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OK, we’re not exactly doing that, but today I did upload the PDF file of the rewrite of my first book ever—The Naked Church. This was my first attempt to express my passion for the body of Christ in the world and how we’ve traded the realities of relationship for the burden and ineffectiveness of programs. My hope was that it would help people discover the life of the church not as they’ve always known it, but church as they’ve always believed it could be. Then we would come to recognize how we’ve sacrificed a vibrant intimate walk with Jesus for traditions, programs and institutions, and how we can recover his life again. I had no idea at the time where that little book would take me.

The first edition of this book was filled with anger and some of the answers it offered were as stuck in the religious mud as those things I was criticizing. I just didn’t know it then. In 1998 I rewrote that book in the Revised Third Edition that has been available since. Many people have found a kindred spirit in that book and a hunger to see the church emerge is the living body of Christ in the world. It freed them to believe that what Jesus had put on their hearts wasn’t an idealistic fantasy, but a calling of the Spirit to go beyond the status quo of our religious institutions and find the life that really is life.

Just yesterday I received the following email from a pastor in Alabama:

Just to let you know, I have read two chapters (of The Naked Church) so far and almost burst into tears. Not because I didn’t see all of this, just because someone else does. I could have almost written word for word what I have read so far. Thank you for putting it into print. I plan on reading the whole book in a short time, and I’ll email you back when I get to the end. God bless you, my brother.

I hope the book continues to stir people to a more passionate walk with God wherever you are in the world. You can download the PDF file here.

Care to read over my shoulder again? I received this email this morning. It poses a question I’ve been asked many times when I talk about the way religion seeks to hold people accountable, and how Father never asked us to do that. I love the way this question was asked and thought others of you might be interested in the answer:

Wayne, you say that Christians are not accountable to each other, but that we are each accountable to God. Could you explain what you mean by that? If you’ve already addressed this in a previous podcast or BodyLife article just give me the reference and you can move on to your million other emails.

To understand where I’m coming from, this is what I think of when I hear accountability:

1) James 5:16 Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other. OK, so its hard to find a group today where this is “Safe” but it is the instructions we are given.

2) 1 Cor. 5 talks about “Putting Out” a brother who is guilty of a heinous sin. If you go to a “Sunday Morning Box” I understand this to mean the leadership asks you not to attend. If you are part of the “Boxer Rebellion” I guess you have to decide with whom to break fellowship. Either way it sounds like accountability of the sinner to the brethren.

3) Matt. 18 Instructs us how to deal with someone who sins against us. This also sounds like an accountability issue.

Can you see where I’m coming from? I must be misunderstanding something. Can you explain it to me?

I there there are two ways to interpret the Scriptures you’ve listed, even while embracing the truth in them.

One can confess, “break fellowship” or deal with sins using accountability components of enforced conformity, which is what I grew up with. Or, one can confess, break fellowship, or deal with sins out of a relational love that is ten times more powerful.

Accountability to me is the right to compel action and always forces those in power to manipulate others to their whim and desire. Scripture never use that term between brothers and sisters in the family, only between each of us and God. He’s the one to whom we give an account. We are called to love each other they way we’ve been loved. Love stands along side others with complete honest and affection and can accomplish all those things without the demand for conformity.

I guess the difference is a brother sitting beside you in the car asking you to slow down if you’re driving recklessly, or to let him out if you won’t stop, and a cop behind with red lights and siren. I’m not saying the later can’t be effective, and I’m grateful in a worldly sense that they are there. But by and large cops don’t transform behavior, they only conform it as long as they are present. As soon as they pull off the freeway, all the cars speed up again.

When Scripture tell us to owe no man nothing but simply to love each other, I think he discounts accountability as a means of fellowship. All the Scriptures you mention can easily and authentically be fulfilled by simply loving others around us. To me that means we treat them with affection, while still being honest with them in ways that convey grace. Even the last Scripture you refer to invites us to treat them as tax collectors or sinners, which were people Jesus hung out with. He was able to love those folks, just not let them live in the pretense of having a faith they did not truly follow. So the end was not to banish them from our hearts, but not let them pretend fellowship while we continue to love them.

