Power of the Blues

Here's a video I found by following a link from Brother Maynard to Reflections of a Jazz Theologian.

You can supply your own commentary.

Pastor Rod

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

Meta-Interpretation

Most Protestants believe that the Bible is the "last word" on matters of faith and doctrine. They also believe that there is a scientific way to determine what the objective meaning of the Bible is. This method is commonly known as the historical-critical method of biblical interpretation. The problem is that this method contains many unexamined assumptions.

(I have written about the false security that results from using this method.)

I discovered (HT: Brian Russell) an article that addresses the assumptions of this method and compares them to a "missional hermeneutic." Colin Yuckman calls his paper "An Ulterior Gospel." Here's part of his opening paragraph:

Every hermeneutic operates according to a critical rubric. Implied in each critical hermeneutic, however, is some sort of uncritical, fiduciary commitment. That is, in order to sustain a critical approach, one must remain committed to something else uncritically (one cannot be critical of everything, including one's critical operating principles, or else he will philosophically implode). Therefore, an uncritical commitment underlies every critical hermeneutic. The purpose of this paper is to put side by side the hermeneutic operative in much historical criticism (which has had particular privilege in Western, biblical interpretation) and missional hermeneutics, examining their respective commitments, critical and uncritical, and the trajectory on which these commitments have set them. The result will indicate the degree to which each model represents an adequate example of critical hermeneutics and, furthermore, how missional hermeneutics can adopt the benefits of historical criticism without contracting its ailments.

Translation: Every objective method is built upon several unproven assumptions that must simply be accepted "by faith." He intends to explain the assumptions of the traditional method of interpretation and compare them to the assumptions of a suggested missional approach to biblical interpretation.

If you are interested in this topic and are well-read, you will want to read the entire article. Otherwise, you can take a look at my summary and simplification.

Here are the assumptions made by the traditional method.

1. Independence. This method was conceived by the Church for the purposes of the Church. But now it considers itself free of any responsibility to the Church. It assumes that the scientific method is the ultimate determinant of truth.
   
2. Value-neutrality. Those who use this method assume that they are free from needing to make value judgments and commitments. They believe that it is an objective tool. On the contrary, it smuggles in its own value system.
   
3. Rationality. This method treats the Enlightenment view of reason as its universal dogma. It operates within a very specific plausibility structure.
   
4. Superior Viewpoint. This method assumes that modern practitioners are able to understand the text better than the people to whom it was written.
   
5. Special Rules. This method applies a skeptical attitude toward everything except itself. The rules are valid everywhere but "here."
   
6. Accidental Theology. This method assumes a particular view of reality, which requires a religious belief. But this religious belief is not acknowledged or examined. It operates behind the scenes without scrutiny.
   
7. Fundamentalist Attitude. This method has an intolerance toward other traditions that is just as narrow-minded as any religious fundamentalism.
   

Here are Yuckman's suggested guidelines for a missional hermeneutic.

1. Interpretation Organically Tied to Mission. The message of the Gospel requires faith on the part of the listeners to understand it. But it is only the message of the Gospel, accepted and understood, that can bring forth the needed faith. It is only as we are engaged in the mission of the kingdom that we can understand the content of the "mission statement" commonly known as the Bible.
   
2. Openly Theological. Missional interpretation is built upon a theological foundation. One aspect of missional theology is that the Church exists for the sake of those who do not belong to it.
   
3. Objective Credulity. The historical method depends upon a universal skepticism. It distrusts everything. Missional interpretation remains open to a new view of reality proclaimed by the text.
   
4. Biblical Plausibility Structure. Instead of accepting an Enlightenment plausibility structure, missional interpretation "lives" within a thoroughly biblical worldview.
   
5. Particularity and Universality. Missional interpretation sees a movement in the biblical narrative from the particular to the universal. Abraham is chosen by God so that he can bless all the nations of the world. "God's very identity is bound up in the intention to draw in the universal through active work in the particular."
   
6. Universal Intent. Michael Polanyi argues that all knowledge requires a personal commitment. There is no such thing as impersonal facts. A personal encounter with reality must result in a claim of universal application. This view sees personal commitment as the foundation of a kind of objectivity. Of course, our view of reality could be wrong. But we can discover the truth only by taking the risk of personal commitment and continued investigation. But this is not some kind of a personal truth. It must be a universal truth if it is truth at all.
   
7. Congregation as Interpreter. The only reliable context for understanding the Gospel is the believing community.
   

I admit that these guidelines are somewhat vague and difficult to comprehend. But I think that Yuckman is headed in the right direction. What do you think?

Pastor Rod

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

Effective Preaching

As a follow up to my criticism of one style of preaching, I thought I'd share with you this post by Brian Russell. He lists six principles for "preaching that connects":

1. Prayer is essential.
   
2. God is working in your life.
   
3. Find Your Own Rhythm and Style
   
4. Understand Your role as an Interpreter
   
5. Share Yourself.
   
6. Bring Passion to the Delivery
   

I agree with him on the importance of these things. They all (except number 4) depend upon what is happening in the life of the preacher.

Bishop William Alfred Quayle said:

Preaching is not the art of making a sermon and delivering it; it is rather the art of making a preacher and delivering that.

It is difficult to explain the proper role of prayer in the preparation of the sermon. It is more like a total dependence upon God that permeates every part of life and spills over into the preparation and delivery of the sermon.

It seems to me that there are three keys to effective preaching (in the order of importance):

• Know God
  
• Know yourself
  
• Know your listeners
  

It is possible to read this list and understand "know" in a very shallow way. But there must be a depth to this knowledge. It is an awareness and familiarity that becomes stronger over time.

Knowing God means much more than having a solid theological foundation. It means having a "relationship" with him as one would with any other person. Unfortunately, this phrase has become a cliché and lost nearly all its meaning.

