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"

What would Jesus say?

If Jesus hosted a conference for pastors, what would he say to them?

My guess is that it would go something like this:

Do not worry about your ministry: how many people you have in the seats or how big your budget is. Is not the Kingdom more important than statistics? Who of you by worrying can add a single name to the book of life? Why do you worry about buildings? Have you not seen the Grand Canyon which is more majestic than any cathedral? Why do you worry about budgets and offerings? The pagans run after these things. But your heavenly Father knows what you need. Instead, seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Do not worry about results. The results will take care of themselves.

You cannot serve two masters. You cannot serve both God and success.

So what do you think?

Pastor Rod

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

Pastor as Expert

Cognitive load theory says that experts are distinguished by two things:

• Extensive schemas of knowledge stored in long-term memory


• High levels of automation in handling many of those schemas
  

Obviously, becoming an expert requires a significant investment of time, energy and attention.

It seems clear that no one can be an expert in everything (outside the movies).

At various times and in various places, pastors have been expected to be experts in one or more of these subjects and skills:

• Administration
  


• Biblical exegesis
  


• Biblical languages (Greek & Hebrew)
  


• Business management
  


• Change management
  


• Counseling
  


• Fundraising
  


• Marketing
  


• Personal networking
  


• Politics
  


• Public speaking
  


• Systematic theology
  

But what is the essential expertise that is required?

I would suggest that every pastor must be an expert in spiritual transformation. He (or she) must be growing more like Christ and be able to assist others in understanding that process and putting it into practice. It seems to me that this is first responsibility of the leader of any group of believers. Anyone who does not see this as the chief calling does not belong in leadership within the Church.

There is a secondary responsibility that follows the primary in much the same way that the second great commandment (to love the neighbor) follows the great commandment (to love God). I believe that every pastor must also be an expert in theology.

I don't mean systematic theology. Experts in systematic theology often have little expertise in spiritual transformation. They seem to be more concerned with organizing the truth about God than with living it out in real life. I'm referring to what Nouwen is talking about in this quotation:

The Christian leaders of the future have to be theologians, persons who know the heart of God.

Henri J. M. Nouwen, In the Name of Jesus: Reflections on Christian Leadership, p. 68

As pastors, we must know God and be able to articulate how he relates to all of life.

We need to develop a robust theology that addresses

• Work


• Play


• Relationships


• Money


• Evil


• Sex


• Time


• Nature


• Power


• Culture

So what do you think? Do you agree with my basic point? Would you add anything to the list?

Pastor Rod

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

Missional Transformation

Georges Boujakly at Missional Church Network lists these principles of Missional Transformation. (I've reworded them slightly.)

1. Spiritual transformation takes place on the inside.
   
2. Spiritual transformation requires deliberate effort.
   
3. Spiritual transformation has a specific goal.
   
4. The goal of spiritual transformation is conformity to Jesus Christ.
   
5. The progress of spiritual transformation is always slow.
   
6. Spiritual transformation is the "business" of the church.
   

Spiritual transformation (discipleship) is not a luxury for the spiritually elite. It is at the heart of the mission of the body of Christ.

It is so easy to think that the Church has a lot of different objects—education, building, missions, holding services…. The Church exists for nothing else but to draw men into Christ, to make them little Christs. If they are not doing that, all the cathedrals, clergy, missions, sermons, even the bible itself, are simply a waste of time. God became Man for no other purpose. It is even doubtful, you know, whether the whole universe was created for any other purpose.

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, p. 169–170

Some people try to reduce this mission to

• Getting people signed up for heaven
  
• Making the world a better place
  
• Attracting people to a weekly meeting
  

But when we focus on spiritual transformation, all the other things fall into their proper place.

When we try to do one of these other things in isolation (such as getting people signed up for heaven) we distort the gospel and the impact of the Church on society.

For example, what would happen in your community if 15 people "made a decision" to accept Christ?

Maybe nothing.

But what would happen if 5 people who were living "without God and without hope" submitted to the Good News and lived as serious disciples of Jesus Christ becoming transformed into his likeness?