Having lived this way now for a number of years, I find far more healthy confession, honesty and confrontation go on with compassion and affection than ever happened with accountability models. Those only offered an illusion of self-made religion, without helping the heart be transformed by the power and love of Christ. And it is his love and revelation that transforms people, not “holding each other accountable” to standards that our flesh cannot fulfill.

As I said in a previous post, I read C.S. Lewis’ novel, Til We Have Faces again over my recent vacation. What a story! Set in ancient Greek mythology, this work exposes some incredible truths about our misplaced anger at God our misunderstanding of the ways in which he works. I won’t ruin this fairy tale for you but it involves two stepsisters of royal blood in an ancient European kingdom. One is taken away and the older fears she is being deceived by a cruel beast or some vile criminal even though she assures her older sister that she is living in a beautiful palace and has come to find the lover her soul has longed for.

The older sister, Orual, comes to her and demands that she return home. When the younger refuses, she out a dagger and stabs herself in the arm. She assures her sister if she will not do what she demands of her that that she will kill her sister and take her own life in suicide. As you can imagine the younger sister, who has looked up to Orual as a surrogate mother is devastated that their love could be so twisted. This is how the younger sister answers…

“You are indeed teaching me about kinds of love I did not know. It is like looking into a deep pit. I am not sure whether I like your kind better than hatred. Oh, Orual, to take my love for you, because you know it goes down to the very roots and cannot be diminished by any other newer love, and then to make of it a tool, a weapon, a thing of policy and mastery, an instrument of torture—I begin to think I never knew you. Whatever comes after, something that was between us dies here.â€

The younger sister swears to do what she’s been told and it plunges her into ruin. When love becomes the excuse to manipulate others, even to do what we think is in their best interest, it becomes an instrument of torture not grace. How often religious leaders use the excuse, ‘We’re only doing this because we love you,’ to justify all manner of ultimatum, gossip and rejection. And you know what? I mostly think they’re convinced it’s true.

But true love never manipulates, never offers ultimatums, and it would prefer rather to be wronged than to wrong someone else in its name. Manipulating others for our own gain is one of the most ungodlike things we humans do to each other and tragically we mostly do it in his name.

A few days ago, I received a circular email from a website that helps with ‘church planting. I don’t usually respond to such things, but this time I just felt inclined to do so. The statement that caught my eye in the email was: “Church planting is one of the strategies used by the Apostle Paul to grow the early church and even today studies tell us that it is the most effective way to impact a community with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.” So I wrote back with just a one-liner, “I’m not sure I agree with the premise here…” The following conversation ensued, beginning with his response to me:

You are welcome to discuss it on my forum if you have questions.

That’s fine… Got too much email now. I just didn’t want to let the assumption blow by…

Okay, however, the statement is not an assumption, but a conclusion based on Scripture and research. Just wanted to clarify your mischaracterization…

Clarify away… I don’t mind a bit.

But what you may consider a ‘conclusion based on Scripture and research’ may still be an ‘assumption based on Scripture and research’. I find no language in Acts or in Paul’s letters that speak of a ‘strategy to plant churches’. Do you? And if it isn’t there, then it is a speculation about his strategy, not a given conclusion.

Isn’t it just as likely to characterize Paul’s travels and teaching not purposed to plant churches, but to spread the gospel and make disciples? I think that is stated far more clearly. The churches he identified and visited later could have been just the fruit of doing the former things that Jesus clearly asked his followers to do. In my view you can plant all the churches you want and never see true discipleship happen or true community. God knows I’ve visited hundreds of those. But you can’t teach people how to walk with the King and not see the reality of church life spring up all around you.

The distinction may sound like semantics, but I don’t think it is and thought it was worth noting or I wouldn’t have responded to you…

But you’re free to see it differently. Many do!

I don’t disagree with anything you wrote in the second paragraph and as a matter of fact I think you are absolutely right. I would add that the same can be said for house churches or any group that calls itself a church! If we do not put first the preaching of the Gospel (which includes the call to discipleship) then all our efforts are in vain.

