An Evening with Doug & David

Last night I visited the up/rooted north meeting at Life on the Vine in Long Grove to hear Doug Pagitt speak. I also got to meet David Fitch for the first time.

It was an interesting evening. It was good to be with people who have a passion for "missional" ministry. But I want to write about what Doug had to say.

He talked about "optimistic, hopeful Christianity." His point was that we tend to think that some places and some situations are "difficult." We have the idea that the gospel can't really flourish there (usually wherever we happen to be).

We say to ourselves, "If only I were in Seattle…" Or, "If only I were in Barrington…" Or, "If only I were in Grand Rapids…"

But the reality is that the gospel can thrive in any situation, in any place, at any time.

We can learn from others who are seeing God work among them. But we cannot recreate what they are doing. We need to pay attention to our own time, our own place and our own situation. We need to learn to recognize the hand of God at work there.

Familiarity tends to weaken faith. Jesus expressed this when he said, "Only in his hometown, among his relatives and in his own house is a prophet without honor" (Mark 6:4).

But it is not only people who suffer from this prejudice.

We become so focused on the particular problems we face in our situation, our time and our place that we begin to think that God cannot work there. When the problem is that we just don't have the eyes to see that God is already working.

We tell ourselves that God could work here and now if only things were a little different.

In other words, we put limits on God.

And so we feel sorry for ourselves. We wish that our past was different. We wish that we had resources that we don't have. We wish that we cold replicate what God is doing somewhere else. We wish that we were more like ________ (insert the name of the current object of our jealousy). We wish that we were surrounded with people who think exactly like us.

Meanwhile, the people who are participating in God's kingdom all around us are praying to the Lord of the harvest for some workers, because the opportunity is so great.

Lord, give us the eyes to see what you are already doing. Give us the faith to trust in your power to build your kingdom right here and right now. Give us the courage to step out of our comfort zones to participate in that work.

Pastor Rod

"Helping you become the person God created you to be"

Final Objections 18–20

This is the final post in my series of responses to the pamphlet by Chaz Bufe called 20 Reasons to Abandon Christianity. The first in the series can be found here.

(The text in blue is from Mr. Bufe's pamphlet. I have used ellipses to show where I have condensed the original.)

18. The Bible is not a reliable guide to Christ's teachings. Mark, the oldest of the Gospels, was written at least 30 years after Christ's death, and the newest of them might have been written more than 200 years after his death. These texts have been amended, translated, and re-translated so often that it's extremely difficult to gauge the accuracy of current editions—even aside from the matter of the accuracy of texts written decades or centuries after the death of their subject. This is such a problem that the Jesus Seminar, a colloquium of over 200 Protestant Gospel scholars mostly employed at religious colleges and seminaries, undertook in 1985 a multi-year investigation into the historicity of the statements and deeds attributed to Jesus in the New Testament. They concluded that only 18% of the statements and 16% of the deeds attributed to Jesus had a high likelihood of being historically accurate. So, in a very real sense fundamentalists—who claim to believe in the literal truth of the Bible—are not followers of Jesus Christ; rather, they are followers of those who, decades or centuries later, put words in his mouth.

I do not have the time or the inclination to develop my own detailed response to this common objection. Here are several good replies:

• Probe Ministries
  
• How Can The Bible Be Authoritative? By N. T. Wright
  
• Can We Trust the Gospels? By N. T. Wright (BeliefNet)

The Jesus Seminar is not a collection of objective scholars:

A group of secularized theologians and secular academics went seeking a secular Jesus, and they found him! They think they found him, but, in fact, they created him.
Birger A. Pearson
Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies
University of California, Santa Barbara

I have my own problems with fundamentalists, but it is not because they gullibly believe that Jesus said words that were "put in his mouth" after the fact. My problem is that they don't take those words seriously enough.

There are plenty of "outs" for people who do not want to acknowledge Jesus as God. But anyone who claims that the gospel accounts are completely unreliable is intellectually dishonest.

19. The Bible, Christianity's basic text, is riddled with contradictions. There are a number of glaring contradictions in the Bible, in both the Old and New Testaments, and including some within the same books.

Since Mr. Bufe did not take the time to mention any of these "glaring contradictions," I won't take the time to address specific occurrences of these apparent contradictions. Instead, I want to make some general observations here.

• It is wrong to expect the biblical record to follow our modern ideas of "accuracy." (This is another problem I have with fundamentalists.) The authors cannot be faulted for not doing something they never intended to do.
  
• The biblical record has the kind of "variety" of data that one would expect in an account of things that really happened. Eyewitness accounts that agree in every detail are obviously manufactured.
  
• Many of these "glaring contradictions" have reasonable explanations. Some are textual variants that were introduced in the transmission of the manuscripts.
  
• None of these supposed contradictions alters in any way any significant doctrine of Christianity.

