(Editor’s Note: The following article was written
on 4 December 2044 by Eutychus Bailey, author and former North
American pastor. Because of amazingly
quick Internet access and the exponential growth of micro-processing speeds, we
are now able to publish this column forty years before it was actually
written. This gives us the chance to get
an unknowingly futurist perspective on where things are heading from this
pragmatist writer observing his own times.)
4
December 2044
Eutychus Report:
Postmodern
Retirement Party
My friend Tom retired this week. It was his last Sunday at his church in
downtown Newark, New Jersey. I never thought I
would see the day when people near my age (born in the 1970s) would be retiring
from the ministry. Talk about making you
feel old!
The
party was a great time honoring his long life of ministry. They flashed a bunch of pictures on the wall
of people that he had influenced over the years. They started way back when he dropped out of
college in 1991 to intern with a church plant in Portland. They wrapped up
with his past decade spent teaching and mentoring the next generation at
several mid-Atlantic colleges where he was an adjunct professor while still
leading his church in Newark. Then about
15 of us planned speakers got up to tell our part of his story. The speeches were half-roast and
half-Hallmark™. Let me give you a few sample snapshots of the
inspiring stories we heard about Tom:
First up was a young woman with crow-black hair and a thick New Jersey accent. Linda told
us how the ministry that Tom currently leads in Newark had done so much in the community. “I was living under a bridge
when Vine Life came to town” she said, “and
I didn’t show up there – they came out to the bridge and found me and a bunch of
my friends.” She talked for 10
minutes about how she got into rehab and counseling arranged by Vine Life
(Tom’s most recent church) and then one of the people in the church offered her
a job.
“Just 12 months ago I didn’t have two quarters to rub together… and now
I’m living my life for Jesus. I just
saved up enough to get my first apartment, and I’m working up the courage to
tell my family where I am—now that my life is straightened out.” Linda then told us how Tom and two other women
from the church were the first regular people they ever saw come out to the
bridge she called home. “In the middle of a February snowfall they
brought out soup and just talked with us for a few hours. We thought we’d never see them again. But they started to come every few nights.” Eventually Linda had blurted out to them, “What do you guys want from us? You must be a little weird to come down here
so often for no reason.” Tom told
Linda that yes, they were a little different
than most people.
Next a 21 year old student of
Tom’s got up. Brandon couldn’t have weighed more than 115 and had on those tight
purple jeans that are so trendy these days.
He told us about one of Tom’s classes he took as a 19-year old kid
wondering what he could do for the future of the church. He said, “Tom’s
class woke so many of us up to how much the world is in need of a church that
cares more about the world than themselves.
He helped us realize that we would shape the church of the latter half
of the century.” Brandon’s eyes were a little moist as he re-considered the
implications: “Tom made me see that the
church isn’t about what has happened, it’s about what could
happen.” He then went into a brief
history of Tom’s own accomplishments in shaping the church of the first half of
the century. His well-researched
findings that included everything from first-hand testimony to 40 year old blog archives were part of a study he was doing on the
seminal leaders of the early Postmodern church. Tom was sure one of the leaders of that pack.
Next a guy about 75 got up and
started by saying, “I used to be Tom’s biggest fan. I started reading his blog
back in the 2010s and they challenged me so much. And his articles for Theooze
and Relevant, as we all knew, started to band us together in such a way that
our movement began to take shape.” The
guy was apparently a church planter with his own 50 years of experience under
his belt. He said, “I think by 2020 I knew that the things Tom was saying were so
inspired by God that I just started to follow him from a distance. At the Emergent Convention in Houston in 2022 I
finally met Tom and asked him to sign his first book, Re-emerging Patterns of Christlike Leadership.
I was so shocked when Tom said,
‘Sorry, I can’t do that.’” Everyone in
the room laughed at this, since Tom had become well known for not letting
others believe the hype. The man
continued, “So Tom says, ‘That book and everything else you and I do for God has
nothing to do with who I am or my own popularity. I can’t sign your book, bud. But tell me your name instead and lets go grab some coffee for 20 minutes instead.’ That’s
when I went from being a fan of Tom’s to being his friend. And I’ve read everything he’s written
since—and love it all the more. But that
first lesson Tom gave me in person I think tells us a lot about who Tom was and
is.”
Next was a very old man from
Chicago, who must have been 85 and wore bright
orange suspenders. He told everyone that he and his family had
never darkened the door of a church or read the Bible. He said they were, “basically uninterested in religious stuff.” But his daughter and Tom’s daughter Lisa
became friends at school. Lisa spent a
ton of time with his daughter. “I found out that Lisa’s Dad led the new
church that was meeting at the Museum on Sunday nights. I was just hoping I wouldn’t have to meet
him. But this Lisa was such a great
friend to my daughter, that when she started to go to the church I didn’t
object.” He went on to tell how he
had finally met Tom at a slumber party drop off one night—and was surprised to
see that he didn’t look like what he thought a minister looked like.
“Not that it matters a lot, I know now, but at the time I thought he at
least was a bit ‘with it.” The old
man started to cry when he told us how his daughter’s life was changed by the
church, and how he and the whole family became a part of one of their
compassion efforts one summer, and when he saw the people of the church working
together up close he threw caution to the wind and charged ahead.
