The Roman Road or Matthew's Missional Mile
I suppose that most of us are familiar with the "Roman Road to Salvation," those few scriptures from the Epistle to the Romans used to lead a people to accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and savior. There are variations but it goes something like this:
"While we were still sinners Christ died for the ungodly." Romans 5:8
"For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God." Romans 3:23
"The wages of sin is death but the gift of God is eternal life in Jesus Christ our Lord." Romans 6:23
"If you confess with your mouth, 'Jesus is Lord,' and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved." (Romans 10:9-10)
"Whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be saved." (Romans 10:13)
The Roman Road has been used faithfully by many and effectively by some but I, personally, seem not to be gifted by Jesus to use it as an effective tool.
About a year ago, I attended a class on evangelizing postmoderns AKA the 'Emerging World' and the leader of the class, Gilbert Thurston, known to many CGGCers from his days in leading growth at our Chambersburg church and who is now planting a church in Harrisburg, actually said that the Roman Road is offensive to many postmoderns.
In our admittedly outside the box group, we are settling into something that can be called "Matthew's Mile" or "Matthew's Missional Mile." It's more focused on missionality than resonating with the emerging generation for its own sake. But, it does seem to help people of the 'Buster' generation and those who are younger relate to Jesus better than the Roman Road does.
This is primitive and still in its developing form, but here is Matthew's Mile:
"Repent for the Kingdom of Heaven has come near." Matthew 4:17
"Unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law, you will certainly not enter the Kingdom of Heaven." Matthew 5:20
"Not everyone who says to me, "Lord, Lord" will enter the Kingdom of Heaven but only he who does the will of my father who is in heaven." Matthew 7:21
"Come to me all you who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me for I am gentle and humble in heart and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light." Matthew 11:28-30
"'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it. 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments." Matthew 22:37-40
"Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thristy and you gave me something to drink. I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prision and you came to visit me." Matthew 25:34-36
"Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age." Matthew 28:19-20
I believe that Matthew's Mile integrates orthodoxy and orthopraxy in a way that is more consistent with the teaching of Jesus than the Roman Road does.
What do you think?
posted by bill Sloat at 7:46 AM
13 Comments:
I like it and I don't :-)
Seriously, I think those series of scriptures paint a good picture of what it means to follow Jesus (a disciple) according to Jesus.
But if the Romans road is all 'spiritual' without any demands on one's life, the missional mile lacks some core elements of the good news - the sacrificial death of Jesus and his resurrection (and their implications).
The cross and resurrection of Jesus are incalculably vital to any understanding of Jesus.
Furthermore, I believe that the missional demands of Jesus are ultimately impossible unless one is born again from above.
And those those reasons, I believe that the missional mile is a very inadequate picture of Christianity.
Using the missional mile, what is the good news?
I have been teaching for the ERC School of Evangelism for several years now - particularly the courses relating to the theology of evangelism and the process of evangelizing people whose thinking has been formed by the postmodern world. I do not believe this is an either/or proposition. I have found that the "missional mile" (although I have never understood it as that) is indeed effective at being a bridge to the Bridge (Christ) but ultimately discipling (not simply decision) requires the convert to deal with the realities explained by the Apostle Paul. But Gilbert is right, simply throwing the Romans Road in the direction of a postmodern is often an exercise in frustration. Matthew's missional mile helps the postmodern understand the person of Jesus drawing them toward a relationship but ultimately the full measure of the love of God is revealed best by BOTH the bloody cross and the empty tomb. - STEVE DUNN
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M,
Youda man, dude!
The key sentence of your reply was,
"I believe that the missional mile is a very inadequate picture of Christianity."
And, still you were able to convey that rejection of the philosophical basis of our ministry with unbelievable grace. You've done something I could never do. Clearly, you have more than a little Barnabas in you. And, I thank God for that.
Re: "Using the missional mile, what is the good news?"
"Come to me all you who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest?"