Eventually the whole community would be transformed, or so I suspect.

What do you think? Can you identify any other substitutes for the Gospel beside the three I mentioned? Why do you think that the Church has lost its focus on spiritual transformation? How do we change that?

Pastor Rod

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

Making Sense

Many people see education as a process of transferring information, as if information were a commodity that can be moved from one place to another.

In this view, learning is simply about adding new information to memory. And the goal is to find the most efficient way to get the information from the brain of the teacher into the brain of the learner.

Richard Mayer argues (Multimedia Learning) that learning is about making sense. It is a process of constructing a network of knowledge.

Learning involves integrating new information into existing networks of information (schemas) stored in long-term memory. According to this theory, there are only two things that distinguish an expert from a non-expert.

• They have extensive schemas.
  
• Parts of those schemas are "automated."
  

When you first learned to drive, you had to focus on many different things. The first few attempts were overwhelming. But with experience, the details combine into schemas that can be managed all at once. And many of those details can be safely automated.

The same is true for learning to read. At first you needed to learn the letters. Then you needed to learn how to combine them into words. The first stage of reading required you to pay attention to every word. And some words had to be "sounded out," requiring you to focus on the letters. As your skill developed, so did your vocabulary and your reading schema. Now you can even read sentences words missing and undrstnd words with letters missing.

Your expertise with these two difficult tasks has developed to the point that you could even do both at the same time.

Here's a little more background if you're interested.

Pastor Rod

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

They Just Don’t Get It

As I hung up the phone, I had an uneasy feeling that I'd just been taken.

The call had been from a vendor about a past-due bill. I was given the option to pay with a "phone check." I was busy when the call came, and I had done this a few times before, so I wasn't suspicious—until the call ended. The more I thought about it, the more certain I was that this was phone fraud.

So I frantically tried to contact my bank.

I went to their Web page, but I couldn't find a phone number for emergencies. I called the customer service number and got a menu—without any options that fit the situation. I dug a little more online and found a more specific number. I still had to go through a long menu, but this time I was able to talk with a real person.

I explained the situation to the young lady.

She told me that I had three options, none of which would really solve my problem.

I asked if I could put a hold on the account. She said no.

We talked for some time with her repeating the three options several times (always in a condescending tone).

Eventually, she told me that I had zero liability if I was the victim of fraud.

I said, "I'm glad to hear that. It would have been good if you had told me that at the beginning of the conversation."

She said, "Sir, I'm offended that you say that I should have told you that at the beginning. I answered your questions."

I replied, "But it's your role as the expert to answer the questions that I'm not smart enough to ask."

She snapped, "Sir, I answered the questions that you asked. I was doing my job."

She wanted to argue with me about this. Finally, I just said, "Listen, you told me that I have no liability. That's all I need to know. Thank you."

This was a person who was hired to handle problems.

Most of her callers are upset. I was panicked. But, I suspect, many of her callers are angry. "Her job" is to defuse the situation and to make the caller feel good about her bank. Yet she was only concerned about fulfilling the requirements of the call. It's as if she sees the calls as an annoyance, a distraction.

If she really understood "her job," she would welcome emotional, even irate, customers. The more problems there are, the more valuable she could be to the bank. And calls like mine, would make her into an easy hero—if she understood what "her job" really is.

She could make my problem virtually go away, simply by telling me, "Don't worry, Sir. You have zero liability if you are the victim of fraud. You don't really need to do anything. But you do have these three options, if that will make you feel more secure."

But she was following the rules, answering my questions.

Now here's the kicker, when I couldn't get through to the bank right away, I called 911.

Just as I finished my conversation with the "customer service" expert, a police officer shows up.

I start to explain the whole situation to her. I apologize for even calling in the first place.

She suggests that I call the company that the bill was for. (Of course, that is the logical thing to do, but I was more concerned with preventing a big disaster at the time.)

