Christianity: Jesus your way. Knowing it’s that way or the highway, many pastors sell out to it. After all, bags of cash are needed to keep the religion-as-big-business machine running. If the beast must be fed, then spiritual leaders feel forced to cater to the crowds and give them what they want, rather than what they need. Lest you feel too sorry for them, understand that it’s a symbiotic relationship. Leaders use the people to keep paying the bills, and congregations use their leaders to put on a good show and make them feel better about doing nothing in Jesus’s name. The zenith is reached when football stars and celebrities are hired to “preach,” elaborate stages are built like sets, and thousand-dollar props are brought in as a draw. After all, when God isn’t enough, giving people an incentive to come back is costly; especially when competing with other leaders who’ve got the same idea. In the absence of a genuine spiritual encounter, they’ve opted for the best of spiritual entertainment. Thus, the responsibility of telling the greatest story ever told is replaced by attempts to throw the greatest show on earth.
When you’re running church like a circus, it’s safe to say there’s something you won’t find in the center ring—God’s presence.
After being on the mission field with a Bible in my hands, I was too jacked up for spectator Christianity. I’d just been on the greatest adventure of my life. There would be no going back to “normal” expectations. Cutting-edge to me was no longer about being cool. It was about being on the front line. Therefore, I struggled as I stumbled through the booths, past the food trucks, Jesus-junk vendors, and hipster carnival rides catering to Christians who wanted to be entertained. The airwaves competed amid the comedian, the live band on stage, and obnoxious music blaring from the coffee house, giving the conference the unintentional vibe of a three ring circus. To my right, people were riding a miniature Ferris wheel, whooping and shouting, “Wheeeeee!” To my left, people were shooting paintball guns filled with opaque paint at a ginormous picture of Jesus. People ran around with croquet mallets, paintball guns, and all kinds of entertainment props. Others slept on hammocks placed all throughout the green, apparently too pooped to party. This place had nothing on the temple in Jerusalem when Jesus upturned tables, cracked the whip, and screamed at them to leave (John 2:13–22). It’s fair to say that if Jesus had been at the conference, he might be reaching for the croquet mallets for a different reason. The worst thing of all was that the intentional sensory overload was cranked way up to produce an illusion that everybody was having a good time.
Except they weren’t.
A lingering glance at the attendees told me they were bored with fun. What they really craved was an adventure. The conference was just another force-feeding in an endless stream at the buffet table of entertainment, except this time, it was stamped with religion. People have settled for entertainment-based Christianity aimed at enticing people in, and keeping them there by pumping the volume up to harder, faster music, and by offering a plethora of cheap thrills. I walked away from that conference convinced of one thing. The church has substituted fun instead of adventure.
CHRISTIANS ARE BORED
The result of circus Christianity is rooms packed with Christians who are bored of sitting in rows and staring at the back of each other’s heads. People are tired of being treated like an audience even if they don’t realize it. Deep down, they know they’re bored, they just don’t why.
In 1986, U2 front man, Bono, visited African shanty towns, and something in his soul was awakened as a result of the experience. He penned the song “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For,” but perhaps no song in Bono’s career has been so misunderstood. Bono wrote, “I believe in the Kingdom Come. Then all the colors will bleed into one.”
Wait for it. The chorus comes back around.
“But I still haven’t found what I’m looking for.” Christians shook their heads, calling Bono an apostate. Bono calls it a gospel song with a restless spirit. That restlessness was Bono’s confession that in embracing God, it raised even more questions than he’d had before he’d fallen at the feet of the cross. For Bono, believing was just the beginning of the journey. Bono knew that there was something more.
Something bigger than the mind-numbing “fun.”
He was called on an adventure. To go “Where The Streets Have No Name.” To make an impact in the world. When Bono penned the words to that song after spending time in villages and humanitarian relief stations in Africa, and it had created a hunger for something more. He had gotten a taste of his real purpose, and it was so much better than being a rock star.
