The Voice Of One Crying Out In Suburbia

The gathered church is the result of community

2012-01-27T14:30:00.001-05:00

We typically assume that community is manifested when we gather as a local church, whatever form that takes. Our local church becomes our "community" because we have chosen to associate with that particular church. That church might be a traditional church or a "house church" or an urban church or any of the hundreds of different styles and flavors you can find around the country. In other words, we define community largely by whatever manifestation the local church takes on in our lives. My local church is my community.

I would propose that the gathered church is an outgrowth of community in Christ and not the other way around, or at least it should be. So many of us have friends, family and neighbors who are Christians that we spend time with and know very well but we are not associated with the same local church, so we don't view them as part of our church community. I found something that Alan Knox wrote this morning to really tie into this post. Alan wrote about organic church life as being relational, not structural. In speaking of organic church life, rather than "organic church" or "house church", in his post Why Is It So Hard To Find Organic Church Life? Alan said:

A group may have a specific weekly meeting (or more than one) and share this kind of life in Christ. Or, they ma not have a regular weekly meeting. Then again, a group may have a weekly meeting (or even meet together more often) and yet not share their lives with one another in Jesus Christ.

When these groups do get together, it is relational not structural. Thus, as the relationships change or the people involved change, then the group will change as well. It is fluid and dynamic.

It seems that we really do focus on the structure, even unintentionally. I sometimes find myself daydreaming about how an organic, simple church would look but it almost always focuses on the gathering. As I think through this I guess I somehow assume that the gathering will lead to community. If we have just the right kind of gathering, community will spring forth as a result. This sort of structural or model approach might explain in part why so many of us want something more than we find in organized religion but are still searching seemingly in vain for it.

I do not think it is the intent of authors like Frank Viola or Neil Cole to suggest that what we need is to just form "organic" churches or house churches and that will fix our problems but I do think that some people read their works and come away with that impression. At times I know I have! If we look to structural solutions, I think we are going to miss out on the richness of community because there is so much more community out there than we are ever going to experience in church meetings.

For example, this is kind of what our week (tentatively!) looks like...

On Tuesday I spent the evening ministering at the pregnancy resource center. I got to talk to several men in a dad's class on the topic of power and control as fathers, a very interesting conversation with three other men in very different places in their life. I also got to talk for a while with one of the men one on one, a very hard conversation with a man who needs a lot of prayer and mostly needs Jesus but he is also very disenchanted with the church. We got to talk about the Gospel a bit and about the church. I hope it was encouraging to him and that he will keep coming back. During the evening I also got to fellowship with Christians from a wide range of churches who also minister there.

Wednesday I took the kids to an evening activity at a local church and participated in an adult Bible study.

Last night my wife and I had dinner with a couple from a completely different local church. We had a great and very interesting time of fellowship over the table! We also got to talk to a random guy who came up to us and was talking about Catholicism, Mormonism, Mitt Romney, Nostradamus and the end of the world. That is what happens when you go out in public! Best of all we got to clearly declare the Gospel to this man and contrast it with whatever he was talking about.

Saturday morning we are having breakfast with yet another Christan couple from yet another local church.

Sunday afternoon we are taking the whole family and having a meal with another family in their home.

Yet there is a disconnect. We don't see most of that other list other than the Wednesday evening Bible study as "church", much less "community". Why do we exclude so much of the way we gather together with other Christians from legitimacy? The more I think about it, the more it seems that I am finding "organic church life" or "community" in lots of different places but most of them are outside of what we see as "church". I think that is true for a lot of people who have friends, family and neighbors who are Christians; they spend a lot of time with those Christians but a separate "church" group that they see as community based on where and how they gather.

The order is all backwards. Community must precede "church", in the sense of "church" describing the scheduled, formal gathering of Christians, and "church" proceeds from community. In the times I have described above, I found myself encouraged and stirred up to good works in every event with the exception of the actual meeting at "church". If I am encouraged and edified and stirred up outside of "church" and not so much when I am in "church", which is really "church"?

I see myself moving away from looking for a particular church model or structure and just seeking community with other Christians where my family and I will be encouraged and equipped. Rather than predetermining how that is going to look on Sunday, I am trying to focus on building relationships wherever and however I can and letting it kind of come to whatever form works out, fully recognizing that the form will be pretty malleable and not at all static. Not sure how that is all going to work out but I am confident in God's hand guiding it.

My least favorite conference name ever

2012-01-27T08:30:00.001-05:00

Preaching Christ: The Pastor As Herald of The Gospel

A couple of pastors telling other pastors why pastors are uniquely heralds of the Gospel?

I am afraid I can't make that date.

Today

2012-01-26T17:42:00.000-05:00

Didn't go quite as planned. Had some interesting ideas but nothing came together plus work was kind of hectic. Should have some stuff tomorrow.

Christians and government

2012-01-25T14:41:00.000-05:00

In 1527, the early days of the "Radical Reformation", the Anabaptists wrote the Schleitheim Confession. This brief confession is somewhat unique in this period because it is one of the few formal statements by the Anabaptists. Whereas the magisterial Reformers had plenty of time and opportunity to write lengthy creeds and confessions, safe and secure for the most part, the Anabaptists were typically on the run, being persecuted, imprisoned and martyred often by the same people writing the magisterial creeds (not the actual authors of course). Of course many of their leaders ended up on a stake being burned alive or tortured in a dungeon or in hiding, so writing confessions was not really a priority.

One of the most fascinating sections of the Schleitheim Confession has to do with the sword and the magistrate. The sword conversation is a pretty well-worn topic but the issue of Christians as magistrates, agents of the state, is a whole other story. Here is the applicable section, it is fairly long and archaic in language but worth the read....

Thirdly, it will be asked concerning the sword, Shall one be a magistrate if one should be chosen as such? The answer is as follows: They wished to make Christ king, but He fled and did not view it as the arrangement of His Father. Thus shall we do as He did, and follow Him, and so shall we not walk in darkness. For He Himself says, He who wishes to come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me. Also, He Himself forbids the (employment of) the force of the sword saying, The worldly princes lord it over them, etc., but not so shall it be with you. Further, Paul says, Whom God did foreknow He also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of His Son, etc. Also Peter says, Christ has suffered (not ruled) and left us an example, that ye should follow His steps.

Finally it will be observed that it is not appropriate for a Christian to serve as a magistrate because of these points: The government magistracy is according to the flesh, but the Christian's is according to the Spirit; their houses and dwelling remain in this world, but the Christian's are in heaven; their citizenship is in this world, but the Christian's citizenship is in heaven; the weapons of their conflict and war are carnal and against the flesh only, but the Christian's weapons are spiritual, against the fortification of the devil. The worldlings are armed with steel and iron, but the Christians are armed with the armor of God, with truth, righteousness, peace, faith, salvation and the Word of God. In brief, as in the mind of God toward us, so shall the mind of the members of the body of Christ be through Him in all things, that there may be no schism in the body through which it would be destroyed. For every kingdom divided against itself will be destroyed. Now since Christ is as it is written of Him, His members must also be the same, that His body may remain complete and united to its own advancement and upbuilding.

That is pretty archaic like I said but the gist as I understand it is that serving as a magistrate (basically an officer of the government, whether President, police office or dog catcher) is inherently a conflict of interest between serving the interests of the world and living as a citizen of the Kingdom. By serving the state, you are in conflict with serving the Kingdom. I am not sure how far you take that, for example by working at a "secular" job am I entangled with the world? It certainly seems that human government gets different treatment in Scripture compared to having a "regular" job. Perhaps this is because of the inherent function of government that uses compulsion or even force to exert its will. If you don't pay your taxes, the IRS can put a lien on your house. If you don't properly license you dog, the dog catcher can take your dog to the pound and compel you to pay a fine. If you are in the middle of committing a crime and are interrupted by a police officer, there is a chance that you will be forcibly detained or perhaps even shot. A President as part of his duties must be ready to use military force to defend his country (Which is why no one who is a pacifist should seek that office. Ever.)

When I look at how entangled Christians are with politics, even the vast majority of us who do not serve in any sort of government office, I have to think that the authors of the Schleitheim Confession might have known what they were talking about. Everything about government seems antithetical to the Kingdom of God. More cynically, the way that so many public officials make vulgar appeals to people of faith for political support is hugely troubling.

The allure of doing what we see as God's work by the methods of the world is seductive. We look to government and think that we can pass laws making sinful, unregenerate men into saints or at least constraining their behavior. Who among the followers of Christ doesn't want to see abortion end and marriage affirmed? Still. If we ban gay marriage, will we have a more "moral" society? If we outlaw abortion will that make the unbelievers around us less ungodly? If we smite the Iranians, are we doing God's will? Is there anything at all we can accomplish via the governmental and political process that advances the Kingdom? If not, should we be joining with the magistrate that is an "...avenger who carries out God's wrath on the wrongdoer." (Romans 13:4)? I have a friend who is a police officer and we have had some discussions regarding what this means to him, namely that in his role as a police officer (and formerly as a soldier) he might be called upon to use force, even deadly force, in the execution of his duties. It is pretty deep stuff, very hard to work through.

It is interesting to look at the Scriptures and see the reaction of Jesus to the tyrannical rulers of that day. Jesus didn't seek to overthrow Caesar or demand societal rights for His followers. He didn't rail against unjust taxes or military occupiers in Jerusalem. He actually taught His disciples to expect hatred and persecution from the world. The first century Christians didn't form legal defense funds, they expected to preach Christ and Him crucified and perhaps pay for it with their lives. American Christians not only want the freedom to worship, we want a seat at the table in the halls of earthly power.

Lower taxes or higher taxes. Green energy jobs or manufacturing tax credits. On and on. For all of our altruistic notions, I am starting to really think that we should avoid being an agent of the state because in so many ways being an agent of the state, a magistrate in 16th century lingo, invariably requires us to engage in behavior that is contrary to what Jesus and His apostles taught and exhibited in their actions.

What do you think?

Does our way of life impair community?

2012-01-24T15:48:00.000-05:00

Dan Edelen has another excellent post with another provocative title: Is the Organic House Church a Myth? You should read the whole post but Dan observes that in spite of all the talk about organic church life, actually finding this life is pretty difficult for many of us.

I made the following comment on his post:

I have had a somewhat similar experience but I also know of “organic” gatherings that are thriving. As for me, trying to find people who are actually serious about a more organic form of the church has been a struggle. A lot of people are fed up but it seems that inertia just keeps us going.

I think the problem comes in when we try to replace one church model with another church model, without addressing the more important question of community. If we have a community of believers living their lives with one another, the church will happen fairly naturally. if we try to substitute a model of church, even one with lots of Biblical support, for community it is bound to fail.

I know that “community” is an overused word to the point that it has lost most of its meaning. It still is the right word to use to describe what we see in the New Testament and what we should see in the church today. Defining it is one thing, seeing it lived out? Quite another.

Dan replied with an especially good comment:

Arthur,

I have long written on this blog that the New testament demands a way of living that flies in the face of what we consider normal, societal living. Our entire lifestyle in America wars with Christianity. As a result, almost every model of church one tries is either going to be broken by that lifestyle or is going to make for some serious angst should one fight societal norms tooth and nail.

Where it becomes hard is that change only comes if we commit to it and simultaneously address the problems of both church models and societal models. That so few smart Christians are taking on greater societal structures and talking about it publicly makes it hard for the little guy to make gains.

That is borderline blasphemy! “Our entire lifestyle in America wars with Christianity”? Doesn’t he know that America was founded as a Christian nation and all we need to do is get back to our Judeo-Christian roots and all will be well?!

I think Dan is on to something here. If we refuse to really consider the issues caused by our cultural and societal structures, are we ever going to be able to move past religiosity and into community? If my life as a disciple is competing, often very unsuccessfully, with my cultural preferences where is the self-denial, the sacrificial life? Denying yourself flies in the face of American culture while living the American dream while attending church on occasion gives the appearance of the best of both worlds. I get my public piety and get out of hell but I can still have all of the trappings of America affluence.

Can I go a step further and make this suggestion? The greatest cultural dangers to Christianity are not found in abortion or gay marriage or banning school prayer or removing Ten Commandments monuments or saying "Happy Holidays". The greatest cultural dangers to Christianity in America are the very things that generally are though to make America great: Patriotism. Self-sufficiency. Affluence. Success. The very things we love and give thanks to God for in our prayer meetings might just be the greatest impediments to Christian community and the most damaging to our Gospel witness.

If we try to modify the church model without also breaking down our societal norms and expectations as the church, we are invariably going to end up with an irreconcilable tension because the allure of the American dream. The American way of life, apple pie and flag waving America, truly is in direct conflict with the life of a disciple. As Dan says, if we address the church culture without taking a hard look at our cultural comfort, it is a recipe for conflict and division.

What say you? Is it possible to live and pursue some variation of the American dream while taking up your cross daily? Can we have community in America without turning our back on so much of what being American promises us?

Gospel dispensers

2012-01-24T13:00:00.000-05:00

As a follow-up to my post yesterday Where Are We The Church? I want to keep thinking about the relationship between the community of the saints and the mission of the church. What role does the church play in the mission of God? Can the two even be properly distinguished? What is our focus? Is it on the gathering or the going?

Let me say this at the outset. If the gathering of the church you are part of is not equipping you to take the Gospel to the lost, it is failing in its calling. Utterly and completely. It doesn't matter if you have super preaching and follow the "regulative principle of worship", if Christians can come Sunday after Sunday and walk away with nothing more than some notes about the sermon on their bulletin, you aren't a Biblical gathering of the church. It also doesn't matter if you have a participatory meeting where everyone gets a say if no one gets equipped. We cannot lose sight of the primary purpose of God's collected people, namely to be the vehicle God uses to carry out His purpose in the world.

I like what Dave Black had to say regarding the church and her mission in a new entry, The Church Is A Granary

We err when we think of the church as a storehouse for converts instead of as a distribution plant. Every believer must be equipped to become a witness for Christ. And every church must become a center of Gospel distribution. Jesus sent out the 12 and the 72. I have the deep conviction that every deficiency in the church can be traced back to a failure to follow the New Testament teaching and pattern about missions. We may be completely orthodox in our theology and yet fall completely short of the New Testament teaching in our practice. Our faith must be a living thing, not just faith in itself. The earliest Christians were wholly dedicated, sold out to Jesus Christ and His cause. And because they were committed men and women, they expected their converts to be equally committed to the Great Commission, to propagate the Gospel, and to serve as Jesus served. Their leaders trained the entire church to be fulltime ministers rather than selecting a few who would devote themselves to "fulltime Christian ministry."

The church is indeed a distribution plant. We are supposed to be making disciples to send them out to make disciples, not making disciples to show up on Sunday. As we make and equip disciples, the community of the saints is what should be formed for the purpose of equipping, encouraging and sending.

Community and mission are not enemies. To the contrary, if the church is functioning correctly and hoping to impact the world for the Kingdom they must go hand in hand. I tend to focus and think a lot about the gathering, not just the Sunday meeting but the people of God living lives together. That is so crucial to the health of the church but if that gathering doesn't lead to the going, it is worthless no matter how Biblical we think it is. We oftebn get caught up in the "doing church right". If we can just make the church gathering more organic or more reformed or more "spirit driven" or more participatory, we will be OK. We need to have our end on the end result we desire first instead of the process. If you try to build a house by slapping up walls without a blueprint, you are going to get a haphazard house that will fall down sooner or later.

Conversely if we neglect the community of the saints, mission simply will never happen. Just assuming that any old church gathering is fine as long as we are personally "missional" grossly misunderstands the purpose of the church and the vital role it fills in mission. The church is the equipping and encouraging system that God has ordained. How and why and what we do when we gather has a major impact on how we carry out (or don't) the mission God has called every single Christian to. Some, I would say many, models of church gathering not only do little to equip believers, they tend to discourage mission from individual believers in favor of sub-contracting mission work to the "properly" appointed professionals, leaving most Christians on the sidelines as observers and check writers.

I would also clarify again that what really matters is the community of the church more than any regularly scheduled "official" gathering. The community of believers who make up the church is the thing, not gathering as the church and hoping community happens.

I am not sure this post makes any sense at all. It seems a jumble of stuff that doesn't flow very well. That might be because I am having a hard time even processing all of this yet again as I come around to this topic over and over. I still have more to write about this but I am afraid of adding to this post and making it worse. Certainly not my best effort in the blogging world!

Generating conversation

2012-01-23T16:37:00.000-05:00

For a somewhat innocent YouTube video, Jefferson Bethke's video Why I Hate Religion, But Love Jesus has caused quite a firestorm and now quite a bit of attention for Jefferson. He was on CBS news this morning and got to talk just for a few minutes about what he was trying to say with this video.

What was weird was having the the other guy, I assume he is a Catholic priest, on stage during a six minute segment. I found it interesting to hear the "priest" say that when Jefferson was baptized that he became part of the institution, a part of organized religion. First of all, that guy is flat out creepy looking and the turtleneck just makes it worse. Second I am not sure why they invited Jefferson to be on the show if they were really planning on letting the other guy keep telling Jefferson what he meant especially someone who represent the epitome of organized religion.

I think it is generally healthy to have this conversation out in the public square instead of in intramural discussions among people who are already believers. I don't know that the conversation really captures the linkage between the institutional church and the sort of religion that is antithetical to the New Covenant community of believers but I do like that it engages many people who see, to various degrees, religion as hypocritical and empty. We can spend lots of time arguing about points of doctrine among believers with a great deal of eloquence and yet find ourselves tongue tied when facing someone who doesn't talk like we do and look like we do. The Great Commission is not really a command to try to convince people who are already believers why our doctrinal stances are correct but to reach the lost, those who need Jesus first and foremost long before they need to decide which kind of church they are going to join.

Where are we "the church"?

2012-01-22T07:53:00.000-05:00

I saw a very interesting tweet from someone I follow on twitter but don't know anything about, Karl Ingersoll. This is what he tweeted:

I think that is a great thought for us. Don't we seem to think that we are really only "the church" when we gather on Sunday? We might not say it that way but we treat it that way. Sunday is church day, "the Lord's Day" and the church is manifested visibly by our "worship services". We "go to church" as if by being in a particular place at a particular time we are being the church as opposed to any other time when we are just being Christians walking anonymously in the world. We think we are obeying Christ and following His commandments when we "go to church" and "tithe" but that is not what He commanded us. His commands to His redeemed sheep boil down to "go" and "do". Go to the lost, go to the world, go to the poor and the hungry. Do for them what the love of Christ has done for you, i.e. show mercy and love to those who are never going to repay you. "Sit", "watch", "listen" are not commands of Christ and when we assume that sitting. watching and listening is the sum of the Christian life we will find it hard to preach, wash feet and visit the widow and orphan.

I think Karl is right on the money here. We cannot merely function as the church, assuming that we even do, only or even primarily when we gather on Sunday. The church is a seven day a week life that transcends rituals and borders and organizations. When I read people saying things like: be in the Lord's house with the Lord's people on the Lord's day this weekend, it makes me crazy because it gives the illusion that one day a week one particular subset of God's people meeting in a particular location is the center of your Christian universe. Instead of just drawing people in, the church should be sending people out and I have come to see that when we are out in the world representing the King, that is when we truly are being "the church".

More on this later. Now I have to "get ready for church" myself!

You tend to meet people where the people are

2012-01-21T12:32:00.000-05:00

Today is the third birthday of January for my kids so we took our daughter to breakfast this morning and then to the hay auction at the local feed store. Nothing says happy birthday to a little girl like standing outside in the cold for an hour watching people bid on hay! We aren't desperate for hay but we thought it might be nice to get some grass hay rather than feeding the critters a straight alfalfa hay which is kind of rich and a bit of overkill. The cow doesn't much care what she eats although the sheep and horses are a little pickier. So we stopped by to see the action. We bid on a few lots but ended up not buying anything, the prices were not to our liking, but in a hour or so we got to talk with a bunch of people.

In the time we were there. we got to talk to a couple of brothers we already know. One guy is the auctioneer and is borrowing our Jacob sheep ram and we are "test driving" an Appaloosa gelding that we might buy. He is formerly Amish and has lots of connections in the community. The other guy is someone we met at a Mennonite church and have bought hay from a few times. We also got to talk to a couple of other men. One just moved here and is also a former Amish guy who has come to Christ and meets with the large fellowship that is mostly people with a similar background in the area. He has nine kids and the oldest is 16! As a side note, it is nice to live in this area for a lot of reasons, not least because there are so many families that look sort of like ours. We are not the only huge family with a fifteen passenger van. My wife is not the only woman around who covers her head. When we went to breakfast this morning several women at the restaurant were covered, as we were leaving a van of younger Mennonite ladies were arriving and as we drove by again heading home there was yet another van load arriving. Far from being an oddity, we kind of fit right in! The other man we spoke with at the hay auction was a younger fellow who still dressed in the Amish fashion but was very outgoing and was talking to everyone he could. I overheard a conversation he was having with an Amish guy in his mid twenties and for some reason they were talking about the Milky Way. The Amish guy was looking at the other guy like he had three heads, it looks like he had never even heard of what we would call basic astronomy terms. It just struck me funny. Anyway we had a nice conversation with him as we were bidding on hay.

Most Saturdays this wouldn't happen. My wife and I would go to breakfast and then come home to do our own thing. I am usually OK with that. My preference is to just be home. I am perfectly happy to hang around in my house or going out to work with the livestock or perhaps taking a nap. Although that is my preference, it is just kind of selfish. The weekends are prime time to get out and meet people, making connections with other Christians and meeting people who need to know Christ. It is kind of unlikely that people are just going to wander in to our house (although we do get a fair number of visitors!). We really need to get out more and not let apathy set in. Granted we know a lot of people in our area, far more and far more quickly than really anywhere else we have lived but I still want to get to know even more. The first step to community is knowing people and in our culture that is going to require some effort. We were talking the other night with the auctioneer we know in one of our outbuildings and he commented that it would be a great place to gather the church. He is right! It is fairly large and open (except for the stuff we have stored in it!) and has a very nice heater that warms it right up. My wife and I talked at breakfast this morning about having some potluck meals out there very soon and inviting people from lots of different church groups in the early afternoon (Bean, you interested?) and I am eager to give that a try.

I am thankful to God for today, thankful for the Christians we met and for the time to reconnect with others. With half the day to go I would encourage you to seek out a place where you can meet new people or get in touch with others you already know but haven't see in a while. It is hard when for many of us Saturday is the only day we don't go to work or gather with the church but that is what makes Saturdays such a great time to get out, especially with people you don't normally meet with on Sunday. We make community too formal and complicated at times but it still takes some effort. That effort is well worth it!

If only we were as zealous for missions as we are for defending organized religion

2012-01-20T13:05:00.000-05:00

The Wall Street Journal has an article out this morning in the "Houses of Worship" column with the provocative title: Can You Come to Jesus Without Church? The author, Jonathan Fitzgerald, is the latest person to respond to the video by Jefferson Bethke that has defenders of institutionalism all up in arms and like so many others he equates "church" with "organized religion". It seems an odd question since everyone who came to Jesus in the New Testament did so without the "benefit" of organized religion but let me allow Mr. Fitzgerald to speak for himself in his conclusion.

Stating that religions build churches at the expense of the poor, as Mr. Bethke does, turns a blind eye to the single greatest charitable institution on the planet. Blaming religion for wars ignores the fact that the greatest mass murderers in the 20th century—indeed in all of history—killed for nonreligious reasons. And advocating for a kind of Christianity that is free of the "bondage" of religion opens the door to dangerous theological anarchy that is all too common among young evangelicals and absolutely antithetical to biblical Christianity.

That statement is chock full of error. Anyone who cannot see that there are people that are starving and in need of shelter all around us while church after church building new buildings, renovating their sanctuaries to make it more comfy for the couple of hours a week it is open, paying clergy to minister so that the average church-goer can feel absolved of the need to do anything beyong payin’ and prayin’, etc. is out of touch with reality. Again I issue this challenge. Look at the budget of most churches and ask where the money goes. Is it going to the cause of missions and aiding the needy, within and outside of the church? Or is it going primarily to sustaining the machinery of institutionalism, keeping the church doors open and the ministers employed?