“From then on I knew that this Tom and those people had something that I
didn’t—and something most people didn’t.
I’ve now been an elder at that church plant for 20 years.”
Next a woman who must have been
45ish walked up to the podium. She had long brown hair and seemed oddly
familiar to me. She was the lead pastor
of the church that was sent out from Tom’s church in downtown Chicago to the northern suburbs.
She said, “Tom always believed in
me more than I believed in myself. He
always told me things that God might do with me or in me that would make my
knees knock together. One day in the
last semester of graduate school he e-mails me and says, ‘Julie, I think you’re
going to be the best church planter God ever sent to Chicago.’ This made me blush of course, because it’s
ludicrous. But then he outlines the plan
to send me and 20 of the people from his church to the northern suburbs. He said that the elders had prayed about it
for 18 months already and they were certain that I was the woman for the job.” Julie went on to
tell how committed Tom’s church had been to their little start. Near the end of her talk I realized that this
woman was Julie Johnson, who had led
the amazing suburban Chicago missional revival efforts of the
last several decades. Christianity Today
had just called her the most innovative leader of the year. I couldn’t believe this one. As well as I knew Tom I couldn’t believe he
had never claimed her churches as being the product of his ministry.
Next up was a 50 year old man
with an NBA cap on. He used to be on staff with Tom in Portland. “I was right out of college when I started
with Tom’s church in Portland. I’ve never had a mentor like Tom. He showed me the ropes in more than just
ministry. I feel like he showed me how
to do life for God. He took a chance on
me when the church hired me on. He even
brought me into the teaching team to do more than just the teaching to the student
ministry. I owe so much to his
friendship and leadership in my life. Thanks,
Tom!”
Next was a surprise none of us
saw coming. An old man from China got up and started in on his story, “I met Tom in Beijing in the year
2008. His and several other churches were
here during the Olympics to meet under those more free conditions with many of
our house church pastors. I was one of
Tom’s counterparts and we roomed together for three days. He told me of how much he wanted to learn
from what we were doing in China as the
underground church and wanted to bring it back to the West. I was humbled by this thought and had never
heard of a western pastor coming to US to learn rather than to teach.” The old man went on
to relate how he had already been a part of starting 20 house churches at that
point, and went on to start more than 150 more in his lifetime that were networked
together through his oversight. “I was imprisoned for 18 months in 2015 and it
was a constant hope of mine that I would be released from prison and someday my
country would even let me go to America and realize Tom’s dream of passing on
what we’ve learned in China to the West.”
The man then told us how he taught the class “Eastern Strategies of
Church Multiplication” at Fuller Seminary for 10 years. He dedicated the class to Tom.
I was up last. I’ve known Tom
since the early 1990s, so I’ve got five decades of history with him. I was really torn on what to say about
him. On the one hand he’s accomplished so
much, and I’d like to recount so many little things that he did that added up
to a life lived in it’s entirety for God.
On the other hand I know that all this is really far too much for Tom to
handle, and maybe I could just roast him a bit to let the wind out of everyone’s
sails after all the long speeches. I
decided on a bit of both, and simply said, “Tom’s
accomplishments are long and you’ve heard many of them, but there are a few
huge firsts that you still do not know. Tom
may have been the first ordained minister to wear jeans every day to work, a
great triumph… for what I don’t know. He was also the first of my minister friends
to have the ends of his hair tipped blond.
This was great until he turned 40 and the tipped hair didn’t match his
bald spot. Tom was also the first church
planter to spend more time writing on his blog than writing
his messages. He was not the last. I think Tom was the first guy to call himself
‘Postmodern’ and not groan about hating to be labeled. But he was also the first (and last) person to
change his church’s name into a symbol, and we started to call it the ‘Ministry
Formerly Known as Church.’” I then
changed direction to give it just a bit of reverence, saying, “But Tom was always the first to pray, the
first to love, the first to help, the first to lead and the first to show the
way rather than just telling you about it.
Tom was definitely one of if not the very first at many things. But so many follow after
him.”
We all expected quite a response
from Tom after the long procession of speeches in his honor. What a life! It was hard to believe all that he had been
involved in. The wide impact and the
deep affect of his ministry left us in awe.
But when Tom slowly reached the podium, he had just three sentences
scrawled out on a small card. He read
them: “It’s never been about me—none of
these stories are about me. I am
crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body I live by faith
in Jesus Christ who gave his life for me.”
And
after a few more toasts to Tom and the generation after him we went home. It was a night I’ll never forget. Back near the turn of the century I don’t
think Tom or I or anyone else saw much of this coming.
Past Eutychus Reports:
Ministry Babies and
Modern Bathwater
Conference in the
Empty Super-Church
The Present War and the
Bush Doctrine
I Used to Be Pro-Life
Voting on a
“Traditional” Pastor
Born in 1974, Dr. Eutychus D. Bailey served as a pastor in the
early decades of the 21st century.
He “now” writes a column on the state of the mid-century church &
culture which is being retrieved by us from the future because of recent technological
advances enabling us to receive his articles 40 years before they are
published. Depending on your time-travel
ISP speed, you may be able to reach the old codger by e-mailing him at [email protected].
©2004 Eutychus Bailey
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