If we’re honest with ourselves (and we so rarely are), would we say we experience all that God has for us? We all are made to crave the wild, the freedom, the element of danger—great things sought and risked and accomplished. We need to venture into the deep. Moby Dick, the ultimate classic adventure tale about the mysterious pursuit of God in the form of a legendary white whale, expresses this longing:
Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off—then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship. There is nothing surprising in this. If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree, sometime or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me.1
There you have it. The confession of the damp, drizzly November soul that it was made for something more. Paul expressed it when he said, “I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me” (Phil. 3:12). Paul desired to know his purpose, to achieve it, and to leave a lasting impact.
So ask yourself, what is your desire?
I believe when we are saved, our desires are at their strongest. Our sense of adventure is intact. The Spirit of God comes to live inside of us, and we are thrilled with his presence, believing that anything is possible. But soon, somebody tamps us down, douses the fire within us, or steps on our dreams, telling us that’s not how it works. So we settle. Our problem isn’t that our desires after fleshly things are too strong. It’s that our spiritual desires aren’t stronger. According to C. S. Lewis, it’s that our desires aren’t strong enough.
In the absence of our soul’s truest desires, we settle for an illicit affair, a bottle, vengeful fantasies, even though none of these things ever lead to fulfillment. There’s a raging ocean of living water inside each of us that only Jesus can still, redirecting the powerful flow of our existence. The soul can become a submissive entity that conforms to a container, or water can flow wildly out of control, spilling everywhere. Sometimes water is at peace, and at other times it is a tempest of destructive force. When a Christian isn’t doing what he or she is made for, they become restless, just sitting in rows, staring at the back of each other’s heads.
New Christians have pent up energy intended for mission. As Paul says, the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you (Rom. 8:11). That’s a power greater than the neutron bomb. It was deposited in us because we were meant to be fighting alongside the armies of the host of heaven, taking enemy territory, taking captives, and taking names. If we don’t use that energy to impact, it can become a destructive force.
Our souls were hardwired for the adventure which requires the presence of the Holy Spirit. In the absence of experiencing that power, we crave spiritual stimulation and go looking for it in other areas. These usually get us into trouble: an extramarital affair, shady deals, or violent encounters like those pictured in Fight Club. Bored with a life of mundanity, we vainly attempt to satiate the restlessness by substituting our adventurous calling with entertainment and stimulation. Gorging nightly on a multi-media frenzy, we live vicariously through viewing the titillating lives of fictional characters like Jack Bauer or the exploits of “real-life” sports superstars. Like taste buds that crave sugar, while the body craves nutrients, the deeper cry of our soul is silenced by the deafening sound of society’s soul-numbing idolatries. C. S. Lewis remarked, “When the modern world says to us aloud, ‘You may be religious when you are alone,’ it adds under its breath, ‘and I will see to it that you never are alone.’ ”2 We never are. We are constantly bombarded by virtual images of others who are living the adventure we should be living. As a result, we find ourselves unable to sit in stillness. We lose the capacity to reflect on our disease of dis-ease. Media is incessantly crammed at us through the buzz of messages and “push notifications.” We are never at peace, even as we sit on the toilet, drive in our cars, and wait in the checkout line. Although Friedrich Nietzsche claimed that religion was the opiate of the masses, somewhere along the way entertainment became our drug of choice. Rather than supplying an alternative, the mainstream evangelical church has become all too happy to supply the injection. It all amounts to the same thing—a substitution for living the ultimate adventure that Jesus set before us in Matthew 28 when he said, “Go and make disciples of all nations.”
I’m firmly convinced that Christians were made for the conquest of mission. Jesus said, “You will be my witnesses” (Acts 1:8). Our function in the world gives us purpose. Like UK garage hip hop band The Streets rapped, “Geezers need excitement. If their lives don’t provide them, they seek it out in violence.” Christians need to kick out the jams on mission, or they become Christians-gone-wild.