Mr. Fitzgerald's opinion that just because religious organization do some charitable work and that not all wars are started by religion is setting a pretty low standard for what is supposed to be the church. I don’t think our standard of financial stewardship is really “marginally better than the world”. When Jesus said blessed are the peacemakers, I don’t think He was thinking that “peacemakers” are those who only start half of the wars or are not quite as efficient in killing others. Being not as bad as Hitler, Stalin or Pol Pot is not quite the message of the Sermon on the Mount.

As far as the breathless hyperbole that we would face “theological anarchy” without the protective confines of the institutional church. Decorum prevents me from posting the cattle influenced phrase that leaps to mind so I will restrict myself to “Baloney!” I would rather have theological anarchy where people ask questions and seek the truth over empty religion of passive sheep shuffling in and out of church each week. Better that many seek to find the truth and some find it than everyone passively being spoon fed dollops of religion in exchange for a check in the offering plate, spiritually withering away on the vine. I hate to point out the obvious but there has been far more error and heresy and division propagated by organized religion than all of the “young evangelicals” and others who reject organized religion combined by far.

The comment stream that accompanies this essay and the other rage that has swirled around this fairly innocuous video by a young brother who seems quiet sincere, humble and teachable has been instructive. It is disturbing that many people who are not stirred to action by the billions of people who don’t know Christ around the world and around the corner, who are apathetic about orphaned children and homeless families, or who see nothing wrong with sitting one pew away from a family in serious financial distress, get incensed and spring to battle to defend institutionalized religion. If only the defenders of organized religion were as zealous for the Gospel and for mercy as they are for religion.

Wonder Bread Christianity

2012-01-20T10:00:00.004-05:00

Compare these two lists. Which list of words do you find more appealing?

- The America way of life                                    - The way of the cross
- Individual freedom                                            - Community
- Self determination                                             - Submission to others
- Financial freedom                                             - Serving God not mammon
- The right to private property                              - Calling nothing your own
- The best defense is a good offense                     - Strength through weakness
- Patriotism                                                          - Citizenry in a nation with
                                                                              no land, army or flag
- Pride, power, prestige                                        - Mockery, hatred, reviling

Now which one seems more in tune with the life of a disciple before being a disciple was cool? If you are like me, you find that first list more appealing, perhaps inserting your own national identity in place of America. That second list is just a glimpse of the more difficult to handle doctrines in the Bible. Those truths are truly the hard sayings of the Bible but they are also crucial to the life of a disciple.

Why don't we teach the simple truths, the hard truths in the church? Not the pretty theological terminology that we can argue about from behind our keyboards and feel triumphant when we score a point. I mean the doctrines that challenge us, break down our strongholds and expose our weakness. These doctrines should be front and center in the church but they get passing attention, if even that.

So why don’t we talk about the hard teachings of the Bible? I am not talking about Calvinism here. The doctrines of grace are easy to talk about compared to the all-encompassing death to self that the Bible depicts. I am not talking about most of the stuff we fuss and feud about that we keep safely tucked away in book, blogs and the halls of the academy (in other words, a lot of what I blog about). I am not talking about meeting in a house instead of meeting in a building. Those questions may be important, and they may not be. They all dance around the core of the Kingdom life: proclamation, self-denial, community, humility, submission, willing sacrifice. They all allow us to continue to live more or less as we choose with only minor inconvenience. I find myself so easily slipping into a smug self-assurance of how right I am walking based on a few practices here and a few doctrines there. I can win arguments all day long with a clever turn of phrase online while living pretty much indistinguishably from my neighbor. The life of a follower is so much more than that. We are told that anyone who takes hold of the plow and looks back is not worthy of Him (Luke 9:62) but most of us haven’t done much more than look at the plow or walk around it to admire it as if the church is a farm show rather than a working farm. We can’t take hold of the plow because we have never let go of the world.

I think there are two reasons these teachings get such meager attention in the church.

One we don’t believe it. Oh we believe in Jesus, we believe in this doctrine and that doctrine, we believe in religion and we really believe that while “those people” are going to an eternal hell, I certainly am not but when it comes to some of the crazy stuff that Jesus and Paul and Luke were talking about? Well, maybe they didn’t really mean it or perhaps it doesn’t apply to us now. For a people who wave the banner “Bible believing” and “sola scriptura” around, we don’t seem to take the commands that require action on our part terribly literally.

The second reason is because teaching what the Bible teaches would empty out a church right quick. I think that is absolutely true. I also say: good. There is no place of lukewarm, spectator sport, subcontracting, ritualistic religion in the Kingdom of God. NONE. There are too many people who need to hear the Gospel, too many orphaned children, too many people in prison, hungry and homeless in the world for us to have most of the church sitting on the sidelines. We should never water down the Gospel to make it easier to swallow because then we end up with churches full of false professors clamoring for teaching to tickle their ears. Let me qualify that statement. That is as true in many conservative churches as it is in “liberal” churches or emergent or seeker-sensitive or whatever buzzword we use these days to describe the wrong sorts of churches. It is also lived out all around us everyday. We would have to take a step up to be the lukewarm church of Laodicea, we more resemble the church of Sardis, reputed to be alive but in reality spiritually dead with but a few remaining that still have spiritual life within them.

For a people that have been sermonized, Sunday schooled, Bible studied nearly to death, we seem to have missed an enormous amount of the message of the Bible, especially when God in the flesh is speaking directly to us in the Gospels. The question becomes how to shake myself and encourage others to shed the lethargy that paralyzes us and get involved in community in the church, global and local mission on behalf of the King and dispensing grace and mercy to those around us. I am not sure what the answer is but I know something is missing. I am desperately seeking others who are motivated for the same thing to support, encourage and prod me when I slip back into the comforts of religion. I am not nearly mature enough to do this on my own and I don't really think that is what God intended in the first place. We need each other and we need each other more than on Sunday morning and Wednesday night.

Some thoughts on unity

2012-01-18T21:43:00.000-05:00

Great thoughts from Dan Edelen on unity or lack thereof in the church: Unity & Disunity in the Church. I love it when people ask questions and start wondering why we just shrug our shoulders and accept without a whimper the sinful disunity in the church. You might not agree with all of his points but you have to appreciate that he is willing to ask the questions.

Book Review: Why We Live In Community

2012-01-18T15:00:00.000-05:00

I read a small, fascinating e-book by Eberhard Arnold titled Why We Live In Community last night. Arnold was a German who lived in the later 19th to early 20th century and was the founder of the Bruderhof commuities. His small book, one of his many writings, dealt with the question of why he and others lived in what we might call intentional communities and you can read it for free on an e-reader or .pdf file.

Arnold’s vision is far more radical than anything you see in most of the church. It seems odd and more than a little threatening. It almost seems….alien when compared to our prevailing church culture.

Arnold’s vision combines the familial nature of the church with an emptying of self that pivots around the community of goods. He bases this not only in Scripture (Acts 2 and 4 specifically) but also in human nature and experience. For example, Arnold retells the story of two monks who live without possessions. The story is not terribly interesting but his point is:

Most important – the real theological content of the story – is that what really starts fighting is possessions. And people get into fights by preferring things to people.

Think about that for a minute. Preferring things to people. How many unnecessary things do each of us have laying around the house that we couldn’t live without while other Christians go hungry or can’t pay their heating bills or can’t afford medical care. This is not crackpot leftist dogma. This is really happening all around us but suggestions that we as God’s people give up some of our creature comforts to benefit a brother, even very modest suggestions like those in David Platt’s book “Radical”, are met with a firestorm of outrage.

Eberhard Arnold realized that living in the sort of community that the Bruderhof communities do is not necessarily the calling of all Christians nor do I agree with all of his points (although the ones I do have issues with are more pragmatic than Scriptural) but it does raise for me some troubling questions. Most importantly, why don’t we live in community? Could it be that we love our autonomy, our freedom, our wealth and possessions more than each other? Is the idea of that sort of closeness and openness in this life scary to people who affirm in theory that sort of relationship in eternity? Perhaps most troubling, could it be that we fear living community in whatever shape it takes because we don’t really believe what we read in the Bible, just as we don’t seem to believe so much of what Jesus taught or how He lived or what He commanded? Is it just easier to live lives of religious observance and to find ways to nitpick and divide from one another so that we can justify our disunity? These are troubling questions but they are hammering me.

I have a lot more to say about this but it will have to wait to tomorrow when perhaps I will be less fired up.

This will make your head spin

2012-01-17T14:09:00.000-05:00

From the Guardian, Gay priest 'considers suing Church of England for discrimination'

The Church of England's most senior openly gay cleric is understood to be considering suing his employers for discrimination unless he is made a bishop.

Dr Jeffrey John, the dean of St Albans, was forced to stand down by the archbishop of Canterbury after being appointed suffragan bishop of Reading in 2003 following objections from conservative evangelicals.

Two years ago, John – a celibate priest who is in a longstanding civil partnership with another cleric – was prevented from becoming the bishop of Southwark after the archbishops of Canterbury and York stepped in.

Reports on Sunday suggested John had become so exasperated at his treatment that he had hired Alison Downie, an employment and discrimination law specialist and partner at the law firm Goodman Derrick, to fight his case under equality law. Four years ago, Downie successfully represented a gay youth worker who was found to have been discriminated against by the bishop of Hereford because of his sexuality.

What in the world? When you have enough "openly gay clerics" that one is recognized as being the "most senior", you should see that as a problem. What would one make of a Roman Catholic priest who was said to be in a celibate longstanding civil partnership with a nun? I wonder what Paul would say about someone who is demanding that he be installed as a bishop in spite of being openly homosexual and threatening to sue if his demands aren’t met? I don’t think 1 Corinthians 6: 1-8 even begins to address what is going wrong here.

Another big issue here is not the homosexual “celibate priest” or even the notion of people who are allegedly Christians threatening to sue other Christians if they are not recognized as a bishop (as if a secular court decision can make one a “bishop” in the church). The other big problem is that this is an issue of employment law, a clergyman suing his employer, i.e. the church. When the church treats some Christians as employees and other Christians as employers, we have lost any sense of what the church is supposed to be about. I don’t care how you slice it, when a person depends on an organization for his wages and benefits he is an employee no matter how you dress it up.

And people wonder why so many Christians are so frustrated with the church as we understand it…

If I may be indulged

2012-01-17T13:08:00.000-05:00

Voddie Baucham, one of my favorite authors and speakers on most topics, has penned an excellent essay explaining why he supports Ron Paul: Why Ron Paul? . What I appreciate is that he approaches the issues with his eyes open and he especially looks at it the idea of Israel in some detail, recognizing that much of American evangelical support for Israel is "...a sort of misplaced Dispensationalism that governs people’s sentimental attitude toward Israel." Anyway. I try to avoid political talk on these hallowed pages but this is an interesting take from a respected Christian leader and while I disagree with some of his points, I wish more Christians would look at the upcoming election a little more carefully.

Justification and Work

2012-01-17T09:30:00.000-05:00

I got a question over the weekend asking what I mean when I say that we are justified by faith alone. That is a very simple answer and a very complicated one and it is fraught with all sorts of peril and potential error. Most Protestants would immediately affirm the doctrine of justification by faith alone, assuming they have ever heard of it in the first place. Unpacking what that means and the implications that come along with it are somewhat more difficult.

At the foundational level, being justified by faith alone is pretty simple. It is simply answering the question of how a sinful man, deserving of God's judgment, is made right with God. Justification by faith alone holds that men are made right before God apart from, and indeed in spite of, any meritorious works of our own. Humble faith in Christ alone is the only means of salvation. Conversely when we claim to be justified, even in part and no matter how small, by our own efforts we turn salvation into a co-operative process. Practically speaking many Christians would hold to what is called synergistic regeneration even though they would affirm the doctrine of justification by faith alone.

Paul powerfully deals with justification by faith alone in many places but nowhere more deeply and richly than in his letter to the chuch in Rome.

For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin. But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it-- the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God's righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. Then what becomes of our boasting? It is excluded. By what kind of law? By a law of works? No, but by the law of faith. For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law. Or is God the God of Jews only? Is he not the God of Gentiles also? Yes, of Gentiles also, since God is one--who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through faith. Do we then overthrow the law by this faith? By no means! On the contrary, we uphold the law. (Romans 3:20-31)

Men are not right with God on the basis of circumcision (or water baptism for that matter), or by observing certain laws like the sacrifice of animals for the atonement for sin (see Leviticus 16).
They are only made right with God on the basis of faith in Christ. Going to church, giving your "tithe", voting Republican. None of them have anything to do with your salvation. Faith and faith is the only basis upon which a sinner can claim to be saved.
This is where faith and grace intersect. Most Christians can repeat the generally accepted definition of grace: God's unmerited favor. That is unfortunately as far as many people get but there is so much more to it. Justification by faith alone keeps the grace in grace. As Paul's letter to the Romans continues into chapter four he makes an important contrast while extending his larger point:

What then shall we say was gained by Abraham, our forefather according to the flesh? For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. For what does the Scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness.” Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due. And to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness,(Romans 4:1-5)

When I get paid every other Friday, those wages are an obligation of my employer in return for the work I have done for the prior two weeks. My employer doesn't just hand out paychecks to people walking by our building but rather pays those who work. If a payday rolled around and I didn't get paid for the time I worked, I would have the legal right to go after those wages. They are owed to me based on the employment agreement between me and my employer. Grace? I have no legal claim on God's grace. I can point to nothing I have done that makes me deserving of anything other than God's wrath. God is gracious to me in spite of my sins. Grace is only truly gracious when it comes with no obligation on the part of the dispenser. God doesn't owe you grace and He doesn't owe me grace. His grace is His to sovereignly bestow as only He deems fit.

That leaves us with the question: what of good works? Are they optional or ancillary, something that is a nice add-on to our justification or something only certain Christians are called to? It certainly doesn't seem that way. Paul, James and Jesus Christ Himself seem quite concerned with how we live out our faith. There is a lot of confusion over this because on the one hand the Bible speaks so often about the necessity of good works but likewise states unequivocally that we are saved/justified by faith alone. Is this a contradiction in the Bible or are we missing the relationship between the two? I think this second part is where many Christians get tripped up. We don't know what to do with the exhortations to good works or to holiness and piety. We are so afraid of any tinge of the Roman error of works-righteousness that we freeze into inaction or become unmotivated to exhort one another to good works. This is a mistake and a serious one. We hear Hebrews 10:25 quoted to us all the time, often as a stick to "encourage" us to "go to church" but the reason we gather is important and often ignored:

And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.(Hebrews 10:24-25)

The reason we gather together, at least one of the major reasons we are exhorted to not neglect the gathering of the saints, is not to listen to sermons or to "worship", i.e. singing songs, or to "partake of the sacraments". Rather it is to stir up and encourage one another to love and good works which implies that we need that encouragement! Now whether the traditional organized religion Sunday morning "worship service" accomplishes that or not is a question for another day. Suffice it to say that one of the primary reasons we gather is for born-again believers to encourage other born-again believers to love and good works. Herein lies the paradox of mixed meetings. If we are meeting in a such a way that unbelievers and believers alike are intermixed we run the risk of exhorting a non-believer to good works which can easil lead them to a false assurance of faith based on personal piety and good works, exactly what we are trying to avoid. Again, a topic for a different day but an important side-note nevertheless.

Faith and works are not an either-or proposition. They are not opposed to one another. We just need to ensure that we get the order right. The classic way of comparing a works based salvation versus a faith based salvation is to contrast Faith+Works=Salvation to Faith→Salvation→Works. In other words, saving faith leads to justification which inexorably leads to good works in response. Faith and works are inextricably linked but not equally. One flows from the other but the one cannot exist without the other. Let me try a bold and sweeping statement:

We are not saved by our works but we are not saved apart from them either.

Works are the result of justification which comes via saving faith. My favorite verse on this progression comes from the second chapter of Paul's letter to the church in Ephesus:

For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. (Eph 2:10)

What is especially pertinent in this passage is that it follows Paul's bold declaration of the Gospel of salvation by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone, dealing with deep theology like election and monergistic regeneration. Paul doesn't stop with "by grace you have been saved through faith" but continues on from the question of "what" to "what now". God did not save us just to save us from hell. He predestined us for adoption but He also prepared works of mercy beforehand for us to walk in. Not only does He prepare the way for our salvation but also the opportunities for service that follow our justification. If God went through the process of preparing these good works, do you think maybe they are important?

So in summary, justification, our legal standing before God as justified with our sins forgiven, comes only through faith. We add nothing to it. We are not partners in it. We don't cooperate in any way. It is all of grace. As a result of this justitication and the changed heart that is regenerated by God, our outlook changes such that we will seek ways to serve God by serving, loving and witnessing to our neighbors. This is not a natural event and that is why we are exhorted to meet as the church to encourage one another.

There is nothing new here and this is merely my clumsy attempt to work through a topic that has been written about by the greatest theologians of the church for centuries. I could point you to a number of far better treatments of this topic but it is helpful to me to work through it on my own from time to time. Hopefully it is somewhat helpful or at least gets you thinking about this most precious and crucial of truths. We need to dig beyond the surface on these doctrines. Saying we are justified by faith alone is one thing but to get deeper into the doctrine, working through it and examining the implications of it, should give you a far greater appreciation of how marvelous this truth really is. When we see ourselves standing before the King with no righteousness of our own, with no claim on His favor other than saving faith in the Savior, that is when we will be able to truly sing Amazing Grace. Then we will see how gracious, precious and all-sufficient Jesus Christ truly is. There is nothing more amazing to me than to realize that He saved a wretch like me, the least likely person I have ever met and to know that He saved me in spite of and not because of whatever merit I thought I was bringing to the table. Justification by faith alone is not a theoogical "get out of hell" card but rather is the is the bedrock of the Gospel message and while it is a doctrine that we need to spend more time studying it is also a doctrine that must spur us to action: proclaiming the Gospel, loving our neighbor, visiting the widow and orphan, sharing and edifying and equipping among the Body of Christ. There is no doctrine in the Bible that is more active, more dynamic and more pertinent to how we live as Christ's ambassadors to the world. If we turn it into merely a cold point of theological correctness we will lose how truly amazing and impactful this doctrine is.

The College of Cardinals hath spoken!

2012-01-15T08:34:00.000-05:00

White smoke has been seen pouring from the chimney of a ranch in Texas!

The annoucement ringeth forth across the land. The evangelical Cardinals have met and they annointeth Rick Santorum as THE Christian candidate. All faithful followers are to immediately throw their support (and money!) to Santorum....

TRENDING: Christian conservative leaders vote to support Santorum

A meeting of Christian conservative leaders resulted in the group backing GOP presidential hopeful Rick Santorum, Family Research Council president Tony Perkins announced Saturday.

The group heard pitches from surrogates for Republican candidates on Friday, and voted to support Santorum after voting on Saturday.

"After three rounds of balloting this morning, and vigorous and passionate discussion, there emerged a strong consensus around Rick Santorum as the preferred candidate for this group," Perkins said on a conference call Saturday.

Reformation? What Reformation?! We are trying to "take back America" here people! We must defeat Obama's "War On Religion"! The Gospel can wait and the lazy poor people can feed themselves. Widows can send me a friend request on Facebook. Orphans? Well the state can take care of them. What? No I don't see the irony in that statement. What do you mean?

Remember. after you drop your check in the offering plate this morning, run home (after brunch of course) and make a donation to the Santorum campaign so we can elect a Christian candidate who will wink at the assassination of foreign citizens and invade Iran within hours of taking office!

A few words from Dave Black are appropriate this morning...

It matters little to me that some Magisterium in Texas has anointed Santorum or that the evangelical subculture prizes conformity above all else. Allegiance to any human institution or political party is not faith. It is misplaced faith.

Yet we wonder why we have so little Gospel impact on the world. Maybe because we are focused on the wrong things?

Talking about Jesus and religion

2012-01-14T15:30:00.001-05:00

If the internet is good at anything, it is great at creating furious tempests in short order than blow over just as fast. This has been on full display over the last few days thanks to a video posted by Jefferson Bethke, Why I Hate Religion, But Love Jesus

The video has, as of the time I watched it this afternoon, almost ten million views and over 100,000 likes and a similar number of comments. Oh yeah, it was uploaded on the 10th so by my calculations it is averaging a couple of million views a day. Behold the power of the internet!

The reaction it has received? Wow. Some people think this is the greatest thing spoken since Martin Luther said "Here I stand, I can do no other". On the other hand there are some who have reacted to this video as if it is the greatest threat to the church since...well since the last guy said something that questioned the church. It is the reaction to this video more than the content itself that I am really interested in because I think it exposes a couple of fascinating undercurrents.

A lot of the quibbling has to do with his use of the word "religion". That word pops up a few times in the Bible and it carries a lot of baggage. This is doubly true in our culture. Religion only has one context in our culture and it is the dominant religious expression of our cultural "Christianity". When you say "religion" in America it really only brings to mind one thing and we all know what it is. Trying to pull out our English translations and looking for the word "religion" really missed the point. I don't think that anyone can seriously look at a place like James 1:27: "Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world" and suggest with a straight face that our cultural religion has that in mind.

Some of the anti-religion stuff is overblown. I get that. Being "non-religious" is a religion for some people. There are a lot of very religious people who make a big show of piously pointing out how non-religious they are, just as they are plenty of modest and simple Christians who are just as prideful about their plainness as a woman with a Prada bag is about her fashion sense. However I think this video really resonates with the huge number of people who love Christ but are sick to death of the empty ritualism and power struggles and political machinations and money grubbing that are hallmarks of much of the organized religious world of the institutionalized church.

What was even more interesting to me was the complete overreaction by so many Christians in the other direction, those who sense in any critique or suggestion of room for improvement in the church an attitude tantamount to heresy. The video and the response it generated led to comments in opposition from lots of quarters, often from the usual suspects. If I may be so bold, there is a sizable contingent in the church that sees any questioning of our religious traditions as a threat to their status, their power and their livelihood. Not everyone or even most of those who reacted negatively to this video fall into this category but that is certainly a factor. I asked the question last night: who benefits from perpetuating organized religion? It is not the widow or orphan that is often at best an afterthought in "the church". It is not the average Christian who spends a lifetime being semonized and never equipped for ministry, living trapped in spiritual infancy. Certainly it is not the average pastor who spends years saddled with debt from seminary getting a degree that has no correlation to qualifications for leadership and ministry and who labors under an unbelievable and unbearable burden until he burns out and quits. Organized religion is big business and business in America has been very, very good for a long time.

What has been encouraging is the way that Jefferson responded to the criticisms aimed his way, This is what he wrote on his Facebook page....

If you are using my video to bash "the church" be careful. I was in no way intending to do that. My heart came from trying to highlight and expose legalism and hypocrisy. The Church is Jesus' bride so be careful how you speak of His wife. If a normal dude has right to get pissed when you bash His wife, it makes me tremble to think how great the weight is when we do it to Jesus' wife. The church is His vehicle to reach a lost word. A hospital for sinners. Saying you love Jesus but hate the Church, is like a fiancé saying he loves his future bride, but hates her kids. We are all under grace. Look to Him.

I am glad to see that Jefferson Bethke recognized the controversy that ensued and made a humble statement to clarify. If only those who used this video as an opportunity to attack him and anyone else who questions the traditions of man that infect the church would exhibit the same sort of humility. I have to say that I don't know of many people who say "I love Jesus but hate the Church" unless you assume that all expressions of what we call "church" are created equal. In fact I would go so far as to say that many people, myself included, who call out the places where the institutional church has strayed from the Biblical pattern do so precisely because we love Jesus and we love His church. I love the church and it truly pains me to see it reduced to religion and so many Christians silenced and shackled while an overburdened few shoulder the entire work of ministry, a work that is so great it demands every Christian be involved rather than just a select professional few. It is not because we hate the Church or are anti-authority or want our own needs met. It is because we have searched the Scriptures and found a serious problem, one that goes back for centuries and that must be thrown down.

