A Declaration of Subversion for the People of Apostles Church
- JR Vassar
- Sep 15, 2008
- Series: Jesus, The Church and the American Dream
When the Gospel of the Kingdom of God’s Beloved Son reaches a community of people and takes root, it transforms that community into a people of faith, hope and love who live fruitful lives that bring flourishing to people around them and to the places in which they live.
We will hold Christ to be our greatest treasure and first thought and will rightly order other competing loves and loyalties. Christ is before all things and above all things (Colossians 1:15-20). We measure the significance of all things by how they impact our relationship with Christ. He is Lord, not Caesar nor the American Dream. We have been set apart for Him and His Gospel and will hold him as our highest allegiance and deepest affection.
We resist the consumption of goods that are made in ways that are destructive to people and the environment. Jesus is Creator and Lord over all things and as such, loves the work of his hands. Because the Kingdom of God’s Beloved Son is one with an ethic of liberation (Colossians 1:13-14), we seek freedom and justice for others and do not exploit them for our own gain. We will be a people who exercise caution in our consumption, refusing to participate in modern day slavery by purchasing goods that were produced in a way that oppressed or exploited others.
We renounce power as a means of control and selfish gain and will embrace a life of self-less service. Jesus has all authority and power yet became powerless to save us, so with the attitude of Jesus we must also become “powerless” to bless and serve others.
We will live with imaginations that are liberated from the culture’s story and expectations and that are captured by God’s story and vision for our lives and world. We will seek to be filled with the knowledge of his will (1:9-12), having his word richly dwelling within us (Colossians 3:16). As His story captures our minds, we will live free from the enslaving finality of the culture’s voice having been filled with a more powerful, truthful and life-giving voice, reigning in our hearts and minds.
We renounce the selfish consumption of commodities and sexual experiences that enslave us and damage community and we embrace contentment, purity and sacrificial love. We live in an age of discontented consumerism. Our culture is desperately accumulating commodities and sexual experiences in hopes of finding life and fulfillment. The culture is full of images that sell the story that life is found in power, possessions, and pleasure. We believe it is found in Christ who is the fullness of God and in whom we are filled (Colossians 2:9). We believe the cultural story of consumption is always at the cost of community – slaking our thirst for possessions while neglecting the needs of others, and selfishly satiating our sexual desires without wholly entrusting ourselves to the other in sacrificial love that fosters fidelity and trust. Because the Kingdom of God’s Beloved Son is one of freedom and contented joy, we renounce patterns of overspending and debt that enslave us and others, and instead seek to embrace generosity and responsibility as a way to release others from debt and slavery. We renounce the use of sex for personal gratification and see it as God’s appointed means for whole life entrustment.
We renounce ideas of status or standing based on ethnicity, education, or economics. In the Kingdom of God’s beloved Son, no one gets special standing (Colossians 3:11). All are created by God and saved by his grace. All claims to superiority are leveled by the Gospel that strips of us of all boasting.
We reject the cult of overwork and addiction to technology and embrace Sabbath as God’s means for the renewal of our lives and relationships. God intends that we enjoy Him, his creation and others in the context of rest, yet the culture promotes a pattern of overwork so as to enable you to buy goods that isolate you from others and build barriers to community. As the people of God, we will turn off our TVs to listen to and experience one another and enjoy the creation.
We renounce fear and the privatization of our faith and embrace a life of prayer that empowers us to sensitively engage the culture with Gospel answers. We will be a people whose lives provoke dialogue and we will be prepared to give Gospel answers in an attitude and spirit shaped by the Gospel (Colossians 4:5-6).