I can tell you one thing. Nobody wakes up in the morning and thinks, You know, I’d like to ruin my life and create a scandal that will break my wife’s heart, rip my family to shreds, and destroy my name, haunting me to the grave. In fact, they don’t think about it at all. But somewhere, lurking under the surface, there’s an underlying restlessness in a person before they get into trouble. King David got into trouble when he was bored. “In the spring, at the time when kings go off to war . . . David remained in Jerusalem” (2 Sam. 11:1). David decided to take it easy, and he got bored. He was designed as a war machine to whoop up on Philistines and kick Amalekite butt. But when he wasn’t out doing what he was made for, he ended up doing someone’s wife. That wasn’t the type of conquest that God had mapped out for him. Think about it from this angle. Every believing Christian has been invaded by the Holy Spirit, who’s chomping at the bit to lead them on the adventure of their lives. If they’re not living the adventure, and chasing the Holy Spirit’s dream for their life, they can still feel the inner conflict caused by the spiritual inertia. Paul spoke of the Spirit’s power for mission when he said, “To this end I strenuously contend with all the energy Christ so powerfully works in me” (Col. 1:29), and Paul found an outlet for that power through mission. Make no mistake. There is a resulting restlessness inside of every Spirit-inhabited believer aching to unleash the Spirit’s power as they fall blunderingly forward on a mission bigger than themselves.
And our churches have done little to help us release the tension.
The part of us that’s made for eternal glory kicks up, kicks off, and kicks out. Christians want to live the glory of the kingdom and see it unleashed in the lives of others around them. They don’t want to be catered to. They don’t want to be entertained. They don’t want to be pampered with programs. Much of what we do in church is designed to put a finger to the mouth, and gently shush them back to sleep. What if Sundays were about awakening something that lay dormant within us? What if Sunday mornings were about hitting the streets? What if our times together were about making an impact?
THE SECRET SAUCE
I want to let you in on a secret. When the church prayed its guts out in Acts chapter one, they had an ulterior motive. Jesus had unfolded the Father’s plan, telling them that they were the divine secret weapon to reach the ends of the earth with the gospel. There was no plan B. The plan A team knew they couldn’t pull off their mission without power, so they fell on their faces in desperation to seek it. When confronted with a naturally impossible mission, the apostles realized they needed the power of the presence of the living God (Acts 1:8). Every great story involving God on the move is summed up by a “Holy Spirit or bust” mentality. This is why the apostles saw radical conversions and whole towns (like Ephesus) caught up in a spiritual revival.
We need to reawaken the awareness of God’s promised power in our midst. It starts with re-engaging with our radical mission from Jesus. Greater empowerment by the Holy Spirit starts with the helplessness we feel in “facing a task unfinished / that brings us to our knees.”3 Being overwhelmed is the first step to getting back where we belong. Even Paul said, “Who is sufficient for these things?” (2 Cor. 2:16 ESV). The front line of mission is where the church has always belonged, and waxed strongest. The world’s deep need for salvation won’t just go away, but the power and authority will if we ignore the mission for too long. When pastors trade in their role of front line gospel workers and instead become spiritual, behind-the-counter cubicle clerks, locked away from the people they’re called to reach, they lose their gospel edge. Our church structures encourage us to take our best leaders out of the world, pull them back from the front lines, and employ them as pencil pushers for Jesus. Look, some desk time is fine, but shouldn’t we be walking the beat as well? The result is that the average believer comes into contact with more people who need Jesus by noon on Monday than their pastor will in an entire week.
The front lines are where Jesus promised that the Holy Spirit would be with us in power. Without the risk inherent in the mission of Jesus, we would have no great need for his power. He guarantees he will go with us into “no man’s land,” kicking butt, and taking names. The power of the Holy Spirit is promised only in in the context of mission. Jesus promised his presence as we gather, but his power when we spread out.