Let me say this carefully and clearly. Expressing concern about the tendency of organized religion to replace community within the Body of Christ, questioning traditions and rituals that men have used for centuries to control people, suggesting that professionalization and subcontracting ministry, etc. is not bashing the Church. Not every tradition and institution that we attach the name "church" to is above reproach. Jesus Himself didn't ignore the emprty religious traditions and false piety of the religion of His day, even when that religious tradition of Judaism was God's chosen vessel to bring forth the Messiah.

So I appreciate the voice that Jefferson Bethke has given to so many people who know something is wrong but maybe can't put their finger on it or who have been cowed into silence by the religious leaders of our day. I pray most sincerely for God to raise up more men who will say the hard things and ask the tough question and for men who will humbly but unflinchingly stand up to those who would seek to shout or sneer them down. We need men like Luther and Felix Manz and Conrad Grebel who will stand for Scripture when the predominate religious culture of the day is more interested in maintaining power and propping up traditions. Turning to ritual and religion is natural for men, it takes a supernatural intervention for men to break free. The church is not about religion or ritual or power or prestige or politics or money. It is about a Person who has redeemed a people and made them His Bride. The sooner we get that truth front and center in our lives, the sooner we will see restoration take place.

What Not To Wear

2012-01-13T09:30:00.000-05:00

Duane Liftin, former president of Wheaton College, writes for Christianity Today with an article titled Clothing Matters: What We Wear to Church.

Over the last several generations, American attire in general has lurched dramatically toward the informal. A feature that quickly dates an old photograph, for instance, is the men wearing fedoras; most today wouldn't know where to find one. Those who are old enough can remember when travelers got spiffed up to board an airplane. Today's travelers think nothing of flying in duds they might wear to the gym. Or consider the rise of the term "business casual." In most parts of the country, though not all, even the corporate setting has grown less formal.

These changes are part of a broad shift toward the convenient and comfortable. It's a shift we see on display every week in our worship services. In many churches casual wear is de rigueur. It's easy to imagine how one might look over-dressed there, but less easy, short of immodesty, to imagine being under-dressed. Jeans or shorts, tee shirts or tank tops, flip-flops or sandals: these draw scarcely any attention, while full dresses or a suit and tie appear strangely out of place. Relaxed, even rumpled informality is in; suiting up in our "Sunday best" is out. The question I want to raise here is, What should we make of this shift in worship attire?

Many seem convinced it's a good thing, because, again, it's the heart that counts. Yet precisely for this reason—because it's the heart that counts—I want to suggest that what we wear in our public worship may matter more than we think. To grasp this connection, let us draw on some helpful insights from the field of communication.

Duane's basic argument is that how we dress when we gather as the church, "to worship", is a reflection of our heart and how serious we are about our faith. This is a pretty common belief in the church (followed in a close second by those who think that intentionally dressing in a culturally hip way makes them more "authentic"). I am afraid I must disagree.

Where Duane goes wrong starts right with his assumptions about the church. He speaks again and again about "worship" but I have come to really question if religious observations are what the Bible meant when it speaks of worship. Is "worship" the reason we gather? Is there a correlation between the Old Covenant forms of worship with careful ceremony or is the New Covenant form of worship completely different from the Old? Much of his argument is based in two streams of reasoning. One is that our culture attaches unique significance to how we dress. The other is the Old Covenant with its carefully ordered forms of worship, esp. in the tabernacle/temple. Neither of these streams of reasoning is especially compelling. It is not like Paul wore a suit when he met with the church. In fact I would be willing to wager that he often ministered to people, preaching the Gospel and teaching the church, while wearing dirty work clothes.

The idea of church as consisting of sacred time observing sacred activities in sacred spaces by holy men has a serious hold on the church culture of the West for centuries, going way back to the early days of Roman Catholicism. I also believe that is where we get our traditional understanding of the church gathering as a modified Mass. The people gather for a religious ritual, wearing their "Sunday best" to differentiate between the sacred world of "church" and the profane secular world of everyday life. I was always a suit and tie guy for church, esp. if I was teaching. Now, I feel free to wear khakis and a polo shirt or even jeans. Many people will affirm that church is about more than the Sunday morning meeting but boy we sure make it seem like that hour or two on Sunday is the focal point of the church.

Then there is this....

Evangelistic gatherings can in many ways be designed to fit the unbelievers we are trying to reach. But this is harder to do with our corporate worship. The church must first shape its worship to honor God, a goal to which all else must be subordinate. But thankfully, watching believers do what they do can have its own evangelistic effect. When Christians are worshiping as they should, says the apostle, and "and an unbeliever or outsider enters, he is convicted by all, he is called to account by all, the secrets of his heart are disclosed, and so, falling on his face, he will worship God and declare that God is really among you" (1 Cor. 14:24–25). Attire that genuinely reflects a God-honoring attitude toward worship may well contribute to a similar result.

Is that true? Or is it perhaps more likely that those who truly need to hear the Gospel, those most desperate for the King, are discouraged from coming to a neat and tidy "house of worship" where they don't fit in because their clothes are shabby and wrinkled? Are we impressing people with our dressing up and external piety or are we portraying the religious hypocrisy that Jesus so despised? Is church designed to be attractive to the already religious even though we assume that non-believers are welcome to come and hear the Gospel? Are we like the Pharisees:

"Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness. These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others. You blind guides, straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel! "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. You blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and the plate, that the outside also may be clean. "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people's bones and all uncleanness. So you also outwardly appear righteous to others, but within you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness. (Matthew 23:23-28)

I kind of feel like we are actually being counter-productive in a lot of the church by presenting Christ as an organization to follow, a culture to join, traditions to embrace more than a King to follow. I don't think that the "church" draws people as much as it repels them or at least discourages them. I am quite comfortable in "church culture". I have a bunch of conservative suits, dress shirts and ties so for me dressing up to "go to church" is easy. For someone who doesn't know how to tie a tie or who doesn't own any clothing nicer than faded jeans? Is there a welcoming place for them? I don't mean someone saying good morning, shaking their hand and giving them a "visitor packet". I am talking about feeling like they can be a part of this community. The people I meet in places like the crisis pregnancy center where I volunteer are not going to feel comfortable in our Western church culture and if our church traditions and culture are a barrier to the Gospel how can they be healthy?

The Bible is not silent on matters of our attire. Women are to cover their heads when praying or prophesying, something few women even in the most formal church. Few preachers bring it up because it is far easier to talk about wearing nice clothes to church than it is for women to cover their heads and mess up their carefully coiffed hair. Women are also called to dress modestly (at all times not just "at church") but that often clashes with our notion of fashion and appropriate church attire. What is clear is that cultural expectations of "proper" clothing to worship is entirely absent. I think the last thing the church was worried about in the first century was making sure that they wore culturally appropriate attire to gather with the church. In fact it seems that this is a symptom of a church that has nothing better to worry about. We don't face real opposition or persecution. We are comfortably cocooned in the culture. So we find stuff like this to worry about or "worship style" or nuances of theology or any of the myriad other stuff we fight and fuss about. All the while those who need Jesus are dying all around us, many of them in church wearing their nicest suit.

It may sound trite but I am more concerned about what is in a person's heart and how God is working in their lives than I am with what they are wearing. What do you think, does God care what we wear to church?

An interesting notion

2012-01-13T09:06:00.000-05:00

Eric Carpenter makes an interesting observation in his brief post: Communion and Fellowship. Eric says:

I find it terribly ironic that most churches do not celebrate Communion in their Fellowship Halls. Instead, the sanctuary/worship center is the place.

The irony is that the words "communion" and "fellowship" are nearly synonymous. Additionally, most times in life a supper is held in a room for eating. In light of this, a room designed from free-flowing fellowship and robust eating seems like a perfect spot for Communion.

I have wondered that as well. Can you imagine in many churches if the pastor said "We are going to observe the Lord's Supper but this time we are going to move to the fellowship hall and share a meal together"? I think a lot of people would be confused. I think many would be upset. Our cultural understanding is that sharing a meal in fellowship with the church is something completely separate from observing the Lord's Supper even though it certainly appears that they were one and the same in Scripture. It seems so odd to me that churches have a hall set aside for occasional fellowship but don't use it for the fellowship of the Table. I can think of no better way to enjoy community fellowship than around a shared meal. It is high time to get the Lord's Supper out of the pews and back around tables where it belongs!

Two years later in pictures

2012-01-12T08:46:00.000-05:00

Boston.com often has great photo galleries of high quality pictures and they put one out yesterday of photos of life in Haiti two years after the earthquake: Haiti slow to recover from 2010 quake . The pictures are high quality so the page might be slow to load. The 9th and 10th pictures are especially poignant photos of the orphanage being built by the family of Britney Gengel who sent a final text message to her family right before the earthquake saying she wanted to build an orphanage in Haiti. She died in the earthquake but her family is carrying out her dream (you can read about her here, BeLikeBrit )

Two Years Later

2012-01-12T08:30:00.037-05:00

Today marks a terrible anniversary. It has been two years since the earthquake struck the impoverished nation of Haiti on January 12, 2010, destroying much of the country and leaving a nation that was already the poorest in the Western hemisphere in a crisis. During the earthquake thousands of Haitians were killed and many, many children became orphans in a country without even a rudimentary social safety net. The humanitarian crisis the earthquake left behind is incomprehensible to most Americans, even those of us who have visited Haiti and come to love her and her people.

Today, two years later things are not much better in Haiti. It has been a year since I was there and while there is a new President, Michel Martelly, things are still pretty rough. With little in the way of a functional infrastructure or government, daily survival still dominates life in Haiti.

That doesn't mean there is not hope. God's people have responded in a wonderful way to the call to come to Haiti's aid. The Haiti Orphan Project has completed work on Village de Vie and up to 100 orphans and abandoned children will be able to receive care thanks to the hard work and generous donations of so many Christians. What does this "care" look like? Well it looks like this:

We have partnered with The Philadelphia Evangelical Church in the city of Gonaives to help them care for up to 100 orphans. Care includes housing, food, clothing, education and clean drinking water. The schools we build serve the orphans and children from the surrounding community. In addition, we help the local people establish micro-business enterprises such as sewing centers, agricultural projects, bakeries and clean water centers. These not only provide sustainable resources for the orphans, but jobs for Haitians and a means of income to support the “villages.”

I am so thankful for the opportunity to help in even a small way in this work of mercy and love. I thought this would be a good time to repost my article Why Haiti from January 2011, kind of my summary of why Haiti has taken such a hold on my heart. I encourage you who are reading this to find some way, however small or inconsequential it may seem, to minister to the least of these and show the love of Christ to those who so desperately need Him, whether in Haiti or Ethiopia or right around the corner.

------
So why Haiti of all places? There are needs all over the world, why this one country, why this particular cause? Why the Haiti Orphan Project?

Well there are lots of reasons.

First, because this cause is better than none. Let me explain. It is easy to talk about caring for the least of these in an academic sense. Putting forth a solid theology of orphan care is nice but we are not called to be a people of talk, but of action. God saved us and He saved us for a specific purpose:

For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. (Ephesians 2:10)

We are not saved by good works but we most certainly are saved to them. As I will mention below, I believe that this cause is one of those “good works” that God has prepared for me long before I was born to carry out as His child and to bring honor and glory to the name of His Son. God did not predestine us just to salvation but to good works as well. There are no sidelines in the Kingdom of God.

Second, because I sort of know someone who is involved. I “know” Les Prouty, the executive director of the Haiti Orphan Project because we have run into one another over the internet (in a non-creepy way), initially from good natured but spirited arguments with Les regarding his erroneous view of baptism. He is someone I respect and trust so when I saw that he was involved in this cause, I decided to look a little closer. You have to be careful with that because you never know what that will get you into. In my case it is getting me into a plane and leaving the country. Considering that I have never been to a foreign country before (I don’t consider Canada to be a real country), this is going to be a jarring experience but one that I pray will stretch me and fill me with zeal for His Kingdom.

Third, the need is so great. This is a tragic situation the scope of which we cannot even imagine as Americans. With literally hundreds of thousands of orphans how can it be otherwise? In a country with it’s act together that would be a staggering number but Haiti has been basically adrift since the earthquake last January and even before that has been going from one crisis and upheaval to another for 200 years. Haiti is parked just a short flight from Miami and in the middle of the Caribbean. By all rights Haiti should be a lush tropical paradise and a destination for tourists but of all of the nations in the Western hemisphere, Haiti is generally considered the worst off and the events of the last year have made it so much worse. Every child we can impact will hopefully grow into an adult who will first and foremost know Jesus Christ and also be equipped to lead this nation out of the bondage of two hundred years of mismanagement, corruption and violence. It can seem hopeless but if something isn’t done in Haiti from the ground up the same problems will still be in place two hundred years from now.

Fourth, 100% of the funds raised go directly to ministry. This is a small group but one that has an outsized impact. Because of the way the Haiti Orphan Project is structured, there is no overhead. The individuals going all raise all of their own funds for these trips (thanks mom!) and unlike some of the huge mercy ministry organizations none of the funds given to the Haiti Orphan Project go to pay for staff or overhead. From the webpage of the HOP:

1. 100% of your tax-deductible gifts are used to care for orphans. Care includes housing, food & water, clothing and school, as well as the local Haitian people actually caring for these children. NONE of your contributions are used to cover overhead here in the US such as salaries, administrative costs, supplies, printing, etc. The overhead is funded from generous donors to ensure that your gifts go entirely to orphan care.

I am leery of donating to places that spend a large percentage of their costs on overhead. I understand why it can be necessary but I prefer to give where my donation goes right to the need instead of paying the light bill in an office in Dallas or Portland.

Fifth, I feel called. I say that cautiously because I think it is an overused term in the church. “I feel called” often really means “This is what I decided to do and I hope God is OK with it” but in this case I think it really applies. From the beginning I was shaken by the catastrophic earthquake and aftermath of Haiti. As I watched in dismay over what was happening, I began to understand the impact this was having on Haitians in general but especially on the children. With some 750,000 orphans the need is immediate and severe and it was something that really stuck with me in a way that other catastrophes didn’t. There was just something about this country, something about the pictures of the children with smiles and faces full of hope in a country where by rights they have precious little expectation of anything good that draws me in.

If you are working with and actively supporting a mercy ministry, whether it involves you traveling to Ethiopia or Brazil or some other far away land or whether you are involved in a local ministry like a homeless shelter or crisis pregnancy center, God be with you. If you are a follower of Christ and haven’t really gotten directly involved with ministry outside of your local church, please prayerfully consider supporting and advocating for Haiti’s orphans. If you are so led, please check out their webpage here. If you have any questions, there is a contact form on the webpage and you can expect to hear back from Les in a hurry (unless he is in Haiti at the time!).

Leaving our preferences at the cross

2012-01-11T15:41:00.001-05:00

I have been engaged in a pretty interesting discussion on Google+ centered around my prior post, Can We Just be Friends? It has been interesting because it gets to the very fine line between unity in spite of differences and unity in spite of heresy and sin. I think we are so used to division being "business as usual" in the church that suggestions that pehaps that division is not only not normal but even unacceptable are met with some pretty strong disagreement. We grew up in the church, whether as kids or as adults, just assuming that some people go to one kind of church and others go somewhere different and that is just normal and perhaps even healthy.

In comes a very interesing post from Michael Young, What I’ve Learned in Organic Church: The Difference Between Brotherhood and Buddyhood (this includes Sisterhood) that looks at the difference between brotherhood and buddyhood:

This is the difference in brotherhood and buddyhood. Brotherhood goes to the cross, dies to self in order to see the Lord’s goals are met. Buddyhood simply wishes to see others that I prefer to hang out with met. I’m not saying that we don’t become buddies in the church. We do. But it’s beyond that…much beyond.span>

I so get that. I think we all naturally gravitate toward those we feel the most affinity for. It is rampant in certain parts of the church, like in the Reformed wing where some Christians will drive very long distances just to meet with other Reformed Christians where they are most comfortable. Charismatics like charismatic churches. Presbyterians like Presbyterian churches. We get uncomfortable and ill at ease about change and differences to our religious routine that we end up just running in the same circles, reading the same books and blogs and doing things the same way because it is what we know and what we like.

As Michael puts it,

Now, there’s nothing wrong with this. But if organic church is to work, we must take our relationship preferences to the cross. We must let them die and allow the Lord to resurrect them.

We can’t make church work the way we want it to. We can’t meet around the fact that we are all into rock music, working out, sports, outdoor activities, hunting, fishing, surfing, or a long list of other things. We have to meet around the Lord Jesus Christ and our common bond to see His eternal purpose seen on the earth; that He would have a place to dwell, a temple made up of brothers and sisters in Christ. Without that, we become just another club. And the church of Jesus Christ is not a club. It’s something much deeper, much more grand, much more precious, and holds much more responsibility.

Taking our preferences to the cross and letting them die there. That sounds great but man is that hard! One of the hardest things about seeking a deeper sense of community is the inherent danger that when you let people in to your little world they are likely to make a mess and you might find that you don't like them or agree with them very much. On the other hand in our natural state we were enemies of God, sinners in open rebellion against Him and yet He still sent His Son to die for the sins of His elect and adopted us into His family. If He did that for us I guess we can learn to get along in spite of our differences and quirks and annoying habits!

Big Book Giveaway!

2012-01-11T11:16:00.000-05:00

Check out this great book giveway going on now!

Massive Book Giveaway Extravaganza!

Irony Alert!

2012-01-11T09:09:00.000-05:00

A quick political diversion...

In the upcoming South Carolina primary two Roman Catholics will be vying for the “Evangelical vote” while many of those same evangelicals are rejecting the one remaining viable candidate who actually is an evangelical because he is insufficiently committed to preemptive warfare...

Politics indeed makes strange bedfellows…

More on The Church of Middle-Class American Virtues

2012-01-10T16:12:00.000-05:00

Try to think of this without bias:

When you think of the word “Christian”, what image comes to mind?

Do you see a happy, smiley family in their “Sunday best” sitting in a pew, listening attentively to a sermon? That is the picture the culture paints for us, Ned Flanders on a massive scale.

Now ask yourself:

What image do you think the word “Christian” brought to mind for people in the first century?

Hopefully you are not getting the same image but with nice togas and sandals instead of suits and dresses!

Christians in the first century were outcasts and social misfits. They were on the outside of the culture, not seeking political victory but just survival while proclaiming Christ, a message that they knew full well would place the life of a new believer in peril. The matters that concern us today would be bewildering to a first century Christian. Politics? Budgets? What in the world are you talking about?! Of course not all Christians, even in the first century, were destitute outcasts. Certainly some Christians were well-to-do but those who were seemed content to give away their wealth, even to the point of selling their lands and houses:

There was not a needy person among them, for as many as were owners of lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold and laid it at the apostles' feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need. Thus Joseph, who was also called by the apostles Barnabas (which means son of encouragement), a Levite, a native of Cyprus, sold a field that belonged to him and brought the money and laid it at the apostles' feet. (Acts 4:34-37 ESV)

Can you imagine that?! Imagine the wealthiest Christian in your assembly deciding to sell his home and land to give to the neediest Christians in that church assembly. It is really unthinkable and no one would even consider that to be an issue. Now can you imagine a pastor telling his congregation boldly that the home owners sitting in the pews needed to sell their house to give to the needy families in the church? He would be looking for a new job right quick. We have a hard enough time getting people to put a couple of bucks in the plate that will mostly go to benefit themselves. In the first century it apparently was pretty common place to make those sorts of demands in a culture where the Gospel call came with the equivalent of a social/cultural/economic death sentence. Picking up your cross and following Him might mean picking up an actual cross with your name on it!

This is the same atmosphere that the Anabaptists encountered for many years. Someone who left the dominant "church", whether Catholic or Protestant, to follow the simpler way of the Anabaptists was likely forfeiting their cultural status, their property and tragically too often their lives. This was common knowledge. When I think of ministers struggling to put together a 45 minute sermon to “preach” for the upcoming Sunday, I wonder what they would have done in the 1st century or the 16th century when you were proclaiming a message that people knew could lead to their imprisonment, torture and death. “Come join us and probably be burned at the stake” is not the sort of message you put on a door hangar or a flyer you hand out at parades. It might not be a message a church growth expert would recommend but that was the message that the apostles and the Anabaptists preached and is still preached by many missionaries in the hard places of the world today. In some crazy way, that message drew in people who were willing to give it all away for the sake of the Gospel. What happened?

The Gospel we preach today, in “Christian America” and the rest of the West doesn’t really have the same urgency does it? In a culture where people are assumed “Christian until proven otherwise”, changing churches has little impact and having your name on a church registry is synonymous with being a Christian and getting out of hell. The message we preach is mostly one that calls on people to come to church, a message with little in the way of sacrifice. Don’t want to give up your wealth? You don’t need to, all you need to do is put a token amount in the plate! Don’t want to be involved in a community of believers? No need, we just ask that you come forward once so we can accept you into the church with a chorus of “Amen!” and then just show up regularly! Worried about witnessing and sharing your faith with others? Not a problem, we have professionals to do that!

We like our Christianity clean, neat and tidy. We like to count our victories in elections and membership numbers, not in tears and blood and dirt and even death. No one is asking us to sacrifice very much and we sure aren’t volunteering to do so.

Christians, we are called to impact the world by the basin, not the ballot box. We will not win a single soul to Christ by outlawing abortion (something I think should be outlawed) or by defeating “gay marriage”. We will not see people change or experience revival in the church by proclaiming a cultural message of middle-class morality and virtue. The Gospel we have been preaching is precariously close to being “another gospel” like the one Paul warned about. Sure it might be theologically airtight but in terms of changed lives it falls woefully short because it changes attitudes rather than changing lives. It is great at making immoral non-religious hypocrites into moral religious hypocrites. In other words it is great at filling churches with people who have middle-class American virtues who vote the right way but little else. We need to get back to the old time Gospel and I don’t mean the Gospel preached in America in the 1950’s. I mean the life changing Gospel that commands people to repent and follow Christ and that comes along with a promise of hardship and trouble in this life. It might not preach well from a pulpit but it is desperately needed in the church, starting right at my own doorstep.

Can We Just Be Friends?

2012-01-09T12:00:00.000-05:00

Back in the day when I was in high school and still dating, that phrase or some variation of it was the kiss of death. You were basically saying "I don't want to date you anymore but I don't hate you. Please go away." It indicates an unwillingness to be committed to another person. Within the church it is often viewed the same way. Just being friends is really not good enough. Christians "commit" to one local church, one group of "like minded" individuals Christians united together more by a shared set of values and secondary doctrines than by community and geography. Drive around a suburb in the Midwest or South on Sunday and you will see minivans full of families in their Sunday best, all driving in different directions heading off to "their church", passing other Christians who live near them and other churches that are close to them in favor of the church that is just to their liking. But when the Bible speaks of the church, especially in Paul's epistles, it seems to be directed at all Christians in a particular geographic area (the church in Ephesus, the churches of Galatia) rather than individual local churches as we understand it.

We have been going to a couple of more traditional local churches while trying to figure out what to do, one a super conservative Mennonite church on Sunday evenings and the other a pretty vanilla evangelical church on Sunday morning. We go to that one because it is the closest "church" to us and I just am sick to my stomach when I think about all of the neighbors around our area who drive past one another and half a dozen churches to get to their preferred venue each Sunday. Where we go on Sunday mornings is about a mile from our house (which is a big deal given how sparse the population is around us!) and most of the people who attend live right around us. It is probably not a group I would naturally gravitate to but it is the closest gathering of Christians to us and that is where we go because getting to know and form relationships with our neighbors trumps my discomfort at doctrinal imprecision.

In a lot of ways, this gathering is like so many others we have known over the years. A pretty old population with a scattering of younger families.The facility has capacity for a much larger crowd but turmoil over the years has led to lots of people looking for greener pastures at other churches, notably a large evangelical "magnet" church about half an hour away that draws a very large crowd with high production value meetings. I get it. When you get fed up with the strife of a small church, a large gathering where you can be anonymous has a lot of appeal. This turmoil has happened several times in recent years coupled with some not great hiring decisions and the result is a lot of empty pews with simply heinous bright orange upholstery (they are comfy though!). The pews on one half of the room yesterday, pews that would easily hold 60-70 people, had maybe 4-5 people. So you can imagine the reaction to a family with 8 kids showing up!