To know yourself requires more than taking the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator or knowing whether you are an auditory, visual or kinesthetic learner. It means knowing the temptations that you are most susceptible to. It means knowing your deepest desires, not just what you think you want. It means having an objective recognition of your strengths and weaknesses. It means being conscious of what you think and feel.

And knowing your listeners goes far beyond "knowing your audience." It means really knowing the individuals sitting there and what is happening in their lives

On the one hand, this is very difficult. But on the other hand, it is natural and "effortless." I used to stress over my sermon preparation. Because I wanted to "do my best." I now have a more focused, relaxed attitude. It is not my job to convince, convert or change my parishioners. It is my job to be in the process of becoming more like Jesus Christ and to share that journey with the people God has entrusted me with.

The real work of sermon preparation is not done sitting in front of my computer. It is done in my heart/soul/spirit as I cooperate with God's grace as he makes me into the person he created me to be.

Pastor Rod

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

Tom Peters, Missional Theologian

I just saw this post about missional Christianity by Tom Peters.

OK, so it wasn't really about that. But it seems to paint a pretty accurate picture of two philosophies within the church.

Strategy 1

• Go on offense.
  
• Give everybody a shot.
  
• Decentralize.
  
• Try a bunch of stuff.
  
• Make it up as you go along.
  
• Get some stuff wrong.
  
• Laugh a lot.
  
• Get some stuff right.
  
• Become a "success."
  

Strategy 2

• Extract "lessons learned" or "best practices."
  
• Thicken the Book of Rules.
  
• Become evermore serious.
  
• Enforce the rules to increasingly tight tolerances.
  
• Go on defense.
  
• Install walls.
  
• Protect-at-all-costs today's franchise.
  
• Centralize.
  
• Calcify.
  
• Install taller walls.
  
• Write more rules.
  
• Become irrelevant and-or die.
  

The first strategy sounds like a missional approach to Christianity. The second sounds like the institutional Christendom approach.

That's just what we need, taller walls and more rules.

May God save us from ourselves!

Pastor Rod

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

Rules & Regulations

I have written before about the theological, cultural and exegetical mess of the membership requirements of The Wesleyan Church. I strongly believe that the whole idea of having such a list is wrong-headed. And its practical result is that it short-circuits the process of serious discipleship.

I read this post by my fellow-Wesleyan Ken Schenk. In the context of free academic dialogue I would like to respond to several points he makes. (Ken's words will be in red.)

The Wesleyan Church is not the universal church. It would be both silly and unwise to pretend like our identity is simply that of generic Christianity. Membership identity in a denomination is not a question of "What is a Christian?" or "What does the Bible require of a person to be a Christian?"

I agree that The Wesleyan Church is not the sum total of the universal church. But how does it differ from "generic Christianity"? Are we somehow superior? Are we the Jesuits of the holiness movement?

Ken argues that denominational membership should not be determined by what the Bible requires to be a follower of Jesus Christ. But here's what The Discipline says:

No person who loves the Lord Jesus Christ, and obeys the gospel of God our Savior, ought to be deprived of church membership (p. 27).

This seems to be in direct conflict with Ken's point. The Wesleyan Church seems to think that only those who keep the membership commitments are obeying "the gospel of God our Savior." Besides, what does it mean to obey the gospel? I don't follow the logic.

In a section describing the history of The Wesleyan Church, there is this statement:

The Covenant Membership Commitments found in this Discipline
(260-268) represent in revised form the General Rules which Wesley gave to
the members of the societies to enable them to test the sincerity of their
purpose and to guide them in holy living (p. 3).

In effect, The Wesleyan Church has taken rules that Wesley set up for discipleship groups and used them as membership rules for a denomination. These rules earned the Wesleys and their followers the pejorative of "Methodists."

Ken continues:

Most of those who frame membership requirements in this way reflect fundamental blind spots in the way they think. For one, the Bible did not set down its requirements with a view to 21st century America and the broader world. Its books addressed various contexts in the ancient world. To think our membership requirements would simply be a mirror of what the Bible required them reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of the contexts of biblical instruction.

I'm not sure what membership commitments have been developed as a result of the special challenges of the 21st century. Wesley's rules for his class meetings were conceived in the 17th century, and The Wesleyan Church (as The Wesleyan Methodist Connection) was established in the 19th century. I think the critics of the membership requirements would welcome some reflection on what church membership means in the 21st century.

With respect to Ken (And I have a great deal of respect for him.) it strikes me as disingenuous to dismiss all appeals to the biblical text as naïve.

Ken argues:

Secondly, to make the identity of The Wesleyan Church into "every church"--as if we obviously would only require what God requires of every Christian, the lowest common denominator of all Christians--is to insist that the ears be the eyes be the feet be the nose.

Paul's metaphor about the body was addressing the differing roles of individuals. To apply this to whole denominations is to do violence to the point that he was making. Would we think that it is healthy to have a congregation made up just of elbows? Who wants an entire denomination made up of spleens?

Ken seems to think that the membership commitments alone give The Wesleyan Church a "personality." Unless we tack on special requirements for church membership, we will lose our identity.

Ken again employs elitist language, decrying "lowest common denominator" requirements. But how does this square with Acts 15:28–29?

It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us not to burden you with anything beyond the following requirements: You are to abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals and from sexual immorality. You will do well to avoid these things.

This was a response to cultural differences between the Jewish believers and the Gentile believers. The Apostles (and the Holy Spirit!) seemed to be looking for minimal requirements. Christianity cut itself free from cultural ties very early.

Ken shifts to his second point:

Denominations do a service to the body of Christ when they do "their thing" well. The Amish do forgiveness well. The question we Wesleyans need to be asking as we look to our denominational identity and our membership requirements is "What do we do well?" Optimism of grace comes to mind, victory over sin as a doctrine, social compassion was mentioned in my small group at the conference.