As to Paul’s strategy to plant, no there is nothing much in Scripture that gives a specific strategy to plant, but of course you also realize there is nothing in there about his strategy for house churches. So I guess we are both in trouble huh? 🙂

Seriously though, let me ask, what exactly do you see as the assumption? What part of the statement do you find to be in conflict with Scripture?

I’m not really a house church guy, so I’m not sure I’m in trouble there. 😉 I see Jesus’ church take on a number of living expressions when people learn to follow him first and love each other second. House church is one of those. And I think it can be done incredibly well. But I also think it can be done with incredible religion and pain.

The assumption I was referring to is that church planting was a strategy Paul used to grow the early church, or that it is the most effective way to impact a community with the Gospel of Jesus. I don’t see them ‘in conflict’ with Scripture as much as I see assigning a priority to them that Scripture doesn’t assign. I’m not saying it is unscriptural, but at least it is extra-scriptural. The fruit of something doesn’t necessarily prove the intent. That churches sprang up in most places Paul frequented is a fact and they all seemed to be based around homes. For example, many people point to the characteristics of the early church in Acts, saying that if we duplicated their life, we’ll experience the same reality. I would argue that their life in Jesus, produced a certain relational reality among them. You can’t imitate the fruit and have the fruit. You have to have the same LIFE in Jesus that they had. That life will produce the expressions of community that Jesus wants. I don’t see that it works the other way around.

This is not a major point for me, and I don’t consider that we are deeply estranged over this. I see it as a matter of emphasis, and I thought I’d respond to your first note just to get you thinking a bit. In the end you may stay with your conclusion and I’ll not lose any sleep over that and hope you don’t.

Wayne, thanks for your thoughtful response. I sense there is a lot of wisdom in what you write. All I can say is that I will need to really think about it and spend some more time reading Scripture.

In my own thinking, The Scripture says that faith comes from hearing and hearing from the proclamation of God’s Word. I take the term “planting” to mean the sowing of God’s seed (His Word) into a community and growing a church from that seed. So in the broadest sense, I understand Paul’s mission to the Gentiles was to go from city to city, preach the Word, and establish a local gathering of believers. That is how I see church planting. Obedience to God’s call to enter an area where the Gospel needs to be preached and then establishing a congregation for the purpose of growing those followers to full maturity of faith.

Again, this is a rough summary of what I have in mind when I talk about planting a church. I will try and weigh this in the balance of what you have shared with me.

Thanks for taking time to share with me brother! I appreciate your willingness to offer some loving admonition and correction.

I appreciate your spirit in talking through all this. But I wasn’t trying to admonish or correct, just offer a different view of things that may nor may not be helpful to your journey.

You’re rough summary of planting a church is better than most, and I like much of it. But it still has some weaknesses by focusing on a priority that I would consider to be a fruit not an objective. I know few ‘established’ congregations that really help believers experience full maturity. Most times the effort over ‘gathering’ and ‘forming’ suck up the life of believers wanting to grow rather than actually helping them do that. I realize there are exceptions to this, but they are exceptions. I hope you have some fun with Jesus sorting through this as he continues to lead you on. In the end, Jesus told us to proclaim the gospel and make disciples, and he would build his church. We do seem to get that backward. When we take it our ourselves to build the church, discipleship rarely happens and the demands of the institution almost always seem to overrun the relational realities the church needs to flourish. In the end, I think Paul returned to those cities to help them see what Jesus was doing to build the church in his area, and helped them recognize it, rather than to impose an organizational model from outside. That’s why they seemed to develop very differently in different communities.

I’ll give you an example of this. When I taught ‘church planting’ teams for an international missions group, I would break the class up into small groups the first day. I told them they were ‘church planting’ teams. They chose the country and city and then I gave them an hour to sort out the questions they would need to resolve as they were getting started. Their concerns and questions all revolved around finance, building rental, publicity, statements of faith and all the other things that go with a corporate endeavor.

Two days later I broke them into the same teams, told them they were going into the same city, but this time not to plant a church but to demonstrate who Jesus is to the people and help them learn how to follow him. The questions and issues they came up with from that assignment was remarkably different and far more powerful. Now it was about meeting people, getting jobs that would link them to the community, learning how to share their faith naturally not artificially and how to help people connect in a real way with him. Finances, buildings and publicity never came up. That’s the difference I’m talking about, if that makes sense.