Note the link in the following passages between Jesus sending us out, and the promise of the Holy Spirit’s power to accompany us as we go: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations . . . And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age” (Matt. 28:18–20, emphasis mine). So first, Jesus tells them he’s got all the authority they need to reach the unreached to the ends of the earth, and the promise is that he’ll be with them as they go. The going and the empowering are inextricably linked together like peas and carrots, Forest and Jenny, Beavis and his unmentionable friend. Again the link between power and mobilization is inherent in the verses that are the theme of this book “But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me” (Acts 1:8 NKJV). Power is always given for witness, not for running a show.
Note how Luke and Paul link mission and power together:
▪ “With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And God’s grace was so powerfully at work in them all” (Acts 4:33).
▪ “My message and preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power” (1 Cor. 2:4).
▪ “Our gospel came to you not simply with words, but also with power, with the Holy Spirit and deep conviction” (1 Thess. 1:5).
The Holy Spirit is always with his people (Matt. 18:20), but he seems to show up with special power when his people are out of their depth. That’s because the secret ingredient for the secret sauce of power is risk. After all, why would the Comforter comfort people who are already comfortable? He comforts those who have ventured out of their comfort zones. The Helper is especially present when we actually need help because we’re doing things that take us out of our depth. During a prayer meeting, one of our leaders addressed the church, “We pray for more power from the Holy Spirit, but why would he pour himself on us when we continue to do nothing?”
We may long to experience more of God’s presence, but maybe we aren’t doing anything we actually need him for. If our goal is to cram a room full of people, we don’t really need the Holy Spirit to accomplish it. Tozer said, “If the Holy Spirit was withdrawn from the church today, 95 percent of what we do would go on and no one would know the difference. If the Holy Spirit had been withdrawn from the New Testament church, 95 percent of what they did would stop, and everybody would know the difference.”4 I’ve been to seminars where church growth barriers are discussed without even a mention of the Holy Spirit. Because of the waste of time, I usually got up and left the room halfway through, convinced that the apostle Paul would have done the same. Trying to fill seats with butts, instead of engaging in the radical front line mission we read about in the book of Acts, is something like straddling a Harley Davidson, gripping the throttle and saying, “Vroom! Vroom!”, but without ever turning the ignition. It’s cute, but there’s no power. In the twenty-first century, most of what we call “mission” doesn’t actually require God’s power, it just takes a building. If most of our churches lost their buildings overnight, they’d be forced out onto the streets first-century style.
Out there.
Where we belong anyways.
MISSION: THE MISSING INGREDIENT
If the goal of church is to cram record numbers of people into a building, what is the goal once they get there? I’ve been in ministry for twenty-two years now. The greatest favor I ever did myself (or anybody else) was when I stopped pastoring like I was babysitting Christians from the pulpit, and started unleashing missionaries from the pews. Besides, “You will receive power” doesn’t make much sense if the main activity we engage in when we come together on Sundays at 11:00 a.m. is sitting on our collective duffs.
When I was a youth pastor a few decades back, I vainly attempted to transform bored, pew-sitting Christian kids into missionaries engaged in their culture. Like most Christians, they sucked at reading their Bibles, praying, attending church, sharing their faith, and giving their money.
Nothing I did was working. Then, a dramatic change came after our first short-term mission trip. I loaded all the students on an airplane and turned them loose on mission in Eastern Europe. During that trip, I began to witness a transformation taking place within those kids as they sensed God’s presence. The only difference between home and abroad was their intentionality. Like the apostles, they faced an impossible mission, felt out of their depth, and were willing to risk stepping out nonetheless.
On a train whistling through Hungary, I walked through successive cars to check on the high school students spread throughout its carriages. Passing through the compartments, I witnessed sixteen-year-old girls weeping together with Hungarian families as they got on their knees and came to Christ. A young man in another carriage had his Bible open on his lap, talking to a businessman through a Hungarian interpreter. That train became a moving Holy of Holies.
God was in the house. You could feel him.
