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You are here: Home / Archives for Bishop of Suburbia

Bishop of Suburbia

August 26, 2015 By Mike Bishop

Discovering the Essence of Church

The following is an excerpt from the book, “What is Church? A Story of Transition” by Mike Bishop.

There are many people who see what we have seen within the church and immediately proclaim the way to fix things:  “We need to be more biblical, to get back to how the first century church did things.”  “If only all these churches would sell off their buildings and start meeting in homes, everything would be different.”  “Shared leadership is the answer.  Pastors need to step down and let their flock have a say for once.”  “Theology is too stagnant.  We need some fresh ideas about God to stir the pot.”  And on and on.  A few years ago, I stumbled on a group of people who have consistently refused to be satisfied with quick fixes.

In the early 1950’s, there was a simple, unknown Virginian helping to prophetically birth a church 50 years ahead of its time.  You have probably never heard of him.  Gordon Cosby was the son of a Baptist father and Presbyterian mother who grew up in Depression Era America.  During WWII, Gordon became an Army Chaplain and had experiences that changed his life as a Christian, Pastor, and member of the body of Christ.  When he returned from the war, he and a small band of seekers began to experiment with what it means to be ‘the church’ in Washington D.C.  In 2001, and then again in 2005, I had the privilege of visiting the result of his life’s work and investigate the phenomenon that is the Church of the Savior.

Actually, Church of the Savior (COS) no longer exists as an organizational entity.  About 10 or 15 years ago, they recognized that the groups that had been birthed from the church’s original core really constituted the ‘essence’ of COS.  Therefore, there was no need to prop up another structure for simply nostalgic reasons.  They just let it die.  Now all that exists are unique ‘mission groups’ that each minister to a specific need critical to the underprivileged residents of the Adams Morgan neighborhood in DC.  Within each of these groups is the genetic code that Gordon and his friends have been working out for the past 50 years.  This code is really very simple.  It is not a church structure, a church growth technique, or special model for ‘doing church right’, but really a set of deeply held values and commitments.

I had never heard of Gordon Cosby or COS before Todd Hunter mentioned them to me during one of our conversations.  It was actually in the context of a discussion we were having on helping people in church find their ‘calling’, which usually is associated with a calling into full-time ministry.  If you had a ‘call’ on your life, you were going to be a preacher or a missionary.  Nowadays in evangelical circles, calling into ministry can mean becoming part of a large church staff doing a myriad of different jobs.  But mostly call has been associated with a career in professional ministry.  Todd and I were discussing the possibility that God calls each of us uniquely into a ministry that may for some be very much outside the church world.  Someone may be called to the engineering profession or to be a stay-at-home mom.  Others may be called to become entrepreneurs and create businesses that bring justice and healing to the underprivileged in our society.  Or some of us may just be called to spend a lot of our time interceding on behalf of those who have not yet tasted of God’s grace and love in our communities.  Are not these functions as important to God as one who commits their life to be a full-time church leader?

COS takes calling very seriously.  One of their deep values is to be committed to the process of call.  I say process, because we can never fully rest in one particular calling.  God is always speaking to us, beckoning us to hear his voice and do what he says.  What COS has ingrained into their corporate identity is a long-lasting patience with God’s timing.  God’s ways take time, and you don’t always see results in the ways you would expect.  A calling never ends up looking like what you thought.

But even before COS dealt with the issue of calling, they asked a very simple, profound, question – “What is church?”  Gordon Cosby posed the question another way to us during our first meeting, “What did Jesus intend his church to look like?”  Or, “What is the essence of the church?”  Now the intent of this question is not to recapture the church in the Book of Acts or to solve all the problems I addressed above.  No, the question is, what did Jesus envision his church to look like in this time and in this place?  What is important to him, now?  After all, he is the head of the church, and he thought up the idea of gathering a group of disciples for mutual support in ‘the Way’.  So what was he really after then and what is he after now?

