Okay, so: We toured 41 cities in the eastern half of the U.S. this summer. It was amazing. We left in Mid-May with about six weeks’ notice and no wheels (turns out we found those wheels at the very last stop of the tour in Columbus, Georgia, but that’s a sidebar for another time). We returned to Idaho 13,000 miles and four months later, and we’re completely changed. We experienced and learned too much to communicate here, but we can explain where we’re at by answering one thing:
What’s next?
Go
The Commission remains: “Go.”
And we haven’t stopped. Though the tour is over, and even though we’re back in Idaho, we’re not going back. We’re moving forward. We never feel more alive than when we’re going. We figure there’s gotta be a reason for that.
Together
Jesus sent the seventy in pairs. I missed that detail for years, merely looking at the fact that He sent them without money or provision but simply told them to go.
But they had each other.
We experienced the value of that fact on tour. It was the purest expression of the Church I’ve ever been a part of. That’s not to say that it was perfect; it just matched Scripture like no other Christian thing has in my experience.
I think the main reason is because we shared all things in common. If someone had a need, we met it together. We had a single mission, and we accomplished it together. We worked together. We took our meals together. We prayed together. We traveled together, and we believed together.
There was no clocking in and out; we didn’t “go home” because we didn’t have anything apart from what we had together. We didn’t “go to work” because the work we had was always with each other. And I believe—though it’s a radical step—that this is how the Church should look. I also believe that one of the main reasons we aren’t experiencing the power of God in our midst today in the Church is because we’re withholding our all.
We sing about surrendering all, but we rarely do. There are untouchable places in our lives, and it should not be so. And even if we somehow managed to surrender totally today, tomorrow’s total surrender looks different because we’re on a journey with God; He leads us in and out to find pasture. That is, He takes us places where, because we have progressed, what was once acceptable is now no longer.
Make Disciples
This is the essence of what we’ve been driving at for more than twenty years now. Before WhiteNoise was, before Chris and April White even covenanted together for life in marriage, this has been what we’ve wanted to do. Indeed, it is what we were made for. Like Wilson Goeda said to us way back in 2002 when we were in South Africa, we too were “a dream in the mind of God” long before our fulfillment of His call began to materialize. Making disciples isn’t some kind of exclusive call or specialty, either. It’s what we’re all called to. Knowing the broad Truth about the call of every Christian, we also have specifics in hand, which we need. God has been speaking vision for the time ahead very clearly, we know what we’ve been made for, and it’s going to require going just as it always has.
Let’s put it this way: God doesn’t send prophets so they can sit on the message He gives them. They have to physically go.
What kind of messenger receives the message only to build a house around it, refusing to take it where it should go but instead issuing invitations to “come and see?” Buildings aren’t bad, but when they become the object of our awe and worship, when all that we do is dedicated to stuff that’s just gonna burn, we’ve strayed into sin.
And making disciples does mean going and preaching, but more importantly, it means modeling what it means to be a disciple for other disciples. That’s not cultivating a cult of personality around one man. It’s just being learners who follow both the teaching and the Teacher together.
And that’s about it.
Closing the Book
As we move forward, we’re going to need what only God can provide. We believe He will work through His people to bring time, treasure and talent to the table, to rightly divide this daily bread (faith-work prepared in advance for us to do), and to bring glory to His name so that many will see and fear and put their trust in the Lord.
WhiteNoise has never been just a media company. We learned this summer that we’re a pretty good rock band. We then perceived that we’re a unique expression of the Church, a family of disciples and disciplers, a people who go. We’re not stopping. In fact, we’re making ready for the next chapter. It’s a whole new page one, and we can’t wait to start writing.