Work is a good thing. Work is a major part of who we are as human beings and is part of the created order, not a result of the Fall. We should find satisfaction in our work. It is good that God provides through our work. Also, work is the means by which we cooperate with others for the good of society (the biblical idea of “Shalom”).

There are two extreme positions in our culture as it relates to work.

The first is echoed in what the rock band Loverboy used to sing, “Everybody’s working for the weekend.” Work is a necessary evil – it provides the paycheck that allows us to enjoy what life’s really about: Leisure! Those who declare “T.G.I.F.!” would find the idea of “thanking God for work” a strange notion. Work is only the means to the end: Friday, the weekend, fun, vacations, etc.

Another extreme is echoed in how we ask people to introduce themselves: “So, tell me, Bill, what do you do for a living?” Our society has allowed our work to be the major way we identify ourselves. If we are not working in a prestigious position, we may feel less of ourselves. If we feel that we are not accomplishing incredible things on a daily basis in our work, our identity as a human being is somehow lessened. This leads to what we call “workaholics.” But unlike other “-aholics,” a workaholic is often admired. He or she is driven to succeed, is seen as a leader, and is often offered the promotions.

How do we guard against these two extremes? The answer is found (can you guess?) in the Bible. The Fifth Commandment was, “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath to the LORD your God” (Exodus 20:8-10). Following the example of God found in the Creation Week of Genesis 1, the people of God were to rest on the seventh day. But why were they to rest? To remember that God is their deliverer. They had been in slavery in Egypt, but were saved from that bondage and brought into the Promised Land of Rest. “Remember that you were slaves in Egypt and that the LORD your God brought you out of there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore the LORD your God has commanded you to observe the Sabbath day.” (Deuteronomy 5:15)

The Sabbath rest not only reminded the Old Testament people of God who their creator is, but also who their savior is. Honoring the Sabbath was essential to remembering that God had delivered the Israelites from bondage. They were to take one day each week and rest, meditating on the freedom that God had provided for them. Honoring the Sabbath also meant that they ceased working in order to show their trust in Yahweh’s provision. The promise God gave to the Israelites was that if they honored the Sabbath they would not to find their identity in their work alone, but that they would “find their joy in the LORD” (Isaiah 58:14).

That’s fine for the ancient Israelites, but what about today’s Christians? How do we move beyond the two extremes of either working for the weekends or finding our whole identity in our careers?

Jesus offers this wonderful promise:
“Come to me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.” (Matthew 11:28)

The new kind of sabbath rest is offered in Christ, and it is not limited to the weekends. The New Testament paints the picture that since Jesus did all the work of salvation on the cross, we are able to enter God’s rest, the work has been accomplished.
“Now we who have believed enter that rest… There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God; for those who enter God’s rest also rest from their own work, just as God did from his.” (Hebrews 4:3, 9-10)

Jesus Christ delivered us from our bondage, he did all the work on the cross. Therefore, for the Christian, the sabbath is not just limited to a Saturday off of work. It is an attitude that flows from the grace of Christ’s work on our behalf. Because we have already entered into the “rest” of being in a relationship with Jesus, our perspective is different. We not only take time each week to stop from our work, but we see all of life with the orientation of what Mark Buchanan (in his book, The Rest of God) calls a “Sabbath heart.” He writes, “A Sabbath heart is restful even in the midst of unrest and upheaval. It is attentive to the presence of God and others even in the welter of much coming and going, rising and falling. It is still and knows God even when mountains fall into the sea.”

But even with this beautiful gift of rest, we still struggle in a fallen world. We must find balance in our lives that reflects the rest that we have in Christ. Establishing a rhythm of work with rest is a wise practice in order to find this balance.

In order to find a sabbatical balance in life, consider these ideas:
1. Sabbath means ceasing from work. In Christ, we cease from works-righteousness, but we also must train ourselves to cease from our frantic focus on productivity. Taking a time away from work tells God (and yourself!) that God is actually the provider, no matter how hard you work. Since the Sabbath is truly fulfilled in Jesus, I can cease from trying to prove myself to myself, to others, and even to God! Since Jesus frees me from the burden of good works, I can enjoy doing good work – without trying to win God’s approval in doing so.

2. Sabbath means resting. The rhythm of work with rest is set in all of us. As we need to sleep each night, we also need to rest from bread-winning each week – so that we can rejuvenate our bodies, our minds, and our emotions. Not only that, we need to be refreshed and reinvigorated spiritually, so that we can be ready once again to do our work in a fallen world, knowing that it is often very hard work to be creative and/or redemptive in our tasks for the glory of God.

3. Sabbath means worship. We need to take time out to purposely recalibrate our lives onto the person of Jesus Christ. We need to deliberately reconnect with other believers as we worship together the Lord of our lives. As we celebrate who God is and what he has accomplished in Christ on Sunday, the effects are felt throughout the rest of the week. As Gideon Strauss wrote, “If we give corporate worship its proper place, we have done perhaps the most important needful thing in the process of putting work in its proper place.”

4. Sabbath means celebration of life. Yes, we need to enjoy the goodness of all that God has given us. Rest is not only taking a lazy Sunday nap, but also playing a fun game of tag with the kids. It’s going for a hike in the state park. It’s enjoying your favorite hobby. It’s enjoying music. It’s having a wonderful meal with friends and family.

When I think of the “Church” (that is, a local manifestation of God’s People, not the “church universal”), I think of the people who are set apart for a purpose: to be God’s redemptive community on earth, especially in a specific locale.

