In 1792, the great English statesman William Wilberforce and fellow politician Henry Thornton moved to the village of Clapham, a prosperous suburb north of London, to establish a “chummery”–a house set aside for fellowship with friends. Their vision was to build a Christ-centered community where each member could build lifelong friendships, find encouragement during times of despair, and champion “kingdom causes” in a unified voice. The common bond that held this circle of friends together was the desire to to apply their faith in Jesus Christ to personal, social, political, national, and international concerns. Believing they were representatives of God’s kingdom on earth and faithful stewards of all God had given them, they were people who regarded prayer and Bible study as serious matters. While this brotherhood of Christian politicians began as an informal group of friends drawn together by common concerns and companionship, it eventually blossomed into what is known as the Clapham Circle.

Over the years, a variety of people joined this fellowship aside from Willberforce and Thornton. Willaim Smith, the Unitarian and radical Whig, lived in the village and was later drawn into the Circle. Brother-in-law to Prime Minister William Pitt, Edward Elliot moved to Clapham with the desire for Wilberforce’s spiritual guidance. Scholar and former slave-owner Zachery Macaulay settled in the village after serving as Governor of Sierra Leon. James Stephen, Master-in-Chancery and Member of Parliament from Tralee bought a house across from Battersea Rise and found fellowship in the Circle. Other members include Prime Minister William Pitt, Parliamentarian Thomas Babington, Reverend Thomas Giborne, Dean Isaac Milner of Queens College, poet and playwright Hanna More, and Reverend Charles Simeon of Cambridge. Clearly, this fellowship was composed of England’s social and political influencers, people who sought to encourage and partner with one another in kingdom-fights.

Collectively, these friends helped bring an end to the practice of slave trade in Britain and secure the abolition of slavery throughout British colonies. They also championed education and prison reform, public health reform, legislation to improve the lives of the poor, and better working conditions in factories. Their communal exploration of Jesus’ teachings about the Kingdom of Heaven inspired them to see that God’s kingdom would come and His will would be done on earth as it was already being done in heaven. Despite these impressive accomplishments, though, these men could not have achieved what they did without the other members of the Clapham Circle. While each person possessed different talents and might have made their mark on society individually, they enacted powerful influence and a lasting legacy because they acted in concert; it was their collective expression of faith, personal encouragement, and mutual counsel that spilled over into their world.

Following in the tradition of William Wilberforce’s own Clapham Circle, American Christians should establish communities on Capitol Hill through which congressional followers of Jesus Christ can find encouragement, explore and apply Truth, encounter God together through prayer and communion and learn how to express their faith on Capitol Hill for America’s next generation of Christian statesmen. Wilberforce was part of a unique community of believers and friends that empowered him, along with God, to accomplish what he did. It is my hope that, through such communities, a new set of Christian statesman will find encouragement through the communio sanctorum, explore the Truth claims of Christocentric spirituality, encounter God through meaningful spiritual practices, and express their faith by loving the Hill community with the gospel Jesus Christ and living Him out incarnationally. Only when these communities form will the Hill Ecclesia be able to carry forth a renewed vision for America.

The next post will further define how Hill community should look by letting the inspirational narrative of Iona, an ancient Scottish community, cast the vision. Hopefully, I will share this inspiration over the weekend.

be His,

As Scot McKnight says, “the emerging movement is pro-Church.” The EC has a deep, profound respect for the Ecclesia, and it desires to reunderstand the originality of Her design. Scot goes on to say, “The EM is pro-Church more than it is critical of the Church, and it is plenty critical. The EM is both (at some say it is) post-Evangelical and post-Liberal churches but that critical stance over against the way ‘Church as it has been done’ is not left dangling.” One of the foundational understandings of EC thinkers is that the Church is the Kingdom community of Jesusly restored individuals through which God “produces” release, healing, freedom, peace, justice, mercy, and love within the lives of individuals and society, not simply a building or institution or collection of programs.