So I called the company and got a person who did get it. She checked my account and was able to tell me eventually that it showed a payment for the amount I had authorized in the first call. Then she wanted to know why I was uncomfortable with the collection call. She asked if there was a problem with the "professionalism" of the caller. She wanted to make sure that there wasn't a problem on their end. And, if there was, she wanted to make certain that it didn't happen again.

I thanked her, hung up, and gave a sheepish grin to the police officer.

By now, I'd lost track of how many times I'd felt like a complete idiot.

And I really had no one to blame but myself.

But there were several things my bank could have done to minimize the damage. Instead, they gave me even more opportunities to feel stupid.

So here's the question: How does the church do the same thing to the "unchurched"?

• Do we have a similar confusion about what our "job" is?
  
• How do we make people feel stupid?
  
• Do we find ourselves answering people's questions instead of telling them what they really need to know?
  

Let me know what you think. I'd be especially interested in any "horror stories" you might have about encounters with churches.

Pastor Rod

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

Why is PowerPoint so bad?

You've seen hundreds of examples of horrendous PowerPoint slides. Edward Tufte even argues that PowerPoint is evil.

But the problem is not the software. The problem is how it is used.

Richard Mayer takes this argument one step further:

"Asking whether computers are a good instructional technology is like asking whether books are a good instructional technology. It all depends on how they are used, that is, on the instructional method" (June 2005 issue of Educational Psychology Review).

Seth Godin contends that PowerPoint presentations are used as crutches by presenters and audiences alike. The presenter uses it as a teleprompter. The audience uses the print out of slides as a verbatim record of the presentation.

Godin suggests five rules to rescue your next presentation:

1. No more than six words on a slide.
   
2. Use professional images.
   
3. No dissolves, spins or other transitions.
   
4. Never use the sound effects that are built in to the program.
   
5. Don't hand out print-outs of your slides.
   

Garr Reynolds offers these suggestions:

• Use a remote.
  
• Blank the screen when appropriate.
  
• Limit the special effects.
  
• Use high-quality graphics.
  
• Choose your fonts well.
  
• Don't use built-in sound effects.
  

But Richard Mayer sees the problem as much deeper. A few tips will not solve the problem. What is needed is a good theory and some real-world research.

It is worthwhile to distinguish between two possible goals in making a PowerPoint presentation — information presentation, in which the goal is to present information to the audience, and cognitive guidance, in which the goal is to guide the audience in their processing of the presented information. When your goal is information presentation, PowerPoint slides can be full of information that may be extremely hard to process by the audience. However, since your goal is simply information presentation, you are not concerned with whether or not the audience can process the presented information. When your goal is cognitive guidance, you want to make sure that the audience members build appropriate knowledge in their memories. Your job is to communicate in a way that will have the desired impact on the audience, so you need to design your slides so they are consistent with how people learn. In my opinion, many of the examples of misuses of PowerPoint occur when the slides are designed to present information rather than to guide cognitive processing. In short, like any communication medium—including books — PowerPoint can be misused as a device for presenting information without regard for how the audience will process the presented information (bold added).

In his Multimedia Learning, Mayer explains the three assumptions that form the foundation for his work:

1. Visual and auditory information are processed through separate "channels."
   
2. Each channel is limited in its ability to process information.
   
3. Processing information is an active cognitive process designed to construct coherent mental representations.
   

Mayer explains that most presentations are focused on the technology:

It is worthwhile to distinguish between a technology-centered approach and a learner-centered approach to the use of educational technologies including PowerPoint. In a technology-centered approach, the focus is on the capabilities of cutting edge technology. Thus, we would be interested in the effects of each of the many features of PowerPoint. In a learner-centered approach, the focus is on the way that people learn and process information. Thus, we would be interested in finding ways to use the features of PowerPoint to support people's natural ways of learning, that is, as aids to human learning.

He explains that humans are not information processors. They are meaning makers. And this requires three distinct steps:

1. Selecting what is important.
   
2. Organizing what has been selected.
   
3. Integrating the new meaning with previous knowledge.
   

In my next post I'll list his "research-based principles for the design of multimedia instructional messages."

So what do you think? Does this theory fit with your own experience?