20. Christianity borrowed its central myths and ceremonies from other ancient religions. The ancient world was rife with tales of virgin births, miracle-working saviors, tripartite gods, gods taking human form, gods arising from the dead, heavens and hells, and days of judgment. In addition to the myths, many of the ceremonies of ancient religions also match those of that syncretic latecomer, Christianity.

This is an example of the logical fallacy of false cause. If Christianity is true, then it would not be unreasonable to expect that there would be hints of its basic truths in "false religions." C. S. Lewis cited these "reflections" of the Christian story as compelling evidence that Christianity was the "true myth" behind all the other stories.

A Final Word: These are but some of the major problems attending Christianity, and they provide overwhelming reasons for its abandonment. (Even if you discount half, two-thirds, or even three-quarters of these arguments, the conclusion is still irresistible.)

I would agree that there are good reasons for abandoning Christianity, but none of them are based upon historical difficulties in the Bible or sociological problems inherent in Christianity. The best reason to reject Christianity is to avoid having to submit to any higher authority. This is the real obstacle to faith.

Here is the honest confession of a candid atheist:

For myself, as, no doubt, for most of my contemporaries, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation. The liberation we desired was simultaneously liberation from a certain political and economic system and liberation from a certain system of morality. We objected to the morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom; we objected to the political and economic system because it was unjust. The supporters of these systems claimed that in some way they embodied the meaning (a Christian meaning, they insisted) of the world. There was one admirably simple method of confuting these people and at the same time justifying ourselves in our political and erotic revolt: We could deny that the world had any meaning whatsoever.
Aldous Huxley, Ends and Means, 273

Pastor Rod

"Helping you become the person God created you to be"

PS: This is my first post using Microsoft Word 2007. It's not perfect, but it's an improvement.

Oprah’s Secret

Oprah recently devoted a couple of shows to The Secret, a book and a DVD movie about “the law of attraction.”

From Oprah’s site:

The Secret is defined as the law of attraction, which states that like attracts like. The concept says that the energy you put into the world—both good and bad—is exactly what comes back to you. This means you create the circumstances of your life with the choices you make every day.

This is a combination of Buddhism and self-help psychology.

But a few viewers were uncomfortable with the religious implications of The Secret. They asked if it didn’t contradict the teachings of Christianity. The panelists all smiled as if a child has just asked where the sun goes at night:

Michael says The Secret isn’t about contradicting religion—it supports it. “It actually goes underneath the culture and explains to you the sacred laws that these wonderful teachers have brought to us,” he says. According to James, The Secret is about supporting the great spiritual traditions in a more modern form. “It really is just putting Christianity, Judaism, all the great teachings into a current vernacular,” he says.

Of course, this view is nothing new. There are many who say that all religions are the same. But this assertion is naïve and self-contradictory.

Yet in an attempt to ride the wave of The Da Vinci Code, the producers of The Secret have announced that a great conspiracy has prevented the widespread implementation of The Secret. They even say that it was discovered by “the church” in the 20th century and then banned.

They claim that The Secret is old but that it has been known by only a few fortunate individuals. They claim that it holds the key to having one’s desires fulfilled. They claim that the world will experience a dramatic change now that The Secret is being revealed.

If you would like a detailed response to these claims, you should read the article by John Stackhouse.

But here is my quick analysis:

Positive thinking works. Our thoughts tend to be self-fulfilling prophecies.

We are responsible for our choices. Many people live as if they are victims. They spend so much energy complaining about the choices they do not have that they fail to take advantage of the choices they do have.

Self-reliance and self-esteem are not the answer to humanity’s problems. We do not need to “believe in ourselves.” We need help from “outside.” Our only hope is for Someone to rescue us from the disaster we’ve created for ourselves.

The Secret is both good and bad. Many people could benefit from some of the techniques presented in The Secret. But the underlying philosophy is dangerous. The answer to “all our problems” is not getting what we want. It is rather submitting to the true King who seeks to fulfill the deepest desires of our hearts (Psalm 37:4). And this submission often feels like moving away from the very things we think we really want. Jesus called it denying ourselves and taking up our cross (Luke 9:23).

And without that “giving up,” you cannot be his disciple, because you will still think you are in charge and just in need of a little help from Jesus for your project of a successful life. But our idea of a “successful life” is precisely our problem.
Dallas Willard, Renovation of the Heart, p. 243

The real secret is the “open secret” about Jesus Christ. All of human history was a preparation for the arrival of the Creator of the universe in a small Judean village 2000 years ago. The good news is that this King has defeated all the rival claimants to his throne and has freed his people from bondage to sin, Satan and death. And now we can live in the power of that victory as we are transformed from the inside to reflect the character of our Master.

Pastor Rod

“Helping you become the person God created you to be”

One Year

This blog is celebrating its first anniversary this month. In February of 2006, I made my first post wondering if anyone would read it.

