MAKING AN IMPACT: Milieu

For a summary of what I’m hoping to accomplish in this blog series (in the third week of every month of 2018), I recommend reviewing my explanation here.

With today’s post, we wrap up our approach toward reaching this generation of college students, something we call Message, Mode, and Milieu (Mx3). In order to reach young adults today, we believe we have to be able to tell the whole story of God and His invitation to join. This narrative-based approach to the Text is something we call message. We also believe we have to teach this in a way that stimulates the mind, heart, and body; this approach is something we refer to as mode, and we talked about it last month and heard Zack tell a great story about his experience on the BEMA Trip.

This month, we talk about the last component, something we call MILIEU. I remember the first time Bill Westfall presented this material (and many times after that), and I laughed at his word choice and his commitment to alliteration. “Milieu” (pronounced mil-yoo) isn’t a word we typically use in everyday conversation, and I’ve only recently been able to consistently spell it correctly, so it would behoove us to make sure we examine its definition. Siri tells me that milieu means a person’s social environment.

Our social connections continue to be what has the most sustainable potential to impact us. Many sources of wisdom tell us to surround ourselves with the people we want to become. While many mothers have encouraged us to consider the practical sapience (how about that for a word you need to look up?) of, “if your friend told you to jump off of a bridge, would you do it,” we must also routinely have that conversation because of the power of the communal voices with which we surround ourselves.

Community is important. Because of this, we have to be very intentional about the relationships we build with others. ICM has defined milieu as intentional relationships with others in the story. This idea of social networking is intertwined with our idea of message. If God is telling a story and is inviting us to join it, then that means there must be others who are already in the story and others waiting to jump in. As we talked about with discipleship, there is always somebody in front of you, and always somebody behind you.

When you consider all of this, you realize how dangerous it is for a campus minister to just run with a flock of students. If it is simply one campus minister and a bunch of college-age students, the milieu is undeniably weak! In fact, depending on the personality of the campus minister, this is downright dangerous. Another campus minister was talking to me recently, following a workshop on discipleship I had done, about the danger of becoming “cult-like” in our adherence to rabbinical principles. It is incredibly important to realize the dangers of this! I went on to talk to him about how important my commitment to the local church is in the health of my ministry. I personally need to be surrounded by other pastors and leaders who will let me know if I start to get a little crazy. I need my students (and myself) to be surrounded by older folks and children, educated and uneducated, rich and poor, conservative and liberal.

Why? Because diversity is what allows us to grow and gain wisdom. It is in encountering differing worldviews and opinions that I am kept humble and forced to consider other ways of viewing things. It is through this diversity that I learn how to respect others. The Spirit moves and bears the fruit of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control as I interact with people who see things differently from me. Diversity is what protects us from the close-minded tribalism that threatens to destroy our world from all directions.

And it is this diversity that will help mold and shape young people into the leaders they are going to become. Just because we have intentional relationships with others who aren’t like us certainly doesn’t mean we agree with those people on everything — or even lots of things. It just means we respect their humanity and see our own development bound up in their own.

I need my computer science student to be rubbing shoulders with the IT Director of Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories. I need my Bernie-Sanders-supporting sophomore to listen to the reasoning behind a Donald-Trump-supporting farmer. I need a newly baptized freshman serving in the children’s ministry with toddlers who are being exposed to a Jesus she only recently met. I need older, more experienced people mentoring my students. I need my students mentoring others in the church. And we all need the mentors to be learning from those they are leading. Why? Because it is this living Eucharist table that reminds us of the world that we are called to change.

If we Impact the U within the context of milieu, we will Impact the World.

1 CORINTHIANS: Broken Body (part three)

If this is the context of the first letter to the Corinthians — if they are struggling with selfish division on one hand and rampant cultural compromise on the other — how will they move forward? Paul suggests the way to conquer the perils of their situation is love.

Surprised? I hope not. We shouldn’t be.