"You will find rest for your souls?"
"My yoke is easy and my burden is light."
"Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world."
"And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age."
By my standard, that's pretty good news.
I have come to believe that, at Faith, we now operate in an entirely different paradigm than everyone else we know in the CGGC. Our worldview, therefore, is entirely different than that of everyone else. In the past year, this has stopped being a matter of degree. So, it's easy for me to say what follows:
The Roman road is not about coming to Christ. It's about icing the cake. Those passages were written to a community of people who were being captured by the Romans, covered with tar to be used as candles in the Emperor's orgies. The Roman followers of the Way attained that maturity in Him WITHOUT the Roman Road.
Paul said the words: "If you confess with your mouth, 'Jesus is Lord,'" not to people who'd whisper those words at a so-called altar in a supposed 'sanctuary' but to people who had said them out loud in the one place in the world where Caesar was really Lord--or else!
The Roman Road is polish to gems.
But, when Jesus modeled disciple making He began with people at the point where they didn't know anything about the theology and whom He confronted with the challenge, "Come, follow me."
On the Matthew mile, the question, "And who do you say I am?" came well down the road. In the Jesus way, that stuff was never part of the beginning--of 'evangelism.'
Jesus came call people to a way of living. The belief system that undergirded that life and sustained is something that, for Him, came later, not in the beginning.
bill,
I do not reject your ministry. What I think is that you are focusing on a huge missing peice that we've neglected far far too long. I think in the process, you've placed to the side something(s) that you spiritually cannot live without.
You said:
'On the Matthew mile, the question, "And who do you say I am?" came well down the road. In the Jesus way, that stuff was never part of the beginning--of 'evangelism.'
I think that's important.
And yet we have to keep in mind that the disciples were faltering (sometimes substantially) but were much less so after Pentecost.
There are a lot of theological questions here, but one for today would be, when are we given the indwelling of the Holy Spirit?
Here's how I see the 'big picture':
God's ultimate concern is the kind of people we are - he created us to be worshippers of him and lovers of other people. To live and act justly and mercifully and lovingly to one another. And yet, from the beginning we've failed, time and time again. God knows that we things only work right when He is king and we live His way, but after generations of trying and teaching and patience, we cannot do it.
And then Jesus comes. He sets the standards even higher than ever before. We've failed miserably before and now he makes it even harder. (insert the teaching from Mathew's Missional mile).
How are we supposed to live this harder way of life out if we haven't before? The answer is that we can't and we won't.
Jesus gave His life on the cross for the forgiveness of our sins. All of our rebellion against God's ways and failure to live as the people that he wants for us to be. He bore our failure and offers us a fresh start. God raised Him from the dead that we to might have new life - a new creation, that our old sinful ways would be buried with Christ and we'd walk in the newness of life. The Holy Spirit indwelling us is what makes us finally able to live the life that He calls us to. We need to be born again.
If we truly are then our lives will prove out in the type of discipleship you describe in Matthew. If are lives aren't radically transformed, we've missed it. Hence we'll be judged in accordance not with lip service to Jesus but by the reality of our life's transformation playing out.
The missional mile works at Faith because you are born again.
The question I would have for you by way of interaction is, how does the cross, the resurrection and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit relate to your current ministry?
(Part 1)
M,
Good stuff. This kind of passionate and spirited discussion of vital truth hasn't happened 'publicly' and in 'print' since generations before the Shepherd Mafia took over the CGGC.
Re: The question I would have for you by way of interaction is, how does the cross, the resurrection and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit relate to your current ministry?
This is a dangerous question for me to answer because my answer will higlight what I've already called John Winebrenner's heresy on the issue of what he described as 'Free Moral Agency.' But, that's okay because I'm sure that, after I'm defrocked, you'll let us use YOUR spare room. Right? We'll have to work out what happens to my great nephew, his shack-up honey and the three kids and counting.