Pastor Rod

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

Wright-ing History

In his Judas and the Gospel of Jesus, N. T. Wright makes an important point that is often overlooked in the discussion of Gnostic Christianity.

The gnostic gospels are today being trumpeted as the radical alternatives to the oppressive and conservative canonical gospels, but the historical reality was just the opposite.

Elaine Pagels is one of those heralds of Gnostic superiority. In The Gnostic Gospels, she writes:

At a time when the orthodox Christians increasingly discriminated between clergy and laity, this group of Gnostic Christians demonstrated that, among themselves, they refused to acknowledge such distinction. Instead of ranking their members into superior and inferior "orders" within a hierarchy, they followed the principle of strict equality…

Such practices prompted Tertullian to attack "the behavior of the heretics."

(Quoted at The Gnostic Jesus.)

The popular view is that Gnostic Christianity is "a lost treasure of immeasurable value, long buried in the suffocating darkness of conventional orthodoxy on one side, and blind fundamentalist extremism on the other."

But Wright argues that the truth is very different:

The people who were burned at the stake, fried on hot irons, thrown to the wild beasts, pulled apart on the rack…, these people did not imagine themselves to be on the way to a great political victory of "orthodoxy" over "heresy." They were not, as is often suggested, settling down and making comfortable compromises with the status quo…. They were following their crucified Lord.

The proponents of Gnostic Christianity, like to bring in factors from the reign of Constantine and from the time we call the Middle Ages. But the second century was a very different world.

In a.d. 177 many Christians were martyred in Vienne and Lyons. Among them was Pothinus, the Bishop of Lyons. He was immediately replaced by Irenaeus who was living in Rome, but who had been a highly-respected presbyter in Lyons. "And it was exactly then that he wrote his Against the Heresies, the work which mentions the 'Gospel of Judas.'"

This runs counter to the popular narrative about the emergence of Christian orthodoxy:

Reading Ehrman, Meyer and others, it is easy to forget what was really going on at the time, and to imagine that Ignatius, Irenaeus and other like him were simply unpleasant and arrogant heresy-hunters, eager to simply prop up their own power and ecclesiastical systems.

The truth is that in the second century the Gnostics were the cultural conservatives. They were the ones who took the path of least resistance. There was nothing dangerous, radical or progressive in Gnostic "Christianity."

The Gnostics were quite content to capitulate to their surrounding culture, in which mystery-religions, self-discovery, Platonic spirituality of various sorts, and coded revelations of hidden truths were the stock in trade. In other words, the Gnostics were the cultural conservatives, sticking with the kind of religion that everyone already knew.

In fact, an honest reading of the Gnostic texts will give us the impression that these people were "fairly thoroughly sexist, anti-Semitic, and lacking the courage to stand out against the ideologies and authorities of their day."

In stark contrast:

It was the orthodox Christians who were breaking new ground, and risking their necks as they did so.

(All unattributed and unlinked quotations are from Judas and the Gospel of Jesus by N. T. Wright.)

As an aside: As it was in those days, so should it be today. The orthodox Christians should not be known for "heresy hunting," conservatism and caution. Rather we should be known as the ones breaking new ground and risking our necks as we do so.

Pastor Rod

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

Cultural Literacy

Many Christians are culturally out of touch. I don't mean that they aren't up to date on their pop culture. I mean that they have little understanding of what culture is.

To these Christians, culture is all the stuff in the world that is different than "what Christians do." Here is an example of this mindset:

Redesigning the church to suit one's own cultural or generational preferences (as opposed to seeking a biblical approach to church order) is the very thing that caused the evangelical movement to run aground in the first place.

This implies that there is a neutral culture or, even worse, a "biblical culture" in which Christians can and should live. It says in so many words that there is only one way, "the biblical way," to structure a church.

And there are many other voices calling for a return to "traditional values." One news commentator styles himself as a cultural warrior.

There is no doubt that contemporary culture is growing increasingly hostile to organized religion. And there are many values of today's culture that are in direct conflict with the gospel. But this has always been so.

There has never been a time when society did not present a threat to the gospel.