From that trip forward, God’s presence and the thrill of the adventure catapulted those youths from spectators into active disciples of Jesus. No leader ever had to tell them again to read their Bibles, pray, serve, or give. Prior to this experience, nobody had ever told them why they should. Now they knew why, and it had to do with fulfilling bigger purposes in their lives than just themselves. It had to do with mission, and these things were tools necessary to accomplish it. But beyond that, they hungered to do these things now, because they understood how desperately they needed to walk in the presence of God, and because they were enjoying him, they were no longer bored. The spiritual disciplines of reading, praying, giving, and serving were never meant to be the ends themselves, but the means to an end. They are what a drum kit, power amp, microphone, and bass guitar are to a band. The goal was to play a song, not to play instruments. God being glorified was the song, and it’s a tune best played on mission. Without the tuning fork of mission, the instrument of Christianity sounds off key. These kids who had multiple Bibles, preachers who preached exemplary sermons, and devotional guides aplenty, needed the outlet of mission to tie it all together.
And our church services hadn’t provided it.
THE POWER VACUUM
The Holy Spirit was like the wind. As his first order of business after Jesus’s ascension, he tore through the upper room and lit fires in his followers that turned the world upside down.
He’s powerful.
Untamable.
Unpredictable.
But what if I told you I could predict where the Holy Spirit was guaranteed to turn up in a profound, unmistakable way? What if I told you I could spread out a map, and stab pushpins into areas I knew the Spirit was raging in a spiritual tempest? Those who build wind tunnels have to know where to harness the wind. Wherever Christians are venturing out of their comfort zones, battling on the front lines, you will find him being faithful to his promise to give us power. He is found at work when they go to places, or do things where they need him to be the God of the book of Acts. A return to first-century risk and mission will guarantee a return to first-century power.
Whenever a Christian embarks on mission, they enter the slipstream of the Holy Spirit. Have you ever sensed God speaking through you as you’re talking to somebody about their soul? “We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God” (2 Cor. 5:20, emphasis mine). There is a power in evangelism that any Christian, at any time, can experience. God just waits for us to enter into how he’s already working in the world. The Spirit works powerfully, and as believers, we experience a jolt—because we’re doing what we were made for. The ignition key to the old Harley Davidson turns, and as it does, we experience a rev of power from the Holy Spirit. He courses through us like fuel flooding into a carburetor. It becomes as addictive as hitting the open road, and the appeal of adventure eventually replaces every other cheap thrill. Like grizzled old bikers, missionaries ride to live and live to ride. Although pitied by Christians sitting at home doing nothing, the missionaries are privileged to live the adventure and tell all the best stories. But it doesn’t have to be that way.
Have you noticed the scandal? The missionary stories recounted by bored Christians are only told in hushed whispers over our coffee like rumors from a strange land. Sure, most missionaries may dress like nerds, but they live like spiritual Jedi. As foreign missionaries unfold the tales of their adventures, such as smuggling Bibles into China, or into Russia before the fall of communism, those in the pew wonder why they’ve never experienced these wonders, but deep down they already know. Many Christians have never left the garage and taken the hog out for a spin where they could fully open up the carburetor. Maybe they’ve never embraced the Force like young Luke Skywalker and run off half-cocked to save the world from the dark side. Their biggest thrill is rushing into Toshi Station to pick up more power converters. Deep inside, their souls yearn for something more.
I have a theory. Missionaries witness God on the move because being on mission is like having a front row seat to what God is already doing. The more frontline you go, the more of his activity you’ll experience. Let me be clear here. The front lines are any time you engage somebody who doesn’t know Jesus. Any Christian can do that at any time, and God will have gotten there before you. After returning from the mission field overseas after twelve years, I was determined to stay a missionary, in America. This is why I targeted urban areas, the trenches of dangerous, sleazy neighborhoods, where the mainstream Christian church rarely ventures.
