Seattle is a city on edge. As one journalist put it, we pride ourselves as being “an emerald refuge in the corner of a troubled country”. But over the past several months, several random killings have shattered that identity.

Though I didn’t know any of the victims, some of these killings have hit very close to home. Justin Ferrari, father of two, was shot in broad daylight at an intersection that’s home to one of my family’s favorite restaurants. It’s also two blocks away from where my kids will go to high school, and one block away from their favorite playground.  We’re in that neighborhood all the time. Another victime, Gloria Koch Leonidas, was shot during a car jacking. The shooting took place a half-mile from my office.

So how should Christians respond in light of these events? What does it mean for us to be faithfully present in our city at this time?

I think that both congregations and individual Christians need to see this as an opportunity to love and serve our city. A very significant part of a healthy Christian identity means we understand that God has placed us in the city to be a blessing to the city. We’re not to be AGAINST the city with a posture of angry self-righteousness. Nor are we to simply be OF the city, absorbing all of the city’s values and no longer living distinctly as God’s people. Rather we are to be FOR the city—living uniquely as God’s people in a way that seeks to bless the city.

This is a great calling to embrace. We need to realize that the church has been uniquely gifted by God to do this very thing. Now is a great time for Christians to live up to the task God has given us.

What might this look like right now? I will sketch out a few possibilities.

1. Share in Grief & Anger. Innocent people have been killed. The peace of our city has been vandalized by the violent. We should join those around us in grief, anger, and sorrow. Of all the people in the world, Christians know that the world is not the way it should be. This should move us to compassion and shared lament with our city.

One woman in our congregation sent me this beautiful email last week.

The Cafe Racer folks live near me, and there was a big group of regulars mourning together in the street Wednesday evening. Neighbors came out and everyone just stood in a big group (50 people or so) together listening to an accordion player and a singer. It was good to mourn together for our broken neighborhood and for the tragedy. There were all kinds of different people coming together…. We're not really afraid, but we don't really know where to start with reaching out as our neighbors grieve. Thanks for praying for us and the Cafe Racer owners and regulars.

This is both a priestly and a prophetic role for Christians to play. It is priestly because we are helping tend to the wounds of sin and death that are present in our city. It is prophetic because in our grief, we are proclaiming that things should not be this way.  We can and should groan because all creation groans.

2) Model a Different Way of Responding to the Violence. The killings were sinful and should not have happened. God created human beings to love one another, not to kill one another.

At the same time, Christians should be able during to model anger and grief without self-righteousness. This is because we understand that we are not innocent. Like the violent people in our city, we are sinners. True, most of us will never shoot another human being in cold blood. Regardless, the Christian self-understanding is that of people who understand that our greatest need is for forgiveness—from God and others.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn said it well:

If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.

This is an entirely counter-cultural way to respond to violence. We can express solidarity with both the victims and the perpetrators. The church has a great opportunity before us to model grief and anger in a gospel-shaped manner. This is a great gift to offer others.

3. Be a Welcoming Place for Seattle’s Outcasts. The church is many things. First and foremost, I would say that the church is a family.

If you read the stories about Ian Stawicki, they are heart-breaking. He was an angry, troubled man. Ian's brother was not surprised that he turned violent.

In light of Ian’s history, here are my questions: Would it have made any difference in his life if he was befriended by one Christian? What if he would have been welcomed by an entire congregation and treated as a member of its family?

Again, I don’t know the details of Ian’s life at all. Maybe such things did happen. Maybe they didn’t happen and even if they would have happened, he still would have killed all those people. But these are important questions for the church to ask.

Here's why. One of the greatest things a Christian congregation has to offer our city is it’s own life as a congregation. We have the ability, as an extended family, to welcome the widow, the orphan, and the outcast. True, this needs to be done wisely and with great care, but it is a significant calling for the church.

4. Be Available. During times like these, people are understandably shaken up. They are also likely to ask questions, big questions that have to do with human nature, evil, suffering, and God. This gives Christians opportunities to speak God’s truth when appropriate. This isn’t free reign to shove the Bible down peoples’ throats. But we may find, however, that some people may be now asking some questions they have never seriously considered. This is a great opportunity to carefully and wisely speak God’s truth into a city that really does need it.