• This was true in first-century Israel.
  
• It was true in fourth-century Constantinople.
  
• It was true in twentieth-century America.
  

When modern missionaries first started evangelizing the peoples of the world, they often were more focused on instilling western culture than in instilling biblical values.

Much of this seems obvious to us now. Few Christians would confuse these western values with biblical Christianity:

• Capitalism
  
• Democracy
  
• Western ideas of modesty
  
• American hymnody
  

But there are many aspects of contemporary Christianity that have no biblical foundation. Even though they've become a common part of Christian practice and culture, they are relatively recent additions.

Here's a list of elements found in churches and Christian observance:

• Altar calls
  
• Baptism
  
• Cathedrals
  
• Christmas
  
• Church buildings
  
• Clergy
  
• Easter
  
• Evangelism program
  
• Individual Bible study
  
• Jesus as personal Savior
  
• Ordination
  
• Organ music
  
• Pews
  
• Priests
  
• Public reading of Scripture
  
• Revival meetings
  
• Sacred music
  
• Sanctuaries
  
• Sermon
  
• Sunday Sabbath observance
  
• Sunday worship
  
• Weekly offering
  

Tell me which ones you think are essential to Christianity and the gospel.

Pastor Rod

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

Religious Literacy

According to Stephen Prothero, "Americans are both deeply religious and deeply ignorant about religion."

In his book, Religious Literacy, Prothero traces the decline of religious knowledge, proposes a remedy and compiles a dictionary of religious literacy. He includes a quiz for readers to test their knowledge.

Here are a few of those questions along with some of my own:

1. Name a sacred text of Hinduism.
   
2. What are the five books of the Torah?
   
3. "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." Where is this found in the Bible?
   
4. What are the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism?
   
5. What is Ramadan?
   
6. What is the difference between the Sunnis and the Shiites?
   
7. Ellen White founded what religious faith?
   
8. What religion celebrates Kwanzaa?
   
9. What are the teachings of Gnosticism?
   
10. What are the five pillars of Islam?
    
11. What is the Decalogue?
    
12. Vishnu is a deity of what religion?
    

If you don't know one of these, do a Google search and explain the answer in the comments.

Pastor Rod

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

Wright on Time

I just received my CDs of N. T. Wright's lectures at the University of Saint Mary of the Lake on March 23. At the end of the first lecture I asked this question:

The popular Christian view tends to see time as an illusion. If, as you argue, time is real and an enduring fact continuing into the new creation, it seems to me that this requires that God interacts with time in a way that involves genuine participation in the passing of time. I'm sure you've given this some thought. Could you comment on this please?

Here is his answer:

Yes, there is, of course, quite a debate at the moment I'm aware of, within North American not least, about God's interaction with and engagement with time, with the question being really whether things that happen in time can, in our cricketing image, put God on the back foot, whether God thinks, "Hmm, never thought you were going to get up to that."

There are, of course, places in the Bible which do seem to say that. You know, when Jeremiah inveighs against the practice of offering children to Molech, he says as the Word of God, "Not only did I never command that, it never entered my mind." That's an extraordinary idea for us, that humans can do something which God would never have dreamt of. And it kind of puts God in a different position. But God remains sovereign.

Jonathan Sachs, the chief rabbi of the UK, is one of the finest commentators on our present scene in Britain, wrote a piece no long ago likening the children of Israel wandering in the wilderness to what happens when you have a sat-nav or GPS system in your car. The voice says, "In half a mile turn right." And you say, "Actually, no. I don't like that road. I'm going to turn left in a quarter of a mile." And there's a pause, and the voice says in effect, "Well, this wasn't what we had in mind, but since we're now here, you're going to need to go this and this and this and this." And it seems to me that this is a perfectly proper way to think about how the sovereignty of God plays out through the responsibility of humans.