This people are a Missional Community, living in the midst of people and loving and serving them with a view to be a redemptive blessing in their lives. Our redemptive work is the proclamation of the Gospel to our culture.

This “incarnational view” of church informs what we should be doing with our local congregations. each church is to be the incarnation of the body of Christ for their local community. The ministry is to be indigenous to this community, made up of people in this community to reach people in this community with the good news of Christ.

So, what are we supposed to do? We are to be a “Missional Community.” It boils down to this.

So, when we split up (in a very modernist way) our ministry into separate spheres (Worship, Community, Mission, etc.), we are pulling apart that which needs to be a cohesive unit.

I cannot imagine “community” without it being “missional.” I cannot imagine “mission” without it being by a community and for a community. And I cannot imagine “worship” outside the definition of Romans 12:1, where our lives are lived out sacrificially for others, as our “spiritual act of worship.”

In my view, the departments of the church need to serve the one purpose of Missional Community. This will ruffle some feathers in our churches, but the church’s departments all feed the overall purpose: to create and sustain a Missional Community.

The “Worship Department” is really just those in charge of the musical portion of our gathering time, where we come together to praise God.

The “Proclamation Department” is really just those in charge of preaching the gospel of joining in the Missional Community of the Church and instructing those involved in the Missional Community how to live out that calling.

The “Global Missions Department” extends our mission beyond our locality to those areas of the world that need our help to be reached.

The “Kids,” “Youth,” and “College” Departments proclaims the gospel of joining in God’s Mission to the younger generations, giving them purpose for their lives.

The “Care Department” intervenes when members of the Missional Community are hurting.

But the overall goal is to create a cohesive ministry of people working together to live out the gospel in the midst of the people we are trying to reach. When we are a Missional Community working for the redemption of all things for the blessing of those in our cities, we are being the incarnation of Christ for their sakes.

We need to think about the implications of isolating up our ministry into these three separate divisions: Worship, Community, and Mission.

This post is mirrored at Vanguard Church.

Is Right Practice the Antidote to Easy Belief-ism?

Michael Wittmer’s first book is one of my favorites of all time. In Heaven is a Place on Earth, Wittmer maps out a biblical worldview by combining a proper understanding of the imago Dei with the biblical story of Creation-Fall-Redemption.

His follow-up book is called Don’t Stop Believing: Why Living Like Jesus is not Enough. In it, he tries to strike a balance between conservative evangelicalism and the emerging church. His premise is that the evangelicalism of the 20th Century pressed too far one way, and that “postmodern innovators” (his term for the leaders in the emerging church movement) are overreacting by swinging the pendulum too far the other way. He states that his book is a “friendly warning” to the postmodern innovators of the emerging church. He states,

“I am thankful for their emphasis on authentic Christian living. Their vision for what the church can become is both exhilarating and challenging. My only concern, and the point I will press in this book, is that their quest to correct abuses of previous generations must not lead them to err on the opposite extreme. Perhaps our parents overemphasized right belief more than good behavior, but that must not become an excuse to teach good behavior at the expense of right belief. If we continue down this road, it may not be long until our liberal method leads to liberal conclusions. Authentic Christianity demands our head, heart, and hands. Our labor for Christ flows from our love for him, which can arise only when we know and think rightly about him, Genuine Christians never stop serving, because they never stop loving, and they never stop loving, because they never stop believing.” (pp. 19-20)

Wittmer’s book is a welcome addition to the conversation. Whereas D.A. Carson’s book Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church was poorly researched and reactionary without truly understanding the movement, Wittmer is actually conversant with the emerging church. He understands it, and thus he can authentically deal with one of the major issues for evangelicals who want to embrace the emerging church: The tension between belief and practice.

Evangelicals have placed a high emphasis on “believing in Jesus,” and this “belief” has often (in a modernist world) been articulated as believing certain propositions about Jesus. According to many evangelical churches, if you can state that you believe that Jesus died for your sins and trust that he satisfied God’s wrath against those sins on the cross, you are “saved.” This is topped off with saying a “sinner’s prayer,” and an assurance that from now on, no matter what you do, you’re in… you are guaranteed your place in heaven.

The “postmodern innovators” of the emerging church have reacted to this by saying that Jesus is more interested in our actions than in what we can state to be truth. In Brian McLaren’s book The Last Word and the Word After That, the character Markus states that conservative Christians wrongly believe that “on judgment day, all God will care about is opening up our skulls and checking our brains…to see if we had the right notion of salvation by grace through faith in there somewhere.”

Wittmer states that McLaren’s answer to this incorrect understanding of faith is insufficient. Wittmer writes, “McLaren counters this extreme view by claiming that God judges people on the quality of their works rather than on what they believe.” (p. 35) Wittmer’s point: the postmodern innovators so underemphasize right belief and so overemphasize right ethics that they swing the pendulum too far the other way.

But does McLaren actually advocate “works righteousness?” No, he does not. In fact, McLaren very much advocates faith in the person of Jesus Christ. He has said, “I believe people are saved not by objective truth, but by Jesus. Their faith isn’t in their knowledge, but in God.” (source) This is an excellent quote, and gets at the center of the issue.

The question that Mike Wittmer is going to have to deal with is this: Does faith in our knowledge about Jesus save us?

I believe it does not. I believe that faith in the person of Jesus is what delivers us.

But, here is where it gets very tricky: What basic facts do we need to “know” in order to place our faith in Jesus? This is what Wittmer gets into in his second chapter. Watch for my interaction with Mike Wittmer on this in an upcoming post.

My blog: VANGUARD CHURCH