While it may seem petty or inconsequential, I cannot emphasis this point more strongly: the Emerging Church movement has strongly reacted to the institutionalization, mechanization, consumerization, and organization of the precious Bride of Jesus Christ. In its most basic form, the EC is about recapturing the Bride’s identity as the agent through which God desires to restore individuals and society to the way they were originally intended to be through Her Groom, Jesus Christ. In reacting to the Modern manifestation of the Bride of Christ, the EC Ecclesia generally looks like this: independent of institution (though there are EC rumblings within denominations like the SBC, PCA, and Episcopal/Anglican church); fiercely ecumenical, recognizing the richness and deepness of the Ecclesia; promotes and revels in the spiritual practices and experiences of the catholic (way lower “c”!) Church, especially those of our ancient brothers and sisters; small and local, which allows for deep relationships and meaningful mission; recognition that the Church and local manifestations of the Church are blessed to be a blessing to their world, not to exist as a club unto themselves; tour guides for the lost; and finally the Ecclesia is viewed as a collection of agents of restoration. While I am certainly no expert of the nuances of the EC, this is a general picture of the way the EC views and understand the Ecclesia

In my own novus lumen journey to reunderstand the Ecclesia, one particular book has probably impacted my thinking more than any other: Chuck Colson’s Being The Body. This version is a revision to his watershed The Body, a punctuated prophetic analysis of the problems dogging the Church with striking models of what the Body must be in order to shine Christ’s light in darkness and serve as a beacon of truth. Without regurgitating the entire tome, I wish to recount one example that stands as a model for why the Church must be the Body within the sandstone Halls of Congress.

The example comes to us from the cinderblock walls of a prison. Colson recounts a story involving Bruce Wilkinson, author of the Prayer of Jabez. Bruce was invited by Colson’s Prison Fellowship to help with a worship service at the 1,100 person Sussex Correctional Institution in Delaware for Easter 2000. The service was held outside in the main court yard, with the main Prison Fellowship group separated by a thick chain-linked fence and the rest of the prisoners heavily segregated by level of security. After Franklin Graham preached the Word and walked the prisoners through the gospel, Bruce was given the opportunity to say a few words to the men and offer a prayer. This is when things took a turn for the interesting!

When he got up to the mic, he instructed the men to move back 10-12 paces away from the front fence. In perfect macho defiance, the prisoners stood still and balked at several more requests to make room at the front. Apparently, this was a major no-no and Colson, the prison commissioner, and chaplain were mortified. The prisoners eventually relented and then Bruce said something amazing: “Now I want all of the Christians, those of you who gave your lives to Christ today, those of you who have been believers for a while–I want all of you to walk forward.” Apparently this was another major problem and Colson cringed in anticipation of what might occur next. But to his amazement, he looked up to see half a dozen guys walk to the front without hesitation. Then five or six more until they just poured forward, about 200 in all walked to the fence and waited with a kind of quiet confidence.

With the Body of Christ as it existed within that prison in front of him, Bruce continued: “Alright, good. Now all you men who stepped forward…you have stepped forward as the people of God in this prison. You are the Church here. And now I want you to turn around, with your backs to me. I want you to do an about-face and look at the rest of the prison population standing there.” Colson and the rest became nervous at the prospect of setting up a situation with two sets of inmates in confrontation, a situation that could easily get out of hand. But what happened was unbelievable. The Christian guys who had walked to the fence, paused and turned as one, standing looking straight into the eyes of the rest of the men.

Bruce continued, “Now, I want you believers to get down on your knees. You’re the Church in here. I’m going to pray for you. I’ve asked you to turn so you’re facing the rest of these guys because they are your mission field. Your job as Christians is to share the gospel with them. Love them. Serve them.” The Christian men got down on their knees and, without instruction, put their hands on one another’s shoulders. Colson said it was such a beautiful, powerful paradox–a kneeling army of believers, arms around one another, in a posture of service before the rest of the tough, skeptical men in that institution. “You’re the Church,” Bruce ended. “You are one in Jesus Christ. Let me pray.”

Bruce prayed, and a holy hush came over the prison yard. He prayed that the church might continue to be one in unity in that prison, that these men might boldly witness to the love of Christ, that they might be filled with the grace of God, and that He would use them to build His Church, extend His kingdom, so that more and more inmates in that prison community would turn their hearts to give glory to God.

I dream the same thing for the Ecclesia as it exists within the sandstone walls of the United States Congress. I pray that the people of God within the Hill community would boldly bear witness to the restoring power of Jesus Christ, actively and deliberately incarnationally live out their relationship with Him, the unity of the Ecclesia in the bond of peace would bear witness to their restoration, that the grace of God would permeate their lives, and that the King of Kings and Lord of Lords would build them into His Bride and use them to extend His Kingdom throughout the Capitol Hill community, to the kings of America, and ultimately to the American society. I pray that God would unite the disciples of Jesus Christ into a powerful Kingdom movement, a force that would restore the individual lives of congressional staffers and Members of Congress to relationship with God through Jesus, while restoring the society of this nation to the way God intended it to be.