It's all to do with image-bearing-ness as humans and the sense that our job in worshipping God is to reflect him into the world. And because God has made the world like that, it is part of God's sovereign determination rooted in the triune nature of God himself that he will act through and with what humans think and do, and that actually you can collapse that back but you're actually moving away from the Trinity if you do so. Equally, you can move it too far forwards into a kind of totally indeterminate idea where really there is no sense of God as creator and judge, but merely of God as one player in a rather odd game. So for me, bring it back to the Trinity. Think through particularly creation and judgment, and you may be able to hold together what some people at the moment find is falling apart. Not a very adequate answer, but that's a starting point at least.

I'd be interested in your reaction to his answer.

Pastor Rod

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

Psychological Literacy

If scientific literacy calls into question the book of Genesis, then psychological literacy apparently rules out faith completely.

David Barash, professor of psychology at the University of Washington, makes the case against faith in "The DNA of Religious Faith" published in the April 20, 2007, issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education.

He announces that "the era of deference to religious belief is ending."

Religious faith, which he defines as "belief without evidence," is dangerous to society. In fact, "the very teaching of religion to defenseless children is a form of child abuse."

Psychological literacy has excluded religious faith for quite some time. "Scholars have found it easy to explain religion: They've done it hundreds of times, in psychological, psychoanalytic, sociological, historical, anthropological, and economic terms."

The problem, as he sees it, is that evolutionary theory hasn't been able to explain the survival of religious commitments in evolutionary terms. "It often appears that religious practice is fitness-reducing rather than enhancing." He writes, "Think of the frequent advocacy of sexual restraint, of tithing, of self-abnegating moral duty and other seeming diminutions of personal fitness, along with the characteristic denial of the 'evidence of our senses' in favor of faith in things asserted but not clearly demonstrated."

But riding to the rescue are "the four horsemen of the current antireligious apocalypse," Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, and Carl Sagan, "all passionate advocates of reason, committed to the proposition that religion is essentially unreasonable."

"Part of the attention-grabbing novelty of the Four Horsemen has been their refusal to abide by" the idea that science and religion are two independent domains, "insisting that when religion makes egregiously false 'truth claims' against science, it must be confronted, and that, moreover, religion itself can and should be 'naturalized'— that is, subjected to the same scrutiny that science brings to other phenomena."

Barash celebrates the iconoclastic work of the "Horsemen" in destroying the historic arguments for the existence of God. He takes particular glee in the attack on the argument from design, which he puts in quotes (presumably because it is not a legitimate argument or because only the scientifically illiterate would see design in biologically complex organisms). In spite of the "absurdity" of the argument from design: "This chestnut has had numerous stakes driven through its heart, but like a cinematic version of the undead, it keeps resurrecting itself, staggering, zombielike and covered with flies, back into public view."

He also addresses the "fine-tuning" argument. "Both Dawkins and Sagan examine this argument, which Dawkins caricatures as 'god-as-dial-twiddler.' Such twiddler-twaddle is oddly tautological, in that if the universe were not as it is, we indeed would not be here to wonder about it." Then he shows his disdain for articles of faith, theories that are not falsifiable: "The anthropic principle can also be 'solved' by multiple universes, of which ours could simply be the one in which we exist. This might apply not only to horizontally existing multiverses, but also to the same one occurring differently in time, if there have been (and will be) unending expansions and contractions. Moreover, it isn't at all clear that the various physical dials are independent, or that the physical constants in the universe could be any different, given the nature of matter and energy."

We wouldn't want our children to commit intellectual suicide by putting faith in "the interventionist, miracle-wreaking, thought-reading, sin-punishing, prayer-answering God of the Bible." It is so much more intellectually rigorous to think that universes are multiplying at every quantum event happening all over the "current" universe, whatever that word means.

Not only is there a universe where I never made this post, but there would have to be an infinite number of universes where I made an infinite number of different posts. There would even be a universe where Richard Dawkins is a TV evangelist. But we can't have people believing in things that can't be proven. That is why Sam Harris feels a "need to take the United States in particular by the scruff of its neck and rub its nose in the dangers and absurdities of religious belief."