Writing this blog has been very beneficial for me. I've become a better writer. I've meet several new friends. I've learned about many things I was only vaguely aware of just one year ago.

I want to thank all who have taken the time to visit and especially those who have risked sharing their own thoughts in the comments.

I hope that some of you have found this blog helpful in some way.

May God help all of us to continue to grow in his grace and become more and more like his Son.

Pastor Rod

"Helping You Become the Person God Created You to Be."

Objections 13–17

Some time ago I started a series of posts in response to the pamphlet by Chaz Bufe called 20 Reasons to Abandon Christianity (the first post in this series).

(The text in blue is from Mr. Bufe’s pamphlet. I have used ellipses to show where I have condensed the original.)

13. Christianity depreciates the natural world. In addition to its morbid preoccupation with sex, Christianity creates social myopia through its emphasis on the supposed afterlife—encouraging Christians not to be concerned with "the things of this world" (except, of course, their neighbors’ sexual practices). In the conventional Christian view, life in this "vale of tears" is not important—what matters is preparing for the next life…. This focus on the afterlife often leads to a distinct lack of concern for the natural world, and sometimes to outright anti-ecological attitudes.

There are certainly some Christians who fit this description. The Left Behind eschatology seems to reinforce an “otherworldly” mindset. But in its essence, Christianity is the foundation for a high view of creation.

However, if Christianity is true, then this world is not the ultimate reality. The Bible teaches that there is a deeper reality “behind” what is commonly called the real world. According to Christianity, what we do in this life is important because it has eternal consequences.

If this universe is just a cosmic accident, then upon what basis can an atheist complain that humans are neglecting their responsibility to care for the “natural world”? Where does that responsibility come from? If this world is just an accident, then how can we be held accountable for the way we treat it? And to whom must we answer?

14. Christianity models hierarchical, authoritarian organization. Christianity is perhaps the ultimate top-down enterprise. In its simplest form, it consists of God on top, its "servants," the clergy, next down, and the great unwashed masses at the bottom, with those above issuing, in turn, thou-shalts and thou-shalt-nots backed by the threat of eternal damnation.

This complaint is based upon the assumption that Christianity is not rooted in any objective truth. If there is such an objective truth at the heart of Christianity, this objection falls away.

Could we not say the same thing about medicine? The medical establishment is the “ultimate top-down enterprise.” At the top we have medical schools. Next come physicians and nurses. At the bottom are the “great unwashed masses.” The people in power issue authoritative proclamations about what is healthy and what is not, backed by the threat of sickness and death.

At the same time, we must admit that many Christian leaders and organizations seem to have removed John 13:1–17 from their Bibles. Even Jesus said that he did not come to be served but to serve others (Mark 10:45).

15. Christianity sanctions slavery. The African slave trade was almost entirely conducted by Christians. They transported their victims to the New World in slave ships with names such as "Mercy" and "Jesus," where they were bought by Christians, both Catholic and Protestant. Organized Christianity was not silent on this horror: it actively encouraged it and engaged in it…. While many abolitionists were Christians, they were a very small group, well hated by most of their fellow Christians.

This objection is filled with false assumptions and misleading statements. To say that “Christianity sanctions slavery” is blatantly dishonest. Christianity is firmly opposed to slavery and other institutions that demean human beings.

The institution of slavery was not invented by Christianity or even by people who falsely identified themselves as Christians. It is an institution that has been around almost as long as there have been human beings.

Slave traders bought African slaves from other Africans. This is not an evil that was created by the “white man.” Sure, these traders exploited the existing custom and provided the financial impetus for it to expand. And much blame must be born by western society for the part it played in this tragedy. But it grew out of human depravity, not any particular religion.

Mr. Bufe overstates the involvement of the church in the perpetuation of slavery and understates its involvement in the abolition of slavery. It was precisely because of their Christian beliefs that a growing number of westerners openly opposed slavery, eventually putting an end to the institution in “Christian” countries.

Today there are white-supremacist groups who claim that their teachings are supported by the Bible. But no honest observer would argue that there is anything inherent in Christianity that supports this hateful doctrine.

At the same time, the church must acknowledge its lack of courage to oppose many social evils. It should have spoken out much sooner against slavery. In Germany, much of the church stood by while millions of innocent people were killed. In the United States, the church took much too long to stand up against racism.

16. Christianity is misogynistic. Misogyny is fundamental to the basic writings of Christianity. In passage after passage, women are encouraged—no, commanded—to accept an inferior role, and to be ashamed of themselves for the simple fact that they are women…. Throughout almost the entire time that Christianity had Europe and America in its lock grip, women were treated as chattel—they had essentially no political rights, and their right to own property was severely restricted…. As for the improvements in the status of women over the last two centuries, the Christian churches either did nothing to support them or actively opposed them. This is most obvious as regards women’s control over their own bodies. Organized Christianity has opposed this from the start, and as late as the 1960s the Catholic Church was still putting its energies into the imposition of laws prohibiting access to contraceptives. Having lost that battle, Christianity has more recently put its energies into attempts to outlaw the right of women to abortion.