I’ve had fun thinking through this again with you. Thanks for being so open…

All good points and I think you are right on! I love that exorcise and will use it with our own people. It is hard in the US not to get hung up on the stuff, and I have tried to do some things to keep us more focused on people and relationships, but it is always difficult to keep the first things first. An exercise like the one you share could be a big help to me.

That’s great! It’s always hard to keep the main thing the main thing!

Well, our blissful vacation on the Olympic Peninsula ended early because of the constant shelling of our quiet seaside cottage by the neighbors on the hill behind us, who started celebrating July 1 with thousands of dollars of fireworks that began in the late morning and continued well past midnight on one evening. And it wasn’t even the Fourth yet.

And I’m not talking about a few bottle rockets or some firecrackers, here. I’m talking about the full-on huge starburst explosions that you see generally only at stadiums and community events—scores of them, one after the other exploding over our roof. When Sara and I passed through a Native American reservation about 20 miles short of our destination and saw dozens of firework stands, I wondered if that would be a problem… I had no idea they were selling the really big stuff.

Sara and I could handle it, but our 10 year-old Shepherd could not. She was in a constant state of panic, so we left early and drove home on Sunday and Monday. We actually made it from Eugene, Oregon to Moorpark in one 14 hours stretch on Monday, a distance of 858 miles. Sara drove all but the last 100 miles of that. She’s nuts!

The sudden end, however, didn’t destroy the awesome time we had. We had lots of time just to be together, to read looking over the sea, to hike through the Olympic National Forest to high mountain lakes and waterfalls with our dogs romping on the trail ahead of us. And we didn’t end our vacation, just because we got home. We still laid low, worked on some household projects and continued to enjoy our break. But today, we’re phasing back in and starting to wade into the mountain of things that has piled up in my absence. I thought I’d get a jump on them

And continuing the theme of the latest podcast released today, I thought I’d let you know what I’ve been reading during this veg vacation—my favorite kind! In addition to the magazines I brought along, my book list turned out to be quite an eclectic mix. I arrived still finishing a novel of Vatican intrigue called The Third Secret, which I enjoyed except for the last 10 pages, and Don Miller’s, Searching for God Knows What, which in the end I didn’t enjoy nearly as much as his first, Blue Like Jazz. Then I read an unpublished manuscript called Divine Nobodies by Jim Palmer, which will be published later this year. I really enjoyed the honesty and humor of someone’s journey shaking fee of religion to embrace a real relationship with Jesus. Then it was onto Robert McCullough’s 1776, which was not at all what I expected. It is the story of Washington’s Continental Army through that year. It was riveting and I was shocked at how little I knew of the war of revolution during that time. Next up was C.S. Lewis’ ‘Til We Have Faces, which I consider to be his best fiction. It’s a story I’ve read four times before, but it had been 20 years since the last reading. What a story! I’m going to quote a piece from it in a future blog. Finally I started a Michael Chrichton Novel, State of Fear about global warming.

I’m on vacation in the Pacific Northwest, but got this email yesterday. I said I wouldn’t write blogs while I’m gone, but I guess it’s OK to let others write them for me. I got this email yesterday and my prayer is that it would give hope to others who are still trying to fill their desire for relationship with God by some kind of expression of “church”, be it home or some other variety. I love it when God finally draws the lines in someone’s heart that he has been laying for some time and they realize it is him they have been seeking all their lives long. This is why I say that whatever expression of church God plants us in must flow out of the growing relationship he wants to have with us. If not, it will just be another substitute. Daniel from Florida expressed a a bit of this process better