God loves Seattle. He loves her so much he has placed many faithful congregations in her midst. Christians, now is the time for us to seek the peace of our city.

It is the glory of God to conceal things, but the glory of kings is to search things out.
Proverbs 25:2

Back in the early 90’s, I was a new Christian. I read all the theology books I could get my hands on and listened to a ton of sermons on cassette tapes while driving up and down I-75 between Tennessee and Georgia. During that time, one of my friends turned me on to a guy named Tim Keller, who was starting a new church called Redeemer in New York City.

He had me at “Hello”.

Not only did I love Keller’s preaching, but I also deeply resonated with his efforts to take the gospel into a hardened, secular place like Manhattan. As an adult convert to the Christian faith, I knew what it was like to be suspicious of the gospel. I sensed a calling in my life to help other suspicious people know and experience the grace of God.

I wanted to move to New York.

Through several twists and turns, I wound up working at Redeemer nearly 10 years later. Since then, I have followed that same call: first to San Francisco and more recently to Seattle. For the last 15 years, I have tried to align my life with spreading God’s kingdom in 3 cities not known for their piety.

So what have I discovered?

I have seen God bless my labors with some good and satisfying fruit. I have seen churches grow and new churches planted. I have seen peoples' lives change through the power of the gospel. This past Sunday at church, Angela Wheeless told us some of her story. Hearing about God’s work in her life was a tremendous blessing to me. God is good, and he is at work.

But at the same time, the reality is God hides much of his work from us. He actively conceals what he is doing from us. We don’t see the full fruit of our labors. We don’t see many of the changes that are taking place around us. In addition, a lot of the things we have hoped to see simply don't materialize. For example, I have yet to see throngs of my non-Christian friends lining up to be baptized.

This can be frustrating and even lead to thoughts about giving up. But I think the hiddenness of God is a good thing. For one, it helps keep us humble. If God showed us all the work he was doing through us, we would probably become arrogant. Triumphalistic Christians are a menace, not a blessing. Secondly, the hiddenness of God also keeps us dependent upon him. When we can't see results, we must continue to trust in his goodness and cultivate soft hearts.

This is probably the most important result of the hiddenness of God. It shapes us into humble and dependent people while we walk along the path of mission. And, if there is one thing I have learned in a life lived in mission, it is that our character matters as much as results.

Here is an excellent sermon about the Hiddenness of God.

Last week, Linn and I spent several days at Spanish River Church in Boca Raton, Florida. Spanish River Church has a long history of being very generous and mission-minded. Over the past 30 years, they have given away over ten million dollars to see the gospel spread all over the world. Their generosity has also impacted us personally. The last three churches Linn and I have been a part of—Grace Church Seattle, City Church of San Francisco, and Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City—have all been started through the generosity of Spanish River Church.

One of the things I really like about Spanish River Church is their single-mindedness. They believe that the best way to see God’s kingdom spread on earth is through the planting of churches. That’s where 100% of their mission giving goes. They don’t give to parachurch organizations or other ministry initiatives. They support church planting—period. They do this because they believe that starting churches is the wisest path to take in order to see the gospel make an impact over the long haul.

I think this is true. When a church gets planted, a new gospel-believing congregation comes into existence. This congregation’s life will be intertwined with the life of the community that surrounds it. Maybe the new church makes a big splash, but quite often it doesn’t. But, we need to remember that making a big splash is not the most important thing.

In a place like Seattle, one of a congregation’s greatest gifts it can offer our city is “staying power”—the slow, steady, faithful presence of a gospel-believing community. Our city is filled with doubting, skeptical, and suspicious people. More often than not, some of the most deeply held suspicions are directed at Jesus and his church.  This suspicion cannot be overcome in an instant. It takes a long time to earn trust. It’s slow, plodding, and meticulous work. But, I think it is work for which the local congregation is ideally suited.