How do membership commitments translate into "what we do well"? Is there any relationship between the Amish wearing long beards and eschewing electricity and their willingness to forgive a mass murderer? (Maybe we need to develop a "Wesleyan uniform" so that don't lose our identity.)

We certainly have victory over sin as a doctrine, but do we have it as a reality? Do our membership requirements encourage people to be vulnerable and transparent about their struggle with sin (as an essential step to obtaining victory over it) or do they institutionalize duplicity and dishonesty? Does refusing membership to anyone who has a glass of wine (at a wedding, for example) advance the cause of social compassion? Do smokers feel optimistic when they are excluded?

Peter's words seem appropriate here:

Why do you try to test God by putting on the necks of the disciples a yoke that neither we nor our fathers have been able to bear? (Acts 15:10).

I wonder how far Ken would be willing to apply his principle that every denomination has the right to establish whatever requirements that it wants. What if a denomination forbad the eating of pork? Or required circumcision?

And I have not even addressed the rank hypocrisy that we have tolerated within our ranks. We have turned materialism into a virtue as long as donors give to our churches and institutions. We encourage gluttony while denouncing the dangers of "social drinking." We make excuses for pastors and church officials who are mean and rude, because they are "effective."

I'd very much like to see The Wesleyan Church become a demonstration of the power of God's grace to overcome the grip of sin. But I don't see our current membership requirements as a means toward that end. Rather, I see them as a significant obstacle.

That's what I think. What do you think?

Pastor Rod

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

Wright & Spong

I ran across this list of 12 areas where Bishop Shelby Spong takes issue with historic Christianity.

Instead of telling you why I think Spong is wrong, I thought I'd let N. T. Wright explain why he is not right. (Spong's words are in blue, Wright's in red, and mine in black.)

1. Theism, as a way of defining God, is dead. So most theological God-talk is today meaningless. A new way to speak of God must be found.

The New Testament is not free-standing. It is what it is because it points away from itself, to the One God of Jewish monotheism who is now known in Jesus of Nazareth and the events of his life, death, resurrection and the outpouring of his Spirit on his followers. If the Bible, Jewish and Christian, does not refer to these extra-textual realities, it fails in its whole object. The biblical writers referred to the actual story of the creator and his world, focused on the story of the creator of Israel, on the story of Jesus and Israel, and on the story of Jesus' followers and the cosmos. In other words, whatever view of the Bible you take, if you are to be in any way obedient to the Bible you cannot make the Bible itself the centre or focus of your attention. It points away from itself ("The Book and the Story," The Bible In Transmission, Summer 1997).

If Spong wants to reject the God of the Old Testament, or the New Testament, then he is free to do so. But let's be clear what the reason is for this rejection. It is not because theism is dead, or that God himself has died.

2. Since God can no longer be conceived in theistic terms, it becomes nonsensical to seek to understand Jesus as the incarnation of the theistic deity. So the Christology of the ages is bankrupt.

I propose, as a matter of history, that Jesus of Nazareth was conscious of vocation, a vocation given him by the one he knew as "Father," to enact in himself what, in Israel's scriptures, Israel's God had promised to accomplish. He would be the pillar of cloud for the people of the new Exodus. He would embody in himself the returning and redeeming action of the covenant God (The Historical Jesus and Christian Theology).

Spong's Jesus is just another incarnation of the great moral teacher a la Siddhartha.

3. The biblical story of the perfect and finished creation from which human beings fell into sin is pre-Darwinian mythology and post-Darwinian nonsense.

Most people rooted in contemporary Western culture assume, unless they have been specifically shaken out of this way of thinking, that the word "God" refers, more or less univocally, to a being who is detached from the world, living at some great ontological remove (most know that Christians and others do not believe in God as a being literally "up in the sky," but most assume a similar detachment in some other mode of being). They then tend to assume that when Christians talk about God becoming human in Jesus, about God addressing individuals or the world, or about God active within the world, this must be a matter of God's "intervening" from a distance. They assume, moreover, that all religions are basically trying to be about the same thing; this idea is frequently supposed to be a very recent innovation or discovery, but was of course the common coin of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment and indeed has roots much further back in some aspects of classical paganism.

And they assume that this general thing — which may as well be called "religion" for want of a better term, though that word is so over- and ill-used that one wonders if a moratorium would not be a good idea — has basically failed. It has collapsed, so it is thought by those who think about these things, under the critique of Marx, who said that talking about God was what those in power did to keep the rest quiet; of Darwin, who said that we were all descended from the apes anyway, and that the world could be understood successfully without a creating or sustaining God, since it works on the basis of competition; of Freud, who said that God-language was projection of a latent father image; and of Nietzsche, who despised Christianity for being wet and wimpish while also exposing its truth claims as power games. Of course, as C. S. Lewis used to say, if people really thought about these things, it might become clear that the attacks, though sometimes interesting and important, are not ultimately valid. But most people in western Europe, and many in North America, do not think very hard about such issues. They assume, not least because the media tell them so, that "God" and "religion" are somehow out of date. Within the postmodern world it is feelings that count, not arguments; and there is a general feeling, widespread in much (though not all) Western culture, that all that sort of thing has had its day — certainly in any form that the culture has known for the last several hundred years (The Letter to the Galatians: Exegesis and Theology).

If Spong is arguing against a 144-hour creation and a 10,000-year-old earth, then I agree. But there is nothing inherently anti-intellectual about the idea of a Creator. And anyone who really believes that Darwin is the final word on origins is just not very smart.