The pastor of this group is brand new, I think we attended on one of his first Sundays. This is his first "pastoral calling", prior to this he worked a regular secular job and he is a bit nervous in general and still kind of feeling his way around. I remember that feeling well. It is intimidating and a bit overwhelming to come into a new church with all of the pressure that our church culture places on the pastor (a pressure that I and others willingly and eagerly accepted for sure). He has mentioned he and I getting together for coffee or something this week and I am looking forward to getting to know him outside of "church". We had the chance to speak yesterday during a shared meal with the church after the morning gathering and the topic of "membership" came up.

I am sure it is pretty clear that I have no use for formal church membership. I am hoping it is not a major sticking point as it is in so many other local churches. I am also going to try to not "win" an argument about why I think it is unbiblical and unhealthy but rather to reinforce my desire to be of service to fellow believers in whatever way I can without being required to enter into an extra-biblical tradition. This is a group that certainly can use some help, with an aged population that seems to me, as an outsider coming in, very plateaued spiritually. The open question becomes whether someone who is not a formal member of that church can teach and minister there or not.

A lot of Christians assume that someone who declines to become a "member" of a local church is either anti-authority or afraid of commitment. I suppose those pat answers are easier to handle than grappling with the very real problems with a dogmatic insistence on a formal church membership, not least of which is the utter absence in command or example from Scriptures. I certainly am not "anti-authority" so much as I am concerned with artificial, unscriptural and damaging manmade authority structures being applied to the church. I am also not averse to commitment but I am averse to commitment that excludes others or making an extra-biblical tradition a condition for full fellowship within the Body. Formal church membership divides believers in a geographic area into "my church" and "not my church". I don't care how you parse it or how many annual Easter prayer breakfasts you hold, the net result of formalizing church membership is division. The local church where you place your membership is "your church" and every other gathering of believers is not.

The reasoning that accompanies demands for formal church membership are on pretty shaky foundations, many based far more in pragmatism than Scripture. For example, I have often seem it said that it is unfair to the elders to not have formal membership commitments and covenants because it makes it impossible to know who they are responsible to care for. Set aside for a moment the idea that elders need a list to know who they should be caring for. What is implicit in that idea is that an individual elder is not an elder in the church, he is only an elder of his church. So as an elder I would only be responsible for those people who were also members of my church. Taking that further, an elder would be responsible for someone who lives half an hour away that they see for a couple of hours a week "at church" but not for a Christian who lives around the corner from them. I doubt anyone would come right out and say that but functionally that is how we seem to operate. When I read in the Scriptures I am not sure that is how it worked. When Paul called the elders of the church in Ephesus to come to him, was he calling the elders of individual local churches or all of the men in Ephesus who were recognized by the church as elders? The latter seems more in keeping with the full witness of the New Testament.

So we will see. Our ultimate goal is a more "organic" community sort of fellowship that not only goes beyond Sunday morning meetings but perhaps even eschews them entirely in favor of a more full-time community. Until that comes to fruition or at least starts taking shape, we find ourselves regularly in more traditional settings. For all of the frustration that accompanies the traditional church setting, they are also (to paraphrase the apocryphal statement of Willie Sutton) where the Christians are. Not every Christian is found in a traditional church setting and not everyone (or even a majority) of those in a traditional church setting are Christians but it remains the case even our our rapidly changing post-Christendom culture that Sunday mornings are still the overwhelmingly dominant venue for the church to gather. In the year that we have lived in this area we have met lots of Christians from a pretty diverse spectrum of the church. Far from being a bad thing, this has given us deeper roots in the Christian community all around us and that can only be helpful in finding fellowship, edification and encouragement for ministry. The adventure continues....

Revisiting Christians and the sword

2012-01-09T09:30:00.000-05:00

A couple of years ago in January of 2010 I did a series on Christians and the sword, a look at the Scriptural basis for non-resistance versus a limited use of the sword for self-defense and/or service in a military. I still find it ironic and more than a little troubling that of all the things I have written, many intentionally controversial, perhaps no other topic has received such a heated response as the suggestion that Christians shouldn't kill others in the defense of self or property or at the demand of the nation they live in.

My position coming into this series was quite different from my past positions and if anything I have grown even more firm in my stance on this contentious issue. Throughout Christian history there is a definite and often tragic linkage between Christians and the state. To an extent we see that still today, especially in the West where the church and the state are in an uneasy state of co-dependence that sees many Christians willing and often eager to use violence to defend life or property or in the service of their nation to defend a certain "way of life" that is deemed more precious than the life of another.

I would welcome your interaction. Am I overstating the case? Oversimplifying it? As you read and interact, please keep in mind that what I am concerned with primarily is the Scriptural position, not hypothetical "yeah but..." statements. To clarify further, I would classify my position as non-resistance, contrasted with those who see our mission as including societal peacemaking changes through demonstrations or political action. Here is the series...

The state, the sword and Christians

Can Christians take up the sword? - Intro

Can Christians take up the sword? - The pro-sword view

Can Christians take up the sword? - The anti-sword view

Can Christians take up the sword? - Conclusion

The Church of Middle-Class American Virtue

2012-01-05T09:30:00.001-05:00

Rick Santorum, the 2011 iteration of Mike Huckabee and Pat Robertson, is the "social conservative" of the day. He is supposed to support the readily identifiable Christian values of being anti-abortion and anti-"gay marriage". In the eyes of many evangelicals, he is the champion of social conservative values, even making the list of the top 25 most influential evangelicals although he is a Roman Catholic. It has made me wonder, not so much about Santorum but the idea of one political philosophy being considered the "Christian" philosophy. Are the values of "social conservatives" Christian values or are they middle-class America virtues (and if you don't understand that there is a difference between the two, we have a bigger issue)

According to his campaign website, Rick is pro-life:

Rick Santorum not only believes but cherishes the ideal of a culture of life.

Amen to that. Of course on his page he also seems not only willing but rather eager to attack Iran for developing weapons that we have possessed for over 65 years and have used twice on a civilian population...

Would work with Israel to eliminate the Iranian nuclear threat immediately; and developing a potential plan for military action if needed

Would work with Israel to determine the proper military response needed to stabilize the region, protect our allies and protect this country – including the authorization of targeted airstrikes on Iranian nuclear facilities

Eliminate the threat "immediately". Military action. Military response. Targeted airstrikes.

I guess a "culture of life" only applies to Americans and Israelis.

I understand the geo-political situation in the Middle East, probably more so now than at any other time in my life. I certainly don't draw an equivalence between the democratically elected representative government of the United States and the nutjobs running Iran. I am merely suggesting that eagerness to bomb yet another Middle Eastern country because of the perceived threat of possibly developing a nuclear weapon is not only the same rationale that led to the invasion of Iraq and the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians, it is in no way a Christian value. A middle class, "America (and Israel) first" value? Yes. The values one would develop from following Christ? No.

In the same way, while I think that lower taxes and generally less regulation is healthier for the economy and less government is better than more, those are not "Christian" values. A lot of people believe in those ideals and are not believers in any sense of the word including many Republicans politicians (Mitt Romney for example). Conversely a fair number of believers are of the opinion, incorrectly in my mind, that more government is best and that higher taxes on the "rich" is "fair". While we would disagree on the specifics the reality is that our comprehensive political positions are not uniquely "Christian values".

This is not just to pick on Rick Santorum. He is just the latest iteration of the political social conservative that supposedly espouse and epitomize "Christian" values, a values system that is nothing more than religiously based economic and moral conservatism dressed up in churchy language. Supporting the "right" of a woman to kill her unborn child is clearly antithetical to the Gospel and the Biblical belief of imago dei, that all humans are created in the image of God. So is the idea of killing for country, for national "security", to defend Israel, etc. With the new found fervor over Rick Santorum, especially among social conservatives who believe he is "our guy", lets be cautious and remember that neither political party has a corner of "Christian values".

The first martyr of the Radical Reformation

2012-01-05T08:30:00.002-05:00

Today, January 5th, marks the 485th anniversary of the first martyr of the “Radical Reformation” on 1/5/1527. Felix Manz was executed by drowning in Lake Zurich, the first of a tragically large number of dissenters to be martyred by Roman Catholics and Protestants alike. We often think of the martyrs of the reformation era as men and women murdered by Roman Catholic authorities (i.e. Foxes Book of Martyrs) but the ugly truth is that often it was professing Christians murdering fellow believers over issues of doctrine.

Episodes like the martyring of Felix Manz are disquieting because we place such a reverence on the Reformation era and the Reformers. Men like Calvin, Luther and Zwingli are some of the heroes of the faith because of their deep and voluminous writings. Their writings are unmatched for depth and being simply exhaustive. Nevertheless, men like Zwingli and Calvin are redeemed sinners the same as any of Christian and are as flawed as any man. Love covers a multitude of sins (1 Peter 4:8), writing a great treatise on theology doesn’t. Zwingli reportendly wrote this regarding Manz two days before his death: "The Anabaptist, who should already have been sent to the devil , disturbs the peace of the pious people. But I believe, the ax will settle it." . My point here is not to burn the Reformers in effigy but instead to remember the courageous death of a fellow believer who paid for his conviction with his own life in a manner that is worthy of any of the great martyrs of faith.

We can dance around this all we like. Technically, Manz was executed by drowning because he broke the law (i.e. was baptizing people) but make no mistake. This was a theological issue being settled by the sword far more than a civil legal issue. He was murdered for questioning the doctrine of infant bapstism as a holdover from Rome. These were the charges brought against him:

"because contrary to Christian order and custom he had become involved in Anabaptism, had accepted it, taught others, and become a leader and beginner of these things because he confessed having said that he wanted to gather those who wanted to accept Christ and follow Him, and unite himself with them through baptism, and let the rest live according to their faith, so that he and his followers separated themselves from the Christian Church and were about to raise up and prepare a sect of their own under the guise of a Christian meeting and church; because he had condemned capital punishment, and in order to increase his following had boasted of certain revelations from the Pauline Epistles. But since such doctrine is harmful to the unified usage of all Christendom, and leads to offense, insurrection, and sedition against the government, to the shattering of the common peace, brotherly love, and civil cooperation and to all evil, Manz shall be delivered to the executioner, who shall tie his hands, put him into a boat, take him to the lower hut, there strip his bound hands down over his knees, place a stick between his knees and arms, and thus push him into the water and let him perish in the water; thereby he shall have atoned to the law and justice. . . . His property shall also be confiscated by my lords."

“Harmful to the unified usage of all Christendom”? I don’t think drowning dissenters was what Jesus had in mind when He prayed for unity among His people in John 17: 21 . I especially like the part where they confiscate his property. Felix Manz was not a violent revolutionary like the men at Muenster. All he sought was “to bring together those who were willing to accept Christ, obey the Word, and follow in His footsteps, to unite with these by baptism, and to leave the rest in their present conviction”. The crime of Felix Manz was shaking up the religious order of things, kind of like another group about 1500 years earlier (see Acts 4: 13-21). By refusing to baptize infants and insisting on baptizing willing adults, Manz was imprisoned several times, threatened with death and ultimately executed by drowning.

What Felix Manz was promoting is the basic belief of thousands of churches and millions of Christians in America, i.e. the baptism of believers and the voluntary association of Christians in the church. Try to imagine if the city council in Louisville decreed it illegal to refuse to baptize infants under penalty of death and further try to imagine if “Christian” ministers in Louisville stood silently while this went on. Manz may have been the first martyr among the Anabaptists but he was hardly the last. We need to remember those who were slaughtered by other “Christians” when we remember the Reformation era.

How I wish we had more Christians today who had the force of conviction of men like Felix Manz, men willing to abandon all for the truth and who had the courage of conviction to stand up for the Gospel of Jesus Christ in the face of real persecution, men who were unsatisfied with the “halfway” measures of the magisterial Reformers and sought a full restitution of the Biblical pattern for the church.

Ephesians 4:11. It is not all about you.

2012-01-03T15:12:00.000-05:00

Alan linked back to one of my favorite posts he has written, a post looking at a non-traditional but very Biblical look at one of the most familiar and I think most misapplied Scriptures in all of the New Testament, Ephesians 4:11.

And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers,(Eph 4:11)

Traditionally we are taught that this, sometimes called the "five-fold ministry", is primarily about the "offices" in the church, esp. the office of pastor. It is particularly important for that purpose because in those translations that use the term "pastor", like the KJV, this is the only place it appears. Odd since pastors are such a focal point in the church. Anyway, Alan writes in the conclusion of his post, And he gave… (Ephesians 4:11) :

Taking all of this evidence together, I believe that Ephesians 4:11 was not intended as a list of specially gifted individuals who alone can equip the church for service. Instead, I believe that Ephesians 4:11 represents a sample of gifted individuals, much like we see in Romans 12:6-8, 1 Corinthians 12:8-10, and 1 Corinthians 12:28-30, none of which include all of the gifts because they are all meant as samples of spiritual gifts.

Just as Jesus gives apostles, prophets, evangelists, and pastors and teachers to the church to equip us for works of service, he also gives servants, helpers, givers, exhorters, healers, tongues speakers, and tongues interpreters (and ALL believers) to the church to equip us for works of service. The church is equipped for works of service and the church is built up toward maturity in Christ when every member of the church exercises the gifts given by Jesus through the Holy Spirit for the benefit of all.

I love it! Focusing on just the "specially gifted" in the church with faith in a theological "trickle down effect" has proven catastrophic for centuries. I love Arthur Laffer, just now when it comes to ecclesiology. Every person in the church has something to contribute and teach to others in the church, not just a few at "the top".

Just like the so-called "pastoral epistles" are not really aimed exclusively at pastors in general and certainly not vocational ministers in particular, when Ephesians 4:11 is read in context it is not about pastors or "leaders" at all. It is about the entire church, working together and edifying one another, becoming mature together.

Free Audio Book

2012-01-02T10:30:00.000-05:00

As usual Christian Audio has a free offering for January and this one is a good one. This month you can download J.I. Packer's Knowing God for free. I read through Knowing God a few years ago (actually 2005 according to Amazon so more than a few years ago!) and it was one of the best, most formative books I have ever read. I was thinking the other day that I need to reread it but now I can listen to it while doing something else, like blogging!

Home Educating Family Magazine Giveaway

2012-01-02T09:13:00.000-05:00

Home Educating Family is giving away some free subscriptions to their magazine, 6,000 Facebook Fan Giveaway!. If you are a homeschooling family, you should check it out and enter!

Back burner to us might be front burner to God

2012-01-02T08:02:00.000-05:00

Jeremy Myers has a guest post on Will Rochow's blog, Rethinking Faith and Church, that is worth your time. His post, Back Burner Ministry, rings true for a lot of Christians I am guessing and for a lot of different reasons. Here is some of what Jeremy wrote:

Most followers of Jesus eventually feel like they have been "put on the back burner." I suspect Moses felt like this while he was tending sheep for 40 years in the desert. Most of the prophets felt this way when they did their best to speak the Word of God, and only got mocked, jeered, and imprisoned in return. I'm pretty sure Saul (Paul) felt this way also after his conversion when he spent 14 years in Tarsus.

Maybe you are in a similar situation. You are in the boondocks. In the sticks. You feel like you are a nobody.

Sometimes we think this is because God is punishing us, but this is usually not the case. Most often, God puts us in such situations so we can mature and prepare for the next stage of ministry God has for us.

I think we are all to one extent or another caught up in the performance/celebrity mentality. We think that God is mostly or specially working through the famous preachers like John Piper or the big name ministries like Samaritans Purse. What can I possibly be doing in my little corner of the world doing some insignificant work of ministry? Struggling and praying and laboring to build one measly orphanage in Haiti? Pshaw! Leave it to the big boys, they know what they are doing. Just pay, pray and stay out of the way!

I understand what Jeremy says because I sometimes (oftentimes?) feel that what I am doing in ministry seems awfully unimportant. No one is inviting me to speak at a conference and publishers are not competing for my next book and every time I post on my blog those two things become less likely! I also think Jeremy makes several important points. God works in mysterious ways but we also know that He works in upside-down ways. In the Kingdom doesn't it seem that the older sister faithfully praying over her prayer list at home is at least as crucial as the famous preacher intoning an eloquent and well thought out corporate prayer in front of an audience of thousands? Is the sister praying for and crying with a hurting young woman at a crisis pregnancy center not doing the work of God just as much as the president of a national pro-life organization on CNN? The brother who is visiting prisoners in some out of the way prison is doing God's will as much as Chuck Colson. We have let the world define what is or is not important in the Kingdom and that makes no sense at all. I am like so many others in seeing more and more that God is at work in the little ministries, in the one-on-one relationships, in the "hopeless" causes at least as much as he is in the ministries with the slick marketing campaigns looking for your donation at the end of the year.

In the Kingdom there are no unimportant ministries even if the church treats some like they are, even inadvertently. I believe God delights in the ministry of the weak, the foolish, the uneducated, the flawed, the unpolished, the shoe-string budget. If you are a Christian, He is using you and no matter how He uses you it is important to Him so it should be important to us. Thanks to Will and Jeremy for this important reminder to start the new year. I encourage every Christian to seek out ways to serve God by serving others this year. Don't wait for someone else to do it and for crying out loud don't wait for some other person to give you permission or deem you qualified!

Apostles Only?

2011-12-30T11:30:00.001-05:00

Felicity Dale posted a fascinating question on her blog yesterday: Was the Great Commission given only to the eleven disciples?

I like her answer!

I believe that all of us are called to be ambassadors, those who represent the Kingdom of God to the rest of the world. Obviously, how we do it, and what motivates us is important too.

I have heard the argument made in the past that the Great Commission was only for the apostles or at least is reserved for a few, properly ordained Christians. When I hear that, I just turn to the New Testament itself for proof that all Christians are called and "licensed" to preach the Gospel. Check out Acts 8:1-4 (emphasis added)

And Saul approved of his execution. And there arose on that day a great persecution against the church in Jerusalem, and they were all scattered throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria, except the apostles. Devout men buried Stephen and made great lamentation over him. But Saul was ravaging the church, and entering house after house, he dragged off men and women and committed them to prison. Now those who were scattered went about preaching the word. (Act 8:1-4)

Preaching the Gospel is not the privilege of a small sub-class of the church. It is the calling of every Christian. Of course we also have to keep in mind that when the Bible speaks of preaching, it is not talking about sermons delivered to the gathered church. There certainly are men who are recognized as elders who equip believers for the work of ministry so that the less mature become mature by observing the example of servant-leaders in the church. But spreading the Good News? That is for every born-again follower of Jesus Christ.

Don't let anyone tell you that you are not called to preach the Gospel if you are a Christian. Don't let some religious group tell you that you need special education or an ordination certificate or a "license" to preach the Gospel. The mission field is far too vast to have most of the church relegated to being spectators in the Great Commission.

Year End Giving

2011-12-29T14:15:00.001-05:00

It is nearly the end of 2011 and if you are like me and on lots of e-mailing lists, you probably are getting inundated with requests for last second gifts. Ligonier needs a quarter million. 9 Marks needs money. On and on and on. It is easy to just ignore them all and not worry about it. I hope you don't. What better way to close out 2011 and ring in the New Year than by contributing to the care for orphans in Haiti by making a tax deductible contribution that goes 100% to helping orphans rather than paying administrative costs?

I would ask you to consider yet again the Haiti Orphan Project. Why the Haiti Orphan Project? Check out this link to see what your donation can do for a child in need: Two Days to Make 2011 Year End Contribution

I just made a donation via PayPal and it took me all of 45 seconds. Not a huge amount of money but a sum that will go a long way toward making sure that these kids get the chance to hear about Christ, get an education, have a place to live and food to eat.

I know that there are lots of places to give in the next few days but I would ask you to consider carefully and prayerfully The Haiti Orphan Project.

Thanks!

The best prison has no bars

2011-12-29T10:40:00.000-05:00

Imagine a prison that needs no guards or fences or gates. A prison where you don't have to worry about prisoners escaping because they don't even realize they are in prison in the first place and they kind of like it anyway. A prison like this exists. It is not in North Korea or China or Iran. It is all around us.

That is the argument being made by Eric Carpenter in a provocative post this morning: The Church Imprisoned. I imagine a lot of people will be offended that Eric compares institutionalized religion to believers in physical prisons around the world. But is a spiritual prison any less confining than a physical one? Give it a read with an open mind. I think he makes some good points....

Some use broomsticks...

2011-12-29T08:00:00.000-05:00

Priests brawl in Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity

Scuffles have broken out between rival groups of Greek Orthodox and Armenian clerics in a turf war at Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity.

Bemused tourists looked on as about 100 priests fought with brooms while cleaning the church in preparation for Orthodox Christmas, on 7 January.

Palestinian police armed with batons and shields broke up the clashes
----
Previous clashes between the denominations which share the administration of the church have been sparked by perceived encroachments on one group's territory by another.

....while others use words or religious rules or traditions. Regardless, when Christians attack one another in front of the world in squabbles over territory, pride or rights it brings shame on the name of Christ. Undoubtedly these men thought they were being pious in defending their "territory" and yet they were brawling in a shrine commemorating the birth of Christ, a birth heralded by the words: "on earth peace, good will toward men". I guess peace and goodwill unless you try cleaning on our sacred turf.

What a picture this sordid event is of the general disunity in the church, a disunity driven by money and prestige and power, all of the things that we are warned about in the New Testament that serve to divide the church.

Politics, Ron Paul, Israel and Division In the Church

2011-12-28T17:12:00.000-05:00

Politics is said to make strange bedfellows. It also causes division like nothing else save perhaps religion (and sports depending on where you live). That is especially true in this day and age as we approach the Iowa caucuses and it is bleeding over into the church to a far greater extent that normal. Nowhere is this more apparent than in how Christians, especially Christians we would call conservative, evangelical Christians, react to one candidate in particular: Ron Paul.

It is no secret that I am supporting Dr. Paul but that is not why I am writing this. If you are interested in the reasons for my support for Ron Paul, check out The Arsenal of Liberty where I blog about politics and do so intentionally apart from my main blog. My concern here and why I am writing is my concern over how the candidacy of Dr. Paul is dividing the church, a division that is not caused by him but by the hyper-political nature of American evangelicalism coupled with the strong current of dispensationalism that exists in much of the church in America.

There is a segment of the church that sees support for Ron Paul, who is fairly unique among Republicans in his lukewarm support for the nation of Israel at least compared to any other nation, as somehow being anti-Semitic and therefore anti-God's covenant people. These brothers and sisters see a vote for Paul as an act of rebellion against God. There are also a lot of Christians who are, putting it mildly, rabid supporters of Ron Paul who get angry at any suggestion that someone else might be a better nominee. Over the last week or so I have seen an incredible amount of angry rhetoric on both sides, and I am afraid I have engaged in some of it, between people who are supposed to be on the same side (see for example this post from the Gospel Coalition Evangelicals, Race, and Politics that generated over 100 fairly strident comments on both sides of the RP Divide). Brothers this must not be so.

We cannot draw dividing lines in the church over secular American politics.

Who wins the U.S. Presidential election in 2012 is not going to make or break the Kingdom of God. If you are my brother or sister in Christ, that trumps your political allegiance and mine. A political liberal who votes for Barack Obama and is a Christian is my brother. A staunch conservative who supports Ron Paul or Sarah Palin or heaven forbid Newt Gingrich but is not a Christian is not my brother and is instead someone I need to tell about Jesus.When Paul warned us about not being unequally yoked he wasn't talking about staying clear of lib'rals! We must be more concerned with our witness to the unbelieving world than we are about electoral victory and right now we are not comporting ourselves very well.

That does not of course mean that we must avoid civic involvement entirely. Just that we need to keep in mind that who we support politically has absolutely zero impact on who we will spend eternity with.

What can we learn from the great Christians of the past?

