Sacramental Living

The following is adapted from an email I recently sent to extended friends and family:

I recently resigned as Pastor of Grace Community Church of the Nazarene in Brunswick, GA. My wife, Heather, and I have been seeking God’s will for some time as we have sensed that we have accomplished our call in Brunswick. God has certainly been preparing us for something very different.

After many months of prayer, listening, and conversation with some peers, we will soon be moving to the Atlanta area. Our home in Brunswick is on the market (you can point interested parties here. Heather is working as a PA three days a week. I’m currently unemployed, but seeking a job in Brunswick until our home sells.  Then, it’s off to Atlanta!

Why Atlanta you ask? We, along with another family are moving into the Atlanta area to serve as Resident Missionaries to Atlanta. We have had much support from a local church outside the 285  perimeter. They see what we are doing as an extension of their local church and the Church universal.

So what are we doing? Is it a church plant? No. Is it a compassionate ministry center? No. Well, what is it?

We are calling it the Synergy Project. We intend to move inside the 285 perimeter of Atlanta, get “regular” jobs, live like Jesus with our neighbors and community, serve our neighborhood compassionately, practice hospitality and fellowship in our home, make disciples through everyday relationships, and see what God does.

Essentially, we are going to pin our entire existence on being the church.

In this centennial year of the Church of the Nazarene, we are very inspired by Phineas Bresee and his companions, who moved into an urban center and lived life with the poor and poor in spirit. We’re doing essentially the same thing.

More details to come soon. You can keep up with everything at www.SynergyProject.cc.

We would ask your prayer. Both families need to sell our homes. We need to find jobs with benefits in Atlanta. We need our kids to enjoy, rather than fear, the transition. We need wisdom and discernment to see where Christ is already at work, and the courage to join him.

This is a very organic, unstructured, missional project we have begun. Jesus is our leader. We are living on faith and prayer.

SO TELL ME SOMETHING:
Want to be involved in the Synergy Project?

——

Brian Niece
www.brianniece.com
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In just over a week, I’ll be joining with friends to celebrate the founding of my tribe.  I previously mentioned this.

I’m honing in more on the similarities between my plight and that of my spiritual grandfather, Phineas Bresee.

Bresee was rejected by the establishment of his tribe.  His rejection culminated in the formation of a new tribe about 10 years later.

He was rejected because he wanted a Christian life that was not just about words.  Bresee not only believed that ministry to the urban poor was important, he intentionally stood with the poor in ruined communities. He and those around him defended the poor, advocated against the injustices that fueled poverty, and developed spaces of belonging and access in which the poor were, not only welcome, but at home.

Bresee and the early Nazarenes challenged social injustices.  They urged their church familiy to move from merely preaching a holiness of heart to expressing holiness of life–in the physical, ordinary, and mundane–as solidarity with the disenfranchised. This is in the direct line of my spiritual great-grandfather, John Wesley.

Because of the poor, Bresee called for radical simplicity of church facilities, not only because ostentatious styles were off-putting for the poor, but the sheer cost of unnecessary embellishments were poor stewardship of resources of God’s people. Tithes and offerings should be used to serve the poor, not build impressive structures. Likewise, words, dress, and lifestyle were to be simple … because of the implications for the poor.

Bresee once wrote:

The first miracle after the baptism of the Holy (Spirit) was wrought upon a beggar. It means that the first service of a Holy (Spirit)-baptized church is to the poor; that its ministry is to those who are lowest down; that its gifts are for those who need them the most. As the Spirit was upon Jesus to preach the gospel to the poor, so His Spirit is upon His servants for the same purpose.

And so Bresee was rejected by his church establishment for challenging Christians to live like Jesus.  He was rejected for being Jesus to the disenfranchised and seeing Jesus in them.  He was rejected for not becoming like the ones who already called themselves Christians.  He was rejected for suggesting church resources should be used for something other than maintaining an institution, a building, an flawed paradigm.  He was rejected for moving beyond a stale, useless, faith.

Bresee was rejected, just as Jesus was.  His primary persecutors were the most “religious” people of his day … as were Bresee’s.

So when I celebrate a centennial marker next week, I’m not celebrating the dawn of yet another schism in the Church universal.  I’m not celebrating the founding of a particular tribe in which I happen to be an ordained elder.  I’m not celebrating the misguided and failed ways we have exercised the inheritance of our spiritual ancestors.

Instead, I’ll be celebrating a wonderful idea made tangible: preaching the gospel to the poor in word and deed.

SO TELL ME SOMETHING:
Can you identify with the plight of Bresee?

——

Brian Niece
www.brianniece.com
If you enjoyed this post, get free updates by email or RSS.

A friend who I am working on a project with sent me a Bresee quote in response to one of my recent posts.  It’s golden:

“As a result much effort is being made to elegantly house the gathering of the people who are supposed to meet and worship God. Elaborate and expensive buildings are erected, often as a burden and sometimes to the distress of the people; and usually as places of spiritual desolation. That there should be a plain, unostentatious place for the people to gather, where especially the poor and those whom the world despises, should have special opportunities, there is no question. But the eras of nice church buildings have been times of spiritual decline from the days of Constantine and his mother Helena until today.”

–Phineas Bresee, Nazarene Messenger 6/13/1901

Sounds like he’s talking about post-Christian US America, doesn’t it?  But check the date … 1901, people!  What a visionary he was.  And what an inspiration today.  The voice of the prophet echoes over 107 years and nails the reason for our spiritual decline.

SO TELL ME SOMETHING:
What does this quote do for you?

——

Brian Niece
www.brianniece.com
If you enjoyed this post, get free updates by email or RSS.