4. The virgin birth, understood as literal biology, makes Christ's divinity, as traditionally understood, impossible.

Because I am convinced that the creator God raised Jesus bodily from the dead, and because I am convinced that Jesus was and is the embodiment of this God, Israel's God, my worldview is forced to reactivate various things in the suspense account, the birth narratives included. There are indeed more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in post-Enlightenment metaphysics. The "closed continuum" of cause and effect is a modernist myth. The God who does not "intervene" from outside but is always present and active within the world, sometimes shockingly, may well have been thus active on this occasion. It is all very well to get on one's high metaphysical horse and insist that God cannot behave like this, but we do not know that ahead of time. Nor will the high moral horse do any better insisting that God ought not to do things like this, because they send the wrong message about sexuality or because divine parentage gave Jesus an unfair start over the rest of us (God's Way of Acting).

If we are able to produce babies by in vitro fertilization, why is it so incredible that some supra-human being did a similar thing 2000 years ago?

5. The miracle stories of the New Testament can no longer be interpreted in a post-Newtonian world as supernatural events performed by an incarnate deity.

See above.

6. The view of the cross as the sacrifice for the sins of the world is a barbarian idea based on primitive concepts of God and must be dismissed.

The story the gospels are trying to tell is a story in which evil and its deadly power are taken utterly seriously, over against the tendency in many quarters today, in the ridiculous clinging to an older liberal idea that there wasn't really very much wrong with the world or with human beings. With a fully-blown theology of the cross such as the evangelists offer, there is no need to shrink back from the radical diagnosis, since the remedy is to hand. To be sure, it is humiliating to accept both the diagnosis and the cure, but as our world lurches more and more obviously into a demonstration that when you pretend that evil isn't there you merely give it more space to operate, so perhaps it is high time to look again at both the diagnosis and the cure which the evangelists offer (Evil and the Justice of God).

7. Resurrection is an action of God. Jesus was raised into the meaning of God. It therefore cannot be a physical resuscitation occurring inside human history.

If we are to think in first-century Jewish terms, it is impossible to conceive what sort of religious or spiritual experience someone could have that would make them say that the kingdom of God had arrived when it clearly had not, that a crucified leader was the Messiah when he obviously was not, or that the resurrection occurred last month when it obviously did not. However strong the disciples sense may have been that Jesus had been vindicated, that they had been forgiven, or whatever, they would still not have said he had been raised from the dead (Christian Origins and the Resurrection of Jesus).

The Gospel accounts do not describe a "physical resuscitation." The resurrection is something very different.

8. The story of the Ascension assumed a three-tiered universe and is therefore not capable of being translated into the concepts of a post-Copernican space age.

We would be wrong to assume that the language of heaven and earth, and of clouds veiling the passage between the two, was heard with a naive literalism in the first century. People who use three-decker language by no means necessarily think in three-decker cosmological terms, any more than we who say that the son rises in the east are committed to pre-Copernican astronomy. Often enough in the Bible, heaven is simply God's space, interrelated with our space in ways char are usually opaque. Stories about Jesus' being exalted to a place within God's space are stories designed to safeguard the bodily resurrection on the one hand and the transformed nature of the body—what Paul calls the "spiritual body"—on the other. We do not, of course, find it easy to come to terms with this latter reality. That problem does not start with the ascension narrative; it is there as soon as we distinguish resurrection both from resuscitation and from disembodiment. If we thought it was easy to talk about this new embodiment, that would just go to show that we had forgotten what we were talking about (Early Traditions and the Origins of Christianity).

It appears that the Bishop has a very limited imagination. One possible interpretation of what really happened is that Jesus went up into the sky, was obscured by clouds, and then went to heaven—traveling in direction (dimension) that we are unable to perceive (as of now).

9. There is no external, objective, revealed standard writ in scripture or on tablets of stone that will govern our ethical behavior for all time.

"Ethics," then, understood as Paul's arguments about Christian behavior, function within Galatians not as an appendix to "theology," … but rather as part of the inner working of the gospel itself. Through the gospel events of Jesus' messianic death and resurrection, the God of Israel delivers Israel and the world from the rule of evil and the "powers" who perpetrate it. Through the Spirit-inspired proclamation of the good news of Jesus as Messiah and Lord, this same God calls into being the redeemed family he had promised to Abraham, whose distinguishing mark, over against those of Judaism, is "the faithfulness of Jesus" — i.e., Jesus' own faithfulness, reflected now in the faith/faithfulness … of Christians. Precisely because this family is the Christ-and-Spirit people, they are set free from the destructive powers and solidarities (including social solidarities) of evil, and are under the obligation of freedom, namely, to sustain this life by Spirit-given love for one another (The Letter to the Galatians: Exegesis and Theology).

I'm not sure what his point is here. I think he is trying to say that we must update our "rules" as culture changes. Anyone who thinks that Christianity is culturally bound has not understood Christianity. Right from the beginning, Christianity clearly was free of any cultural limitations.

10. Prayer cannot be a request made to a theistic deity to act in human history in a particular way.

In prayer, we are invited, summoned, to become more truly human, to worship the God in whose image we are made and so to find ourselves interceding for the world he loves. The start of God's address to the world, following the death and resurrection of his son, is the creation and vocation, by the Spirit, of a people drawn from every family who will live consciously out of tune with the world as it presently is and in tune with the way God intends it to be (Romans 12.1–2: do not be conformed to this present age, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds – a statement that might serve as a title for this whole lecture), and who by bearing that tension in themselves, and turning it into prayer, become agents of that new world beginning to break in to the present one in healing and hope. Prayer thus lies at the heart of the task of the people of God, their glorious, strange, puzzling and ennobling vocation (Evil and the Justice of God).

Why not? However, if one accepts that there is no God (in a theistic sense), then this statement is a tautology.

11. The hope for life after death must be separated forever from the behavior control mentality of reward and punishment. The Church must abandon, therefore, its reliance on guilt as a motivator of behavior.

A generation ago, liberal thought managed to get rid of sin; and, with sin, most theories of atonement were dismissed as odd and unnecessary. But in our own generation we have rediscovered guilt; we have plenty of shame and violence; we have alienation at all levels. And we don't know what to do with it, either at a personal or at a corporate level. Cleansing of the conscience is what is required; and the only way to do that is by the total offering of the human life to God (The Final Sacrifice: Hebrews).