2011-12-28T15:30:00.000-05:00

What can we learn from men like the Wesley's, Charles Spurgeon, John Calvin, George Muller, Jonathan Edwards?

Well quite a lot. That is why we love to read what they wrote. Many Christians today turn to these men when question comes up. What did Spurgeon think about Christmas? What did Calvin teach about the Lord's Supper?How did George Muller pray? Some of these men were some of the greatest thinkers in world history and what they wrote is precious to Christians today. Our faith does not exist in a vacuum and it didn't spring forth in America a few hundred years ago. It is an ancient faith with roots that run back thousands of years, even beyond the borth of Christ to Abraham, Moses and David.I praise God for these men throughout the ages and the record of their writings that we have today to learn from.

What can't we learn?

Well we can't learn much about what it means to be a Christian. Sure we can read a lot of what they wrote about how to walk, how to minister, how to be a father and husband. Simply put though we cannot learn in the way that is the most crucial, dare I say the most Biblical. The Christian life is not merely a set of doctrinal truths to be affirmed but is a life to be lived. A crucial part of that life is understanding the core doctrines of the church but many of the most important truths involve how we live, not what we believe. I would say that most Christians would affirm that but in pratice we seem locked into a manner of learning that is derived from our cultural expectations. In the West, we learn by lecture. Public schools where most of us spent 13 years of our formative years creates the expectation of learning by lecture and by study. That may be the most common way but is that the best way for a follower of Christ to learn how to follow Him?

When Paul wrote his epistles, he had the advantage of being an apostle, a witness of the risen Lord. Paul spoke and taught with authority and simply saying, "Because I said so", would probably be perfectly acceptable in his teaching. Yet while Paul did appeal to his authority as an apostle on occasion, he more often appealed to the example of his life, the manner of how he lived among believers.

Brothers, join in imitating me, and keep your eyes on those who walk according to the example you have in us. (Philippians 3:17)

And you became imitators of us and of the Lord, for you received the word in much affliction, with the joy of the Holy Spirit, so that you became an example to all the believers in Macedonia and in Achaia. (1 Thess 1:6-7)

Let no one despise you for your youth, but set the believers an example in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith, in purity. (1 Tim 4:12)

For you yourselves know how you ought to imitate us, because we were not idle when we were with you, nor did we eat anyone's bread without paying for it, but with toil and labor we worked night and day, that we might not be a burden to any of you. It was not because we do not have that right, but to give you in ourselves an example to imitate. (2 Thess 3:7-9)

Remember your leaders, those who spoke to you the word of God. Consider the outcome of their way of life, and imitate their faith. (Heb 13:7 I know the author of Hebrews in not a settled matter but it fits with my general argument!)

Well sure but doesn't the Bible talk a lot about teaching and stuff? Absolutely! What does it mean to teach? Does it mean to deliver a lecture? To write a book? Those certainly are a type of teaching and they can be very valuable. No one loves doctrine more than I do and I love to read about, write about and argue about doctrine. Talks and books are very powerful tools for learning.

As powerful as they are, they cannot replace teaching by example. We are not learning how to perform brain surgery or how to build a nuclear reactor, something that requires very specific technical skills. We are learning to walk after Him. Imagine trying to describe to someone who has never walked or seen someone walking how a human being walks, how incredibly complex the process of nerves, blood, bones and muscle all working together following commands from the brain transmitted over a complex system that transforms a human being from stationary to in motion with almost no thought at all. On the other hand, I can show you how a human walks quite easily, all you need to do is watch me walk! I don't need to understand physiology to walk! When Paul and the other apostles and itinerant workers lived among the people they evangelized, I don't think they were working through new member classes or systematic theologies. They were living and working and serving alongside them (Phil 4:3) so that the newer believers could observe how Paul and the others lived.

We have much to learn from the great theologians of the past and should cherish what they have to teach us. We have as much to learn and more from our brothers and sisters who are living with us today. May we never get so caught up in looking to the church of the past that we lose sight of the church all around us!

The Gospel is the thing

2011-12-28T10:06:00.000-05:00

An important reminder this morning from Eric Carpenter. It can be easy to get caught up in lots of dicsussions about lots of stuff and a lot of them don't amount to much but what really, really matters is where our focus should be. Read Eric's post: What Matters Most.

Our discussions about other issues like soteriology and the church and baptism and gender are important and we should have them but we all must be careful to not let the main thing get pushed aside.

Da Beard

2011-12-27T18:17:00.000-05:00

Dave Black linked to an article about facial hair that was kind of fun: Beards: A Hairy Topic in My Household. Especially so since I have elected to grow a beard now that I am 40 something years of age (see below). This may be the first and last time I post a picture of myself on the blog. I don't need to make my brothers stumble out of jealousy for both my awesome blogging and my sheer masculine presence. FYI, I don't have a lazy eye, I am raising one eyebrow.

In many cultures, beards are a sign of manliness. Among our Amish neighbors beards are only worn by married men and some of the older guys have some pretty phat beards. Like the old Amish guys I have an abundance of grey in my beard

Admit it. You can feel the virility coming at ya, right through the computer screen. OK, quit staring. You are starting to creep me out.

I kind of like it. It is sort of rugged looking and also kind of counter-cultural which I like, especially in a sanitized, suit and tie evangelical culture. Not sure my wife likes it much but of all the dumb stuff I have done in the course of our marriage, this is pretty far down the list.

Irony Alert

2011-12-27T12:00:00.002-05:00

I held off posting this because of the Christmas spirit but now.. Pope calls for humility beyond Christmas 'glitter'

Pope Benedict XVI Saturday hailed Christ's humility, urging the faithful to look beyond the Christmas "glitter" and "enlightened reason", and issued a powerful message for peace.

"Today Christmas has become a commercial celebration, whose bright lights hide the mystery of God’s humility, which in turn calls us to humility and simplicity," the pope told thousands at mass in Saint Peter's basilica.

"Let us ask the Lord to help us see through the superficial glitter of this season, and to discover behind it the child in the stable in Bethlehem, so as to find true joy and true light," the 84-year-old pontiff said.

The message makes sense but the delivery does not, not from a man wearing costly attire and accepting the obsequiousness of others who bow before him, call him 'Holy Father' and kiss his ring. If there is anyone who embodies the polar opposite of simplicity and humility, it is the man who styles himself Pope Benedict.

Jesus had some sobering words for those who breezily make religious chatter but live lives in direct contradiction to the words they speak, those who live lives of opulence from the offerings of the poor and faithful.

Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples, "The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses' seat, so practice and observe whatever they tell you--but not what they do. For they preach, but do not practice. They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on people's shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to move them with their finger. They do all their deeds to be seen by others. For they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long, and they love the place of honor at feasts and the best seats in the synagogues and greetings in the marketplaces and being called rabbi by others. But you are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you are all brothers. And call no man your father on earth, for you have one Father, who is in heaven. Neither be called instructors, for you have one instructor, the Christ. The greatest among you shall be your servant. Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted. (Mat 23:1-12)

I don’t want this to be seen as an attack on Roman Catholics, many of whom are sincere and faithful followers of Christ. Frankly this makes me sick and it is hardly unique to Roman Catholicism. There is way too much chatter about service and humility among professing Christian leaders who live off the offerings of the sheep. Whether it is a charlatan like Benny Hinn or other prosperity preachers asking for donations that line their own pockets or a pope who dresses in finery that makes him look more like a Caesar of ancient Rome than the simple fisherman they claim to be the successors of, the tendency for organized religion to be used to steal from sincere followers of Christ is appalling.

The only way to combat this is to remove the influence of money on the church. Money for building projects, money for institutional preservation, money for clergy. All of it. Christians should give generously to spread the Gospel to those who have not heard and share unconditionally to meet the needs of those without food, shelter and clothing. That is it. Any other use of money is subject to the temptations of misuse, greed and envy.

Jesus taught that the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil and that is true even when that love of money is cloaked in empty religious piety.

Running out of people

2011-12-27T11:00:00.000-05:00

I read a great essay from Mark Steyn, writing for National Review over the weekend: Elisabeth’s Barrenness and Ours. Steyn looks at the barrenness of Elisabeth in the Biblical account of the events leading up to the birth of Christ and places them in a modern context. I am quoting a large section here because it is just that good:

We now live in Elisabeth’s world — not just because technology has caught up with the Deity and enabled women in their 50s and 60s to become mothers, but in a more basic sense. The problem with the advanced West is not that it’s broke but that it’s old and barren. Which explains why it’s broke. Take Greece, which has now become the most convenient shorthand for sovereign insolvency — “America’s heading for the same fate as Greece if we don’t change course,” etc. So Greece has a spending problem, a revenue problem, something along those lines, right? At a superficial level, yes. But the underlying issue is more primal: It has one of the lowest fertility rates on the planet. In Greece, 100 grandparents have 42 grandchildren — i.e., the family tree is upside down. In a social-democratic state where workers in “hazardous” professions (such as, er, hairdressing) retire at 50, there aren’t enough young people around to pay for your three-decade retirement. And there are unlikely ever to be again.

Look at it another way: Banks are a mechanism by which old people with capital lend to young people with energy and ideas. The Western world has now inverted the concept. If 100 geezers run up a bazillion dollars’ worth of debt, is it likely that 42 youngsters will ever be able to pay it off? As Angela Merkel pointed out in 2009, for Germany an Obama-sized stimulus was out of the question simply because its foreign creditors know there are not enough young Germans around ever to repay it. The Continent’s economic “powerhouse” has the highest proportion of childless women in Europe: One in three fräulein have checked out of the motherhood business entirely. “Germany’s working-age population is likely to decrease 30 percent over the next few decades,” says Steffen Kröhnert of the Berlin Institute for Population Development. “Rural areas will see a massive population decline and some villages will simply disappear.”

If the problem with socialism is, as Mrs. Thatcher says, that eventually you run out of other people’s money, much of the West has advanced to the next stage: It’s run out of other people, period.

We are rapidly becoming in the West a childless culture. A culture that see children as a burden or obligation rather than a joy and a blessing. As women are encouraged to delay or eschew childbearing and modern medicine continues to extend life spans, we are becoming a culture with more grandparents than grandchildren. America is lagging Europe here, as we lag so many other cultural declines where Europe is the undisputed leader but that is largely thanks to our stubborn religious heritage. Each year sees fewer and fewer Americans getting married and those that do marry do so later in life and put off raising a family until the very last second, often waiting too long which then necessitates artificial methods to conceive.

On our current trajectory we are going to be a country that builds nursing homes while shuttering schools, a bankrupt country at that, as a shrinking pool of workers tries to support unsustainable social spending on the elderly. Of all of the threats to American prosperity, demographics is one of the greatest and the most subtle. It is tragically ironic that one of the signs of our cultural “progress” will ultimately be the source of our cultural destruction.

What's new down on the farm?

2011-12-26T12:36:00.000-05:00

Jump on over and find out: The new addition to the farm has a new addition

Faux familiarity

2011-12-26T07:46:00.000-05:00

Rick Ianniello posted this, just a quick funny to provoke a chuckle and then perhaps some thought: church growth

What a difference a year makes!

2011-12-25T07:38:00.000-05:00

Last year on Christmas Day we were halfway moved from Michigan to Indiana. I had spent the entire day Christmas Eve loading, trucking and unloading our stuff in pretty cold weather to our new house and would spend the day after Christmas doing the same. We got together around a foot tall artificial Christmas tree and opened a couple of gifts in an otherwise mostly empty room. Later my wife and I went to see a movie because the stress of the move was so great.

Today? My house is still mostly quiet. A couple of kids are awake because they are sick but the rest are still sleeping soundly. Everyone is tired and not feeling well but we can just enjoy spending the morning together. We are probably not "going to church" this morning and I don't feel even a little bit bad about that. It is just nice to be with my wife and our children. We have a sense of permanence, of "home" here. It has been a great blessing to have come to know so many of our brothers and sisters in Christ in our new home over the last year. We have a house full of kids and dogs and cats and a little farm to work and enjoy. I am very happy and content. God has been good to us in so many ways and it is my prayer that we extend that same love and mercy and grace to others.

Regardless of whether you do or do not celebrate Christmas, these words still hold incredible meaning for all followers of Christ everywhere:

For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end, on the throne of David and over his kingdom, to establish it and to uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time forth and forevermore. The zeal of the LORD of hosts will do this. (Isa 9:6-7)

Merry Christmas!

My favorite Christmas verse

2011-12-23T12:44:00.000-05:00

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. (John 1:14)

Repost: On authority or the lack thereof

2011-12-22T09:30:00.001-05:00

This is something I wrote a few years ago and I have been thinking more about this idea of "authority" and leadership in the church so I thought I would repost it to spark some conversation...

----
I wrote last month:

I think the solution to radical individualism is not authority. The antithesis of individuality is community, not hierarchy. We don’t overcome individuality by elevating certain individuals to rule over the others but rather through selfless service and ministry to one another. It is only when the whole Body ministers and serves one another that individuality is overcome.

That brings us to the mantra of “submission to authority”. That seems to be the solution proposed in many circles to the problem of individualism in the church, i.e. submit to the men in charge of the local church. It is the "Ninth Mark of a Healthy Church Member" for crying out loud!

Going a step further, it is generally considered an “either or” proposition. Either you accept authority as it is traditionally configured or you don't accept leadership and authority at all. It is just a given that the model of authority we see in the local church is the way it is supposed to be, without question. I have been accused and I have seen similar accusations thrown that about essentially assert that questioning the traditional systems of church government is tantamount to rejection of authority, sort of a Christian anarchy. I reject that dichotomy as false on its face.

I have no issue with what the Bible says about authority. The Word of God is authoritative (2 Tim 3:16). Christ is the head of the church (Eph 5: 23-24) and all authority on heaven and earth has been given to Him (Matt 28:18). We should submit to those in civil authority (Rom 13:1). We also see places where Christ gives authority to cast out unclean spirits to His apostles (Mark 6:7, Luke 10: 19). We do see a passage in Hebrews that speaks of submitting to leaders, Hebrews 13:7:

Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with groaning, for that would be of no advantage to you. (Hebrews 13:17)

So that seems pretty straight forward. Hang on though. Who are these “leaders”? These leaders are spoken of earlier in this chapter in verse 7:

Remember your leaders, those who spoke to you the word of God. Consider the outcome of their way of life, and imitate their faith. (Heb 13:7)

So our “leaders” are identified as those who spoke (past tense?) to us the Word of God. I would expect that for most Christians the guys in leadership at their local church are not the ones who preached the Gospel to them when they were converted. In my case it was Rev. Sheldon Hale at First Baptist Church in Walton, Kentucky. So does that mean that I should only submit to him? That is kind of hard since he is no longer at First Baptist Church in Walton and I haven't been there in years. My point is that we read “leaders” and apply that to “pastors” in the local church. Also, how do they lead? We are to "consider the outcome of their way of life" and we are to "imitate their faith". They lead us by example as well as by teaching and we are to imitate them. This fits neatly with Ephesians 4: 11-16 where we see the goal of leadership in the church is not to be a permanent division but helping others to achieve the same level of maturity as those more mature in the faith. The goal of leadership in the church is not leadership itself but leading others to maturity in the faith (see Preaching Yourself Out Of A Job). Now I may be wrong about the interpretation of Hebrews 13 but I don't think it is as cut-and-dried as it is made out to be.

Hebrews 13 is hardly the only place we read about submitting in the Bible. In various other places we are to submit to one another (Eph 5:21). We are to submit to God (James 4:7). Wives are to submit to their husbands (Eph 5:22-24), children are to submit to their parents (Eph 6:1) and slaves to their masters (Eph 6: 5-8). We are to be “subject to” those who are serving the church and to all who are “fellow workers and laborers” (1 Cor 16: 15-18), That is a lot of submitting going on. Is that a defense of the traditional idea of submitting to local church leaders? Eh. The “support” for submission to local church authorities seems pretty flimsy in spite of centuries of tradition.

Again, I am not questioning authority per se. I just question whether we express the Biblical concept of authority properly in the local church. In traditional parlance, those having authority in the church are the leaders of the local body, who have authority over us based on our “membership” in that local body and by virtue of their “calling”. “Calling” is church speak for someone being selected based on a vote or appointment by an ecclesial authority. So what this boils down to is that we are supposed to submit to authorities, which typically means the men who have been elected, by whatever criteria, in the local church. The relative merit of one local assembly as opposed to another comes down to the men elected to lead that assembly.

Is that proper? Is it Biblical? Is that what the Bible means by “those in authority”? An authority based on what? A seminary degree, a solid work history as a pastor and a “calling” after a few interviews and sample sermons? I think an enormous leap has been made here. This begs the question: what are the marks of a man called to lead? More to the point, what do we view as the marks of a man called to lead? I am afraid that it may be based on many things that may make sense to us from a traditional and pragmatic standpoint more than from a Biblical standpoint. Being a good preacher, a good manager/organizer, having the proper experience and education, etc are all well and good but the picture we get in the Bible is a bit more complex and counter-intuitive. More on that in the next post.

Yes

2011-12-21T08:12:00.002-05:00

As someone who is vertically challenged, I give this movie a preemptive two thumbs up

The servant is greatest of all

2011-12-20T12:57:00.000-05:00

Good post by Eric Carpenter on the supremecy of service in the church, Service is Supreme. Lots of Christians are told they are not "qualified" or "called" to certain vocational ministry roles but every Christian is both qualified and called to be a servant and there is no greater calling in the church!

Fore? Oh!

2011-12-20T11:57:00.000-05:00

Ah yes, ‘tis that semi-official national holiday known as my birthday. Today is an especially auspicious event as I turn the “Big 4-0” today. I don’t even remember turning 30 but hitting 40 certainly seems to be generating more melancholy. Given my eating habits I was never quite certain of ever living to 40 in the first place so I have already outlived my own assumed life expectancy.

As I look back over the last decade I have piles of regrets, some minor and some quite major. I can’t say that I have been an especially faithful follower of Christ in many respects. Sure I read a lot of theology books and I attended a lot of cool conferences and did a lot of teaching and “preaching” in church but in the areas that really count like loving my neighbor, shepherding my family and serving those in need I really missed the mark. I realize of course that my righteousness before a holy and sovereign God is not reliant upon my own efforts but I also recognize the dangers of and my tendency toward antinomianism in my own life.

Even in my blogging there has been an enormous shift from my first post on March 19th, 2004 to today. Seven and a half years ago I was quite a bit more concerned with Reformed theology, why infant baptism was wrong and why invading Iraq was right. Today I am more concerned with expressing good theology through unity, I still think it is wrong to “baptize” infants and I wish we had never gone into Iraq. I hope that the tone of my blog is more gracious, although I always reserve the right to be snarky and sarcastic where appropriate. Not everyone will agree with me on my timing of course!

As much as I have matured, I am often still grieved at how far I fall short and thank God for His grace toward me. I am not any more deserving of that grace today than I was a decade ago and my paltry baby steps toward maturity in the faith seem awfully pitiful. Through continued prayer, study and fellowship it is my fervent hope that I will grow closer to Him in my walk and my heart.

Anyway, I enjoyed my complimentary birthday breakfast at our favorite little family restaurant with my wife and oldest daughter this morning, I get to come to work to provide for my family today and tonight I get to minister at the pregnancy resource center. I will return home this evening to a house full of children who have a nice place to live, plenty of clothing to wear and always enough food to eat. All more than I deserve. Here’s to the next decade, may it bring more glory to God than the last and may He increase while I decrease.

Soli Deo Gloria!

Hell is real and we should take no satisfaction in that

2011-12-19T16:06:00.000-05:00

Senator John McCain seems quite pleased at the prospect that the deceased former dictator of North Korea, Kim Jong-Il is bound for an eternal hell. From Politico...

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) appears to have no doubt where deceased North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il may have ended up in the afterlife.

“I can only express satisfaction that the Dear Leader is joining the likes of Qaddafi, Bin Laden, Hitler and Stalin in a warm corner of hell,” the Arizona senator – not one to be wishy-washy with his words – said in a statement Monday.

A professed Christian expressing satisfaction that someone is in hell? That is simply grotesque. I am reasonably sure that the individuals Senator McCain mentioned are likely to spend eternity in hell. I am 100% sure that there was (or is) a place right alongside them for John McCain, a place that he will avoid only through the redeeming sacrifice of Christ. Not because he is a Republican or a "war hero". John McCain is not less deserving of hell than Kim Jong-Il or Osama bin Laden and being an enemy of the United States does not make one more deserving of hell than someone who wore the uniform of the U.S.A.

For the first time I am ashamed of my vote for John McCain in 2008.

Asking Questions Is OK!

2011-12-19T12:20:00.000-05:00

I read something I liked a lot this morning from Mark Altrogge. Mark’s post, It’s Not Wrong To Question Your Pastor, makes the point that it is not only OK but healthy to compare what you are taught with Scripture and

It’s not wrong see if what a pastor preaches lines up with the Bible. A pulpit doesn’t make you infallible.

Some pastors give the impression that to question them is insubordination. Pastors aren’t a different breed of Christians, but sinners just like the people they preach to. I always try to discourage people from calling me “Pastor Mark” or “Reverend” (though I will accept “Your Highness” from my wife). I tell them “pastor” is just my job description. I say if you’re going to call me Pastor Mark, then I’m going to call you Carpenter Bob.

I like that he recognizes that the laity are not “subordinates” to the pastor. I also really like that he discourages people from addressing him by the title “pastor”. That drives me crazy, especially when people use their title in their facebook profile or when commenting on the internet, as if we are supposed to give them special deference because of their job title. "Well sure your comment was inane but you have 'pastor' in front of your name so I will keep quiet!". Baloney!

I am more concerned that this is even an issue, that Christians are uncertain if they are “allowed” to question their pastors. I posted this comment on Mark’s page:

What should trouble us is that this is even an issue, that the church culture often leads to Christians feeling as if they are not permitted to raise questions of their pastors. Elders are supposed to be servant-leaders who equip the less mature members for the work of ministry and provide examples in their lives of how Christians should live. I work for a very large corporation and wouldn't even think of calling our CEO and questioning him but we should never have that same distance between the servants we recognize as elders and the rest of the Body.

Where do we get the notion that holding the title of “pastor” or “elder” makes one above question? Certainly Christians shouldn’t be in the habit of nitpicking and seeking ways to tear someone down but in my experience in the church it is far more likely that Christians feel intimidated into silence rather than emboldened to badger their pastor with questions. I recall quite clearly when my friend James asked a very pertinent and respectful question to the pastor of a church we both attended. As soon as he mentioned he had a question, you could see this pastor tense up and assume a defensive posture. His question was pretty much dismissed by this man. Needless to say neither of us attended that particular gathering for much longer.

We are supposed to be a family, a family that believes in a priesthood of all believers. A family can’t function if some brothers are intimidated into silence by their more elder brothers. If a man claims to be an elder but sees your questions as impertinent or insubordinate, he isn’t much of an elder and probably isn’t someone you should be following in the first place.

Education, work and skillz

2011-12-16T15:03:00.000-05:00

More about work. Sorry! This post is something I have been hashing over all week and some of the concepts well before that. Some basic facts to begin with from a Biblical standpoint. I think it is quite clear that the Bible honors work. The Proverbs are full of praise for the one who works and conversely chastisement for the sluggard…

Go to the ant, O sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise. Without having any chief, officer, or ruler, she prepares her bread in summer and gathers her food in harvest. How long will you lie there, O sluggard? When will you arise from your sleep? A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest, and poverty will come upon you like a robber, and want like an armed man. (Proverbs 6:6-11)

In the New Testament the apostle Paul often spoke about work. In his final tearful words to the Ephesian elders in Miletus Paul said….