Oh, and we have a dog, too. ;-)
The cross, the resurrection and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit relate to what we do--to employ a faddish word of the day--organically to the lifestyle the Spirit empowers and the Lord prepares for us. This is a consistent New Testament teaching.
About a year ago Grrr-rrr-rrr-rrrl Prophet spoke a prophetic word to us that helped us at Faith to focus on the connection between being saved by grace through faith in Jesus and the lifestyle that goes with it by showing us that Ephesians 2:8 & 9: "For it is by grace you have been saved through faith, and this not of yourselves, it is a gift of God, not by works, so that no one can boast," is followed by this sentence: "For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works which God prepared in advance for us to do."
Hebrews 10 says something similar. "Let us hold unswervingly to the hope within us, for he who promises is faithful. And, let us consider how we may spur one another on to love and good deeds."
Salvation through faith requires imitation of the life the savior lived.
Not to live that life is amfruitless life. It is the life of the unsaved. It is the life of branches not connected to the True Vine. It results in a branch withering and being thrown into the fire. (Jn 15)
Even John 3:1-21 ends up talking about lifestyle. Verse 19-21 say,
"This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God."
(Part 2)
Now the CGGC heresy part. The cross, the resurrection and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit become a factor before one repents. Actually, both Arminans and Calvinists believe this. It's just that CGGCers don't--as of the last We Believe and the current proposed one.
IOW, and in a sense, they come before the first step on Matthew's Missional Mile. (But, they are also clearly a part of "and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you" from the last step.)
One can't repent without the work of the Spirit. In John 3, Jesus explained being born again as, "flesh gives birth to flesh but the Spirit gives birth to Spirit." In John 6, Jesus says twice similar versions of "No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him."
In Ephesians 2, Paul says that God made us alive with Christ while we were still sinners.
The New Testament plan model is to call for repentance. John the Baptist did that. Jesus, in launching Matt's Mile, did it. Peter did that very same thing on Pentecost and again in Acts 3. And, it's packed into 'teaching them to obey everything...' If it was good enough for John, Jesus and Peter, it'll work at Faith.
We don't discount the Gospel. We believe in it. But, we know that the fruit believing the Gospel comes, not in affirming the creed that summariizes it, but in the life it produces. And, we think that one comes to faith in the Gospel through following Jesus, not by being told about Him and not by believing, intellectually, assertions about Him.
We really think that Jesus was being honest about the Day He will sit on His glorious throne when He says it will all come down to what you have done to the least of His brothers and sisters. And, so we live that way.
bill - there is not much that you said in either part of your post that I disagree with.
If you would be defrocked for that, you can't stay with me because I would be too. I hope that none of us believe that we can choose to believe in and follow God merely in our own ability. Pelagius?
Actually, part of my problem with the list of Scriptures (MMM) without including any others you chose is that I think they could be understood this way.
If somebody was completely outside of the faith and needed to know the basics, is that really all you'd give them? (MMM - Matthew's Missional Mile).
Perhaps you are more satisfied with something being implicit (Gospel content) in the basis of your ministry while I insist of it being explicit?
Your second to last paragraph:
"We don't discount the Gospel. We believe in it. But, we know that the fruit believing the Gospel comes, not in affirming the creed that summarizes it, but in the life it produces."
I agree. Affirming theological content is not believing the gospel. It is the fruit of one's life.
"And, we think that one comes to faith in the Gospel through following Jesus, not by being told about Him and not by believing, intellectually, assertions about Him."
Believing is following, biblically. They are the same. We've created a false dichotomy somewhere along the way. Part of the problem of where the church is today.
Again, I think some things must be explicit. I don't think one can be a follower of Jesus and not believe he died a sacrificial death and was raised from the dead. If someone were to seek to follow the teachings of jesus but denied those things intellectually, I would not call them a disciple of Jesus.
On the flip side, if someone were to affirm 100% orthodox theological truth (i.e. Romans Road) but not follow the content of the missional mile, I would certainly not call them a disciple of Jesus either.