Spong sure has a limited understanding of Christianity for a Bishop. "Life after death" is not about "behavior control." Christianity does not depend upon guilt as a motivation for moral behavior.

12. All human beings bear God's image and must be respected for what each person is. Therefore, no external description of one's being, whether based on race, ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation, can properly be used as the basis for either rejection or discrimination.

Christians must be active not only in advocacy of the moral standards in which all are treated as full human beings, not as toys or as trash, but also to stand alongside and help those who, having been treated like that themselves, treat others the same way because that is the only way they know. In these and many, many other ways, those who would tell the story of Jesus must first live it, bearing a measure of the world's pain as they do so (The Letter to the Galatians: Exegesis and Theology).

OK. But without Christianity (as it is historically understood) there seems to be no basis for making this argument. What we need is not less Christianity or a different "Christianity." What we need is more and truer Christianity.

I keep looking for some intellectual challenges to Christianity that I can take seriously. John Shelby Spong sounds intelligent and sophisticated, but his argument does not hold up to scrutiny. If he wants to reject Christianity, then he should just be honest about it. But don't give me this nonsense that he is recovering the "real truth" of Christianity.

His "faith" no more requires a historical Jesus Christ than Buddhism requires a historic Gautama Siddhartha. In fact, what he is advocating seems to be essentially a westernized Buddhism.

What do you think?

(While I have been somewhat dismissive of Spong's assertions, I would welcome debate and dialogue on these points. I would especially like to hear from atheists who think that I'm wrong and Spong's right.)

Pastor Rod

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

2 Conversations

Last night I attended a business open house for a friend. During the evening I had several conversations, but two of them were longer and more significant than the others.

One was with a new believer.

When he found out that I was a pastor, he told me that he had just become a true follower of Jesus Christ about a year ago. He was excited about his faith and his involvement in his new church.

He said that he had been a part of an institutional church most of his life, but he had never heard the Gospel.

The conversation turned to things missional. Though he had never heard the word or even thought about Christianity in quite those terms, the notion resonated with his soul. We talked about how that might work out in his ministry at his church.

Then I suggested that he could also approach his career with the same view to ministry.

This was an entirely new idea to him. He knew that he should act in a "Christian way" at work. He knew that he had an obligation to treat people in a certain way. But he saw his career as simply how he supported himself so that he could do ministry.

I could see the excitement in his eyes as he started to think about he could participate in God's mission at the same time that he was earning a living.

Just after that, I was introduced to an older man as the pastor of a local church. The one introducing me couldn't remember the name of the church. I had some food in my mouth, so I couldn't respond right away. In the meantime the older guy asked, "So what synagogue is he with?"

I answered that we did have roots in the synagogue, that our founder was known to attend synagogue from time to time.

The introducer eventually walked away, and the two of us talked. He quickly told me of bad experiences that he had at a missionary boarding school. He told me of a book he had recently read by John Shelby Spong, Liberating the Gospels.

I affirmed his frustration with the anti-intellectualism far too common in Christianity. And I agreed with his view that the daily practice of Buddhism and Christianity are strikingly similar.

At the same time, I carefully explained how Bishop Spong and I had different views about what happened on the first Easter Sunday.

We had a good, challenging conversation.

A few years ago, I would have been more jazzed up about the second conversation than the first.

• The first guy is already plugged in to a church. There is little chance that he would ever be a part of my congregation.
  
• The second guy, by his own admission, is not a Christian. He probably has little experience with Christians who are not intimidated by his views and his intellect.
  

I would have seen this second guy as a challenge and as an opportunity to refine my apologetic skills.

But today I have a very different perspective.

• The first guy is eager to participate in God's mission. He is excited about what God is doing around him and wants to be a part of it. He has been infected with the missional virus.
  
• The second guy was concerned only with justifying himself. His mind is closed. It would take a miracle of God's grace to get past his pride and bitterness. While that is certainly possible, he has consistently resisted the slightest movement toward grace and mercy.
  

In the past, I would have left with a sense of frustration:

• Frustration that the new believer was not a part of my church.
  
• Frustration that the skeptic seemed to be closed to the truth.
  

Now I'm invigorated because I have met another believer who has embraced the missional mindset. And I am encouraged because I hear what God is doing in another community. And the skeptic is not my problem. It's not my responsibility to convince him. If we happen to meet again, I'll be open to the direction of the Holy Spirit. But I'm not plotting how I can get him to change his mind.

Now that I've begun to see the world with a missional mindset, it's hard for me to see it any other way.

A mind, once it is stretched by a new idea, will never return to its original dimension.

Oliver Wendell Holmes

Pastor Rod

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

Shipwreck

Imagine that I am the keeper of a lighthouse where a cruise ship went down and that I saved 55 of the passengers. I might be heralded as a hero because I saved anyone.

No one would blame me for those who were not saved.

Unless, I could have saved more people but chose not to. What if I had the opportunity and resources to save everyone on board, but I chose to save only 55?

• It was purely by my choice how many were saved.
  
• It was purely by my choice who was saved.
  

I would be vilified worse than Mike Brown from FEMA.

In effect, I would be morally, if not legally, to blame for all those who died in the shipwreck. I could have saved them, but I simply decided not to.

But what if it was discovered that I had caused the ship to sink in the first place?

Let's say that I planted a sizeable bomb below the waterline and detonated it when the ship was in deep water. After the ship started sinking, I arrived and saved the lucky 55.

Would anyone care that I had saved the lives of 55 people?

All they would think about are the hundreds of people that I killed.

But what if I had a good reason for sinking the ship?

What if I knew that it would be hijacked by terrorists and used to blow up a bridge? It is conceivable that I could convince a jury that there was a greater good to be accomplished by sinking the ship.