I coveted no one's silver or gold or apparel. You yourselves know that these hands ministered to my necessities and to those who were with me. In all things I have shown you that by working hard in this way we must help the weak and remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he himself said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’” (Acts 20:33-35)

Paul saw work as something honorable because it didn’t burden anyone else and makes it possible for Christians to use the fruit of their labor to care for the weak and needy. Paul, if anybody could make this claim, didn’t need to work a job because of his status as an elder but he seemed to be more concerned with his example than his rights. So he worked, and from what we read in Scripture worked quite hard. Conversely Paul had little good to say about those who refused to work…

Now we command you, brothers, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you keep away from any brother who is walking in idleness and not in accord with the tradition that you received from us. For you yourselves know how you ought to imitate us, because we were not idle when we were with you, nor did we eat anyone's bread without paying for it, but with toil and labor we worked night and day, that we might not be a burden to any of you. It was not because we do not have that right, but to give you in ourselves an example to imitate. For even when we were with you, we would give you this command: If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat. For we hear that some among you walk in idleness, not busy at work, but busybodies. Now such persons we command and encourage in the Lord Jesus Christ to do their work quietly and to earn their own living. (2 Thessalonians 3:6-12)

Note that Paul is not chastising the poor, many of whom did (and do) work hard for little gain. This is not his “let them eat cake” moment. He was instead speaking of those who can work but refuse to. Paul himself saw working as not only a way to earn money to help care for the poor and a way to avoid a stumbling block to the Gospel (1 Cor 9:12) but also a form of discipleship, providing an example for other brothers and by extension for us on how we should live, i.e. earning our bread by the labor of our hands. That brings us to today, here in the land of the free and the home of the brave, a nation with a trillion dollars in student loan debt and millions of Americans out of work.

I am one of the many Americans who have a four year degree in something with essentially no directly applicable vocational skills. I majored in Political Science and minored in History and from all of those classes I sat through (or didn’t), the books I read, the papers I wrote, etc. I got virtually nothing of any value in the “real world”. I have learned more about both history and politics in the years since earning my degree simply by reading decent books for minimal or no cost. In the eyes of our culture I have accomplished something quite special, something that allegedly sets me apart from those who merely graduated from high school. This mindset translates into the work world. Without a college degree, many employment opportunities are simply out of reach. The jobs I apply for almost universally list some iteration of “four year college degree” as a minimum requirement. How in the world can you be expected to possess the skills to sit in a cubicle and reply to emails without a semester or two of Women’s Studies or Sociology?

I have read two news articles in the last week that raise important questions regarding the sacred cow of college. The first was on NPR, Airplane Mechanics: A Farm Team For Everyone Else? , and the topic was the shortage of aircraft mechanics around the country and it turns out that it’s quite a severe shortage.

There are hundreds of open positions for skilled blue-collar workers and airplane mechanics — and it's been this way for years. In this economy, how can that be possible?

"These are very technically qualified positions. It isn't something that you can take an individual right out of high school and teach them how to do it," says Anita Brown, head of human resources at AAR's Oklahoma City facility for the past 28 years.

Brown says airplane mechanics at her company start earning between $12 and $15 an hour, while veterans who have their FAA Airframe and Powerplant licenses top out at $28 an hour.

Yet AAR can't keep these positions filled. Brown says the company has at least 600 open jobs. "I know Indianapolis needs about 283 [and] we're just shy of needing 200 people. They also need people in our Miami facility; we're a worldwide organization," she says.

$28 per hour is $58,000 per year. The skills you learn as an aircraft mechanic are also not only useful in maintaining aircraft but also in many other industries: metalworking, electrical work, welding, etc. Our local community college, Ivy Tech, actually offers an associates degree program in Aviation Maintenance Technology. Tuition at the Ivy Tech is $107.80 per credit hour and the program can be completed with as few as 72 credit hours, or total tuition expenses of $7,761.60. One year at Indiana University is $9,524 and I am not sure what percentage of IU bachelor degree grads make $60,000 per year anytime soon after graduation.

Then I read this morning about the looming shortage of machinists from Fox News,
On the Job Hunt: Machinists in High Demand:

America's economy was forged by machinists. But today, a quarter of the nation's welders, engineers and steelworkers are getting ready to retire. And as budget-strapped school districts cut shop classes, fewer young people are entering the trade.

The result is a shortage of skilled workers to build and run the machines that run our lives.

"There's a huge demand for machinists," says veteran machinist Louis Quindlin." They're needed both in manufacturing, and the industrial maintenance side, which is repairing equipment, either pumps or valves, for refineries, water companies, waste water companies..."

The article makes an important point, namely that a lot of the skilled machinists are rapidly approaching retirement age and very few kids today have much in the way of marketable skills to replace them. Someone needs to pay for Medicare and Social Security in the future and a shrinking pool of workers making low wages in service industry jobs for a ballooning population of retirees is untenable.

Twenty years ago when I was in school, we offered many vocational programs but even then those programs were turning into holding tanks for trouble-makers and kids who just didn’t make the academic cut. In my day those were the kids with the long hair, jean jackets and cigarettes. Today high schools are almost entirely focused on preparing students for college. People don’t move to a school district because of an awesome welding program, they move to the school district that has the best college preparatory programs. I am not even sure if schools still offer shop, woodworking and home economics classes because they are so concerned with state achievement scores and getting graduates accepted to college.

What really stunned me was this stat:

From refineries to manufacturing plants, companies are hiring-- with starting pay as high as $30.00 an hour.

"A good, top level machinist can actually earn more than a manufacturing engineer these days," says Don Castillo, a manufacturing manager at FM Industries in Fremont, California.

$30 an hour? That is huge, $60,000 per year. Not a lot of people make that much per year, even people with college degrees. By the way, our local community college also offers a plethora of programs in applied technology leading to careers as machinists and if you live near a decent sized town, you probably have a community college that also offers these programs for a fraction of the cost and half of the time of a bachelors’ degree.

Most kids, in fact the overwhelming majority, are not going to grow up to be doctors. Everyone knows that. We certainly don’t need more lawyers. Accounting and actuarial work is always needed but is painfully boring and being an actuary especially requires serious math skills. Engineering and the various medical professions (like physical therapy, nursing, etc.) are in demand but are also academically rigorous and medical professions like nursing often require weird work schedules. Most degree programs at traditional four year universities have minimal application in the work world and based on what I have observed having a liberal arts degree is no longer any sort of indicator of a person’s ability to think critically, speak in public or solve problems. It is mostly a measure of their ability to make it through four years of schooling interspersed with lots of drinking.

So why are parents not encouraging our kids to learn a trade of some sort? It is cheaper than college, pays well and is in demand. What is the problem? Are we averse to having our kids work with their hands?

In a way I think it is exactly that. Going to college has been painted as an integral part of the “American dream”, the gateway to middle-class life. High schools, especially in the suburbs, proudly (or not) wave around the stats of how many of their graduates go to college. Colleges feed this with academic reports that paint dire pictures of life without a four year degree. When you lump all of the high school grads or even high school drop-outs in with those with some sort of technical training, you are going to get skewed numbers. As the articles above demonstrate, young adults with some minimal training in a marketable field are going to live quite comfortably without the expense of a college “education”.

There is a theory called the military-industrial complex that suggests that an unhealthy relationship exists between the military, the government and the industrial world that supplies armaments. I think there is a lot of truth to that idea and that something similar exists in the world of “education” where the education establishment keeps pushing the idea that you must go to college to be successful which in turn leads to demands to the government to “make education affordable”, a notion they accomplish by making it possible for kids with no income and no credit to borrows tens of thousands of dollars in unsecured student loans which in turn allows those same education institutions to keep raising costs, thus defeating the notion of making college education affordable. As the chart to the right shows, the cost of college is exploding compared to the rest of the economy but no one bats an eye until the student loans need to be repaid and the early twenty-something with $100,000 in debt, a degree in Art History and a minimum wage job becomes a ~~vagrant~~ protestor with Occupy Wall Street.

Sending your kids to community college to learn a marketable skill is not failing as a parent. We have spoken with our oldest son about getting a two year degree in some sort of computer field, getting a job and letting his employer pay for the bachelors’ degree. I would be just as fine with my sons getting some sort of applied technical degree instead of a degree in psychology or English. Just because someone gets dirty at work and wears jeans instead of khakis doesn’t mean they are a failure. Maybe we should be less eager to have our kids get expensive sheepskin status symbols and more eager to have them learn marketable skills? Instead of leaving school and entering adulthood with a six figure debt load, aren’t many of kids better off with no debt and a marketable skill?

More on work

2011-12-16T09:00:00.002-05:00

Here is another video I liked from Doug WIlson.

Academics & Work: Has the church damaged the Protestant doctrine of vocation (Part 8 of 11) from Canon Wired on Vimeo.

I especially liked his line that we seem to see the non-clergy, i.e. the laity, as "breeders and tithers", a necessary evil in the church.

That is actually quite good. Is that how we sometimes see "regular" Christians, as merely pew fillers and tithe payers, an audience for the preacher to preach to? Don't we see the pastor and missionary as somehow better or more important than the rest of us? Keep in mind that Doug is a pretty traditional guy and still he sees this.

What do you think?

This illustrates it perfectly

2011-12-15T17:46:00.000-05:00

Check this out from Pursuing Titus 2...

By now the outrage has gone viral. Suze Orman told a young couple that they couldn’t possibly afford for the wife to stay home when they have another baby because, among other things, when they have a new baby, their expenses “will go up $700-$1000 a month” due to having to pay for “diapers” and “this and that.” I don’t want to go into the whole financial situation of this particular couple (like the fact that they are already spending more than the two of them make together and, therefore, probably need way more help than this post is going to provide), and I don’t really want to criticize Suze Orman. Maybe she just pulled that number out of her hat, but also maybe it reflects the misguided norm of our Western consumer culture as applied to babies. And that’s what I really want to talk about. That $700-$1000 a month somehow sounded reasonable enough to throw out there on national television, and the young couple (who already had one baby) meekly nodded their heads. Plenty of seasoned thrifty family types are arguing that it’s ridiculously high. But I, being a details person, wanted to explore how high it really is and how much better a creative family could do.

She goes into a great deal of detail and is quite reasonable I think. You should read the whole thing to see how silly and dangerous Ms. Orman's statement truly is. We are not as thrifty as Mrs. Parunak but no way adding a new baby added $700-$1000 per month. Did our kids wear brand new clothes? Nope. Did my boys occasionally wear pink jammies? Yep! A lot of the expenses that people think are "necessities" are really just frivolous. Now some kids have special needs and cost a lot more but those same kids are the ones who need their mom more than others.

So many families are indoctrinated with the dogma that you simply cannot afford to have children and if you do you can't have very many of them and if you somehow manage to have a kid or two there is no way you can stay home.

It is a lie.

Worse it is a lie swallowed hook, line and sinker by many a Christian. Enough is enough! You can have as many children as God blesses you with. You can stay at home with them and raise them up. You can make ends meet and make sure you kids have everything they need. You can do it!

The vocation of motherhood

2011-12-15T09:13:00.000-05:00

Doug Wilson has a series of videos on the theology of work that I just stumbled across and they are pretty interesting, coming as they do from a particular worldview and doctrinal position. The most recent one is fascinating, an interview between Doug and his daughter Rachel Jankovic on Motherhood and Work: The Vocation of Motherhood. There is a lot that I disagree with Doug Wilson on, from the role of elders to infant baptism, but I loved this interview...

1--The Vocation of Motherhood from Canon Wired on Vimeo.

I found one line she said to be very interesting. She suggested that the work of staying at home is what drives women to the workplace (at around 1:17). That may not be true in every case but I can't tell you how many times women I work with have made remarks about there being no way they could deal with staying at home and caring for their kids "full-time". When I tell co-workers that my wife stays at home with our eight kids and also homeschools them, they get a look of horror on their face, as if somehow there is something intellectually stimulating and satisfying about working in a cubicle festooned with pictures of your children.

As a culture we have so stigmatized motherhood as a vocation and calling and created such a horrifying picture of stay at home motherhood of the constantly weary, covered in drool and wearing frumpy clothes mom that we have made mothers afraid of motherhood. Rather than women seeing motherhood and child-rearing as the preferred state to be abandoned only as a last resort, women seem to default to working outside of the home and only reluctantly coming back home when they simply can't afford the child care any longer.

The devaluation of motherhood and marriage is all around us. It was reported yesterday that the percentage of married people in America has hit an all-time low and is heading for minority status. I am hardly surprised that is the case, in fact I am a little surprised that it is not even worse. Why would we expect unregenerate people to embrace an institution created by God for His people and as a picture of His Son and the church indefinitely? What troubles me is that the church, rather than standing in opposition to this trend and seeing family, marriage, motherhood and fatherhood as opportunities to witness to the world instead seems more interested in embracing and outdoing the world at its own game. Some of the most popular women writers in Christian circles seem to take delight in denigrating and mocking the Scriptures because they find that Biblical teaching on motherhood interferes with their own "gifts" and ambitions.

We should recognize and honor motherhood as the high calling that it is, in a realistic fashion recognizing how very difficult it often can be, but supporting and equipping women in this great service to God and the church. We hardly need yet another writer telling women that they need to be more than "just a mother" or "just a wife", as if those are degrading and unimportant things. Of course we should also realize that in this world merely telling young women to stay home and let us know how that works out for them is not proper either. The church exists in large part to equip every member for maturity and ministry and few ministries require more equipping, encouraging and maturity than the raising of children. The church should be pulling out all of the stops to encourage young women to embrace being a wife and mother but also making sure that we are supporting them in that vocation with love and wisdom, especially from older women (Titus 2:3-5). Unfortunately fewer and fewer older women have much experience in this area as more and more of the older generation of women have spent their mothering years working outside of the home.

Being a mother is every bit as important as being a missionary to far away lands even though few churches will put your picture up on their missions board. I wish they would! I would love to see a bulletin board in the foyer of churches with pictures of moms and their kids at home. We should love them and support them. I think it is a far better use of our offerings to financially help out a family in need so mom can stay home than it is to pay for another professional minister or supporting some denominational bureaucracy.

Honor moms. Support them. Love and encourage them. Nothing will have a greater impact on the future witness and mission of the church in America than strong families.

Repost: Gospel Grocery Stores

2011-12-14T15:03:00.000-05:00

I put this up last year and I think it helps to get at the way different "forms" of church function in either helping or hindering the intent of the church gathering....
------

An interesting story recounted in Total Church:

The Bible calls the church a family. It describes the church as a community that shares together. The church is a body whose members perfectly fit together. We belong to one another. Our friend's church was neither a family or a community. It had no vision for involvement in its immediate community. The truth is, it was not really a church according to any New Testament definition. It was a preaching center. You drove to their large parking garage for your weekly dose of religion just as you traveled to the out-of-town supermarket for your weekly groceries.

(Total Church, pg. 194)

That definition describes an awful lot of churches, big and small. We have had a similar experience in a large Baptist church in northern Kentucky. We sat in the same place every week, down to sitting in the same pew, and we sort of recognized the people around us. The people on the other side of the "sanctuary"? Not a clue. They were anonymous people in their Sunday best. We kind of knew the people in our segmented (younger married adults w/ kids) Sunday school class but virtually everybody else was just an anonymous guy in a suit or woman in a dress we jostled with in the foyer while collecting our kids from the nursery. We went there because they had a big youth and childrens program and because the preaching was consistently decent (unlike our prior smaller church where the preaching was poor at best, the fellowship was sketchy and the only kids in the church were ours and the pastors).

Why do we go to grocery supermarkets? Why is there a new Super Wal-Mart springing up daily? Because it is easy, quick and convenient. We go to a supermarket instead of raising our own food because it costs us less, it is predictable and it takes less time. Rather than work all week to grow, harvest and prepare our own food, we go to the store and get what we need in one fell swoop. I can walk into a store right now and in half an hour get enough food, in sufficient variety, to feed my entire family of ten for a week. I don’t know the other people shopping and I don’t need to because knowing them is irrelevant to what I am there for.

The church is treated much the same. We can get all of our religion in one stop and it only costs us some time and a check in the offering plate. I can go to one of dozens of local traditional churches on Sunday morning and drop my little ones off in a nursery to have a little activity but more importantly keep them out of my hair so I can “worship”. My middle school kids have classes, my high schoolers get classes with a hip youth pastor. My wife and I can go to a prepared Sunday school class and then sit in a pew for an hour, sing a few songs, listen to a prepared talk and then head out in time to be home for lunch.

Many (most?) institutional churches are grocery stores for religion. Quick, easy, in and out and plenty of different ones to choose from. This one makes you mad? Go shop somewhere else. Your only attachment is selection, price and service or in the case of a local church music style, preacher and denomination. It makes little difference to me if I go to Wal-Mart, Meijer or Krogers for my groceries. It impacts the store but only a little. There are lots of local churches I could go to that would be the same way, ranging from hip churches with cool music to somewhat more traditional, orthodox churches. No one would notice us if we were careful (although with eight kids, when we show up at a church it is like chum in shark waters and it is hard to blend in). We could show up a few Sundays at one church and then go somewhere else for a few weeks. We could maintain a great deal of anonymity beyond a smile and handshake.

The church should be more like a community garden and less like a supermarket. That might mean we need to spend a lot of time together. We might get a bit dirty in the process and there are going to be disappointments. Things might not turn out like we hope. If you have a garden and plant tomatoes, sometimes some of the tomatoes will have bugs in them or turn brown or fall off the vine before they are ripe. Sometimes it rains too much and sometimes it rains too little. If you go to the grocery store, you can pick just the best looking tomatoes and pretty much know what you are getting. It may not taste as good as a home-grown tomato and it might have been soaked in pesticides before it was shipped from California to Michigan but it is predictable. We demand too much predictability in the church, we want to know when to show up, what to expect and in what order. Deviate from the “order of worship” in the bulletin and people will be in mass confusion. Lots of people defend the institutional church by pointing it out that it is full of imperfect people but we try to make the gathering of the church as homogenous and easy as possible.

Gardening is hard work, dirty and unpredictable but the rewards are often wonderfully and immeasurably better than “store bought” produce. The church works in much the same way. Unplanned and unscripted is scary because you don’t know what you might get but I would much rather have somebody stumble over a thought or endure periods of silence than sit through another carefully scripted service designed to deliver the maximum religion for the minimum cost. The church is not something we can cram into a couple of hours a week and the goal of church should not be to get in and get out as quickly and efficiently as possible so we can mark a check box on our religion shopping list. Sermon? Check. Singing at least three songs? Check. Shaking the preachers hand? Check. Out at noon and lunch away from the rest of the church by 12:30? Check.

The church is not a list to be completed, it is a life to be lived with one another.

Yet Another Reason Politics and Faith Don't Mix

2011-12-14T10:29:00.000-05:00

The political world is abuzz with news that a staffer for Newt Gingrich referred to mormonism as a cult during a focus group, a statement that led to his firing from the campaign of Newt Gingrich, moral paragon. This is reported in the Iowa Republican but it is national news. From their webpage...

A participant in a focus group organized by TheIowaRepublican.com and McClatchy newspapers lost his job because of comments he made during the event last week. Shortly after participating in the focus group, Craig Bergman was hired as the Iowa political director for Newt Gingrich’s presidential campaign.

The controversial comment came in regards to Mitt Romney’s prospects, if he captured the GOP nomination. “There is a national pastor who is very much on the anti-Mitt Romney bandwagon,” Bergman said. “A lot of the evangelicals believe God would give us four more years of Obama just for the opportunity to expose the cult of Mormon…There’s a thousand pastors ready to do that.”

There is an awful lot going on with that statement and none of it good.

First and foremost. Mormonism is a cult. In terms of its theology as well as its overtly cultic practices mormonism is a textbook example of a pseudo-Christian pagan cult. That is obvious to any student of that religious group but it certainly is not something that is going to be acceptable in the secular world of politics. In order to navigate the world of national politics with any success, you need to be very careful about what you say and calling the faith of a candidate a "cult", even if it is true, is simply unacceptable. Ironically the man Mr. Bergman signed on to work for prior to being fired is a Roman Catholic convert, a religious organization that long was considered "the whore of Babylon" by most Protestants (see the sort of non-PC language used to describe Rome in the older Protestant confessions and creeds, they make calling mormonism a cult sound like a Hallmark card)

The other biggie is the notion that God is more concerned with American politics than He is almost any other issue. I am not sure that the Presidential election season in America is more important to God than the ruler of Saudi Arabia or the mayor of a town in Japan. Far too many "pastors" seem more interested in who wins the White House in 2012 than they are in the lost, the hungry, the orphan and the widow right in their own neighborhood.

Being entangled with the world is more than cable TV and video games. Some of our deepest entanglements with the world happen in the world of politics but it is far easier to rail against Harry Potter from the pulpit than to risk insulting influential church members by adopting political neutrality. That doesn't mean that government and politics are without value but we need to always keep in mind that the Kingdom of God doesn't rise or fall based on the GOP nominee for President.

Even more on giving

2011-12-13T13:05:00.001-05:00

Given the last few posts on giving, I think this is a good time to link back to Alan's posts on giving in the church from last October....

Introduction

Christians giving directly to others because of need

Christians giving indirectly to others because of need

Christians giving to other Christians who are traveling from place to place

Christians giving to other Christians in response to some service

I think Alan does a great job in breaking down the way the church gave/shared with one another in the New Testament. Take a look at his series and ask if that is what we see in sharing and giving in the church today?

People are not budget items

2011-12-13T11:42:00.000-05:00

I mentioned yesterday that world famous Canadian blogger Tim Challies is doing a series on giving in the church. As I expected most of it is little more than a regurgitation of the cultural understanding of “give to the local church to support the local church” dogma. Today he covered the “where” and “how much” question and his answer and more importantly his rationale for answering “where” with “the local church” was quite telling. His first two points were not terrible…

First, the church appoints certain people to be aware of need and responsive to it. In most churches this is the job of deacon who are called and equipped to be both proactive and responsive when it comes to need.

Second, the leaders of the church can identify the most important needs. The elders and deacons work together to identify and determine how to meet whatever needs arise.

That seems reasonable. We see that the early church sold their belongings and gave them to the apostles’ feet to be doled out….

There was not a needy person among them, for as many as were owners of lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold and laid it at the apostles' feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need.(Acts 4:34-35 ESV)

I would point out that elders in local churches today are not exactly the same as the apostles but that is a minor quibble. Now I have never been a deacon in a church except in the sense of deacons being servants and I certain strive to serve wherever I am but I wonder how accurate the assumption is that, i.e. that the deacons are aware of the needs of the church and ensuring that they are being met. I question this for a couple of reasons, one being that in most churches we have been associated with there is not the level of close fellowship that would be required to really know what the needs of every Christian in a local church are (plus our American pride that prevents us from seeking help from friends). The other reason is that in a church budget, benevolence or mercy ministry is but one line item and is rarely (again in my experience) a very substantial one compared to clergy salaries and building maintenance. Still, those first two points seem defensible from Scripture. His third point is that often more can be accomplished by big gifts to a relatively small number of ministries, which seems to fly in the face of the reality that $500 to help a family with heating and food in your local community is probably more Biblical than a $5000 donation to some massive bureaucratic ministry.
Then take a look at reason number four (emphasis added)….

Fourth, the New Testament makes it clear that the church is to set aside certain men to the work of the ministry and some of these are to be set aside to vocational ministry. Most Christians take this to mean that they are to be paid for their work. By making the church your primary means of giving, you are supporting your pastors in the ministry. And, of course, you are also supporting all the ministry of that church, from paying salaries to paying for a building and Bibles and everything else that is needed to keep a church going. If you are at a church week-by-week but giving your money to another cause, you are not supporting and sustaining your own church.

Most of it is typical pay clergy rhetoric but the second from the last sentence was really telling. The mindset that says we need salaried professional clergy and “church” buildings in order to keep going is so prevalent in the church and it is really damaging because the actual people of the church become a line item on the budget and often that line item falls far down the pecking order on the budget. We have to pay for the building and the pastor because without those how could we possible have a church?! Sure the Jones family is beingevicted or having their heat turned off but at least they can come here on Sunday and listen to a sermon in a comfy pew!

This is so contrary to Scripture where sharing within the church and caring for one another was not one of the financial priorities of the church, it was the priority of the church. In the midst of false teaching, violence and persecution against the church and the generally poor conditions of the first century, the church didn’t just “keep going”, it thrived. Today in the midst of unimaginable wealth and cultural acceptance the institutional church in the West is largely spiritually dead and everyone knows it but the proposed solution is always more of the same. More programs, more and better buildings, more clergy.

