The Next Generation Church: What would Jesus do?

The WWJD refrain is quite common in the western Church. The inference is that we can determine what to do in today’s world by drawing on Jesus example.  I have included a WWJD discussion in my third book NGC (Next Generation Church), free of this web site.  I’ve also replicated it as a You Tube clip which should be accessible from the site in a month or so.

All I want to do here is add an addendum based on some strategic inferences we can draw for Jesus’ example. First of all he would have been well aware of what I call the ‘perverse forces’ endemic within Man’s fallen nature.  I identify those forces in my books; they include things like the will to power, group think, rebelliousness and something Germans call the fuehrerprinzip or leader worship.  Both the old and new covenants were focused on reducing Man’s tendency to fall victim to his fallen nature, but without God it’s impossible. The 12 Reforms at the heart of the NGC strategy would, if implemented counter the perverse forces with which liberalism and corporatism (the two giants within The Problem.  If you read the perverse forces section in one or more of my three books and cross-reference them with the 12 Reforms you should be able to see how their implementation would mitigate against Man’s fallen nature, especially if the Church has grown  in strength and influence though employing the 12 reforms as a public square stimulus for evangelism.

Secondly, Jesus’ primary concern was saving souls (what profit a Man if… Mk 8:36).  That is why the NGC strategy looks like a political action campaign but, as far as the NG church is concerned, it is not. It’s a means to re-instate the western Church’s relevance in the western world as a direct response to an understanding of the times in which we live (Mt 16:2-3). Individual Christians might take the 12 Reforms into the party political arena if they wished but the Church must steer well clear of such entanglements.  Political partisanship and ideologies are totally toxic to the Church’s purpose.  

Thirdly, Jesus unflinchingly and unceremoniously took to the religio-political leaders of his times.  He called the leading Pharisees blind guides and vipers because they enmeshed the people in a creed that had much more to do with Man-centred dogmas than God’s ways.  The two giants are doing the same thing. Both liberalism and global corporatism are implacably opposed to God; enticing or forcing people to embrace perverse ideas and practices completely at odds with the will of God.  By abandoning God they have left themselves entirely exposed to hose perverse forces alluded to already. Evil, oppression and the hollowing out of human character they have been deliberately undermining God’s economy and building mountains of anti-Christian hubris.  They do everything God says he hates.

Can you see why the NGC is so important? It’s David’s sling, or Sampson’s jawbone of the ass.  Wielded resolutely and boldly the 12 Reforms ‘weaponise’ an understanding of our times to take on the two giants with ideas that will fell them as surely as any weapon hefted by a David or a Sampson – if they were implemented. We are told to bring down pretentious arguments raised up against Jesus (2Cor 10:5). If we are to do so in our own lives, how much more should we not also do it in the communities in which we live – as an act of love; a love for both God and our neighbour because everything done by the two giants is destroying lives and ensnaring vast numbers in a world view prison – a Plato’s cave, far from the truth and God.