The truth is that Christianity has been an innovator in valuing women. From its inception, Christianity gave women significant roles that were in opposition to the prevailing culture. As God explains in Genesis, the exploitation of women is a result of the fall, man’s rebellion against God.

The very idea of “personal rights” grew out of the teachings of Christianity. Without the foundation established by Christianity, it is most unlikely that the values of western democracy would ever have taken root.

Yes, tyranny has often been imposed in the name of Christianity. But without Christianity, one tyranny could only be deposed by another tyranny. Without an appeal to an objective authority, humanity would be condemned to living according to the “law of the jungle.”

Mr. Bufe brings up the issue of abortion. This is not some insignificant religious dispute. Nor is it an attempt to oppress women. The key issue regarding abortion is when the fetus should be considered a human being. Some of the arguments claiming that the fetus is not human sound shockingly similar to the arguments made that slaves were less than full human beings.

This is a difficult issue without a simple solution. Those who claim that this is a black-and-white issue (on both sides) are being irresponsible and dishonest.

17. Christianity is homophobic. Christianity from its beginnings has been markedly homophobic…. Thus the current wave of gay bashings and murders of gay people should come as no surprise. Christians can find justification for such violence in the Bible and also in the hate-filled sermons issuing from all too many pulpits in this country. If history is any indication, the homophobic messages in those sermons will continue to be issued for many years to come.

If Mr. Bufe really believes what he says in this paragraph, I question his intellectual abilities. If he doesn’t believe what he says, then I question his moral standing to make any objection against Christianity.

There is no foundation in Christianity for violence against gay people.

What does Mr. Bufe mean by homophobic?

• Does he mean that Christianity teaches that homosexual individuals are irredeemable sinners?


• Does he mean that Christianity singles out homosexual behavior as the ultimate sin?


• Does he mean that Christianity believes that homosexual individuals should be stripped of any personal rights?

If so, then he is completely wrong.

Christianity does teach that sex belongs within marriage and that any sexual practice in any other context is a sin.

Christianity does teach that people are responsible for their actions, regardless of their “natural inclinations.”

Christianity does teach that there is no such thing as a victimless or harmless sin.

Christianity also teaches that all people must be treated with respect as bearers of the image of God. It also teaches that all humans are sinners in desperate need of redemption. It also teaches that every one of us is flawed at the level of our inclinations and surface desires.

Pastor Rod

“Helping you become the person God created you to be”

The Open Secret

I recently read The Open Secret by Lesslie Newbigin. I had the sense that I should disagree with his theology in some way, but I couldn’t find anything specific to disagree with. Here are a few quotations:

The church could have escaped persecution by the Roman Empire if it had been content to be treated as a cultus privatus—one of the many forms of personal religion. But it was not. Its affirmation that “Jesus is Lord” implied a public, universal claim that was bound eventually to clash with the cultus publicus of the empire. The Christian mission is thus to act out in the whole life of the whole world the confession that Jesus is Lord of all.
Lesslie Newbigin, The Open Secret, p. 16–17

Our mission is to live out the truth of the central proclamation of Christianity. If Jesus is Lord, we must live like it—in every aspect of our lives. And if we do this honestly, we will find ourselves in conflict with the prevailing culture, but not necessarily in the ways that we might think.

It is not enough for the church to go on repeating in different cultural situations the same words and phrases. New ways have to be found of stating the essential Trinitarian faith, and for this the church in each new cultural situation has to go back to the original biblical sources of this faith in order to lay hold on it afresh in contemporary terms.
Lesslie Newbigin, The Open Secret, p. 27

Too many people treat the Bible as if it were a magical incantation—that simply repeating its words will transform others even if they do not understand their meaning. The work of theology is not done. Every Christian is a missionary. The truth of the gospel must be constantly redefined and communicated in original terms.

It has been said that the question of the Trinity is the one theological question that has been really settled. It would, I think, be nearer to the truth to say that the Nicene formula has been so devoutly hallowed that it is effectively put out of circulation. It has been treated like the talent that was buried for safekeeping rather than risked in the commerce of discussion.
Lesslie Newbigin, The Open Secret, p. 27

Christian theology is not reduced to organizing and cataloging what previous generations have determined. God does not change his nature, and the canon is closed. But it would be foolish to think that we have exhausted our understanding of the revelation we have received in the form of the Bible and that a few dead men from previous centuries have written such perfect descriptions of God and how he works with humans that there is nothing new to say.

