“I want to destroy the influence of the Christian cliché ‘the safest place to be is in the center of the will of God,’” says Erwin McManus, a Hollywood-based pastor, author and “cultural architect” of one of the most innovative congregations in America. McManus challenges “civilized Christianity” in his book, The Barbarian Way.
McManus is the visionary behind Mosaic—a multi-ethnic congregation in the heart of Los Angeles. With nearly 60 nationalities represented, an average age of 27, and a large population of artisans, innovators and entrepreneurs, the unorthodox Mosaic is a true reflection of its passionate and straight-forward leader.
During a recent interview, McManus elaborated on The Barbarian Way and how it can play out in everyday life.
Chismar: You say that Christianity is too civilized and too safe. In what ways?
McManus: Recently when I was teaching at Mosaic, I talked about how in Jesus' day, the more priests there were, the more wickedness there was. I think the condition we’re in today is a condition we tend to move in historically – generation by generation. What happens is that people are sincere when they begin this journey with Jesus Christ, but sometimes, after generations, people may hold to the beliefs but no longer have the relationship. We begin to establish institutions that hide the fact we’ve not been transformed by Jesus Christ.
Chismar: I love the section where you talk about how God is not calling us to the same path that every follower of Christ will walk. Our lives are unique. “How God chooses to use your life cannot be predicted by how God has worked in the lives of others before you.” I find that can be a lonely path at times. Can you comment?
McManus: The point about being alien barbarians? Let me give you a great example that I stumbled on this weekend. I took my daughter – she just turned 13 – and my son shopping for blue jeans. I don’t know what it was like for you, but when I went shopping for jeans, there was just one kind and everybody wore them - you know, Levis. Well, we went into Lucky Brand and what I discovered was that the more tattered, the more torn, the more worn the jeans, the more expensive they were. And the more they were new and ordinary, the less expensive.
I think there’s something in the culture that says, "I’m so tired of being forced to conform to everyone else’s expectations of me" and there’s something inside of every human being that says, "Whether tattered or ripped apart or shredded, I want people to accept me for who I am and know me for who I am." I think we live in a time when people have a desperate longing to be authentic and then to find that they’re still loved.
Chismar: Can you comment on churches that give the message that everything about our lives on earth should be wonderful and blessed, and that we shouldn’t experience any pain or get out of our comfort zones?
McManus: Well, I think it’s a misunderstanding of the human spirit. We become convinced if we don’t preach to certain needs, or we don’t preach some kind of prosperity gospel, or if we don’t reach the consumer-oriented masses, then people will not be drawn to the gospel of Jesus Christ. It’s almost as if we believe that the only way we can bring a person to God is by appealing to their desires and longings.
I am convinced that human beings, because we’re created in the image and likeness of God – even though it’s broken and fragmented – there’s something inside of the human spirit that longs to life a live that is noble, a life that’s heroic. For me the declaration of the gospel is a call to a heroic life. It’s not inviting people to receive the lowest level of their longings but to aspire to something beyond their greatest imagination.
Chismar: How does the Barbarian Way play out in your church?
McManus: Let me tell you, I love Mosaic. It’s got a couple thousand people. The average age is the mid-20s and we’re 70 percent single. We have about 60 plus attending ethnicities; right now we’re 40 percent Asian. When I came here a decade ago, I think we had nine Asians in our whole community. It’s an incredibly diverse community. Yesterday we baptized a guy from Hinduism. There are people coming out of Islam, Buddhism, Communism, Atheism.
We’re not trying to convince churched people to believe in Jesus in a more intense way. We’re actually dealing with people who worship other gods, or when they think of god, they don’t think of the God of the scriptures. It forces us into an entirely different conversation, but I think it’s actually a conversation that people in church need.
Part of the way I’d say Mosaic is barbarian is at one time, we owned 3/4 of an acre of land, but we sold our land and became transient for a time for the next seven years. In three weeks, we’ll be hitting six services in four different locations all over the city of Los Angeles. We move into nightclubs, we move into lots, we look for any open spaces. Right now we’re meeting in a club downtown called The Lion. And when you walk in, the whole club is carved in Mayan gods. I have to tell you when Christians walk in from the South or Midwest, you can just see it in their face – what is a church doing here? I get emails from Christians around the country all the time angry with us because we’re in the world.
Yet what they don’t realize is the First Century church didn’t have any nice, comfy, well-designed church buildings to meet in. We’re in the middle of all the pagan gods declaring Jesus as Lord. Somehow we’ve come to believe the suburban expression of Christianity is actually the biblical expression.
Chismar: What about the people? How do they follow the Barbarian Way in their everyday lives?
McManus: We have a Chinese doctor and instead of taking her medical career and maximizing her income in an opportune area, she moved into an impoverished Latino community and opened up a Mosaic family center to provide quality health care for underprivileged families. That’s the part of the Barbarian Way. We average one adult a month going into what’s called the 10/40 Window, living in nations where the message of Jesus has never been heard. Our people just kept relocating – moving into India and Pakistan and Afghanistan and China. That’s the Barbarian Way. We see teams going into Mexico to work with impoverished communities, and rebuild cities, and work with city governments to try to brinabout social change so that the message of Jesus is in context and authentic. To me, that’s the Barbarian Way.
I think that’s part of the beauty of the Barbarian Way – that every person is called out to find their God-given uniqueness and to discover the path that God calls them to - and have the courage to live it. It’s also about play. It’s about fun. It’s about being fully alive and awake. One of my favorite lines in the book is “Barbarians love to live and live to love.”
Erwin Raphael McManus is Lead Pastor of Mosaic in Los Angeles, California. Known around the world for its spiritual creativity and cosmopolitan diversity, Mosaic is a community of followers of Jesus Christ committed to live by faith, to be known by love, and to be a voice of hope. He currently serves as Distinguished Professor at Bethel Seminary and is a contributing editor for Leadership Journal. Visit his website at www.erwinmcmanus.com.