When young moms start playgroups in parks intending to let the children play, but also lead other moms to Jesus, that’s front line. I’ve witnessed churches running kids’ karate, ballet, or dance lessons for underprivileged families and single parents who couldn’t afford it. They brought in unbelieving instructors from dojos and dance studios and witnessed loads of people being saved. Your front lines could be talking with a friend, or inviting your neighbor to dinner. It could be your office or community gardening group. What makes the difference is your intentionality. The disciples received power because they were about to do something. And you have the same power if reaching those Christ died for is your aim. Christians who are dejected and destitute, but desperate enough to break out of their frustrated boredom, find themselves meeting with God himself. After all, that’s where Jesus concentrated his ministry during his three years—not in the church buildings, but in public spaces.
In the 1980s my mentor, pastor Peter Jeffery, came back from a Reformed evangelical minister’s conference convicted that he wasn’t doing enough to reach the lost. Personally discipled by Martyn Lloyd-Jones, he’d been a minister in Rugby, England for years, but seeing little fruit. He returned from that conference determined to step out in faith and evangelize. Nobody can fully explain it, but the result was that the Holy Spirit started ripping through that town so powerfully, that somebody was converted every week for two years straight. The clincher? Nobody was saved by any of the outreaches that they put on after that conference, but something had changed. God turned up and started working in them, around them, and in spite of them.
Jesus promised that his authority, presence, and power would continue with them as long as they continued on mission. “Surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age” (Matt. 28:20). Conversely, when the church has lost its mission, you can guarantee it has also lost the power of the Holy Spirit. He may be there, but not with the depth or the roar that he could be. Why? Because we’re not even taking the first steps toward reaching the unreached. We may cry out with Gideon, “God, why don’t you go out with our armies anymore?”5
The answer is, we don’t go out.
RUSH THE STAGE AND DIVE
I know that most of you won’t plant churches, and that’s cool, but nowhere else have I witnessed people change from pew sitters to urban missionaries. A team of ordinary people was transformed into pioneer missionary church planting daredevil commandos. After being in Europe as a front line missionary, I promised the core team of this church plant that they’d see things they’d only read about in books. I told them that crack addicts would get clean. Gang members would miraculously come to faith. Experience from twelve years in Europe had taught me that anyone can go full frontal missionary without having to buy an overseas plane ticket. As soon as your foot hits enemy occupied soil, the Holy Spirit answers the call with an air strike. It takes faith to abandon security. When a believer jettisons their security, a temporary vacuum is created. That vacuum sucks in faith like a carburetor and gives mission its power. Isn’t that the story of every biography of a man or woman powerfully used by God? Their stepping out in faith was a direct invitation to the Holy Spirit to team up on a date with adventure. As men and women of faith, they finally went radical enough to rush the stage and dive. J. Hudson Taylor is said to have remarked, “Unless there is the element of extreme risk in our exploits for God, there is no need for faith.”
Embarking on scary mission endeavors that take us out of our depths, out of our comfort zones, are activities that the Holy Spirit promised to help with. The things that most people run from are the very things he runs to. Keep that in mind if you ever want to have a crash collision with him. In other words, run toward what the church seems to be running from—the place where the unreached are waiting—and you will crash into God himself. It’s not the only way, but it’s one of the fastest. That is what every hero or heroine of the faith has done throughout church history. Bold faith that takes prayerful risks* makes the crucial difference in living a power-filled, adventurous life.
NOW OR NEVER
When the Spirit moves through his people and reaches the unreached, adventure is in abundance. Don’t be fooled by all the talk of urban mission floating around these days by middle-class hipster church planters. The truth is, they’re not going into the wound with the salve, but are going around the edges. We still aren’t reaching the urban people. We’re reaching the suburbia as they move into urban areas through gentrification. Where’s the adventure in that? I’ll use a typical Sunday in Long Beach as an example of the wild ride mission can be. A prostitute stood up and announced she wanted to leave the sex trade. A guy tried to make change from the offering. One of our Sunday school teachers was bitten by a pit bull. A once-hopeless heroin addict stood up and shared how God took away his suicidal thoughts and was helping him keep clean. A recently converted ex-con asked to train for ministry.