This is not the time for business as usual. Playing church for centuries has gotten us in serious trouble in the church to the point that the world we are supposed to be reaching associates us with hypocrisy, money grubbing, anger, jealously and politics rather than grace, mercy and love. I can't say that the world is wrong. For all of our talk about “loving one another”, our budgets and financial decisions scream just the opposite. We love religion, we love performance, we love private property. Our fellow members of God’s elect, His adopted family which we were brought into by the blood of Christ and the grace of God? They are just a budget item, somewhere between snow removal and office supplies.

Why do we marvel that unbelievers want nothing to do with “Christianity”? Much of the time I don’t either.

Giving and sharing: Are They The Same Thing?

2011-12-12T12:12:00.000-05:00

Tim Challies is doing a series on giving over at his blog. So far it is pretty much boilerplate stuff and you can see where it is heading (i.e. give 10% to your local church first and then to other ministries or direct giving if you have anything else above and beyond that). As I read over it, I started to think about how much I dislike the term "giving". Is "giving" the same thing as "sharing"? Do we see the model of the New Covenant church as "giving" or as "sharing"?

First a couple of definitions, at least in my own interpretation of the terms.

Giving implies that what I have is mine and I give some of it to whatever cause I choose, whether that is a church or the Salvation Army or the National Rifle Association. I give a certain percentage and the rest is mine. It is a gift I choose to give.

Sharing implies that within the community of faith what's mine is yours. I make no claim on what is "mine" because truly nothing is mine. Anything I have is available to any brother in need at any time, without strings attached and without the need for budgets or committees to determine where it goes.

Those are clumsy definitions but I think they are a starting point. When we look in Scripture what do we see, specifically in the New Testament is the church giving or sharing? Clearly the Old Testament/Old Covenant model is "giving" but what about the New? Do we see our traditional notion of "storehouse giving" or is the church "sharing"?

In the one case where the church gathered up money, the example often cited as "proof" that Christians should "give at church", 1 Corinthians 16:1 (see also Rom 15:26 and Acts 11: 29-30 dealing with the same issue), Paul is telling the church in Corinth to set aside money to take to Jerusalem. The church was sharing with their brethren in Jerusalem who were in need and not keeping the money "in house".

In Acts 2:44-45 and Acts 4:32, perhaps the most uncomfortable passages for many Western Christians in all of Scripture, I think what is happening is "sharing", not "giving". They were not writing a check on Sunday morning at church. They were sharing directly to those who were in need and perhaps as importantly were not paying operating expenses but rather meeting the physical needs of the church (presumably food and clothing?)

I have argued in the past that we never see the church in the New Testament treating money as we do, i.e. the giving of offerings to the local church where it is primarily used to fund the offerings of that local church with a small portion being distributed outside of the church organization. I think the distinction between Christians sharing with one another and giving to the local church is enormous and very, very important. What do you think? Is there a difference between giving and sharing and is the way we understand and view money important to how we relate to one another?

I am not sure which is worse

2011-12-11T13:52:00.000-05:00

I read this and wondered.....

Perry backs constitutional change for school prayer

(CNN) - Texas Gov. Rick Perry called Sunday for a constitutional amendment to allow prayer in public schools.

Appearing on "Fox News Sunday," the Republican presidential hopeful went a step further than his previous calls for the Supreme Court to reverse its 1962 decision that banned organized prayer in public schools.

Perry said he would support "a constitutional amendment that would allow our children to pray in school any time that they would like."

Is it worse that Rick Perry thinks that American evangelical voters are such saps that we would be swayed by an empty promise to amend the Constitution of the United States to allow prayer in public schools or that he is probably right?

Speaking of ornaments

2011-12-10T08:16:00.001-05:00

Here is my new favorite!

Jealous? Don't be, you can get your very own from The Haiti Orphan Project Store!

Christmas Ornament Giveaway!

2011-12-09T20:31:00.000-05:00

Bubbling Brook Farm is giving away some cook Christmas ornaments, jump over and check them out and enter to win!

Christmas Ornament Giveaway

On calling and ministry among Christians: limited or universal?

2011-12-09T14:59:00.000-05:00

I deeply appreciate Al Mohler, reading his blog whenever he posts anything, listening to both of his podcasts on a regular basis, etc. (Now you know that whenever someone says that, they next thing they say is going to be a disagreement! That is true here.) Dr. Mohler posted the text of his talk to be delivered at the 208th commencement of Southern Seminary. Most of the talk is a fairly typical application of Paul’s letters to Timothy as directly and uniquely applicable to professional ministers but one thing he wrote late in the talk jumped out at me.

In every believer, the perfect patience of Christ is demonstrated, but in the life and calling of the minister, it is demonstrated all over again.

Did you catch that? God’s patience with us is demonstrated in each person who believes, presumably the patience of withholding His wrath against the unrighteousness of sinners. But a guy who goes to seminary and gets a certificate of ordination? That is a second demonstration of God’s patience that is apparently unique to clergy.

It is gravely disturbing that the commencement address heard by seminary graduates this morning tells them that they are unique in the church by virtue of the sheepskin they will receive in return for gobs of money and the ability to pass graduate level coursework. What does that tell the Christian who cannot afford seminary for whatever reason or lacks the academic prowess to pass Greek or Hebrew classes? Good enough to sit in the pew and contribute, not qualified for "real" ministry?

What is it about professionally trained clergy that demonstrates God’s patience a second time? This notion that there is some sort of divine, supernatural calling that is unique to those Christians who feel compelled to pursue a seminary degree is so foreign to Scripture that to proclaim it requires an enormous assumption based solely in our traditions and church culture. Yet we hear it over and over again even from those who ostensibly hold to a doctrine of the priesthood of all believers that in practice means the priesthood of ~~all~~ some believers more than others.

Again and again we see on the one hand bemoaning of the general apathy of the Body of Christ and on the other hand embracing church traditions that provide fertile soil for the exact sort of apathy we decry. When we describe those who have elected to attend seminary and pursue vocational clerical ministry as being called in the same manner as Paul: “In the same way, they, like Paul, know that the ministry they have received is just as much a demonstration of God’s grace and unmerited favor.”, we should expect to get the results we see all around us.

I have no intrinsic problem with seminary. If someone wants to spend a bunch of money and three years of their life to get an advanced degree, that is their business. I do have a problem with those who do so being treated as somehow above the rest of the church. Even if we dress it up with the language of service, the reality is that we still see certain men as uniquely called and apart from the rest of the church and that dichotomy is unhealthy and unbiblical. Church leaders, elders and deacons, are servants who lead by example, not rule by virtue of an amorphous “calling” or educational achievement or ecclesiastical paperwork.

I need your help once again

2011-12-09T10:15:00.000-05:00

The other night while at the pregnancy resource center I was browsing through a catalog from Christianbook.com. You have to love a catalog that has the John MacArthur study Bible and a book by Joel Osteen on the same page! Anyway, I saw a product and I am afraid I just don't quite get it. The item is called: New Covenant Prayer Shawl, English/Hebrew with Bag 72 x 22 . What exactly is this you might ask? Well here is what it says:

Add meaning to times of ceremonial prayer with Hebrew tallit (prayer shawl) in white with striped accents in blue and metallic gold. The collar features the Messianic roots symbol and and Hebrew prayer which reads: Blessed are you O Lord, King of the Universe, who has fulfilled all of the law through Jesus the Messiah and has covered us with his Righteousness. Each of the four corners is accented with a different Scripture verse in English - taken from Matthew 14:36, Isaiah 53:5, 2 Corinthians 5:21, and Malachi 4:2. Fashioned of acrylic; measures 72" long x 22" wide. Exquisite in design and workmanship, with tassel trim and ceremonial fringes. Also includes matching zippered bag with embroidered roots symbol; measures 11" x 10.25".

So here is my question. What exactly does that have to do with the New Covenant? See I thought that under the New Covenant there is neither Jew nor Greek (Gal 3:28). I also wasn't aware that under the New Covenant we were called to ceremonial prayers, with or without $25 prayer shawls.

So here is the question. What possible purpose could this serve?

Straddling The Tiber

2011-12-08T18:24:00.000-05:00

Read something by John MacArthur today that made me shake my head. It is similar to hundreds of essay and blog posts I have read before and each time it makes me sad. What I read today is a 2009 post from John, Gimme That Showtime Religion…

Can the church fight apathy and materialism by feeding people's appetite for entertainment? Evidently many in the church believe the answer is yes, as church after church jumps on the show-business bandwagon. It is a troubling trend that is luring many otherwise orthodox churches away from biblical priorities.

Church buildings are being constructed like theatres. Instead of a pulpit, the focus is a stage. Some feature massive platforms that revolve or raise and lower, with colored lights and huge sound boards. Shepherds are giving way to media specialists, programming consultants, stage directors, special effects experts, and choreographers.

The irony here is rich and tragic. Instead of a pulpit, there is a stage? There has always been a stage that the pulpit sits on and whether it is a wooden pulpit, a glass lectern or a stool where the pastor sits, at least for the last 1700 years, the congregation is merely an audience of mute observers. Some people like upbeat contemporary Christian music, others warmly familiar liturgy, still others lengthy exegetical expository sermons. Whatever. It is all religion, repackaged over and over again for centuries but essentially the same. For example, here are three different packages…

The seeker sensitive pastor leads the service. He wears a particular uniform that marks him as a “man of God”: skinny jeans, a graphic t-shirt and horn rimmed glasses. He does almost all of the speaking and officiates over the sacraments like baptism and communion. The rest of the congregation sits quietly and watched him. He has special educational training and is hired by the church to perform clerical tasks.

The conservative Reformed pastor leads the service. He wears a particular uniform that marks him as a “man of God”: a dark suit and conservative tie. He does almost all of the speaking and officiates over the sacraments like baptism and communion. The rest of the congregation sits quietly and watched him. He has special educational training and is hired by the church to perform clerical tasks.

The Roman Catholic priest leads the service. He wears a particular uniform that marks him as a “man of God”: a priestly collar and priestly robes. He does almost all of the speaking and officiates over the sacraments like baptism and communion. The rest of the congregation sits quietly and watched him. He has special educational training and is hired by the church to perform clerical tasks.

The doctrines are different, dramatically so. The meaning of certain aspects of the service is radically different although the rituals are eerily similar. But when you are sitting in the pew, whether at some groovy church or St. Something or other Catholic Church or Grace Community Church in California, if you aren’t a clergyman you are just an observer. You are there for the show.

I had a conversation the other day online that highlighted for me once again the dilemma of the traditional Protestant apologist trying to discuss ecclesiology with a Roman Catholic apologist, namely that when it comes to the church Protestants have not moved terribly far away from Mother Rome. Each Sunday most Protestants find themselves unknowingly straddling the Tiber River, one foot in the Reformation and the other in Rome and neither in the New Testament.

In some ways you can argue that the form doesn’t matter much. There are Christians in church forms of all types and many of them are doing the work of the Kingdom, in megachurches and in tiny congregations, traditional churches and organic churches. So who cares how it looks? Let’s just do our thing in our way and see what happens.

While I get that and can affirm much of it, I am left with the inescapable conclusion that form does matter because form has such an impact on how the church functions or, more to the point, doesn’t function. Church as event, church as entertainment, church as religious inoculation, church as performance. All of these common unspoken but unmistakable forms of “church” inevitably hamper spiritual growth, reinforce the “leave it to the professionals” mentality and turn the vibrant, living Body of Christ into rows of immobile mannequins silently watching an overburdened man pouring out the fruits of his weekly efforts in the form of a 45 minute speech.

That is why so many of us spend so much time exploring, studying and discussing ecclesiology. It matters! It matters how we gather, why we gather and what we take from our gathering. It is so important that we cannot assume anything, we cannot just accept a tradition because it is 50 or 100 or 500 years old.

Form is not everything but form certainly is something.

Thinking about Tim

2011-12-08T10:30:00.000-05:00

Check out my new post at Under Christ's Archy: Mohammad El-Tebow

Jesus the Free Market Capitalist

2011-12-07T18:30:00.002-05:00

This is without a doubt the most embarrassing thing I have read in a long time, coming from Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council writing for CNN: My Take: Jesus was a free marketer, not an Occupier. What is really troubling is that I am not sure if Tony Perkins really believes this, which would be a sign of a serious lack of theological maturity, or if this is a callous attempt to use Jesus Christ as a political tool which is even worse.

According to Mr. Perkins, the parable of the Ten Minas, told by Christ to His disciples in Luke 19: 11-27 immediately before His entrance in Jerusalem, is proof positive that Jesus was a free market capitalist. Sure Tony admits that the primary purpose of the parable was the idea that even though Jesus was entering Jerusalem, the final manifestation of the Kingdom was far off but that doesn’t stop him from ascribing to Jesus a preference for a particular economic model:

The parable of the king and the servants endorses the principles of business and the free market when properly employed.

Remember, these servants were not working for themselves, but under the constraints of their lord and for his benefit. Likewise our free market system works when bridled by morality. Not arbitrary morality that changes with political parties, but transcendent moral principles.

Yes, we are to "occupy," not by railing against a free market system that rewards diligence, even though it is occasionally abused. Rather we are to occupy by using that system ethically as a means to advance the interests of the one we serve.

Egad.

How exactly do we “advance the interests of the one we serve”, i.e. Jesus, by embracing and exploiting the free market system? That is not to say that free market capitalism is evil or even to say that it is not the best possible economic system. Given the various alternatives I think free market capitalism is the system that creates the greatest economic opportunity to the greatest number of people but regardless it is not a Kingdom imperative to embrace it over against other economic systems. A Christian can proclaim the Gospel just as easily in a nation with a socialistic economic system as he can in a capitalist system.

This attitude is as foolish as the statements by those who see the “all things in common” passages in Acts 2 and 4 as Scriptural support for government wealth redistribution schemes, a gross misreading that misses that the “all things in common” passages occurred as a result of lives changed by the Gospel, not as forced confiscation of the wealth of unbelievers by unbelieving bureaucrats in a secular system. Forcing an unbeliever to share with someone else doesn't make them holier or more receptive to the Gospel, it just makes them resentful.

You don’t advance the Kingdom of God by raising taxes on the wealthy and you don’t advance the Kingdom by lowering capital gains tax rates. Jesus is neither a leftie Occupy Wall Street protestor demanding free goodies nor a pinstriped suit Wall Street tycoon trading derivatives. Tony Perkins, Jim Wallis, Tony Campolo, Rick Perry. Stop trying to claim Jesus as the champion for your political platform. We have enough work preaching the Gospel to every person in every tribe, tongue and nation without preaching free market capitalism or socialism.

Unity is good theology

2011-12-07T14:40:00.000-05:00

Alan posted some thoughts in response to my post, The Assumption of Disunity, with his post Can we begin by assuming unity in Christ?. Like me, Alan sees unity in the Gospel as a non-negotiable that is demanded by the Gospel…

Think about this for a moment… What would happen if we assumed unity in Christ instead of assuming disunity based on our traditions and backgrounds and interpretations? Is that even possible? I think it is…

In fact, I want to expressly state something that I hope has been apparent through my blog posts: If I disagree with you, or if you disagree with me, I do not automatically assume that we are divided from one another because of that (those) disagreement(s). Instead, my first assumption is that we are united in Christ – brothers and sisters – whose bond is stronger than flesh and blood and able to withstand our disagreement.

Idealistic? Maybe. But, like Arthur, I believe that the gospel demands our unity in Christ, and I will seek to live in it.

That reflects where I am coming from. The Gospel demands unity. Real unity, not lip-service. You cannot say “I can’t be unified with that person because of his bad theology” because disunity is in and of itself inherently bad theology.

This is not easy for me! My natural impulse is to find something wrong with what someone says so that I can be proved right. One of the things that really appealed to me about the Reformed church culture (not Reformed theology which I still embrace, but the culture that surrounds many of those who subscribe to Reformed theology) is that smacking around other Christians is something of a favored pastime. Line by line refutations of some Arminian sap is a good and necessary use of ones time. Triumphantly posting a killer post shredding something some theological infant wrote is a source of pride and something that is celebrated and that drives page views. It also is ugly and divisive.

I am trying to move past that mindset and actively seek ways to be united with others in Christ on this side of eternity rather than deferring real unity to the wedding feast of the Lamb. The Gospel requires it and the Great Commission demands it. How can we say we look forward to an eternity with Christ when we refuse to break bread or share fellowship with those we will spend eternity glorifying Him with?

Is this the church? How is it NOT the church?

2011-12-07T11:56:00.000-05:00

I had an interesting conversation with a fellow volunteer at the pregnancy resource center last night. We were talking about his church, a very large church in our area with its own schools, and how they were starting to emphasize small groups. I see this a lot, especially in large churches where the Sunday gathering is inherently impersonal because of the sheer size of the group. When you start to get several hundred people on a Sunday, it is easy to have little or no interaction with large numbers of the people you are “fellowshipping” with. That is fine for many people because we have been taught that the gathering of the church is first and foremost a “worship service”. In other words, I go to church to worship which is defined as singing songs and listening to sermon. The bigger the church, the less important fellowship becomes. I am simply a religious consumer who shows up at a worship supercenter to get my weekly fix and check off my religion box on my to-do list. Many church leaders seem to recognize this and small groups kind of fill in the “fellowship gap” but they also tend to be suspicious of small groups because they are not tightly controlled. A lay person leading a small group may say something wrong! So there is a real love-hate relationship between the institutional, traditional church focused on Sunday morning “worship services” and small groups.

Our conversation centered around stuff like where does the church start and stop? The initial question and one I think we hear a lot is: Are small groups “the church”? I flipped that around and asked “In what way are they NOT the church?” What exactly is it about a Sunday morning “worship service” that is Biblically the church in a way that a small group meeting in a home, especially one with the blessing of a traditional church, is not? In Acts 2:42 we see the four-fold functioning of the church in its earliest days: breaking bread, fellowship, the apostles’ teaching and prayers. Neither a normal small group nor a traditional worship service “breaks bread” typically in the sense of sharing a meal together but small groups generally involve more fellowship than a “worship service”, involve more Christians in the apostles’ teaching and in my experience always includes prayers, often by multiple Christians rather than just the pastor. So if anything I would go so far as to say that not only are small groups as legitimate an expression of “the church” as a traditional “worship service”, in some ways they are even more so. Now having said that, I think we need to stay away from putting expressions of the church into hierarchies where some expressions of the church are more valid than others.

The conversation then turned to elders, specifically at first how do the elders in the local church fit in with the small groups? We quickly moved to the issue of elders more generally. What is clear to me is that I really don’t fully understand Biblical eldership and even more so the church at large doesn’t even really think much about it. Who are these men? Why are they chosen and how are they selected? How do they function in the Body, what is their purpose and role? So much about elders is just assumed based mostly on our particular church tradition. Southern Baptists often have a single elder, i.e. the pastor, and a number of deacons, Presbyterians often have “teaching elders” and “ruling elders”, etc. It is assumed that Acts 6 is speaking of deacons and elders and that Paul’s admonitions to Timothy are specifically applicable to elders as opposed to all Christians. These are all assumptions that don’t stand up to scrutiny the more you examine them. The more I think through and try to live out what it means to be a follower of Christ, the more I realize how little I truly understand!

I really enjoy these conversations in real life, away from the world of blogging where it often becomes a “one-upmanship” contest. Real brothers in Christ having a serious conversation about the weightiest matters imaginable while we are ministering to those in need. What could be better than that?

God opens AND closes the womb

2011-12-06T14:34:00.000-05:00

Obviously infertility is not an issue I have had to deal with. We could hardly stop getting pregnant! For many in the church though it is a very real and very heart-breaking topic and it is one that doesn’t get a lot of conversation in the church because it is so hard to talk about in a culture that by and large gushes over the blessings of children. Especially for people like myself and others who have and embrace large families, talking about infertility is something that is often easier to just not do. So I appreciated reading an interview by a sister in Christ with a large family, speaking to another sister who has struggled with infertility: Viewing the Quiverfull World Through the Lense of Infertility, Part 1.

The interview is excellent, open and honest in a way that is kind of rare in the church. I would encourage you to read it especially if you are someone who is a “big family” person or someone who is or has struggled with infertility (or know someone who is).

Book Review: Family Shepherds

2011-12-06T13:08:00.000-05:00

One of the greatest threats to the church is found right in the homes of many Christians in the form of fathers who are either not equipped or not inclined to lead their families. As befits the seriousness of the issue, there are many books being published calling on men to step up in their homes. Voddie Baucham’s latest book, Family Shepherds, is the latest entry and comes with Voddie’s particular brand of hard hitting teaching. Like other books he was written, Family Driven Faith and What He Must Be…If He Wants to Marry My Daughter, Family Shepherds comes at this issue from a decidedly old school and counter-cultural approach. Voddie makes no apology for highlighting the unique calling of men as leaders in the home, a stance that is drawn directly from the Bible although it is also rarely addressed even in the church. Family Shepherds is a solid addition to this conversation and comes at the issue with more emphasis on the writings of Paul than the pontifications of Dr. Spock.

This is a very good book, especially for those who are less familiar with the topic and haven’t read much of Voddie’s prior writing. Some of the material will be repetitive if you are familiar with his prior writings and the positions of the Family Integrated Church movement. In places the material felt vaguely like something I have read from him several times over and it takes some patience and time to get to the point of the book because the background material takes so long. Again, if this is your first exposure to this information it may not seem as tedious and the information certainly is valuable but I could have stood to have less background information and more of the meat that is found in the second half of the book. Once I got to the second half of the book, the information became more applicable and the reading more enjoyable.

As with all books, there are weak spots and the most glaring is in Voddie’s reliance on the institutionalized church model. Reading chapter 13, Church Membership, was almost physically painful. When he states (on the opening line of the chapter and elsewhere): “Church membership is the most important aspect of lifestyle evaluation”, that strikes me as an entirely unserious and counter-productive statement. Of all the lifestyle qualifiers of a man, whether he is a “member” of a local church (a “healthy” church of course which means a church that is doctrinally compatible with what Voddie holds to) is one of the least important. A man who is a member of a church is not more likely to be a family shepherd than one who is not and since church membership as we understand doesn't appear in the Bible, it is hardly appropriate in a book calling on a return to a Biblical understanding of fatherhood. In other places Voddie inserts other cultural understandings of leadership in the church (like assuming that Acts 6 is speaking of deacons). When he focuses on the home and the unique, irreplaceable role of fathers the book is very strong but in places where he strays into ecclesiology his arguments lose a lot of their strength.

All in all this is an important and valuable addition to the conversation regarding fathers as the spiritual head of their households. If you are familiar with the literature in this genre, I doubt you will find much that is innovative but Voddie as always delivers his message forcefully, persuasively and unapologetically. Virtually every man in the church that I know needs a spiritual swift kick in the pants and that sort of jarring is Voddie’s forte. This is a book that fathers, elders, new husbands and young men considering marriage would all benefit from.

(This was also the first book I purchased for and read in its entirety on my Kindle Fire and I enjoyed the experience, esp. the ability to book mark and highlight sections with ease!)

Speaking of mission reports

2011-12-05T15:44:00.000-05:00

As an addendum to my prior post on Kevin Brown's mission report from Ethiopia, I saw a link to his daughter Katy's report as well and it is also well worth your time to read: The Adventure to Africa.

Old Dudes In Seminary

2011-12-05T15:19:00.000-05:00

CNN reports that older students are the fastest growing group of incoming seminarians, Baby boomers heading back to seminary.

According to a decade-long study of enrollment by the Association of Theological Schools released in 2009, the fastest-growing group of seminarians include those older than 50. In 1995, baby boomers made up 12% of seminarians, while today they are 20%.

I am of two minds here, setting aside my concerns about professional training for what should be voluntary ministry. On one hand I have to wonder if men in the latter part of their careers have lost their jobs and see seminary and vocation ministry as a "safe" alternative to fill out their reminaing working years. On the other hand, I would rather see men who have families and life experience outside of Bible college and youth groups leading in the church.