Let me know where you'd push back on this post. I think this is a fruitful discussion. And I appreciate it.
M,
If somebody was completely outside of the faith and needed to know the basics, is that really all you'd give them? (MMM - Matthew's Missional Mile).
(With the disclaimer that I am a prophet and this is not really my thing:) Yes. It is.
The Roman Road isn't presented without commentary. The commentary that goes with the MMM makes it make sense.
I don't think one can be a follower of Jesus and not believe he died a sacrificial death and was raised from the dead. If someone were to seek to follow the teachings of jesus but denied those things intellectually, I would not call them a disciple of Jesus.
Whoa, Nelliebelle!
Not to know every nook and cranny of the Jesus story is not the same thing as rejecting crucial parts of the story.
Paul admonished people to follow HIM, even when they didn't get all the intellectual stuff down. I think one of the most deadly errors of the distortion of Christianity that began with Connstantine calling for the Council of Nicea is the conviction that true belief is the root of Christianity. That teaching is found nowhere in the New Testament.
One can come to a love for Christ experientially by living the life He orders. In fact, the so-called 'Great Commission' instructs that we teach the nations to obey. It doesn't instruct us to teach doctrine.
I hope that none of us believe that we can choose to believe in and follow God merely in our own ability. Pelagius?
Actually, part of my problem with the list of Scriptures (MMM) without including any others you chose is that I think they could be understood this way.
The first part of MMM is the call to repent.
Now, if you assume a 'cheap grace' baseline for the definition of repentance, you could end up having the concern you have, i.e., that a person can believe in and follow God on his/her own. And, let's be honest. Cheap grace is what is proclaimed in the CGGC--well no--we're often good at proclaiming something different. What we PRACTICE is cheap grace.
But, if you begin with the call to repentance in the way John the Baptist meant it when he said to the Pharisees and Sadducees who had trudged into the desert to hear his preaching, "Produce fruit in keeping with repentance," and you adopt a lifestyle of repentance, you will never think you can achieve repentance on your own. Rather, you find yourself needing to spend all the time you can in prayer and meditation.
No insult intended in any way, but this remark that I cited last suggests that you still haven't fully abandoned the Christendom, cheap grace, way of thinking. Repentance, as it was proclaimed by John and Jesus and the Apostles, is a life altering act. Nothing like that act is envisioned along the Roman Road where it is asserted so blandly and outside of context that everyone who calls on the Name of the Lord will be saved.
bill, could you please explain again what you mean by "cheap grace"?
walt,
Cheap grace is Bonhoeffer's term. He said in part,
"Cheap grace means grace as a doctrine, a principle, a system. It means forgiveness of sins proclaimed as a general truth, the love of God taught as the Christian ‘conception’ of God. An intellectual assent to that idea is held to be of itself sufficient to secure remission of sins…. In such a Church the world finds a cheap covering for its sins; no contrition is required, still less any real desire to be delivered from sin. Cheap grace therefore amounts to a denial of the living Word of God, in fact, a denial of the Incarnation of the Word of God."
I can't say it better than he did.
Cheap grace is the merchandise peddled by the Shepherd Mafia which asks sinners only to come into the fold and experience the comforts of being a part of a flock without change in heart and sorrow over sins and conversion to a new way life rooted in following an incarnated Lord who gave Himself as a slaughtered sacrifice and who cries out, "Come follow me."
It is what the CGGC I know today hawks. It is not what John Winebrenner offered.
hmmm. so what is the alternative? how do we retain and pass on the truth that we do not merit anything good we have from God, and yet not teach an easy believe-ism? how do we fill up grace again?
walt,
I think you have to realize that you aren't understanding Ephesians 2:8-9 until you see their organic connection to verse 10.
When grace is a reality in a person's life that person's life produces fruit of repentance and that person begins to hate his mother and father, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters--yes, even his own life. According to Jesus, anything less is not fruit of the operation of grace in a person's life.
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