In light of this example of the Church being the Body within the cinderblock walls of a prison and Ecclesial principles of the Emerging Church, what would it look like for the Church as it exists on Capitol Hill to be the Body? First, She needs to be in regular community. Imagine if 1,000 disciples of Jesus Christ regularly came together for fellowship and God-encounter moments in 100 small group communities? Imagine the impact of the Ecclesia if it regularly bonded, prayed, and dined over the Supper of Christ? Secondly, the Hill-Body must come together regularly to encounter and worship God. Last year, I tried to begin a movement to establish a weekly worship service on Capitol Hill. For various reasons, this vision has not yet transpired. But imagine if the Church as it exists within the Capitol Hill community came together each week for an hour or two of worship, communion, and lectio divina (sacred reading of Scripture)? Imagine if 700 staffers gathered together to adore and summon the Lord of Hosts right on Capitol Hill, if they invited the Breath of God to dance within their community, to invade the community that writes the laws of this land? Finally, individuals within the Capitol Hill Ecclesia must get serious about being individual Agents of Restoration, while partnering as a community to prophetically speak words of restoration into the lives of individuals and society. Imagine if 5,000 Christians deliberately lived out their ambassadorship within the Hill community? Imagine if they reached just one person and that 5,000 became 10,000 eternally breathing beings who swore their allegiance to the Lion of Judah?

Imagine the power that would be unleashed in the Halls of Congress if the Body got serious about being the Body?

Jesus Christ said the very forces that march out of the gates of Hell will never prove stronger than the Ecclesia. No matter how ghoulish, fierce, or evil the power of the forces of Hades, the Church will not be overcome nor will She be defeated! The time is now for the Church to recapture Her identity and realize the power She has through the Spirit. She must lay down the butter-knives of the world and re-embrace the Excalibur of Jesus Christ! Only by unifying the forces of the Ecclesia as it exists within the Capitol Hill community and forsaking Might and Power will She ever hope to to restore individuals within the Hill and American society.

As I eluded to in my previous post on community, history provides two beautiful examples of Ecclesial community: Iona of Scotland and William Wilberforce’s Clapham Circle in London, England. Both actively and deliberately lived out these ideas of community and deep ecclesiology, examples which should inspire similar manifestations in the Capitol Hill community. My next post will be on these Ecclesial inspirations, which I hope will complete the picture of how the Hill Church community should look.

First, nurturing community will provide a sacred space in which the lost may experience and encounter the Living God, outside of the institution of the church. The objective of such communities isn’t to replace what a local body of believers provides, but rather the EC recognizes that people “belong before they believe.” In his book “The Out of Bounds Church”, Steve Taylor relates providing these safe places to the art of tourism. He writes, “Tourism can serve as a redemptive framework for postmodern mission, in which people are ‘tourists’ on spiritual journeys and the Church operates as ‘tour guides,’ stimulating forward movement and nourishing the quest.” In light of the free-fall attendance and association with churches and the reported increase of the spiritual experience of people in a “do-it-yourself” quest that Taylor exposes, American Christians should encourage establishing communities as a point of contact between the lost and the Truth of Jesus.

As I have said before, the Hill is filled with nearly 18,000 lost and broken individuals who desperately need to be restored to relationship with God through faith in Jesus Christ. What better way to begin accomplishing the restoration of individuals within the halls of Congress than by developing tens and hundreds of “tourist agencies”? Of this need for tour guides Steve writes, “It is the role of those on the journey now to create signposts that allow the traveler to get oriented. The signposts we create are not meant to exclude some from the journey but to guide all who wish to walk.” So in an effort to transform the life of the policy writer, and thus the policy itself, we Christians need to take on the role of tour guide to lead people to liberation in Christ. Steve gives some great advice on what this might look like:

The mission of the Church is to act as a resource for spiritual tourists and must search for ways to move people from recreation to experimentation to existential relocation into the kingdom of God. The tour guide can deepen knowledge, explain local customs, and ensure a safe space in which to explore and experience. The tour guide can create an invitation for continuing the journey or shut down the desire to return. An effective guide has an intuitive sense of what the tourist needs and is ready for. This tour guide provides opportunities for exploration beyond what is expected and offers resources for deepening the impact of the journey.

In addition to providing a place for missing persons to find relationship with Jesus, community is also a venue through which disciples of Christ can grow spiritually and find support in their important roles. Through community, followers of Jesus can do life together, explore and apply Truth, encounter God through group prayer and communion, and refocus their Hill-lives around their calling as agents of restoration by actively and deliberately being Jesus to the world around them. One of the strongest assets of the EC is their emphasis on missional communities, groups of disciples of Christ supporting one another and encouraging each other to live out their faith locally. Given the incredible physical and spiritual demands of these very young unelected leaders, the American Church must promote, encourage, and nurture communities like those of the early Church. In fact, the book of Acts paints the best picture of what this would look like for Capitol Hill Christians.