But remember, I could have saved everyone.

I could have stopped the ship and still saved the life of every single person on board. The only reason I didn't save everyone is because I decided not to.

Most of you have already seen the theological implications of this analogy.

Some people claim that God has already chosen who he will save.

• Not because of any intrinsic value that they might have
  
• Not because of any choice that they might make
  
• Not because of anything that distinguishes them from all others
  
• Only because of God's sovereign choice
  

Furthermore, they say that God "caused" sin in the first place. He determined that humans would rebel against him and orchestrated the circumstances to ensure that this happened.

And from the very beginning, he decided some would be saved and some would not.

He could have saved everyone if he wanted.

But for some reason that we cannot comprehend, he decreed that some would have no opportunity to be saved, that they would be cut off from his mercy and grace, for no other reason than because he decided that it would be that way.

Yet they claim that this God is a good God.

But the Bible seems to tell another story.

• It says that God wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth (1 Timothy 2:4).
  
• It says that God does not want anyone to perish, but wants all to come to repentance (2 Peter 3:9).
  
• It says that God takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked and wants everyone to repent and live (Ezekiel 18:32).
  

The Bible tells of a God who went to great lengths to make it possible for anyone to be saved.

Jesus said, "I tell you the truth, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned; he has crossed over from death to life" (John 5:24).

The final chapter of the Bible rings with this call:

Whoever is thirsty, let him come; and whoever wishes, let him take the free gift of the water of life (Revelation 22:17).

The only ones who will not be saved are the ones who will not be saved, who refuse to get in the lifeboat.

Pastor Rod

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

What the ________?

Many pastors have adopted the foolish practice of using fill-in-the-blank outlines when preaching.

This is a bad idea on so many levels and needs to be stopped immediately.

First, it assumes a misguided understanding of the purpose of a sermon. I've discussed this in some detail before. But the bottom line is that the bottom line of preaching is not to pass on information. It is to allow people to experience God and his grace. Tim Keller explains this well:

The "informational" view of preaching conceives of preaching as changing people's lives after the sermon. They listen to the sermon, take notes, and then apply the Biblical principles during the week. But this assumes that our main problem is a lack of compliance to Biblical principles, when (as we saw above) all our problems are actually due to a lack of joy and belief in the gospel. Our real problem is that Jesus' salvation is not as real to our hearts as the significance and security our idols promise us. If that's our real problem, then the purpose of preaching is to make Christ so real to the heart that in the sermon people have an experience of his grace, and the false saviors that drive us lose their power and grip on us on the spot.

The purpose of preaching is to make Christ real.

Second, these ________ outlines violate the principles of learning. Even if the purpose of the sermon were to convey information, this approach is terribly ineffective. When people are given fill-in-the-blank sheets, their focus is on the individuals words that belong in the _________. Not only does not help people process or remember the "point" the preacher was hoping to make, but it distracts the mind of the listener (or note taker) from the "point."

Let me give you an example. Have you ever followed a friend's car to get to an unfamiliar place? If you simply concentrate on staying with the car and turning whenever it turns, you will have no idea how you got to the final destination. You were so busy keeping your eye on the car, that you could not pay attention to the street names and surrounding landmarks.

Third, the activity of filling in the _________, causes the listener to "objectify" the sermon, to keep it at a distance. A good sermon is personal. Taking notes, especially this way, reduces the Gospel to "timeless principles" that can be manipulated according to the laws of logic and stored away along with the value of pi and the number of feet in a mile.

Fourth, this approach encourages the preacher to focus too much on the structure of the sermon. Structure is good—to a point. But how many times have you heard (or preached) a sermon where the preacher forced the "points" to rhyme, or all start with the same letter? Beginning painters learn to use the principles of composition when sketching out their canvases. But a master uses a composition as a starting point to emotionally connect with the viewers. Imagine going to an art museum to view a masterpiece and seeing that the artist has marked up his painting with a ballpoint pen to show the underlying structure.

Fifth, __________________ demand to be __________. People _______ cheated if they don't ________ the _______ that goes into every _________. When all the ___________ are ________ the listeners (cum stenographers) __________ that their job is done.

So what do you think? Do you think my view is too strong? Do you agree with Keller's view of the purpose of a sermon? Can you think of other reasons why this approach is bad?

Pastor Rod

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

All Roads Lead to Romans?

What is the Gospel?

For many evangelical Christians it is defined by what has come to be called the Romans Road:

• All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23).
  
• The wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23).
  
• But God demonstrates his own love for us in this, while we were still sinners Christ died for us (Romans 5:8).
  
• If you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Jesus from the dead, you will be saved (Romans 10:9).
  

This is true as far as it goes. But there is much more to the Gospel than what is represented in these four verses.

Scot McKnight has an excellent post on this. Here is an excerpt:

The biggest issue that I see with the Romans Road approach is that once the sin problem is resolved (sin almost always understood as guilt before an all-holy God, which is true but not true enough), salvation has been accomplished. Frankly, this isn't biblical: the sin problem of guilt, to be sure, has to be resolved, but sin is bigger than guilt (it is distorted relationship with God, self, others, and the world) and therefore the resolution (salvation) is bigger than forgiveness (it is resolved relationships with God, self, others, and the world — and it takes a lifetime). Only a kingdom vision makes the sin problem fully clear and only a kingdom vision makes the solution fully clear.

The Romans Road reduces the Gospel to getting people signed up for heaven. In the tradition I have come from, people look at me with utter confusion if I tell them that the Gospel is about more than just getting people signed up for heaven. They can't imagine what else there could be.

Among the worst expressions of this distortion of the Good News was a group of one-point Calvinists that I knew when I was in high school. They held to the "perseverance of the saints" but believed that individuals needed to "make a decision" for Christ. I actually heard one of them talking about his willingness to use deceptive means to get people to "make a decision" for Christ because once they were signed up for heaven they were guaranteed to get there.

