Victor Chininin Buele

The President-elect has been saying that his grandmother would not tell him to keep the faith but to spread it. Now, I’m not advocating for spreading the President-elect’s faith, of course, but he managed to get inside of my thinking with that phrase.

We are multipliers. That’s our nature. The blessing at the creation, reported in Genesis, was to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. There is so much to do! There is work to be done excellently, classes to be taught, bread to be baked, women to be rescued, children to be raised, a nation to be saved. We cannot possibly do it all.

I have been homeless, from an ecclesiastical point of view, so to speak, for a bit. I’ve learned a lot.

Multiplication is unavoidable. The question is what are we multiplying?

We will multiply, but if what we are multiplying is the wrong kind of leaven, the whole thing will be bad. That is, it is not just about spreading the faith but about what kind of faith it is that we are spreading.

We become what we worship. I’ve been saying that phrase a lot as I’ve been preparing a class about worship that I’m teaching. Greg Beale came up with it, of course, to summarize the biblical teaching about idolatry. I didn’t make it up myself.

So, what have I learned? Churches become what is sown in them. If you sow self-preservation, they become ingrown monuments to self-preservation. If you sow sacrificial giving, you get to watch a couple depart the comfort of a rising career in Kansas City to go serve in the east where they will very likely face severe persecution for daring to bring the message of salvation in Jesus Christ.

We now know what it feels like to “date” the church as the now-not-a-Christian Josh Harris plastered in a little book once. We know what it is like to walk in and to have literally no one notice that you exist. We know what it is like to have severe reservations about something and not know how to get out. We know what it is like to raise concerns and have them shut down. We know what it is like to have your children ask you why they heard a gospel different than the one they themselves can read in their Bibles. We know what it is like to have children ask legitimate questions you have no good answer for whatsoever.

We now hope we can see the overlooked, not ignore the red flags, not fear the appearance of conflict, not confuse boldness with harshness, not confuse questions with an anti-church mentality, not disregard questions asked whether they seem thoughtful to us or not, not avoid the difficult conversations that sorrow and pain bring about.

We long to see Jesus Christ magnified in Kansas City, disciples growing and thriving, multiplying the good news of Jesus, not a message that kind of, sort of looks like him if you twist your head 63 degrees to the right, put on 3D glasses, squint real hard, and step up a ladder to see.

The kingdom of heaven is at hand. Christ has come. There’s work to do.

Like I heard many times coming out of that TV screen, “get busy living, or get busy dying.”