I’ve lost count of how many people at our church have confessed to committing murder. Our record for prison time is held by Tommy, a former FBI Most Wanted poster child and a thirty-eight-year inmate. His record is hard to beat, but some come close. Some tell stories of running drugs for the Mexican Mafia and some tell of their partners being murdered. One of my leaders remarked last Sunday, “Either this grace thing is real, or we’re in trouble, because these are some really dangerous people.” One night early on in our church plant, while doing an open mic discussion in a coffee shop, I spoke with a young man who recently moved to Long Beach, “What takes getting used to the most?” I asked. He was from the South, so I expected to hear complaints about the pace of life. He told me the hardest thing to adjust to in Long Beach was being awoken by gunshots most nights.
At our church, we baptized the ex-gangster brother of one of our leaders. He was shot dead by police before the year was out for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. I knew planting a church in a dangerous park in the heart of the urban Long Beach would be tough, and we’d need the Holy Spirit, badly. On our first day, somebody tried to steal our sound system out of the truck before we’d even unpacked it. But the Spirit turned up, I preached in the open air, and a woman got saved on the spot. We decided to keep meeting outside, and crowds of people would line up around the perimeter and listen. We saw people miraculously delivered from years of crack addiction, prostitutes leave the sex trade, exorcisms, and some radical conversions in the first eighteen months of ministry.
It didn’t start off like that, but I remember the day that everything changed.
At first, my core team had been along for the ride, but they hadn’t yet hopped into the driver’s seat. Two thousand years ago, the disciples of Jesus turned up one day to hear him teach like he had been doing each day. As they took their places around him, he waved them good-bye, “Go into all the villages in Judea,” and sent out the seventy-two (Luke 10:1–23). They weren’t ready, but Jesus forced them on an adventure. Like me, they stumbled into it as they reluctantly dispersed on mission.
Church planters get to experiment on churches a lot. I decided to “pull a Jesus” on my team and send them, unprepared, to reach the pimps, prostitutes, homeless, dealers, families, and everyone else who met in various areas in the sixteen-acre park. I preached for ten minutes, then told them to take the food and feed the homeless, and we’d see them back in forty-five minutes. They stood and looked at me blankly. That only got me more excited, “There! That’s the exact look that Jesus got from the seventy-two!” As the realization dawned on them that I was actually serious, the blank looks on their faces morphed into wide-eyed disbelief, eventually settling into looks of undisguised fear. I laughed to myself as it became clear why Jesus did this to his disciples. They had no idea what God was about to do, but he did. And so did I.
Forty-five minutes was a joke. Two and a half hours later the last of them circled back to our meeting point. Without exception, all who returned had joy on their faces like the disciples who marveled that “the sick were healed, and even the demons listened to us.” Until that day, they had never led people to Jesus before. They were hooked.
Addicted.
Ready.
These days, I’ve come to believe that being ready looks a lot like simply being willing.
PITCHING A TENT IN A BEAN FIELD
During an interview for my first book, Church Zero: Raising 1st Century Churches Out of the Ashes of the 21st Century Church, a radio host introduced me as a church reformer. Although I’d never thought of myself as one, as a missionary in Europe, I suppose I had to be. Nothing we did in American churches seemed to work there. In Europe you can’t just rent a building, announce a series, drop leaflets, hire a band, and expect Europeans to fill a room. You’ve got to go get them. You need to compel them to come in.
I’d come from the Calvary Chapel movement, where a forty-five-year-old pastor named Chuck Smith was used by God to ignite a counter-cultural, generation-changing movement by hitting the beaches with the gospel in the daytime. And at night, bringing people into a tent set up in a nearby bean field. Not content to hide within the four walls of a church, Smith and his hippie preachers hit the sand and actively went after a lost generation.