In 1 Corinthians 12–14, Paul moves into an interesting argument. He begins dealing with the unique giftedness of the the Corinthian church — namely, the miraculous gifts God has bestowed on them. Note that this is not written to address rightness and wrongness, or to give my personal opinions about the miraculous gifts. Clearly something unique is taking place in Corinth that isn’t taking place in Philippi or Colossae or Rome. God gets to do whatever God wants, so I’m the last person in the world who’s going to have the audacity to claim such gifts aren’t in use in the church today (albeit in conjunction with some pretty helpful instructions about how to use them properly).

But what does become relevant to our discussion here is that even the spiritual gifts have become an issue of contention and division for the people of God in Corinth. Their desire for selfish identity and glorification seems to know no bounds. They are using their own giftedness to promote their place within the Body of Christ. And couched in the middle of this three-chapter discussion is what we’ve often called “The Love Chapter.”

What many people have often noticed is that 1 Corinthians 12–14 (and maybe beyond) is a chiasm. While I have seen the chiasm identified and described in different ways, it appears Paul has intentionally placed this conversation about love in the center of a larger conversation about unity. Paul seems to be convinced that the way for them to deal with their divisions and find a place of orderly worship is to lay down their own desires and offer themselves to others in love.

This has actually been a thread for Paul throughout the letter. Look at Paul’s argument from chapter 6:

“I have the right to do anything,” you say—but not everything is beneficial. “I have the right to do anything”—but I will not be mastered by anything. You say, “Food for the stomach and the stomach for food, and God will destroy them both.” The body, however, is not meant for sexual immorality but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. By his power God raised the Lord from the dead, and he will raise us also. Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ himself?

Or this very similar argument four chapters later:

“I have the right to do anything,” you say—but not everything is beneficial. “I have the right to do anything”—but not everything is constructive. No one should seek their own good, but the good of others.

No one should seek their own good, but the good of others. Apparently, Paul thinks that considering others before ourselves is the way to rid our faith community and our worship from the struggles of selfishness and idolatry. Paul says it isn’t enough to make sure that “it’s OK” to do something or to be something. It’s more important to consider the impact on others. Not is my behavior permissible, but is my behavior beneficial for others. Not is my behavior allowed, but is my behavior constructive for the larger community of faith.

Love God. Love others.

When you love others, God says you are loving Him.

I’ll close with some thoughts about the Eucharist — the Lord’s Supper. It seems that in the quest to find what is considered sacred by the Corinthians, even the Lord’s Supper didn’t escape their selfishness and division. Consider this from chapter 11:

In the following directives I have no praise for you, for your meetings do more harm than good. In the first place, I hear that when you come together as a church, there are divisions among you, and to some extent I believe it. No doubt there have to be differences among you to show which of you have God’s approval. So then, when you come together, it is not the Lord’s Supper you eat, for when you are eating, some of you go ahead with your own private suppers. As a result, one person remains hungry and another gets drunk. Don’t you have homes to eat and drink in? Or do you despise the church of God by humiliating those who have nothing? What shall I say to you? Shall I praise you? Certainly not in this matter!

For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me.” For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.

The Eucharist resembled a guild feast before it did the broken body of Christ.

A broken body, indeed. This body of believers is broken beyond recognition. Yet Paul will invite them to a table that can remind them of the solidarity they share will all those bothers and sisters who worship alongside them. At the table, we are reminded of the fact that no matter who we are, we come — needy, beaten, battled — to the table of God. We find a reminder of the last night Jesus spent with his disciples and the way he served them selflessly. We are reminded of the thing that brings us together and makes us members of the same family.

We have wrestled in the previous two conversations about how much our day and culture shares in common with that of Corinth.

There is encouragement in the fact that now — 2,000 years later — we are still celebrating the same Eucharist and partaking in the same reminder of all that brings us together. I pray those regular moments will remind us of love incarnate; that we would remember the life and ministry of Jesus and how he loved; that we would be able to examine our own broken body (the Church!) and be invited to a table of grace and solidarity with our fellow brothers and sisters.

A broken body, repaired by the broken body of Christ.