As with calling, I think it’s important to realize that we can never fully rest in one definition of church.  The question has many different answers for many varied places and times.  As a matter of fact, during our first meeting, Cosby offered this word of advice to us young church planters:  “Your job is to keep asking that question as long as you live.”  Because – and this is critical – “We grow by asking the right questions not by getting answers.”

Growth in discipleship to Jesus, as in anything worth our effort, requires discipline.  He qualified this part of the discussion because people always have a hard time with the word discipline.  It is difficult because it conflicts with our freedom.  But in fact, as Richard Foster and others have shown, true freedom is really found in discipline.  He quoted Dietrich Bonhoeffer in ‘The Cost of Discipleship’, “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.”  The purpose of the spiritual disciplines is to open ourselves in an orderly way to God’s grace.  That means a long, slow, painful death to every flesh-way we know.  So what do these disciplines look like to a faith community?  He suggested a few guidelines.  First, they must apply to life.  An example of this is the Sabbath rest and recapturing that as part of the way we live.  Not in a legalistic way of course, but as a discipline to open ourselves to rest and grace.  Secondly, we need disciplines that deepen the community and create intimacy.  Our society fears closeness so we need to have time to spare in our gatherings so this closeness is fostered.  Finally, we need to be with the poor.

When I visited COS for the first time, I was already aware of my lack of concern for the poor.  But Cosby threw me a curve ball.  To be with the poor is not the same as trying to help the poor.  To be with means you are actually trying to understand someone who is not like you.  You are developing relationship.  This is a much deeper discipline than just meeting what you think their needs are.

While in Washington D.C., I visited two of the mission groups started under the COS umbrella.  The first was their housing project called Jubilee Housing.  This program was started more than 30 years ago when they purchased an existing apartment building from a slum-lord.  Totally funded by private donations, they now have over 200 low-income apartments in multiple buildings.  The purpose of the buildings is to provide low-cost, clean housing to neighborhood folks who would normally live in slum conditions (or be homeless).  Sister organizations, Jubilee Jobs and Columbia Road Heath Care provide the obvious practical means for quality of life improvement.  The second ministry we visited was called Samaritan Inns.  It was created to get addicts off the streets and provide an avenue towards total life transformation.  Incredibly, 96% of addicts that begin in their 28-day Alcoholics Anonymous-style program and continue to live in their long term housing for another two years stay off drugs.  And not only that, but they get jobs, find permanent housing, and many get reunited with lost family members.

Now, if you have been a good evangelical like me, you are probably wondering, “When do these people get saved?”  Or, specific to the argument I have been making, “What about discipleship to Jesus – how is this accomplished?”  

This was one of the biggest lessons that COS taught me.  Here is a group of people that are deeply ‘Christian’ – sold out to our mission to make disciples as Jesus commanded us to.  But they have been committed to one poor neighborhood in DC for 50 YEARS.  That commitment has led them to make deep sacrifices of time, energy, and money – all outside of what evangelicals would traditionally classify as ‘church’.  For me, this point was driven home when someone from COS was posed a question about how they deal with having to hire professional social workers to provide some support to their ministries.  Obviously, not all of them are totally committed to the original values of the church.  The response was that they try not to hire outside unless it is absolutely necessary.  She quoted Cosby as saying, “I would much rather have someone working in a mission group who is called than one who is qualified.”  Immediately I remembered sitting around in church meetings saying those same words…about worship leaders and nursery workers!  What a box-breaker!  These people came to the same conclusions about calling, but relating to life and death issues – dealing with people that Jesus loves dearly, but happen to have no home, no money, and a wrecked life.  Up until that point, my concerns were making sure someone was there to watch the three year olds during the Sunday service and the worship team’s guitars were in tune.

