Strategic Repositioning
The Bible is filled with stories that begin with painful adversity but end up demonstrating how God repositions His people to advance His Kingdom.
Consider Moses who, in the middle of a sea of death, is repositioned to be used by God.
Consider Joseph who is sold off by his brothers, left to rot forgotten in jail and was being positioned to provide for God’s people.
Consider the early disciples of Jesus who were scattered due to persecution but were actually being repositioned by God to advance His Kingdom.
Over and over again, God works ahead of time to prepare for what is on the horizon. God is never caught off guard by the events of time. Instead, by his grace, provides a path through the wilderness by positioning his people ahead of time for the work to be done.
Could it be that we are in such a season?
Data was recently released for the Church of the Nazarene. Over the last 8 years, they have lost 15% of their people. Additional data was released at the significant aging of their ministerial population. While I am more informed by Nazarene data, additional research released by the SBC shows similar problems. There is ongoing division in the Methodist Church. Regardless what the optimists would try to convince us to believe, things do not look good for the Church in America. You can’t look at the data and walk away thinking things are going great.
However, God does not seem to be worried. He never is threatened by the actions of humanity but works to draw people to himself. His Spirit is actively engaged in the world regardless of what the data suggests is going on, or not going on, in the established church in America.
When I pastored in Greenville, SC, we had established Life Groups that thrived during the lockdown of Covid days. They met in open garages and in parks where they could meet out in the open. They functioned as micro-churches in Greenville County, led by what were essentially ministers in the absence of ordained clergy.
Now that I am in Nassau County, Florida, we are engaged in a micro-church movement that seeks to have a flat leadership structure centered around core values. We are seeing young people excited to be entrusted with the sacraments of the church as they make inroads into dark places with the good news about Jesus and as they radically love humanity.
A dear friend of mine has opened a wine/beer/mead tasting room that seeks to be an extension of the Kingdom of God in their community. Like Jesus, they are literally breaking bread and passing the wine to extend God’s grace. They provide space for stories to be shared. They listen. They love.
These, and many other, contexts are examples of how God is repositioning his people so that, regardless of what happens with the established, campus based churches, and regardless of what happens in America, there will be those scattered across our Nation with new / ancient expressions of the church in communities.
Now we don’t yet know what God has in mind to do with it all. It is my hope that the future of God’s plan has space for established, denominational, campus based expressions of God’s Kingdom that serve alongside what are now seen as atypical (and probably by some as heretical) expressions of God’s Kingdom. Only time will tell that story.
If I end up a heretic for my approach, I am willing to take that risk if it means trying to align myself with the cruciform Jesus who seems to always kneel to lift the lonely, broken, destroyed and hurting. I will empty myself of everything to love in the name of Jesus.
Every day I go to my classroom to lift up the broken, wounded, hurting, unloved person. I am happy to be considered a lunatic and heretic for this repositioning. I am approaching a year from stepping away from the Church of the Nazarene but will speak more about that later date.
For now, is God wanting to reposition you for what is to come? People will accuse you like Moses. People will stop respecting you like Joseph. People will stop following you like the early church. Don’t let that stop you. Run into his repositioning will for your life. It will be brutally hard but it is so worth living in the excitement of this new day.
If you need someone to listen to the struggle of what God might be repositioning you to do, give me a call.