How Will They Know Us If We Do Not Bear Fruit?

This past weekend I traveled to St. Louis to visit an emerging church for a class I took early in the Summer with Earl Creps called Ministry in Emerging Culture. On the way there I stopped to visit my brother in Columbia.

It was as if this trip reflected my heart at the present time. It is a heart tired of petty theological arguments, of clichés, of hearing one thing, but seeing another. It is a heart tired of cynicism, of pointing out the faults of others while often refusing to acknowledge my own. It is a heart tired of turning the church into a playground for my own intellectual fodder. It is a heart that I believe is more passionate about the Great Commission (Matt. 28:19-20) than ever before.

Jesus tells us that people will know us by our fruit. In other words, they will know us by what we do. I cannot judge a person’s motives. I cannot judge a person’s heart. Have you ever heard someone say something along the lines of, “I don’t like what so and so did, but I know they have a good heart”? How in the world do you know they have a good heart? Or on the flipside, how do you know that someone who has done something terrible has a bad heart? What in the world are we talking about here? Only God judges the heart. Only God judges motives. This is not our job.

My friend Luke and I visited The Journey in St. Louis on Sunday morning. The pastor, Darrin Patrick, preached a sermon essentially on judging without being judgmental. [There is also a great article on this topic by Wave Nunnally on the Enrichment Journal website (http://enrichmentjournal.ag.org/). Just search for “Nunnally” and you will find it.] I am not going to go into any detail about the sermon. I will only say that I found it to be one of the most biblical and personally encouraging sermons I have hear in a while.

The sermon was not necessarily encouraging in its content for me, although I appreciated the content greatly (because it was solidly biblical, confrontational, courageous, and honest). There was one thing that Darrin said that really stuck out to me (and I paraphrase): “Coming to hear me speak won’t help that much. People need relationship. They need depth. They need people willing to be careful and thorough, pointed and delicate, tough and tender.” People need relationship. They need to not just hear about the love of Christ, they need to experience it through other people.

This statement summates what it means to be missional: empowering others to create relationships for the sake of Christ. Let me clarify though (and this is my addition). This does not mean we are out to convince others. Rather, we are out to be friends with people in the world, especially those who disagree with us. What I find so revolutionary about this idea is that we can put correct theology on the back-burner and focus on what Paul called the most excellent way, love. We are to love others in thought, word, and deed. It is unfortunate that we have come to the point where love has become subject to correct theology, denominationalism, and the egos of so many Christian leaders.

No, I am not saying correct theology is not important. But once again, Jesus tells us that others will know us by our fruit (a good tree cannot bear bad fruit and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit-Mt. 7, Lk. 6; if you abide in the vine that is Christ, you will bear good fruit, the bearing of fruit is what proves that you are a disciple of Christ—see John 7). I believe that this means we should place primary importance not upon the correct theology of a particular local church, but on the fruit of the church. This requires discernment, but we are clearly told that it is our fruit by which others shall judge us, so it is only right that we judge others only by their fruit.

The Journey was a church that I could have found many theological differences with, but all of them are minor and make little difference in light of what they are doing, the fruit they are bearing. The mindset there is forward, pushing to reach new people in whatever way possible. I got an opportunity to sit down with one of the pastors (elders, as they refer to themselves) named Joel. He breathed mission as he spoke. The church presently exists as three separate campuses and they are planting a fourth. He talked about the autonomy of each campus and structuring the service around the needs of the community. He talked about the hope of reflecting the diversity of St. Louis. He talked about reaching out through the arts. He exuded the passion of the Great Commission.

As I left the service at the old Catholic cathedral turned emerging church, I knew I had found a church that was taking the emerging church ideas and living them out with integrity. And these ideas, about being missional and doing church outside the church walls, about engaging with people of different faiths, about meeting the needs of the community first, about not getting bogged down in theological differences, about moving forward and not looking back . . . these are biblical ideas, but they are not being embraced by so many in action. How will they know we are disciples of Christ if we do not bear fruit?

I left the church visit in somewhat of a stupor. God is pouring excitement and joy back into my life. He is bringing my year of study to a culmination of blessing with new relationships and the encouragement of seeing a church striving to live the Great Commission in everything it does. Praise Him for his blessing!