So what does all this mean?  I still do not have ‘a heart for the poor’.  Maybe the truth is that no one does.  But Jesus does and we are saying that we will go where he leads us.  One of the catch phrases around COS is that we have a journey inwards and a journey outwards.  Our calling to the poor (or whatever calling we receive to minister the kingdom of God) comes from Jesus – along the inward road.  This is what we must begin seeking in earnest.  In the midst of that quest as a learning community, to discover the kingdom of God in us and among us, we may just stumble upon the essence of church.

Filed Under: Bishop of Suburbia Tagged With: Church

August 16, 2015 By Mike Bishop

Finding the Jesus Movement Again

Most Americans (including this one) live a highly coordinated, fast-paced existence.  Life is a complex machine.  There is very little down time.  Weekdays are filled with work, school, sports, car-pools, and heaven forbid if the car has to get the oil changed and tires rotated.  If a car does break down, or a child gets sick, or someone has to travel, the efficiency of the machine takes a serious hit.  At that point, we do everything in our power to get the machine repaired and humming along again. 


In increasing numbers, Americans are eliminating church from the design of their machines.  Over the course of the last generation, the church has been pushed to the margins of influence and participation.  The public image of Christianity is about political power and shaming society’s ills.  The Bible is not taken seriously as a source of authority for modern life.  Pastors make great punchlines.  If God is alive, and the common thought is that he very well might not be, he is far too silent and mysterious to actually place serious belief in or more importantly, follow.

The machines of most 21st century Americans are running fine without God.  We now have the tangible wonders of science to heal our bodies and technology to dazzle our minds.  Soon our organic machines will be enhanced in unimaginable ways by robotics and artificial intelligence.  But in spite of the progress, there are still massive problems facing the world.  Since we Americans generally have enough food to eat and disposable income for craft beer, it follows that we should care deeply about how to fix these problems for the rest of humanity.  If you are a rational person, it is not difficult to see that there is a tremendous amount of work to do for the good of the world.  Who has time to waste on God, religion, or church?  And those are the rational ones!  Everyone else has been swept along with the tide of the new civil religion – worshiping the god of self.  And that kind of worship does not mix well with the God talked about in church.


If you are a church-going Christian, pastor, or church leader, this is all very disconcerting.  From a broad perspective the situation seems hopeless.  The temptation is to up the stakes with loud rhetoric condemning evil and pandering to a base of believers already convinced.  Or pump money into advertising and initiatives to get people to return to church.  Or become content with being pushed further and further into the margins.  None of these responses seem to be working.


I believe, quite simply, the answer will not be found by church insiders.  No offense to anyone reading this who is a pastor, church planter, or a good church-going family.  Your churches do wonderful things in your community and lives are being changed.  But, you won’t get God back into the 21st century American machine.  That ship has sailed.


The answer will come from where it is least expected.  Cultural outsiders.  Immigrants.  Sinners.  The unclean and uncouth.  Fatherless and motherless.  Those longing for acceptance and community.  Those who desire mercy yet receive none.  Somewhere, sometime, within this soup of people who are loved by God (who Christians affectionately call “the Lost”), the Holy Spirit will stir.  It may have already happened.  An outsider meets Jesus and is set free.  Like the woman at the well.  Or Mary Magdalene.  In the rush of that freedom, Jesus is shared with another, and another, and another.  Signs and wonders will happen.  The kingdom of God will be discovered.  The beauty and wealth of God’s Story in scripture will be read and treasured.  “Church” in its essence will happen in broken yet beautiful ways.  But at the center will be Jesus, as King, leading his movement and shepherding his family as he has been from the beginning.


The answer we are looking for is a recovery of the Jesus Movement.  Not a revival of the Jesus Movement from the 60’s and 70’s.  Not a charismatic or pentecostal renewal.  Not a return to the church holding a position of power in culture.  It is the purity of Jesus changing hearts and minds and lives, setting people free from the bondage of self-idolatry, self-hatred, and the false promise of humanity saving itself without God.  

Let us pray and watch for such a movement.  I’m praying, and waiting.