But the last stronghold of religion to be destroyed is the idea of transcendent moral law. Barash asserts that "God is no longer needed to explain 'Moral Law.'" Biologists have shown that "kin selection, reciprocal altruism, group selection, third-party effects, and courtship possibilities, as well as simple susceptibility to social and cultural indoctrination" taken together or in various combinations provide sufficient foundation for a transcendent morality.

Professor Barash is well within his rights to refuse to believe in Christianity or any other traditional faith, but he doesn't seem to realize that his own plausibility structure is loaded with unprovable assumptions. If he chooses to place his faith in multiverses rather than a personal God, that is understandable since his assumptions exclude the existence of such a being. But surely he could spare us the patronizing lecture.

While I would agree with his view that scientific truth and religious truth are not two completely separate realms, I am not prepared to adopt materialism as my "scientifically-proven" religion whose "articles of faith" are not open to scrutiny. I prefer my religion to be transparent and honest about what it wants me to believe.

Pastor Rod

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

Missional Dip

Seth Godin has a new book, The Dip. I've ordered it, but it doesn't ship until May 10.

Here are some quotations about the topic of the book.

From the book description at the Amazon site:

"Maybe you're in a Dip-a temporary setback that will get better if you keep pushing. But maybe it's really a Cul-de-Sac, which will never get better, no matter how hard you try."

"Winners quit fast, quit often, and quit without guilt-until they commit to beating the right Dip for the right reasons. In fact, winners seek out the Dip. They realize that the bigger the barrier, the bigger the reward for getting past it."

"Losers, on the other hand, fall into two basic traps. Either they fail to stick out the Dip—they get to the moment of truth and then give up—or they never even find the right Dip to conquer."

From an interview with Guy Kawasaki:

"What's the worst time to quit? When the pain is the greatest."

"The willingness to quit when you get off track pushes you on the path to mastery."

"When you copy something that's already on the other side of the Dip, you've already lost."

From an old essay at Fast Company:

"Fundamentalists decide whether they like a new piece of information based on how it will affect their prior belief system, not based on whether it is actually true."

Here's my summary of what Seth is trying to say:

• Any accomplishment that is really worthwhile gets difficult before there is a "pay off."
  
• But not all difficulties are created equal.
  
• Some difficulties are essentially dead ends.
  
• The "trick" is to be able to tell the difference.
  
• The bigger the dip, the greater the pay off.
  
• Each person, or organization, must discover what challenges should be faced and what obstacles are simply too big to overcome.
  

This requires a little translation to apply to missional Christianity. But here are some observations I would offer:

• Missional living is the ultimate "Dip."
  
• There is no quick pay off, no short cut.
  
• But the eventual reward is incalculable.
  
• There is no one-size-fits-all approach to ministry.
  
• One of the most important disciplines for a congregation is to learn to say, "No."
  
• It is a mistake to copy what another congregation did to get to the other side of the "Dip."
  
• The reward for getting to the other side of the "Dip" is not
  
  • Getting big
    
  • Becoming famous
    
  • Speaking at seminars
    
  • Telling other people how to do it
    
• The reward for getting to the other side is
  
  • Participating in the viral spread of God's kingdom
    
  • The opportunity to encourage others to survive the "Dip"
    
  • The opportunity to "risk it all" to cross another "Dip"
    

So what do you think? What would you add? What do you take issue with?

Here's an even more important question: Does this sound like something you'd be willing to spend your life for?

Pastor Rod

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

No Accent

Since I moved to the Chicago area 25 years ago, people have wanted to know what my accent was. As it turns out, I don't have one.

What American accent does Rod have? His Result: The Midland "You have a Midland accent" is just another way of saying "you don't have an accent." You probably are from the Midland (Pennsylvania, southern Ohio, southern Indiana, southern Illinois, and Missouri) but then for all we know you could be from Florida or Charleston or one of those big southern cities like Atlanta or Dallas. You have a good voice for TV and radio.
The South
Philadelphia
The Inland North
The Northeast
The West
Boston
North Central
What American accent do you have? Quiz Created on GoToQuiz

Try the quiz for yourself and post your results here. (Philosophy students: this does not count toward extra credit. I'm generous, but not that generous.)

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