The supreme parable, the supreme deed by which the reign of God is both revealed and hidden, is the cross.
Lesslie Newbigin, The Open Secret, p. 35

I don’t think we really understand what happened on the cross. I think we have systematized our descriptions of the atonement to the point that it is reduced to a cliché.

What is given here [Acts 1:8] (and this is vital for true missionary thinking) is not a command, but a promise. The presence of the Spirit will make them witnesses.
Lesslie Newbigin, The Open Secret, p. 58

When the Spirit came they were naturally witnesses. In other words, we should focus more on receiving the Spirit than on trying to be witnesses.

We can be assured that the mission of the church is not conducted, nor is its success measured, after the manner of a military operation or a sales campaign. The witness that confutes the world is not ours; it is that of one greater than ourselves who goes before us. Our task is simply to follow faithfully.
Lesslie Newbigin, The Open Secret, p. 62

This book should be required reading for every pastor and every denominational executive.

Our so-called eternal truths are the attempts we make at particular moments in the story to grasp and state how things are in terms of our experience at that point. They are all provisional and relative to time and place, as we recognize when as twentieth-century people we read the seventeenth-century language of the Westminster Confession.
Lesslie Newbigin, The Open Secret, p. 83

Touché.

The biblical story is not a separate story: it is part of the unbroken fabric of world history.
Lesslie Newbigin, The Open Secret, p. 88

I can live fully the life of a real person, part of the real world of society, history, and nature, and know that, because Christ is risen, my labor in the Lord is not futile.
Lesslie Newbigin, The Open Secret, p. 106

All of life is sacred. Everything we do should be done in the context of the Lordship of Jesus. We can worship God with our play as well as our work.

The church has to learn how to live by the grace that forgives but does not condone sin and under the judgment that exposes sin and yet keeps open the way of repentance.
Lesslie Newbigin, The Open Secret, p. 112

Too often the church condemns those who commit the sins we ourselves are not likely to commit and condones (or even celebrates) the sins that have worked their way into the culture of the church.

In no sense does the triumph of God’s reign seem to depend upon the growth of the church.
Lesslie Newbigin, The Open Secret, p. 125

Most pastors and Christians would think that this statement is a contradiction.

The place where the virus of legalism gets into the work of evangelism is the place where the evangelist presumes that he or she knows in advance and can tell the potential convert what the ethic content of conversion will be.
Lesslie Newbigin, The Open Secret, p. 136

Our efforts to call people to righteousness and holiness often result in a facsimile of righteousness and holiness that prevents the outbreak of the real thing.

When the light shines freely one cannot draw a line and say, “Here light stops and darkness begins.” But one can say and must say, “There is where the light shines; go toward it and your path will be clear; turn your back on it and you will go into deeper darkness.”
Lesslie Newbigin, The Open Secret, p. 175

This is the difference between a bounded set and a centered set.

To invest the money with a view to a high rate of interest is to risk the capital. The church has often been afraid to do this, thinking that the faith once delivered to the saints is to be preserved inviolate and without the change of a comma. The mystery of the gospel is not entrusted to the church to be buried in the ground. It is entrusted to the church to be risked in the change and interchange of the spiritual commerce of humanity.
Lesslie Newbigin, The Open Secret, p. 189

When most Christians engage in a discussion with a person who has a different worldview, they “talk down” to that person and try to convince him or her to adopt the Christian worldview. If we are true seekers of the truth, we must be willing to accept whatever is shown to be the truth, even if it is different than what we already believe. If Christianity is true (and I believe it is), then we do not have to protect it from new scientific discoveries. We do not have to be afraid of challenges and criticisms of the gospel.

It is not our job to defend the gospel. Our responsibility is to proclaim and explain the gospel in words and in actions. We must acknowledge the possibility that we could be wrong about what we believe. If we don’t, then we don’t really believe that it is true. We are just trying to convince ourselves that it is true.

I don’t know if this is the best book that Newbigin has written, but it certainly is better than most of the contemporary books on ministry that I’ve read. It should be added to the list of essential reading for anyone who wants to understand missional ministry.

Pastor Rod

“Helping you become the person God created you to be”

Prodigal Grace

Here’s another quotation from Free of Charge by Miroslav Volf:

God’s forgiveness is indiscriminate. That’s the bedrock conviction of the Christian faith. “One has died for all,” wrote the apostle Paul (2 Corinthians 5:14). That simple claim has immense implications. All means all, without exception. There are no people who are sufficiently good so that God doesn’t need to forgive them and Christ didn’t die for them. There are no people who are too wicked for God to forgive them and for Christ to die for them. And there are no people whom God, for some inscrutable reason, decided not to forgive.
Miroslav Volf, Free of Charge, pp. 177–178

Pastor Rod

“Helping you become the person God created you to be”

Why I Hate Mardi Gras (repost)

(This is a repost of something I wrote last year.)