Filed Under: Bishop of Suburbia Tagged With: Culture

June 3, 2015 By Mike Bishop

The Good Life

From Adam and Eve forward, humanity has been trying to answer the question, “How do we thrive?”  Another way to pose that question would be to ask, “What is the good life?”  There are a thousand ways to answer that question.  Whole societies have been built on certain answers like survival, freedom, conquest, the pursuit of wealth, power and control, even hatred for other societies.  America was built on answers like opportunity, adventure, exploration, religious freedom, and a healthy dose of individualism.  

But once a society is built and established, it gets steadily more difficult to maintain “the good life”.  The ideals that build a society, the over-arching Story that pioneers lived and died for, gets watered down. Pioneers are quickly replaced with settlers.  And settlers have a habit of forgetting the reasons why the society was built in the first place. 

To a settler, the good life means to have a good job, a good marriage, well-adjusted and healthy kids, a comfortable house, work out 3 times a week, drink in moderation, and only occasionally order 2 dozen crullers from the local gourmet donut shop.  Settlers – and let’s face it, all us are settlers – eventually lose touch with the powerful founding Story that motivated the pioneers to accomplish the amazing things they did. 

In the book of Joshua, it is recorded how the people of Israel occupied the land God gave them under the leadership and faithfulness of Joshua son of Nun.  It is the story of a generation of pioneers and warriors that believed with absolute conviction that nothing was going to stop them because God was with them and for them.  But eventually their time came to an end.  In Judges chapter 2, starting in verse 7 it says:

“…each of the tribes left to take possession of the land allotted to them.  And the Israelites served the Lord throughout the lifetime of Joshua and the leaders who outlived him—those who had seen all the great things the Lord had done for Israel.  Joshua son of Nun, the servant of the Lord, died at the age of 110. They buried him in the land he had been allocated, at Timnath-serah in the hill country of Ephraim, north of Mount Gaash.”

But in verse 10 it says, “After that generation died, another generation grew up who did not acknowledge the Lord or remember the mighty things he had done for Israel.  The Israelites did evil in the Lord’s sight and served the images of Baal. They abandoned the Lord, the God of their ancestors, who had brought them out of Egypt. They went after other gods, worshiping the gods of the people around them.”


So in one generation – one single generation – the Israelites went from the spoils of victory and the blessing of God to abandonment of God and utter failure.  Stunning.   

What is the Good Life?  How do settlers – those of us tasked with living in the in-between times, where no volcanic, society-creating activity is going on – stay faithful to the Story that got us here in the first place?  Well, just like the people of Israel, if we forget where we came from, how we got here, and who led us here, we are doomed for failure.   

As great as the American Dream is and as great as the pioneers were that founded this country, as followers of Jesus it is not our ultimate Story.  Phillipians 3:20 and 21 says, “But we are citizens of heaven, where the Lord Jesus Christ lives. And we are eagerly waiting for him to return as our Savior.  He will take our weak mortal bodies and change them into glorious bodies like his own, using the same power with which he will bring everything under his control.”  Now this is not describing some otherworldly future where we will be floating on clouds and playing harps.  This is talking about God-shaped reality; life as God intended it from the beginning.  This is where heaven and earth come together.  This is resurrection and new life as citizens of God’s kingdom. 

Because this is our future, we live now with this image in full view.  As bad as the world gets, we know who comes out on top.  As messed up as people are, we know God is in the rescue and recovery business, the resurrection business. 

In 1 Corinthians 15:54-58, Paul tells us how this all fits together:

“Then, when our dying bodies have been transformed into bodies that will never die, this Scripture will be fulfilled:  

Death is swallowed up in victory.  O death, where is your victory, O death, where is your sting?  

For sin is the sting that results in death, and the law gives sin its power.  But thank God! He gives us victory over sin and death through our Lord Jesus Christ.  So, my dear brothers and sisters, be strong and immovable.  Always work enthusiastically for the Lord, for you know that nothing you do for the Lord is ever useless.” 