Without going into an in-depth explanation of the passage, take a look at Acts 2:42-47:

They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.

This is such a beautiful expression of what it means to establish community among the Church as it exists on Capitol Hill. As Luke recounts, the early assembly of believers centered around some core concepts: they devoted themselves to the exploration and understanding of the Word of God; encouragement, support, accountability, and regular connection were hallmarks of these early communities of believers, including the physical care and provision of their brothers and sisters; they regularly encountered God by observing and reflecting upon the Lord’s Supper; and we can see they devoted themselves to living incarnationally within their world–many people who previously were not disciples of Jesus were added to their numbers as a direct result of expressing their faith. This sort of original concept of community–not to mention the definition and expression of the Ecclesia–is what the Emerging Church rests heavily, and it’s a concept that Americans should nurture on the Hill, too.

But beyond providing a group through which staffers can do life together and encounter God, this communion of saints must exist for the good of the Hill community, for the good of the world. Ultimately, I see community on Capitol Hill reflecting two historical communities: Iona and the Clapham Circle. For Hill Christians to reflect these historic Christocentric communities, however, they will have to reunderstand their role and identity as not simply individual Christians working a job, but a collection of disciples of Jesus that form the Ecclesia within this community of lost and broken individuals.

Inevitably, these reflections on community will have a dramatic affect on our view of the Ecclesia. Many theologians have commented that no evangelical group has a higher view of the Church (Ecclesis) than the Emerging Church, and that is the topic I wish to discuss in my next post. If American Christians outside of Capitol Hill desire to be effective in missionally reaching that community for the Kingdom of Heaven, it will have to encourage Christians within to be the Body of Christ and get serious about it’s role as the Church as it exists on Capitol Hill.

First, what do I mean by Capitol Hill? For most American Christians, it is a bureaucratic institution that pumps out the pork, wages war, spends your money willy-nilly, and sometimes threatens the values we hold dear. But the Hill community is no different than any other community in America: it is filled with hurting, lost, broken individuals. We need to realize Capitol Hill is not merely a center of power and bureaucracy, but rather a community of lost individual people. That community is composed of 23,000 postmodern young adults (average age is 27), roughly 80% are unsaved. And these staffers are leading very broken lives that need the restoring power of the love of Jesus and His gospel. It is out of this hurting, broken, lost, sin-marked heart/mind/life that policy is being written. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: the Church must move beyond viewing the Hill as an organization and look at it through the eyes of Jesus to see a community of individual people living dark, broken lives.

Now if Capitol Hill is more than simply a bureaucratic organization and really a community of dark, broken individual people who need to be restored by Jesus Christ, then the Church must engage that community missionally and spiritually. But if I am right, and the EC is the conversation that speaks to this community, what is it saying and why should we listen? This conversation understands the Church needs to move beyond the Modern (philosophical, not technological) version of Christianity and reunderstand some aspects of our faith, while recognizing a seismic cultural shift and the need to missionally engage with that emerging postmodern culture. Both of these “conversation pieces” are what the Church needs to hear if it desires to reach the Hill community for Jesus and with His Way.

Before I try and unpackage what I mean by the need to move beyond the Modern version of Christianity, the Church needs to recognize the fact our culture already is emerging beyond modernism into postmodernism. Some believe we already are a postmodern culture, while others say we are still emerging. Regardless, our contemporary American society is reacting to emerging beyond modernism, and this is really what postmodernism is: a reaction to modernism and a desire to move beyond this philosophical structure.

Without going into great detail of the philosophical distinctions—both because I am certainly not qualified to make a length discussion and because it is really not entirely important to the over all series—pure modernism held to a single, universal worldview and moral standard, a belief that all knowledge is good and certain, truth is absolute, individualism is valued, and thinking, learning, and beliefs should be determined systematically and logically. Postmodernism, then, holds there is no single universal worldview. All truth is not absolute, community is valued over individualism, and thinking, learning, and beliefs can be determined nonlinerarly.