Congregations have the unique ability to offer staying power to our city. Our belief is that, over time, God will use his congregations in this city to build something beautiful. I think this is what Jesus had in mind when he taught this parable:

Jesus put another parable before them, saying, ‘The kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his field. It is the smallest of all seeds, but when it has grown it is larger than all the garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches. (Matthew 13:31-32)

This Eastertide, our congregation is focusing on the mission that Jesus has given the church. As N.T. Wright so aptly put it, the task of the church is to “plant the flags of resurrection—new life, new communities, new churches, new faith, new hope, new practical love—in amongst the tired slogans of idolatrous modernity and destructive postmodernity.”

So here’s the question: How do we know when we’re doing a good job? How can an individual Christian or a congregation figure out if they are succeeding at the task God has given us?

For most of us, the stated or unstated default answer is this: the presence of tangible, positive results is a sure sign we are laboring well. These "positive results” can be various good things. For a Christian parent, positive results could be having children that grow up to be faithful Christian adults. For those with a heart for justice, positive results could mean effectively mobilizing others to serve the poor. For pastors, good results often mean numerical growth in a congregation.

I think this is a trap. Making these good things (and they’re all good things) barometers of whether or not we are doing a good job of following Jesus into mission quickly leads us astray. It makes us servants under the tyrannical rule of what William James so aptly called “the bitch goddess of success”.

So what are we to do? I think we should reject idolatrous notions of success. But we can’t just leave an empty space there. The via negativa is not a satisfying way to live. We need something positive to work towards. We need a better definition of true success.

I am currently reading through a book that gives such a definition. Kent & Barbara Hughes’ book, “Liberating Ministry from the Success Syndrome” has been very beneficial to me. Through a powerful combination of a life of ministry and a love for God’s word, they flesh out a compelling vision for evaluating our kingdom-centered labors.

Here is the core of their argument: faithfulness to God is success. This is so simple, but incredibly profound. Anyone can be faithful. Anyone can love God, serve others, and live a life of grateful obedience. And this is what we are called to do. Any other definition of success will ultimately undo you and those around you.

It’s true Kent and Barbara wrote the book for pastors. However, I think one can easily apply their concepts to other aspects of following Jesus into mission.

I closed my Easter sermon with a quote from NT Wright about the significance of the resurrection. Here is an extended excerpt from an another really great article he wrote several years ago.

The message of the Resurrection is that this present world matters; that the problems and pains of this present world matter; that the living God has made a decisive bridgehead into this present world with his healing and all-conquering love; and that, in the name of this strong love, all the evils, all the injustices, and all the pains of the present world must now be addressed with the news that healing, justice, and love have won the day. That's why we pray: "Thy kingdom come, on earth as it is in heaven." Make no bones about it: Easter Day was the first great answer to that prayer.

If Easter faith is simply about believing that God has a nice comfortable afterlife for some or all of us, then Christianity becomes a mere pie-in-the-sky religion instead of a kingdom-on-earth-as-it-is-in-heaven religion. If Easter faith is simply about believing that Jesus is risen in some "spiritual" sense, leaving his body in the tomb, then Christianity turns into a let-the-world-stew-in-its-own-juice religion, instead of a kingdom-on-earth-as-it-is-in-heaven religion. If Easter faith is only about me, and perhaps you, finding a new dimension to our own personal spiritual lives in the here and now, then Christianity becomes simply a warmth-in-the-heart religion instead of a kingdom-on-earth-as-it-is-in-heaven religion. It becomes focused on me and my survival, my sense of God, my spirituality, rather than outwards on God and on God's world that still needs the kingdom message so badly.

But if Jesus Christ is truly risen from the dead, Christianity becomes what the New Testament insists that it is: good news for the whole world, news that warms our hearts precisely because it isn't just about warming hearts. The living God has in principle dealt with evil once and for all, and is now at work, by his own Spirit, to do for us and the whole world what he did for Jesus on that first Easter Day.

That is why we who celebrate Easter do so with material things: water in baptism and bread and wine at the Lord's Supper. Easter is about the living God claiming the world of space, time, and matter as his own. That is why Christians celebrate it with candles and flowers and incense and processions and banners and, above all, music: the world of creation has been reclaimed by the living and healing God. That is why we who celebrate Easter after a Lenten fast do so not with a guilty sense of going back to things that are tainted with sin, but with the joyful sense of celebrating the goodness of God's good creation in all its rich variety.

The full article is here.