I find myself surrounded by church leaders (not in my congregation) who seem to share a similar philosophy. They say things like:

• "Nothing is more important than" getting people signed up for heaven.
  
• "The only justification for the existence of a church is to" get people signed up for heaven.
  
• "We need to do whatever it takes" to get people signed up for heaven.
  
• "This event will be worthwhile if just one person" gets signed up for heaven.
  

The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association reports that "3.9 million people made decisions for Jesus Christ in 2006." The 2005 report cites 3.2 million decisions: "On average, one life was transformed by God's grace every 10 seconds last year [2006] through the ministries of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association."

Now, I'm not claiming that the work of the BGEA is harmful or even worthless. But I am wondering if these 7 million people really have been transformed by God's grace in the past two years. Are they true disciples of Jesus Christ? Are they really "signed up" for heaven?

Unfortunately, when many Christians read the Great Commission they see this equation:

Make disciples = Get people signed up for heaven

Others read this (incorrectly, I believe) as a three steps process:

1. First make disciples
   
2. Then baptize them
   
3. Then teach them
   

They then reason that the first step is the most important step because it gets people "signed up for heaven." But the Gospel seems to be much more than "step one."

What you present as the gospel, will determine what you present as discipleship. If you present as the gospel what is essentially a theory of the atonement and you say if you accept this theory of the atonement, your sins are forgiven and when you die you will be received into heaven, there is no basis for discipleship.

Dallas Willard, "Kingdom Living"

And as we think more clearly about what this mission really is, we must remember that it is not our mission. It is Jesus' mission in which he invites us to participate.

The Church's job is not to save people but to shape the space in which God calls them to Himself.

Earl Creps, Off-Road Disciplines, p. 145

So what do you think? Is the "Romans road" an adequate explanation of the Gospel? Is the mission of the church primarily to get people signed up for heaven? What exactly is the Gospel?

Pastor Rod

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

Willard on Church Planting

Dallas Willard makes these provacative statements in a presentation that you can listen to at www.allelon.org:

The church is God's operation on earth.

We don't build churches. We preach the kingdom, make disciples, bring them together in the presence of God, and grow them. And the church results. And then it has a further activity. But the one who is in charge of his church is Jesus Christ.

When Jesus sent his people out into the world, he did not send them to plant churches. He sent them to establish beachheads of the kingdom of God. And churches would be the natural result of that. And then they would carry on that work. But the primary work is the action of God among the people who go out with faith in Jesus Christ to make disciples to him.

Not only are our efforts ineffective, but they actually prevent us from us becoming channels that God can use to advance his kingdom. Here's some more from Willard:

Grace is God working in our lives to do what cannot accomplish on our own.

What you really believe about Jesus Christ is shown by what you do after you learn that you can't do anything.

Spiritual formation is not learning to do the right things.

Here is the irony. What we do really matters.

But the only effective action we can really take is to trust in God's grace.

The harder we try to "make things happen," the less we trust in God's grace.

This is neither simple nor easy.

And people who should know better get in the way of this instead of facilitating it.

Tell me what you think. Do you agree with Willard? Have you experienced this dynamic at work in your own life?

Pastor Rod

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

7 Steps to Church Growth

I just found this tongue-in-cheek strategy for church growth (HT: AKMA) by Josh "The Fearsome Pirate." (I've reworded some of his suggestions and dropped one.)

1. Stop preaching lousy sermons. "If you're like most Christian pastors, your sermons are horrible." Fortunately, that means that it doesn't take much to distinguish yourself. "Unlike your typical sermon illustration book, pastor, or systematic theology textbook, the Bible is really cool and exciting. I suggest you preach it."
   
2. Get rid of your praise band. "It is a proven, scientific fact that only 2.3% of praise bands actually put on that slick-as-snot professional performance every Sunday morning. The problem is that to do that kind of music the way it's meant to be done, you need to have actual professionals and tons of practice." I have to say that I just witnessed this at a "meta-church" event.
   
3. Don't sing those bad hymns. Even the best hymnals have a fair amount of garbage. Many have inane, ridiculous or heretical lyrics. Others have unsingable tunes. At this event I mentioned above, the "worship music" was unfamiliar and too complex for congregational singing. But part of the meeting was governed by a traditional liturgy which called for a classic hymn, "And Can It Be." I was looking forward to a song I could actually sing, when I hear the keyboardist playing an unfamiliar tune. Even that hymn was ruined.
   
4. Stop trying to be cool. Sitting on a stool, sporting a goatee and wearing "emo" glasses cannot make preaching cool. "And please stop pandering and talking down to people. People are not as stupid as you think they are. It just makes you look like a fruit. Talk like a human being."
   
5. Kill the announcements. "They're supposed to be announcements, not Chinese Water Torture."
   
6. Teach stuff in your classes. "Maybe people would start coming if they were actually learning things instead of just hanging out, hearing some idiotic presentation, or listening to the teacher ride a hobby horse. Teaching the Bible should be a priority." Don't use the lame workbooks that insult the intelligence of the people. "Instead, spend time actually studying the Word yourself, and teach the stuff you find."
   
7. Get to know your people and care about them. If you do all the other stuff and don't do this, it won't mean a thing. Or if you do this, the other stuff will take care of itself. "People need pastors who care about them as human beings; you're not simply a sacrament-dispenser or a professional orator. Pastors that don't care are kind of unhuman, and in some way, they seem to really damage the church as a community."

So what do you think? Seems obvious doesn't it. Do you have some things to add to the list?

Pastor Rod

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

Mission Statement

When the Israelites complained to Moses about the lack of water at Kadesh, God told Moses, "Speak to that rock before their eyes and it will pour out its water." But Moses became frustrated with their stubbornness. He struck the rock with his staff and said, "Listen, you rebels, must we bring you water out of this rock?"

