The Drama of Discipleship

Gregory R. Perry

• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781666704174
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Ministry

How do Christ's followers reach across the dividing lines of our culture to offer hospitality and hope? How do local congregations worship God faithfully on Sunday and bear witness to their neighbors with fitting words and deeds during the week?Christ has called his people to follow the ways of his kingdom in their homes, workplaces, schools, churches, and neighborhoods. The Drama of Discipleship is a resource for being and making disciples of Jesus in the everyday tasks of being human.Each episode offers at least one group activity that is designed to catalyze group action on your local stage and build your congregation's practice of taking off the old ways of being human and putting on the true image of God--Christ. The Drama concludes with additional tools for those who lead small groups in the heartwork of discipleship, as well as a neighborhood survey for those who lead congregations in the fieldwork of discipling the nations.

Episode Five

Church

Working Together to Flourish

When we are planning a move to a new neighborhood, we explore its parks, shops, and restaurants. However, before we put down a deposit or a down payment, we also investigate its schools, churches, and real estate values. We get the numbers, including the crime reports. And, we hire a home inspector. We want the whole picture, the beautiful, the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Before we make the move, we need to be able to see ourselves and our family members in that picture. Whether we realize it or not, we are doing an asset inventory and a needs assessment. What’s more, we are finding our way in a story that starts long before we arrive in our new neighborhood. We have not been sent so much as we have been brought there by the God who is always the first missionary on the scene.

In her work as a social and cultural entrepreneur in Indianapolis, Joanna Taft has learned that neighborhoods are living stages animated and marked with a history, not blank slates. As founder and director of the Harrison Center for the Arts, Joanna has made a name for herself revitalizing abandoned spaces in the city center. She helped found a nationally ranked high school and a cultural center that connects neighbors through innovative programming like Front Porch Indy.105 These accomplishments have brought opportunities to work with many leaders of business and government who have sought her advice. Like all good teachers, however, Joanna has never stopped learning from her neighbors.

In 2015, the King Park Development Corporation came asking for help to form a revitalization plan and attract investors. But, as Joanna and her team talked to the neighbors, they noticed a lot of fear. These residents weren’t against improvement. But they had heard how “improvements” in other neighborhoods had pushed residents out, even erased neighborhood names to start over.

As she listened, Joanna began to reckon with her own role in gentrification. Digging into the subject, she identified two forms: 1) economic gentrification, in which a neighborhood’s revitalization attracts investors, drives up property values, and pushes out longtime residents who can no longer afford to live there, and 2) cultural gentrification, in which a neighborhood’s story is forgotten in part or erased completely, such that longtime residents no longer feel at home there or part of its future.106

As Joanna and her team cultivated conversations with residents about their life together in King Park, she came up with a way to honor its story. “What if we used theater to reenact the neighborhood’s history, like a living history museum?” As Joanna and her team began gathering memories, photographs, and stories, they realized that the past was riddled with problems and possibilities just like the present. So, a member of Joanna’s team suggested a different way to honor the neighborhood’s story. “What if we explore our neighbors’ hopes as well as their memories? What if we imagined a pre-enactment of what the neighborhood could become? We can honor the stories, people, and places of the past, but we can also provide a foretaste of what King Park might become.”

In October of 2016, King Park hosted a pre-enactment with the help of former, longtime, and new residents. New business owners in King Park were approached about how they imagined their future there, and how they would pre-enact it for the benefit of their local neighbors. Within the month they responded to say they had adjusted their hiring policies and their pricing to make room for the neighbors, who were making room for them. Together, businesses and nonprofits rented billboards and framed art for the pre-enactment weekend, depicting neighborhood scenes they were imagining together.

The city planned to reopen the Paul Laurence Dunbar Library, closed in 1968, for the pre-enactment to honor former residents and to recall the joys and sorrows of their shared history. A neighborhood church invited participants to take a vow of community renewal. Spoken word artist and musician Nabil Ince (stage name Seaux Chill) wrote music and lyrics imagining a “new normal.”

Somehow we’ve got to find a way to recognize how we got here today.

In order for us to understand where we ought to go.

Yes, in order for us to form new realities, to form new normals,

To help create a neighborhood we’ve never seen before

For our children and our children’s children.107

When Christians move to a new neighborhood to start a new job or school, finding a local church is usually high on the checklist of needs to fill alongside a new grocer, doctor, and dentist. If not, something has gone wrong in their understanding of the character and mission of the church. I say this on the basis of two important modifiers for the word ecclesia or church in the New Testament.

First, the church is not just any gathering of people. It is the church “of God.” “Of God” signifies its primary relationship and its source or origin. The church is God’s family, brought about by God’s generous, self-giving actions. Therefore, a true church is marked by God’s presence, that is to say, by the presence of God’s Spirit. Second, phrases like “the church of God in Corinth, Philippi, or Thessalonica” identify a particular locale where members of God’s household live, work, and worship. The church is committed to the welfare of a place and the well-being of its citizens. As Mike Goheen has summarized,

The church is related to God. It exists for God’s mission, but it is also related to its place. It exists for Corinth, for Ephesus, for Surrey, for Tempe, and so on. It is of the very essence of the church that it is for that place, for that section of the world for which it has been made responsible.108

If the church is to be simultaneously for God and for this place, however, it also must be against indigenous idolatries and injustices that twist the people, the relational and institutional systems of this place away from their original design and direction. In short, by loving both God and neighbors well, local churches help reweave a social fabric of redemptive relationships that foster peace. The Holy Spirit’s energizing presence in the weave between participants creates a tapestry beautiful enough to fire minds and hearts,...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations
• What This Book Is About
• Introducing the Drama of Discipleship
• Episode One: Creation
• Episode Two: Rebellion
• Episode Three: Israel
• Episode Four: Jesus
• Episode Five: Church
• Episode Six: New Creation
• Closing Notes and Additional Tools for Stage Directors in the Drama
• Bibliography