You would expect a pastor to say that he doesn’t like Mardi Gras.

But you might be surprised why I don’t like it.

Is it because of the excessive drinking? Not really. There are many other situations when people drink too much and hurt themselves and others because they are intoxicated. I’m not in favor of excessive drinking. But that’s not the reason I hate Mardi Gras.

Is it because of the nudity? Nope. There’s just as much nudity at Spring Break. (And I have to admit that it does appeal to my hormones.) Sure, women flashing their breasts in public is not a healthy expression of sexuality. God has a much better, and more fulfilling, way to express and satisfy sexual desires. But the nudity is not the reason I hate Mardi Gras.

Is it because of the debauchery? This is nothing unique to Mardi Gras. People engage in all sorts of self-destructive behavior every weekend. They have been duped into abusing God’s gift of sex for a few moments of titillation, when God wants us to enjoy a lifetime of intimacy and fulfillment (with a fair amount of pleasure in the bargain). No, sexual decadence is not why I hate Mardi Gras.

I hate Mardi Gras because it reinforces several lies of the Evil One.

• The lie that “holiness” is about deprivation.
• The lie that “holiness” is dull and boring.
• The lie that we have to give in to temptation so that we can resist temptation in the future.
• The lie that forgiveness is cheap.

That’s why I hate Mardi Gras. It’s not just “a little harmless fun.” It’s propaganda by the Enemy to keep people from finding the life that God wants them to enjoy.

It is one more way that the Enemy distracts people from being serious followers of Jesus Christ.

Pastor Rod

“Helping you become the person God created you to be”

Drawing Lines

My denomination has membership commitments that are (at best) anachronistic. They draw a clear “line in the sand” defining who can and who cannot become members of any local church.

For the moment, I want to set aside the fact that this line is drawn in the wrong place.

I want to address, instead, the whole rational of lifestyle membership regulations. There is biblical warrant for a very limited number of lifestyle “concessions” (Acts 15:19–21). But they are clearly concessions, and there are only four of them.

Trying to define what serious discipleship looks like creates all sorts of cultural problems. These definitions, by nature, lag behind the rapidly-changing culture. By the time they are written, they are out of date.

They also tend to emphasize things that are not important and to overlook things that are important.

Leslie Newbigin points out the well-documented errors that western missionaries have made in this regard:

The place where the virus of legalism gets into the work of evangelism is the place where the evangelist presumes that he or she knows in advance and can tell the potential convert what the ethic content of conversion will be.
Leslie Newbigin, The Open Secret, p. 136

Much as the act of measurement irrevocably alters a quantum event, the attempt to delineate rules, or even guidelines, imposes a time-bound and culture-bound reduction on the gospel.

We can see this clearly with groups like the Amish. But most evangelical Christians are different from them only in the degree to which their cultural regulations lag behind the current time.

But the real danger is much more serious. A detailed list of lifestyle regulations inevitably turns Christians into Pharisees. They had a list of activities which were forbidden on the Sabbath; we have a list of activities, associations and occupations that are forbidden for membership.

With such a list, we tend to focus on the periphery, thinking about what is allowed and what is forbidden. Our focus should not be on the periphery, but on the center, Jesus Christ. Again Newbigin has a good word:

When the light shines freely one cannot draw a line and say, “Here light stops and darkness begins.” But one can say and must say, “There is where the light shines; go toward it and your path will be clear; turn your back on it and you will go into deeper darkness.”
Leslie Newbigin, The Open Secret, p. 175

These kinds of regulations actually discourage serious discipleship. Paul addressed this in Colossians 2:21, 23:

“Do not handle! Do not taste! Do not touch!” Such regulations indeed have an appearance of wisdom, with their self-imposed worship, their false humility and their harsh treatment of the body, but they lack any value in restraining sensual indulgence.

They seem reasonable, but they have no real value in producing holiness.

These kinds of rules cause harm as Dallas Willard warns:

If in spiritual formation you focus on action alone, you will fall into the
deadliest of legalisms and you will kill other souls and die yourself. You will get a social conformity…. To focus on action alone is to fall into pharisaism of the worst kind and to kill the soul.
Dallas Willard, The Great Omission

But this is not an issue of balancing freedom with obligation. This is not an issue of how much we should accommodate to the host culture.

Paul was not sliding down some slippery slope. He was not “becoming liberal.” In the very next verse, he continues:

Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things…. Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry…. You must rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips. Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator…. Therefore, as God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with
compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity…. And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.
Colossians 3:1–2, 5, 8–10, 12–14, 17

When we give people a list of what they should do and what they should not do, we change the dynamic of discipleship. This does not mean that discipleship has no demands. It means just the opposite. Discipleship demands much more than simply keeping a list of rules.