The tent was a bold, radical move. Smith risked losing the fifty existing congregants who were used to literal pews, fancy Sunday-go-to-meetin’ clothes, and “pew sitter” church. The story about Chuck telling his church he’d rip out the carpet and upholstered pews and replace them with concrete benches he’d hose down every week is legendary. He was a man on a rescue mission to seek and save the lost generation in front of him, and the further he stepped outside his comfort zone, the more the Spirit fell upon the people.
According to Ed Stetzer, nearly every contemporary church owes its style to the Calvary Chapel movement. The stylistic changes that Chuck’s hippie church instituted to remove roadblocks from the lost youth culture have somehow become about us again. We play our music, preach to amuse ourselves, and tailor services to cater to Christian crowds.
I watched the memorial service for Chuck Smith a few years back. The leaders of the movement recounted the stories of how God used to move, and questions surfaced in my mind. Shouldn’t we be out there today, still doing radical and risky things? Shouldn’t we be motivating our people to launch out away from our comfy megachurches and get back onto the beach? The urban areas? The parks? The halfway houses? Shouldn’t we be out reaching the marginalized, unchurched, and out of touch in today’s society, instead of recounting stories about how we did it four decades ago?
The lost world around us won’t wait for us to figure it out. They’ll continue to go to hell while we gather around our campfire telling stories about when giants once walked the earth, men beat their chests, and women swooned. Radical is as radical does. Radical is stepping out. Radical is trusting. Radical is the leap. It’s not where you’re leaping, but who you’re leaping towards—the unreached.
Reaching the “hippies” or whoever is unreached in our community, is costly. Mission is uncomfortable. It takes sacrifice. It takes the kind of radical Christianity that pitches a tent in a bean field and calls it church. And until the Spirit of God moves upon his people again, I’m afraid that will continue to be a rare thing in these days. But if the church won’t head to the front lines, it won’t see the God that our spiritual forefathers saw. As long as she stays huddled in the bunker, sheltered from the action of the battlefield, she’ll never know the power of the air support that the Holy Spirit can bring in. We’ll be depressed and fearful like Gideon, thrashing wheat in a winepress, asking, “Where are all his wonders that our ancestors told us about?” (Judg. 6:13), when we should be a city upon a hill. Gideon felt that God had abandoned his generation, but wanted to see power in his generation, not just hear about what God used to do. Jesus is beckoning his church to walk out on the water again. However, like the old saying goes, if we want to walk on water, we’re going to have to get out of the boat! According to the promise of Jesus, in Acts 1:8, where there is little risk, there is little power. And in the words of daredevil Evel Knievel, “Where there is little risk, there is little reward.”
Discussion Questions
(For Dr. Jones, the Princeton Professor in you)
1. What things are you running from right now?
2. What’s the riskiest thing you’ve ever done for the gospel?
3. How have you seen the Holy Spirit work in an unbelievable way in your own life?
4. What crazy, risky thing could you do to really make a difference in the world?
5. What would it take to get you to take the next step towards making it happen?
Adventurous Actions
(For Indiana, the Temple Raider in you)
1. Contact a missionary this week asking them what’s the riskiest experience they’ve had as a missionary.
2. Ask them what experience they’ve had that seemed like it was from the pages of Acts.
3. Attend a church plant in a needy area for two weeks.
4. Make plans to visit a missionary within the next year.
*For what it’s worth, Knievel became a hardcore follower of Christ at the end of his life. We’ll see the glory boy in glory.
*Apparently, time had not improved on C. S. Lewis’ criticism of Christian music as “second rate lyrics set to third rate tunes.” But as I tuned into Christian radio, the kicker was the commercials that aired during the breaks. Plastic surgery was marketed as a way to improve your witness because people can see you smile again after a little nip and tuck. Christian divorce lawyers prominently pervade station breaks to help you “do it God’s way.”
*I owe this phrase to Mac Lake, one of my mentors and a phenomenal leader.