That is our story.  That is our promise.  Nothing you do for the Lord is useless.  No-thing.  So that brings us full circle.  What is the good life?  What does it mean to thrive?  Well, it starts as we follow Jesus together as a family.  It starts around the table, sharing a meal, singing, praying, interacting, remembering our history and imagining our future.  And then we go out from there, or more accurately, we get sent out.  And we become representatives of the kingdom that will have no end.  We work, we raise families, we love our neighbors, we pray, we heal, we suffer, and we laugh.  And all of those things, every-thing, matters to God.  Not just what we do in a church service.   

Truth be told, much of life is pretty ordinary and unglamorous.  It is the stuff of settlers.  Many churches try to pump up crowds with big ideas, big programs, and big visions – pioneer talk.  But what happens when you leave church and have to change a diaper?  Or wash the dishes?  Or do your homework?  In God’s economy, that is holy work, not just what is typically called ministry. 

So here is the truth.  Do you want to live the good life?  Then find some friends, some fellow settlers that have not forgotten the Story.  People that love God and love each other.  You don’t have to do anything fancy.  You don’t need smoke machines and a million dollar sound system.  Just be together, worship, pray, eat, laugh, and love.  Then go live.  And be a generation, like Joshua’s, that serves God for the rest of your lives.

Filed Under: Bishop of Suburbia Tagged With: Intentional Community, Kingdom of God, Spiritual Family

March 15, 2015 By Mike Bishop

A Liturgy of Resistance

Below is an introduction to something our community – Resurrection Church – did tonight as a part of our weekly worship gathering.  We met at a local park – this one.  I read the introduction and then sent the group on their way.  Bummer for me, I had to pick up one kid and then deal with another kid’s sick friend, so I missed out on the conversation.  But that’s the great thing about a liturgy that is truly participatory…the Spirit knows how to lead the Church!  Please feel free to use / modify / or otherwise rip off this for your own community of faith.

Our lives are filled with ever-present obligations and responsibilities. From the moment we wake up until we go to sleep, an endless list of have-to’s and should-have-done’s consume our minds. We are bombarded by the tyranny of the urgent. A crying baby needs her milk. A deadline needs to be met. The pantry needs to be filled. The car needs a new tire. These “needs” never stop. To make matters worse, everything we read, watch, and hear from the outside is aimed at either trying to create a need within us (advertising), convince us that the crisis of the day in the world should be our crisis (the news), or help us escape from having to cope with this thing called life (entertainment).

The Gospel – the Message of God’s Kingdom – is like a Molotov cocktail thrown in the middle of our living room.  God is not interested in helping us prop up our distracted, conflicted lives.  He doesn’t want to give us keys to a better self while the self we have is riddled with sin, pain, guilt, and shame.  He doesn’t want to slap a new coat of paint on the walls and call it a new house.  No, he’d rather burn it down and start building you a mansion.

Don’t be fooled by the current attempts to sanitize or domesticate the good news of Jesus Christ.  Here are some truths that should be stated plainly.  All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.  Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.  There is no condemnation for those who belong to Christ Jesus.  For you died to this life, and your real life is hidden with Christ in God.  Christ has been raised from the dead.  We will not all die, but we will all be transformed!

Today, we will practice together a liturgy of resistance.  Recall that liturgy simply means, “The Work of the People.”  It’s what we do as a community to worship God and orient ourselves in God’s kingdom, which is in fact the real world.  There have been times in the history of God’s people where our worship takes on a certain edge.  Sometimes, we have to stand up to the powers that be and say, “Enough’s enough.  You are not God.  You are not in control of our lives and we don’t have to live by your rules.”