I left organized religion last year after several years of God exposing many issues to me and I was directed to your site a few months ago by a guy at an online bookstore. After e-mailing back and forth with you once or twice I decided that you were totally missing it because I was on a direct path to the home church thing and you said that home church is not the answer so I moved on. My wife and kids along with another family started a home church thing, after a short time it totally flopped. Then, after reading the Jake book and a time of listening to the podcasts, and then reading He Loves Me, I grew more and more frustrated because you clearly say that it is possible to have a real daily relationship with God and I was not getting it. The last two days I have been listening to the Transition thing, then just last night I woke up at 2:00 AM and listened to disc 7 and 8 of transition, and by 3:00 AM I was having a terrific time with Father and started getting it. I wanted to say thank you for making the transition thing free on mp3. God exposed several things to me early this morning and I could literally feel Him there with me. I realize that hye loves me and I am excited about this journey. Life is more awesome today than I ever imagined, which is odd because the area I live in is in the middle of a drought and I own/operate a small rain gutter business and nobody buys rain gutters in a drought and I do not know at this point if I will have a business when it is over. I have had a lot of time to look at my life and have to trust God. But in the midst of that, I am excited about today.

Don’t think the same process may work for you, just keep looking to Jesus, knowing he will draw together whatever pieces will help you get it too! He wants to know you more than you want to know him. It’s just that he has to get through lots of baggage to make that real. And he is extremely patient even when we wander around chasing our own ideas.

I am blessed to be able to finally have a recording of the most important teaching I do around the world to help people sort out how to move from religious thinking about their life in God and learn to live relationally as he designed us to. Recently on a trip to Pennsylvania, I did eight and a half hours of teaching over two days helping people sort out how to live out a relationship with God that is not manipulated by our shame nor based on our performance. Instead it is motivated purely out of God’s love for them as we discover how to respond to him.

I felt impressed to make this audio series available to anyone in the world free of charge and without any sense of obligation. We have posed downloaded mp3s of all eight and a half hours on the Transition page of the Lifestream website.

If I could recommend anything to you, it is not to rush through it. Listen to it in bits and as God makes some things clear to you, ask him to work those things into your life so that you can walk in its reality, not you’re your mental agreement. Feel free to make CDs of if you like and pass it along to others as Father leads you.

If you’d prefer to have a CD series of this teaching, you can order it from Lifestream for $30.00 plus shipping.

The July 2006 issue of BodyLife has just been posted at the Lifestream website.

The lead article is called Reveling in the Freedom to Follow, and confronts the difference between observing Christianity and following Jesus as the most significant part of every day life. Jesus invited us to follow him and yet so much of our religious life is designed to erode our belief that he can lead us each as he desires and leaves us instead with lifeless rituals and rules? This article describes the incredible freedom that people experience simply from learning to follow him and him alone.

I hope you enjoy it. Tomorrow Sara and I will be starting a two-week vacation that we are incredibly excited about after a long and busy first half of this year. So, don’t expect a lot of blogging during that time and I will probably fall way behind on my email. So please be patient. However, you can still place order for books and CDs with our very capable office staff.

I’m a bit of a golf nut, so I’m excited about having some time to sit and watch the final round of the US Open today! Go Phil! Or, Padraig! Or, Monty! Or, Furyk! Should be lots of fun.

Reading an article on the open the other day, however, I saw a humorous story about a previous golf tournament that was in danger of being cancelled or curtailed because of unrelenting rains. One of the TV announcers spotted a priest in his clerical collar and called to him, “Can’t you do anything about this?”

“You’ll have to take that up with management. I’m in sales,” he responded with a smile.

It made me smile, too. I love the idea that God’s in management and we’re not him. I even see Jesus living in that freedom. He wasn’t trying to get his Father to do what he thought best; he was living in the things he saw his Father doing. On a number of occasions when questioned about the timing of future events, he would respond, that he didn’t know for those things were in the Father’s hands. I guess when you know the Father you don’t have to sweat the future.

As I thought about this more, however, I was troubled with the priest’s view that he was in sales. Believe me, if I had heard this story 15 years ago, I would never have thought twice about that. Religion is something you have to ‘sell’ to people and I wouldn’t have caught that. Today, however, the idea of being in sales as an ambassador of this kingdom turns my gut.

Perhaps it would be better said, “You’ll have to take that up with management. I’m in service.”

That, I like! Imagine the freedom of living that way. Even the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve. He wasn’t selling anything either…