He took upon himself the responsibility to "manage" the people and the prerogative to "fix" them.

This is one of the greatest temptations for pastors.

We start focusing on what we need to get people to do—or stop doing. We have our agenda (that we have asked God to bless) and try to get "our people" to put it into action. And before we know it, we are frustrated that God has given us so many lazy and stubborn people and so few eager, obedient people. We start to feel sorry for ourselves (a la Elijah), "I've had enough, Lord." And we feel all alone, "I have been very zealous for you. Those people have rejected your covenant, broken down your altars, and put your prophets to death with the sword. I am the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me too."

But notice what God tells Elijah, "I have thousands who are yet faithful."

As pastors, when we impose our agenda upon others, we get frustrated and start to feel sorry for ourselves. Everywhere we look we see resistance and opposition. We try to fire people up with an energizing vision. We attempt to motivate them first by encouragement and, when that doesn't work, by guilt. We garrison ourselves in our study and pray for God to send us some people who will support us in our mission.

But here is the problem: It is not our mission.

It is God's mission.

And the logistics are his problem.

While we've been whining for help, God's been hard at work.

What's more, he has people all around us who are participating in his mission. And when we stop trying to impose our agenda, we see that God is busy doing far more than we ever dared dream was possible.

When we start looking for signs of divine activity, we are astonished to see that "suddenly" those signs seem to be everywhere.

• Where before we saw people who didn't have enough commitment to make it to church every Sunday, we now see people who have to work most weekends but see their jobs as a true ministry.
  
• Where before we saw people who couldn't shake their bad habits, we now see people who have a heart for God and have made prayer a natural part of their lives.
  
• Where before we saw people who reluctantly supported our programs, we now see people who are eager to participate in God's kingdom in all sorts of ways that we never thought of before.
  

This is not our mission, our responsibility.

It is God's mission.

And he is calling for us to get up off the ground and prepare for the journey. And this journey is rarely charted out for us when we set out. God often tells us what he told Abraham, "I'll let you know where you're going when you get there."

When I try to impose my agenda for advancing God's kingdom on others, I end up exhausted and frustrated. But when I seek to collaborate with what God is already doing, I am filled with energy and hope.

If you can wade through my mixed metaphors and conflated examples, I hope you can understand what I'm trying to say.

We can continue to be frustrated trying to fulfill our own mission, or we can abandon our agenda and lose ourselves in the work that God is already doing all around us.

Pastor Rod

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

Ministry by Hanging Out

If Jesus were a pastor, how would he spend his time?

How much time do you think he would spend . . .

writing job descriptions?

attending committee meetings?

overseeing the construction of a new building?

designing a direct-mail postcard?

raising money?

organizing programs?

writing sermons?

developing strategic plans?

He didn't seem to be very concerned about these things when he was training the very first members of the whole Church.

He spent a fair amount of his time speaking to gathered crowds. But most of his time appears to have been invested in just hanging out with his disciples. Here are just a few examples:

Leaving Nazareth, he went and lived in Capernaum (Matthew 4:13).

As Jesus was walking beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers (Matthew 4:18).

Jesus went throughout Galilee (Matthew 4:23).

Now when he saw the crowds, he went up on a mountainside and sat down. His disciples came to him, and he began to teach them (Matthew 5:1–2).

When he came down from the mountainside, large crowds followed him (Matthew 8:1).

Then he got into the boat and his disciples followed him (Matthew 8:23).

While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew's house, many tax collectors and "sinners" came and ate with him and his disciples (Matthew 9:10).

That same day Jesus went out of the house and sat by the lake. Such large crowds gathered around him that he got into a boat and sat in it, while all the people stood on the shore (Matthew 13:1–2).

As Jesus and his disciples were leaving Jericho, a large crowd followed him (Matthew 20:29).

As Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately (Matthew 24:3).

While Jesus was in Bethany in the home of a man known as Simon the Leper . . . (Matthew 26:6).

Once again Jesus went out beside the lake. A large crowd came to him, and he began to teach them (Mark 2:13).

One Sabbath Jesus was going through the grainfields, and as his disciples walked along, they began to pick some heads of grain (Mark 2:23).

Jesus and his disciples went on to the villages around Caesarea Philippi. On the way he asked them, "Who do people say I am?" (Mark 8:27).

After Jesus had gone indoors, his disciples asked him privately . . . (Mark 9:28).

They came to Capernaum. When he was in the house, he asked them, "What were you arguing about on the road?" (Mark 9:33).

Jesus then left that place and went into the region of Judea and across the Jordan (Mark 10:1).

When they were in the house again, the disciples asked Jesus about this (Mark 10:10).

They were on their way up to Jerusalem, with Jesus leading the way (Mark 10:32).

As Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives opposite the temple, Peter, James, John and Andrew asked him privately . . . (Mark 13:3).

He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom (Luke 4:16).

While Jesus was in one of the towns, a man came along . . . (Luke 5:12).

Now one of the Pharisees invited Jesus to have dinner with him, so he went to the Pharisee's house and reclined at the table (Luke 7:36).

Once when Jesus was praying in private and his disciples were with him, he asked them . . . (Luke 9:18).

As they were walking along the road, a man said to him . . . (Luke 9:57).

As Jesus and his disciples were on their way . . . (Luke 10:38).

One day Jesus was praying in a certain place. When he finished, one of his disciples said to him, "Lord, teach us to pray" (Luke 11:1).

On the third day a wedding took place at Cana in Galilee. Jesus' mother was there, and Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding (John 2:1–2).

Jacob's well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well (John 4:6).

As he went along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him . . . (John 9:1–2).

Now, some will argue that "just hanging out" is irresponsible and unfocused. But they miss the point. Properly understood hanging out is more like a spiritual discipline. Intentional hanging out is costly.

So what do you think?

Pastor Rod

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