So today, in solidarity with churches around the world that have no permanent place to worship, we are proclaiming this park to be our sanctuary.  The leaves of the trees will be our musicians, the birds will be our choir, and the trails will be our pews.  Printed on these papers are a few scripture verses that remind us about the truth of God’s kingdom.  There are also a few questions to think about and discuss.  For the next hour, let’s walk through the park and ponder these verses together.  You may walk alone for a time if you wish, but I would encourage you to be together as much as possible.  Turn your cell phones off and try to keep the small talk to a minimum.  Choose one person to be the facilitator and to read the verses and questions.  Don’t worry if you don’t finish all the questions – let the Spirit lead!

A Liturgy of Resistance (pdf)

Filed Under: Bishop of Suburbia Tagged With: Missional, resources, Spiritual Family

February 28, 2015 By Mike Bishop

A Pastoral Geometry Lesson

“American pastors are abandoning their posts, left and right, and at an alarming rate. They are not leaving their churches and getting other jobs. Congregations still pay their salaries. Their names remain on the church stationery and they continue to appear in pulpits on Sundays. But they are abandoning their posts, their calling. They have gone whoring after other gods. What they do with their time under the guise of pastoral ministry hasn’t the remotest connection with what the church’s pastors have done for most of twenty centuries.”


This may sound like the rant of an angry, young blogger.  It’s not.  This may sound like a bitter congregant who has been hurt by the church.  It’s not…not even close.  This may sound like a pastor who is jealous of other pastors who have large churches, a bigger platform, or a better book deal.  Ha!  No, this is a quote from Eugene Peterson, best selling author, scholar, poet, and pastor.  He’s one of my heroes, and I agree with him wholeheartedly.


Peterson wrote Working the Angles in 1987, almost 30 years ago.  Since that time, the role of pastor in America has continued to degenerate.  The “other gods” Peterson refers to are easy to name.  Celebrity status.  Money.  Political influence.  Organizational control.  Relevance.  These are no longer temptations to avoid that a few succumb to and the rest condemn.  They are expected, sought after, and encouraged.  These gods dominate the landscape of what it means to be a pastor.  And they make me sick.

Peterson advocated for a return to the three basic pastoral angles – prayer, Scripture, and spiritual direction – that give the visible lines of pastoral ministry – preaching, teaching, and administration – their shape.  Without the angles, you are left with a jumbled mess of lines, not a triangle, a real ministry.  The beauty of a triangle is its structural integrity.  It is stable and can handle weight and pressure.  There is no “better” side to an equilateral triangle.  Each side, each angle, is as valuable as any other.


I have spent the last 13 years pastoring (verb) various groups of people in a variety of contexts.  I have never carried the title of pastor in the same way Peterson did.  It’s not my day job.  However, I have tried to invest as much time as I can to the angles as a means to make my pastoring as effective as possible for the few God has entrusted me to equip.  Some of the practicalities of pastoring must be shared in a community like ours.  The lines of my triangle are short.  But I have others around me who are also capable shepherds and practice pastoring in their families, their workplaces, and in their neighborhoods.


Honestly, I do not think the role of pastor will ever return to its former place of honor in American society.  The internal pressures (the gods mentioned above) and external pressures (culture’s denial of spiritual authority and the knowledge of God) are just too great.  Instead of wringing their hands and attempting to grasp for the last shreds of honor, pastors should swallow their pride, take the rebuke, and fervently return to the triangular task of pastoring.  For some, this may mean the end of a career, to drop the pastoral salary and find a job in the community.  They might find ways to use their gifts in other settings than the Sunday morning service routine, maybe as business owners, counselors, or coaches.  For others, it may mean redefining the role of pastor around the ancient skills (angles) and finding innovative new ways to draw the lines that are the meat of pastoral work.  

Of course, included in this is the recognition that the equippers doing the equipping in Ephesians 4 are not all pastors and not even all leaders!  They are people, Holy Spirit empowered people that are willing to respond to God’s call – however big or small – to help the church grow in unity, maturity, wisdom, knowledge of God, health, and ultimately, Christlikeness.

Filed Under: Bishop of Suburbia Tagged With: Church, Missional

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