Michael Frost could be talking about a rule-based approach to holiness:

This version of Christianity is a façade, a method for practitioners to appear like fine, upstanding citizens without allowing the claims and teachings of Jesus to bite hard in everyday life.
Michael Frost, Exiles

In its essence, discipleship is about developing character from the inside out. It is about the kind of people we are becoming.

Spiritual formation for the Christian is a Spirit-driven process of forming the inner world of the human self –our “spiritual” side—in such a way that it becomes like the inner being of Christ himself. In the degree to which such a spiritual transformation to inner Christlikeness is successful, the outer life of the individual will become a natural expression or outflow of the character and teachings of Jesus.
Dallas Willard, Living A Transformed Life Adequate To Our Calling

Jesus said that anyone who wants to be a disciple must deny himself, take up his cross daily and follow the example of Jesus. He said that true disciples are becoming the kind of people who naturally turn the other cheek. They are people who bless those who curse them.

Paul said that true disciples can be easily identified by their love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.

But I’ve shifted this discussion from membership to discipleship. This is a shift that is often made unconsciously when arguing the question of membership commitments. An argument is made for what a mature Christian should look like (from the point of view of the person making the argument) and that is translated into membership requirements.

But is it reasonable to require of church members the characteristics of Christian maturity?

Do we allow only healthy people into hospitals? Do we enroll in college only students who already have a command of the subject for which they desire a degree? Do we leave our children at an orphanage until they can take on adult responsibilities in our families?

But somehow we think it is reasonable to expect maturity at birth when it comes to the spiritual life.

Some would argue that we shouldn’t just let anyone become a member of our churches. I agree. We should limit membership to baptized believers who are serious about following Christ.

There is no correlation between the nonconsumption of alcohol and the desire to be a serious disciple of Jesus. The same could be said regarding smoking.

Anytime an organization draws a line of required behaviors, those behaviors tend to clump on either side of the line. As a church, we shouldn’t be calling people to cross our lines. We should be calling people to become more and more like Jesus.

The early church didn’t have detailed membership requirements. Peter even had to revise his presumed requirements on the spot in the home of Cornelius (Acts 10:47). And while the early church had a few problems, there was a vitality and commitment that we rarely see today.

This does not mean that leaders should never label certain actions as sin. The truth is that we need more of this. But our membership rolls will become very short indeed if we only accept those who are free from any sin.

There are many arguments for supporting the status quo.

• We should submit to the authority of the church.
• We should respect the tradition from which we’ve developed.
• We should honor our spiritual “fathers.”
• We should limit our freedom so as not to offend the “weaker brothers.”

Quietly accepting the status quo is the easy position to take. But is it the right position to take?

A good friend once asked me, “Do you really want to be known as the person who made drinking permissible in the Wesleyan Church?” (His point was that we only get one legacy and that we need to choose it wisely.)

Framed in this way, the obvious answer is “No; I’d rather be known for something more important.”

But what about being known for calling the Wesleyan Church to be serious about true discipleship, about a compelling and powerful holiness that is a true work of God?

I think I could reply with a “Yes” to that.

Pastor Rod

“Helping You Become the Person God Created You to Be”

L'ultimo Giorno

I'm spending my last day in Italy. Early tomorrow morning I leave for Chicago.

Right now it is sunny and 60 degrees. In Chicago it is ten degrees and snowing.

It will be good to get home, but I will miss my friends here and the nice weather.

I intend to get back to my regular schedule of frequent posts. I have one ready to post as soon as I get back and several ideas for other posts.

I wonder how long it will take my body to get used to the cold weather and my brain to get used to speaking English. Yesterday in one class (where I am supposed to be helping teach English), I was talking for a while when the teacher said, "Speak in English."

I find myself translating everything into Italian when I'm not thinking directly in Italian. That is not to say that I have achieved true fluency. I still have difficulty understanding every word that someone says when they are speaking at normal speed. But I usually understand enough to follow the conversation.

The students at the two middle schools have treated me like a celebrity. I told the mayor that I was coming back in 10 ten years to run for mayor myself.

This is my fourth time in Sicily. Altogether, I've spent more than three months here. I've started to understand this culture on a much deeper level. I will be making some posts in the near future about some of my observations.

For five weeks, I have been at the mercy of other people's schedules. I haven't driven a car. I've had limited Internet access. I've been to only one church service (and that was a special mass on a Saturday night to honor policemen who have died). I haven't played basketball or been to the gym. I haven't had a glass (of anything) with ice. I haven't seen my wife.

As you can imagine, I'm eager to get home.

But I also haven't shoveled snow. I haven't worn anything heavier than a light coat. I haven't eaten any overcooked pasta. I haven't seen a single McDonalds. I haven't had to buy a meal or much of anything else.

As you can imagine, it will be difficult to leave.

But it will be nice to get back home, to have my wireless Internet access and to take back control of the remote control to the TV.