How has this tension affected spirituality, religion, and the Church? Postmoderns react severely to dominant groups imposing a single worldview and life story (called metanarratives) on a people group. They have seen the destruction various groups throughout history imposing using certainty and worldviews to bring destruction upon a people group and world. These metanarratives range from Facism with the Nazi regime in Germany, to Communism being utilized in the former Soviet Union, to Christians suppressing different people groups like slaves and women using the metanarrative of the Bible. Obviously, it is unfortunate Christianity is lumped in with evil, Satanic dictatorial beliefs throughout history, but the biblical worldview (metanarrative) is considered just as oppressive as these other regimes. This is why a diversity of spiritual experiences and traditions is accepted, celebrated, and embraced.

While most believe the transition into a fully postmodern, “post-Christian” era has not fully culminated, there are very real forces at work behind the scenes of modern American life. The American society is moving into a world beyond the values and worldview of modernism, and even more significantly beyond Christianity. We need to recognize that much of the culture neither understands nor accepts Christianity as being true, real or valuable. At worst, Christianity is seen as a worldview used to oppress Blacks, women, Native Americans, and other non-Western nations; at best, Christianity is one other alternative in the spiritual smorgasbord and completely irrelevant to 21st Century living. Welcome to our world!

Not only does the Emerging Church movement recognize the need to missionally approach our postmodern, Post-Christian culture, it also appreciates aspects the postmodern critique of philosophical modernism, especially as it relates to the current manifestation of Christianity. Ultimately, this movement recognizes that our current articulation of the Movement of God has been influenced by modernism and is no longer a viable option. The professor and author Scot McKnight puts it best when he writes on his blog: “Emergent is a reaction to what the Church has to offer and what the Church is today, and what it has to offer is not enough, not good enough, not biblical enough, not spiritual enough, not radical enough, not relevant enough, not in touch with a new generation of young adults who simply will not let the ‘same old, same old’ be what they will tolerate for the Church (which is theirs too).”

In reacting to Modernism and the current version of Christianity the EC values several things: relationships over institution; the gospel as a restoration to relationship with God and His Story now, rather than simply a consumeristic ticket to heaven later; an emphasis on an apologetics of incarnational living and orthopraxy, rather than a propositional argument of orthodoxy; evangelism by discipleship and process, not sales-pitch and end-product; experience of God and life change over intellectual study and a sterile approach of God; importance on spending money on missional work rather than Church buildings, programs, and fluff; honest-to-goodness radical confession and admission of where and who we really are, rather than superficiality and fake-Christian vinear; equipping the saints for grassroots activism over hierarchical control and church celebrityism.

I could go on, but as you see there is a deep down sense that there is something wrong with the “state of things” within the Church, and the “system is to blame.” Which means there is a need to re-do the system, from ground up. In other words, one of the most significant features of the Emergent movement is “systemic analysis.” While those who are doing the analysis are not getting it completely right, the issue is clear: the system is what led us to this “state” and there is a need to re-work the whole thing. To be more precise, the Modern system has run its course, especially in the midst of this postmodern culture.

I fully realize I did not do the EC conversation enough justice in this post, but I feel confident the description covers the basics and will serve its purpose in laying a foundation for the series. If you are left wanting in my description of the EC, the following posts should help you understand more what it is trying to say to the Church. The next series of posts will unpackage more what embracing the EC movement would look like in missionally approaching the Capitol Hill community. Hopefully, this series will give you a greater appreciation for what we in the EC conversation desire for God’s movement and what I am dreaming of for the Church’s missional involvement in the Hill community.

And as many of you also know, I have been experiencing a “new understanding” or “fresh clearness” in Christian spirituality, hence the name of my blog is novus lumen (latin for both of these descriptions). One large contributing factor to this novus lumen experience has been the Emerging Church conversation. After reading and considering many thinkers (both published print and blog authors) within this fresh expression of the 21st Century Ecclesia, I believe I have personally grown in my depth of understanding and appreciation of the mysteries of Christ and His kingdom movement.

So in the midst of these two facets of my personhood I’ve been wondering, “how does my ministry and the emerging church movement intersect?” Because I have been hugely encouraged and challenged by the EC conversation, while growing evermore passionate for the Capitol Hill community, I think this question is a natural outgrowth. This intersection is what I would like to consider over a series of 5-6 posts, with such topics as: the Ecclisia, Gospel, Kingdom of Heaven, and Missional.

I am not entirely sure what this series will look like, though I have some initial thoughts about these topics and am fairly excited! It is high time I consider and articulate what I have been learning and dreaming regarding these twin facets, and I am just thankful I have a venue through which I can do this considering. As always, I would appreciate some comments and interaction in each of these posts. I’ve said it before: I cannot possibly move through terra nova into novus lumen unless I converse in community, so please help me do both!

be His,
jeremy