Pastor Rod

"Helping You Become the Person God Created You to Be"

Missional Marketing

What is the difference between a missional orientation and a seeker-sensitive orientation?

One significant difference is the motivation for adapting the message of the gospel to the culture.

First, let me make clear that we do not have the option of a culturally free expression of the gospel. The gospel is not “timeless principles.” It is an account of good news. It is a report about a specific event that happened in a specific place at a specific time. The story of the gospel is inextricably intertwined with culture.

But the gospel transcends culture. The Christian Scriptures can withstand translation into other languages and cultures. (It is radically different from the Quran in this regard.) In fact, the four accounts of the gospel in the Bible had already broken cultural barriers before they were even recorded.

We do not even have the actual words of Jesus. Jesus spoke in Aramaic, but his words are recorded in “street” Greek. Each writer sought to capture the sense of what Jesus said; he had no intention of being a human tape recorder.

Matthew tells his gospel in the framework of Hebrew culture. Mark recounts the same story in terms more at home in the wider Roman Empire. Luke seems to be working from a Greek foundation. John takes a different view entirely, focusing on the meaning of events in Jesus’ ministry.

Right from the start, there was never such a thing as a “Christian culture.”

In the past century or so, the Church has operated out of a culture that was distinct from the culture of its environment, but also different than the culture of the first Christians. This “Christian” culture was generally little different than the general culture, that is the general culture of a few decades before the current time.

Many western missionaries in that same period seemed to be as focused on instilling western culture as they were in proclaiming the gospel. It could be argued that they were unable to conceive of the gospel in any other terms than the prevailing (or dated) western culture.

Along came some mission-minded people who were culturally literate enough to see the foolishness of this strategy. People were rejecting the Church, and Jesus Christ, for reasons that had little to do with the essence of the gospel. They were rebelling against elements that had little or nothing to do with Christianity—even though these elements came from the culture of many Christians.

And so these pioneers removed the artificial, cultural barriers. This development is generally known as the seeker-sensitive movement.

But, as happens with any “adjustment,” there was an “over correction.”

In the effort to remove cultural barriers there was generated a momentum that tended to remove (or weaken) all barriers, even barriers inherent in the gospel itself.

Partly in reaction to this over correction, a significant part of the Church has taken a new direction. These people seek to proclaim the gospel in terms that challenge the “powers.” They make no effort to soften the offense of the gospel, but they are scrupulous to distance themselves from the offense of Christendom.

This movement often dismisses the previous movement as “mere marketing.”

And this charge has substance. The gospel has far too often been packaged and sold as another product in the marketplace. Success has often been defined in marketing terms. Not only were the methods taken from the world of business, but the measure of success was defined in “bottom-line” terms, even when the bottom line was “souls.”

But we need to be honest here. Marketing is inevitable. We are always marketing, either intentionally or unintentionally. “Non-marketing” is simply another form of marketing.

So the question is not whether we should market the gospel. But the question is what the message should be and how it should be communicated.

The missional movement seems to be at once counter-cultural and culturally sensitive.

The seeker-sensitive movement appeared to be motivated by a desire to remove barriers to make the gospel more accessible. The missional movement seems to be motivated by a desire to make the scandal of the cross more prominent by removing all cultural “noise” that might be confused with that offense.

But this is not as straightforward as it sounds. Even the prevailing explanations of the offense of the cross are usually loaded with ideas that have more to do with the Enlightenment than with the gospel.

This “offense” is usually explained in terms of personal sin and divine power.

But I would suggest that it runs much deeper than this. The real scandal of the cross is that Jesus won his victory in weakness and defeat.

As it is usually depicted, the cross is little more than bowing to a superior power. Even a tough guy like "Dirty Harry" Harry Callahan admits that “a man’s gotta know his limitations.” When we recognize that God is the sovereign, we give up our pretensions of being in control. But this is simply a wise “business” decision.

Too many people “come to Jesus” to enhance their lives: to win more football games, to make more money, to sell more widgets. Taking up our cross is no longer a radical submission; it is now a calculated investment.

What the gospel calls us to is something much more difficult. It calls us to trust in a Savior who could not “save himself.” It calls us to a life of power that is manifested only in weakness. It calls us to abandon ourselves to God’s story without any alternative “plot lines.”

Jesus is not the ultimate warrior. He is the outcast, the reject, the “fool.”

We are not called to “take prisoners” for Jesus. We are called to become prisoners for the gospel. The gospel is not just a different insider game. It is a complete rejection of all struggling for position and power.

This is the scandal of the cross.

It is not giving up bad habits. It is not changing the way we dress. It is not engaging in a program of moral improvement. The way of the cross may involve these things, but they are not the essence of that way.

At least that is what I think. What do you think?

Pastor Rod

“Helping You Become the Person God Created You to Be”