What do you think? Is this a positive in the church?

Mission Report

2011-12-05T12:59:00.000-05:00

I really loved this report from D. Kevin Brown who just got back from Ethiopia where he was ministering along with two of his children, Where To Begin. I especially appreciated this:

I will try to write over the next week or so about the experiences of the journey and the things the Lord has taught me and given to me and my family in this process. In doing so, perhaps vicariously you can somehow get a taste of the work. But, I must tell you that I have another motive. It is to place a seed of desire within you for mission work to reach beyond the comfort, security and pleasure of our own homes and even our own borders to reach the world with the Gospel. I hope the Spirit of God will place a desire in your heart to do “hard things.” I pray some parents will see that it is just as important to send your child on mission adventures as it is sports camps/weeks, summer camps or academic exploits.

I so get that and it is my desire to take my oldest daughters with me next year to Haiti, not to give them a cool experience and some pictures to post on Facebook but to give them that sort of spiritual awakening that comes from seeing the enormity of the work and our utter dependence on God for the task. It takes a certain level of trust in God to take your children from the comfortable world of middle America and show them how the rest of the world lives. It is far easier to talk about missions from the safety and comfort of the youth room at church but the mission field is out there waiting and God has called us all, without exception, as His workers in the harvest.

I am looking forward to the rest of Kevin's posts and encourage you to read his first entry and the subsequent entries.

Marketing With Jesus

2011-12-05T08:36:00.001-05:00

Will Rochow takes on the notion that we can "Christianize" something by adding the word "Christian" to something, in this case a "Christian" credit union: Christian Money?. Christian books, Christian music, Christian this and Christian that. Makes me wonder...

Should we be using the name of Jesus as a marketing tool?

Sacred Space Became Obsolete With The New Covenant

2011-12-04T18:10:00.000-05:00

Jon at Profane+Faith has an interesting post this morning: There is no sacred place. He says:

Here is what I wanted to write down. There is no sacred place. You can not somehow channel God's Spirit through a certain scale of things, a certain size of building, a certain type of design, or even a certain type of activity there. I believe God is just as up to something in the sub shop, in the mechanic's garage, in the retail outlet, at the editor's desk as he is in a church building. Maybe more so.

I believe you can obliterate every churchy building there is, and the church of Jesus Christ will not be tarnished in the least. When no place is sacred, our faith becomes a profane faith. It is lived out everyday. And the renewing hand of God can be seen in the restaurant, the car dealership, the school.

If our faith is such that a fancy building we visit once a week is letting us off the hook or immunizing us from living out faith where the rubber meets the road, we have yet to come into life-changing contact with the good news of Jesus Christ. Because he is good news in real life, not just for one hour one day a week. And so there is no sacred place.

I agree. We just can't seem to get the difference between the Old and New Covenant. That is a real tragedy because they New is infinitely better than the Old but when we try to function as New Covenant people of God as if we were still under the Old Covenant, we miss a big part of the joy of the new and better covenant God instituted with the blood of His Son. There are so many ways we try to force the Old Covenant practices into our church traditions: a set apart priestly class, ritualism, infant baptism, sacred places and sacred times. These don't bring us closer to God but further away from the glorious life in Christ that is ours by faith.

God is working all around us and it often seems that He is working the most in the places that we recognize the least. Neighbors helping one another, a mother comforting a hurting child, Christians sharing a time of warm fellowship over a cup of coffee. We don't see those things as nearly as important as "church" but I think God is far more glorified in simple acts of fellowship and love than He is in our vain attempts at "worship". There is absolutely a place for intentional gatherings of the church but they should be a part of our everyday lives, not an event to be attended. Check out the rest of Jon's thoughts and leave a comment or three!

Return on Investment

2011-12-04T09:10:00.000-05:00

Nothing about church this morning. Yesterday we brought home the first of two cows we are buying. The other cow is still at the farm we are buying her from, she seems to be in season and she and the bull seem to be...getting along. So we will get her and her calf from earlier this year later in the week (hopefully she will be "with calf" at that time). We brought this mama cow home yesterday because we knew she was ready to calve at any time.

Well, we were certainly right about that! Last night at around 1 AM one of my daughters woke us up, she had been out in the barn and thought the cow was in labor. Like I did whenever my wife was in early stages of labor, I rolled over and went back to sleep while she got up to investigate. Sure enough, she was in labor and had a little calf (we think it is a bull calf, which means he is destined for the freezer) early this morning.

He(?) seems pretty healthy this morning, all dried and cleaned up. I am glad we got him yesterday, otherwise he would have been delivered in the pasture. These are Dexter cattle, which is a smaller and quite hearty dual-purpose (good for milk and meat) heritage breed so a pasture delivery would have been fine but still I think delivery in a warm barn on clean straw beats outside any day of the week!

So we have a cow for less than 24 hours and double our herd. The world hasn't seen a spectacular return on cattle investment like this since Hillary Clinton turned $1000 into $100,000 in 10 months! Maybe I have a career in politics after all....

Love your children by making your marriage a priority

2011-12-03T12:44:00.001-05:00

This is an excerpt from Voddie Bauchman's new book, Family Shepherds, on why husbands should prioritize their marriage over their children: 3 Reasons to Prioritize Your Marriage Over Your Children

What defines you?

2011-12-03T08:43:00.000-05:00

When you are talking with other Christians, what defines you?

Is it where, when and how you "go to church"?

Is it the creed or confession you subscribe to?

Is it the famous preachers and sermonizers you listen to?

Is it how you educate your kids?

Is it your choice for President in 2012?

Or...

Is it how you love the Lord your God? How you love others? How you serve them?

I admit that the first list has been what defines me for a long time. I think that is true for a lot of us and it is something that poisons our relationship with other Christians and damages our witness to the world. We do a pretty poor job loving and serving all of our brothers and sisters but if we focus on that, I think that first list will become less and less important to us.

The assumption of disunity

2011-12-02T12:00:00.000-05:00

Trevin Wax has posted a series of reviews derived from a book, Four Views on the Spectrum of Evangelicalism that are worth reading. The book features four representative figures from the world of evangelicalsm:

1. Kevin Bauder (Fundamentalist)
2. Al Mohler (Confessional Evangelical)
3. John Stackhouse (Generic Evangelical)
4. Roger Olson (Postconservative Evangelical)

All three speak to their understanding of what it means to be an evangelical and they also respond to what has been posted by the other authors. It is an important conversation. The term “evangelicalism” is so misused and confused that while it gets thrown about a lot, almost no one knows what it means. Within the church it means one thing within Christianity, it means something entirely different to those outside of the faith (and it means something generally negative, associated mainly with politics, militancy, money grubbing televangelists, etc.). Even within the church, there are camps that use "evangelical" as a pejorative, from being too conservative (mainline denominations) to being too liberal (White Horse Inn types).

Here are his four posts...

What Is an Evangelical? 1: The Fundamentalist View

What Is an Evangelical? 2: The Confessional Evangelical View

What Is an Evangelical? 3: The Generic Evangelical View

What Is an Evangelical? 4: The Postconservative View

The reviews are interesting and I think all four men have important points they have made (at least based on Trevin’s review). All that being said, something troubling runs through the four views: a common theme of assumed disunity. All of these conversations invariably work within a framework where the church has just decided to shrug our collective shoulders, throw up our collective hands and just accept disunity and assume it is normal and unavoidable. While the conversations revolve around defining evangelicalism, one of the key ways evangelicalism is defined is by determining who is and who is not part of this sub-group in the church.

I am not naïve. Certainly there is plenty of evidence for this being “the way it is”. The church has created all sorts of structures and traditions to exclude some Christians from full fellowship in a local body: formal church membership, denominations, closed communion. I also realize that for the vast majority of the church, this is not only just the way it is, it is perfectly acceptable or even celebrated. As the years turn into centuries and roll on by the church becomes more and more disunfied and the most common reaction is a shrug and “What are you going to do?” dismissal.

I reject this. I don’t reject it because I think it is not the reality on the ground and has been for centuries. I reject assumed disunity because it is something that the Gospel simply demands that we reject and overcome. There is simply no way to read the New Testament and come away with practices that lead to a disunified church made of up thousands of competing local churches. The New Testament spends a ton of time breaking down the walls between believers and we have promptly spent the last two thousand years building them right back up in new, innovative ways.

“Evangelical” is just another label, another divisive subgroup that distinguishes whether a fellow believer is the right sort or the wrong sort of Christian. I am not an Evangelical. Nor am I an Anabaptist. Or Reformed. Certainly I am not Emergent. I am just a Christian and I am just seeking others who have been sought out by Christ and are following Him.

For sale: $73,000 in video equipment

2011-12-01T14:59:00.000-05:00

So I see that Desiring God is selling off some of their old video equipment. Just for kicks, I totaled up the asking price of all of the equipment as of around 3:00. Total bill is $73,100.

No wonder the video material from Desiring God looks so nice.

Nothing gives you a sense of perspective like orphans!

2011-11-30T17:15:00.000-05:00

I really enjoyed this post from a recent returnee from Haiti, full of lots of great pictures! Check out A New Perspective.

The times they are a'changing!

2011-11-30T08:47:00.000-05:00

I can say without hesitation that this post from Wade Burleson is one of the best things I have read on the changes happening in the church and the difference between Old Covenant national Israel and the New Covenant church of Christ. The Church Is Changing - A Reformation of the Church Based on the Truth of Scripture. You absolutely need to read the whole thing because his explanations are outstanding regarding the Old and New Covenant but I am going to copy and paste the opening and closing paragraphs:

For many centuries established Christian churches have attempted to assume the status and function of ancient Israel's Temple worship. From massive buildings erected to inspire, to stained glass windows or elaborate decor intended to tell stories, from the priesthood of authoritative pastors/leaders who separate themselves from 'laity,' to injunctions to tithe into the storehouse of the church or risk being devoured by the devil, the modern church looks more like Old Testament Israel than early followers of Christ. The crystallization of the institutional church into Jewish modes of worship is not limited to Roman Catholicism or even unorthodox Mormonism. Baptist churches, though shouting loudly 'no creed but the Bible,' have ignored the New Testament teaching on the nature of the true church and have replicated Israel's hierarchy of priestly authority (pastors), Israel's emphasis on worship at a specific place (the sanctuary), and Israel's obligation to an 'if-then' covenant with God ('if we will obey God, then God will bless us'). The freedom of a sinner who personally, intimately and spiritually trusts Christ and experiences the power of God at work within is substituted for a form of behavioral control imposed by a spiritual authoritarian (usually a pastor) who uses Old Testament passages of Scripture to bind believers. The pastor who operates in this manner may not realize that God abolished the Old Covenant system of worship and that the early Christians were known for their radical departure from dependence on a worship place, authoritarian priests, and any religious performance through ceremony, holy days or sacrifical 'offerings.' As Adolph Safir reminds us in his brilliant work on Hebrews: “The Greeks and the Romans were not merely astonished at, but felt irritated by the worship of the early Christians, who without image and altar, without priests and vestments, appeared to them as atheists, men and women ‘without gods’ and at times felt threated by the mysterious power Christians possessed as they rejoiced in suffering and met with calm courage the tortures of death itself” Adolph Saphir.
---
The church is changing. There is a reformation taking place. The church has left the building(s). And any pastor who tries to reinvigorate the institutional church through Old Covenant principles is destined to fail.

That is just great stuff. He even makes comments sure to horrify many of his fellow pastors when he says that giving should be directed as led by the Spirit, not by misapplication of the Old Covenant "bring your tithe to the ~~storehouse~~ church" laws: God's people should give, should serve and should worship as the Spirit leads, where the Spirit leads, and as long as the Spirit leads. Gasp! That is borderline blasphemy! Everyone knows you should give your first and your best in the offering plate on Sunday, not where you are led to give by the Spirit of God!

This is just good stuff and it comes from a guy who is a traditional pastor in a traditional church, Emmanuel Enid in Oklahoma, but at least on this issue he seems to get it and embrace it. Read and be encouraged!

(A hearty tip of the hat to Aussie John for linking to this!)

Not consuming for the sake of consumption

2011-11-29T18:13:00.000-05:00

If you are sick of the constant accumulation of goods just for the sake of accumulating the latest and greatest thing that will be obsolete next month, check out the Christmas shop at the Haiti Orphan Project! You can select from a few different items, Christmas cards and a sweet ornament (see picture to right) that will be a fun and unique Christmas gift and will at the same time help orphans in Haiti. I just ordered my Christmas ornament and it will be featured prominently on our tree! Consider a gift that gives back to those who are neediest in this season when we remember the birth of Christ!

Why Trumps How

2011-11-28T14:51:00.000-05:00

Swanny has penned a very good post on how we gather and why it is less important than why we gather, (warning, some of the ways he expresses himself won't pass muster among certain people in the church but if you can't get past that to see his point, well you need to get a grip). His post, Im Not a Model… You Know What I Mean?, really hits at a weakness in many of the conversations about the church that circulate around the blogosphere among those of us who reject the institutional church as proper and normative for Christians. The assumption is often that if we reject one form of church model, the institutional model, we must therefore advocate for a different form, the house church model. Swanny says "not so fast!"

People rightly assume that I believe the institutional church system is downright destructive, causes separation among the people, promotes individualism, has a disease called “Jesus-Deficit-Disorder”, and breeds legalism. If you read my other posts among this blog, you will see where I am coming from. However, many of you I speak with or chat with online seem to assume that if I am against the institutional church model, then I must be for the “organic church model” or the “house church model” or some other “model”.

If I am honest, I need to say that when I first started down this path, I assumed that a “house church” was, if not a silver bullet, at least a step in the right direction. I am not looking for a house church model or organic church model even though I think that comparatively it is far more conducive for an environment of mutual edification. I am also not looking for a “Reformed” church even though I am largely in agreement with the tenets of Reformed theology nor am I looking for an “Anabaptist church” although I see much that I admire in the Anabaptist tradition. I am looking for God’s church, His people living in community with one another. That means that I am looking for community among God’s people where His people are in an environment of mutual edification, loving support, rebuke and discipline where needed and a sharing of lives that goes beyond Sunday meetings whatever the form. It also means that it will look different in different contexts.

You can’t force this. Having a church that meets in a home but functions like an institutional church is not going to bring us closer to community. Nor is forming “community” via cloistered communes that are largely cut off from the world we are called to be ambassadors to like the Hutterites the answer. Perhaps worst of all, if we arrogantly assume that we are smarter than those dumb sheep that go to institutional churches we are engaged in outright sinful and divisive behavior, we are actually being counter-productive. My posts often stray over that line and I am trying to avoid that.

If we are living our lives together for the right reasons, getting the “why” right, and submitting ourselves to the Scriptures even when it is uncomfortable and runs contrary to our traditions and the culture we live in, the form will naturally take care of itself. That doesn’t mean we don’t study it and discuss us and think and pray through it but we need to be sure that we have the focus on the main thing: living lives in community with other believers as a witness to the lost and edifying environment for the redeemed while we are all equipped and sent to take Jesus Christ to the world.

This should concern all followers of Christ in America

2011-11-28T11:30:00.000-05:00

I am not talking about a store telling it's employees to say "Happy Holidays" instead of Merry Christmas or a public place taking down a Nativity scene. I am talking about a secret meeting being held in Iowa to find an alternate candidate to Mitt Romney. CNN reported this a few days ago, First on CNN: Key social conservatives secretly meet to stop Romney in Iowa, and while I am not averse to finding a different candidate than Mitt "The Human Weather Vane" Romney, I was concerned by some of those in attendance...

The meeting, the group's first, took place in a private office building in Des Moines on Monday. In attendance were representatives from the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition, The Family Leader, the group Iowa Right to Life, and a representative for the Iowa chapter of Concerned Women for America. Some pastors from prominent Iowa churches also attended the meeting.

So in Iowa, prominent clergy are secretly meeting to plot political strategy with various political operatives and organizations. These are presumably men who make their living from the offerings of the church and are hired as professional ministers by the churches that employ them. Is this what they should spend their time doing? Is this what Paul was talking about in 1 Corinthians 9:14, the Gospel of Republican politics? More pointedly:

There is no one in Iowa that needs to hear the Gospel?

There is no one in Iowa who is going hungry or is in need of clothing?

There are no widows or orphans to be visited in Iowa?

I can think of nothing less pertinent to the Gospel ministry than secret cabals dedicated to finding an alternate candidate to Mitt Romney. One of the names bandied about as a possible replacement to Romney is Newt Gingrich, a smart guy for sure (and if you are unsure he will tell you all about how smart he is) but also a man who is a serial adulterer, twice divorced and an allegend convert to Catholicism. Meanwhile someone like Ron Paul is crossed of the list for his failure to be sufficiently militaristic for "conservative Christians" who apparently think Jesus said "Blessed are the bomb-makers (as long as they live in America)" during the Sermon on the Mount. Since when is a perpetual state of warfare a "family value".

It is scary how many Christians are willing to be so reliant on the machinations of men, whether secret cabals of "social conservatives" in Iowa or Jim Wallace types advocating for income redistribution. So much for seeing first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness.

Next up!

2011-11-27T16:18:00.000-05:00

Rick Ianniello posted this today in his post, sunday tv, and I would agree completely...

Gobble gobble!

2011-11-24T12:35:00.000-05:00

Back to real life

2011-11-23T11:10:00.000-05:00

I read a wonderful essay from a sister named Rachelle who just recently returned from Haiti and in many ways her post, Wrestling With Life, could easily describe my experience as well. The whole thing is worth your time to read but this paragraph was especially powerful...

I do not want my experience in Haiti to become a series of Polaroids taped into my scrap book. I want to own my part in caring for the widows and orphans James speaks of. My hope is the church will take the words of James to heart. I believe we are the ones who will make a difference by building consistent relationships over time.

That is so important. Works of mercy cannot be isolated, one time actions that we can look back on with nostalgia but rather must be part of the fabric of our lives as individual followers of Christ and as the family of God. If we become "vacationaries" we are losing the sacrificial power of lives of service in the name of our King. It can be all too easy to return from some far away land full of zeal but then as the realities of life creep in begin to forget what we were so convicted about in the first place. Even worse we can let the business of "doing church" distract us from the business of being the church. That is a trite saying because it is overused but it is also true. Playing at church and being the church are not the same thing.

May God continue to place an insatiable burden for the work of mission and mercy in the hearts of His people such that the cares of this world can never begin to satisfy us.

Those darn Midwesterners and their Midwestern sentiments!

2011-11-23T10:31:00.000-05:00

Apparently a professor at Michigan State, which last time I checked was in Michigan which is solidly in the Midwest, is far too sophisticated for the people who actually live in the Midwest and send their kids to a university in the Midwest. The Detroit News reports that one Danny Guthrie, an associate professor of some sort, is in a bit of hot water because he likes to take pictures of himself and some students. Without clothes. Hey, it's art!

Some regard Michigan State University associate professor Danny Guthrie as an artist doing what others have done for centuries: creating beautiful images that include nudity.

But others think Guthrie is pushing the bounds of creativity too far by making art photographs with himself and students, especially young women exposing their breasts and most of their body.

On the MSU faculty for 13 years, Guthrie and his images are well-known among students and MSU officials, who have determined there's a protocol in place so students do not feel pressured to participate. But Guthrie's work recently caught the attention of the student newspaper and parents, leading to a debate about the line between art and ethics.

What is the problem?! Surely some 65 year old guy posing nekkid with co-ed students in their late teens or early twenties is not creepy at all! Never fear though, another one of the academic elites at Michigan State will explain it all to us provincial types...

But those who are raising questions don't understand what a serious artist Guthrie is and are expressing puritanical, Midwestern sentiments, said Henry Brimmer, an assistant professor in MSU's Department of Advertising, Public Relations and Retailing.

"His work is gorgeous, it is beautiful, it is well done, it has significance," said Brimmer. "I am not trying to be a snob. But if you come from any of the coasts or if you have an education in art … you wouldn't even think twice about it."

Quick rule of thumb. When someone starts a sentence with "I am not trying to be a snob", there is a 100% chance that the next sentence is going to be something horribly snobbish. I love that he is aghast at people in the Midwest expressing "Midwestern sentiments". What sort of sentiments are we supposed to express? Apparently an old guy taking pictures of himself naked with college aged girls is perfectly normal "on any of the coasts". If that is true, and it is not, that is all the more reason to live in the Midwest!

Ah, our academic elites. This is the sort of quality education the Occupy Wall Street kids borrowed tens of thousands of dollars for and now don't think they need to pay back. Actually, when you look at it that way they should be protesting at the universities that suckered them into paying for this drivel, not the banks that loaned them the money.

Holding His Table Hostage

2011-11-22T15:25:00.000-05:00

I got a phone call I was expecting last Saturday morning. The group we have been meeting with for the last six months or so had announced that they would be having communion on Sunday, November 20th. We are not “members” which hasn’t been an issue so far but I suspected that it would become an issue when communion was observed. Saturday morning the call came in from the most senior of the elders to let me know that while we were welcome to come on Sunday, we were not permitted to partake of the Lord’s Supper because we were not “members” and hadn’t been attending long enough to be granted a waiver. I was very disappointed but not surprised to get this call. This practice is not at all uncommon. There are many churches that flat out refuse communion to non-members or set forth restrictions on those who are being graciously allowed to participate. This practice is supported mainly by tradition and by the artificial barrier of formal church communication but it is terribly problematic to defend this position from Scripture.

Scripturally there are only a couple of reasons why someone would not be welcome to the Lord’s Table. One is if they are not a believer. As far as I can tell, and I am open to correction here, the Lord’s Supper was exclusively something observed by the gathered church. It was not something that unbelievers participated in or at least that is not obvious from the text. Again, I might be wrong on that. The other reason to deny someone the fellowship of the supper is a person in gross and unrepentant sin that had not been properly disciplined and restored to fellowship. This comes from the well known passage in 1 Corinthians 5. The context is a man who “has his father's wife” which indicates a man having sexual relations with his step-mother (see Leviticus 18:8) which is pretty gross but Paul expands on this specific situation in Corinth to make a more global point (emphasis added):

I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people—not at all meaning the sexually immoral of this world, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters, since then you would need to go out of the world. But now I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother if he is guilty of sexual immorality or greed, or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or swindler—not even to eat with such a one. For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge? God judges those outside. “Purge the evil person from among you.” (1 Corinthians 5:9-13)

Paul states pretty unequivocally here that those who are Christians that are guilty of a variety of sinful behaviors should be banned from sharing meals, which I believe is how the early church understood and observed the Lord’s Supper. This denial of the breaking of bread seems to be the most severe form of church discipline.

So what does that say about the “non-member” in a local gathering? From what I can see, you either welcome someone to the breaking of bread or you refuse them because a) the aren’t a believer or b) they are engaged in open and unrepentant sin and are treated as an unbeliever. Since formal church membership in any form is absent from the Scripture, how exactly does that suffice as a reason to deny someone the Supper? Or disagreement on secondary doctrines? If I hold to the Biblical practice of baptism, i.e. baptizing only professing believers, should I withhold the fellowship of the Table from those “baptized” as infants? In my understanding of Scripture they are tacitly refusing to submit to baptism upon profession of faith. There was a time when I would have refused the Lord’s Supper, at least the ritualized form it takes in the traditional church, from someone “baptized” as an infant with a clear conscience but now? Unless I believe that they are not a believer or that they are openly sinning I don’t see where that warrant comes from. The idea that I would enforce a completely artificial standard (being a "member" of that particular local church) as the entry point for breaking bread is divisive and to be blunt sinful.

The Lord’s Supper is the great unifying symbol of the shared faith of every Christian and yet it is most often something that is either ritualized to the point of losing its familial meaning or it is held hostage to manmade traditions like “church membership”. This should not be so. We are one people, part of the same one Body that is the Bride of Christ and we should welcome to the table all who confess Jesus Christ as Lord.

The Lord’s Table is not your meal. You aren’t the one who sent the invite and you aren’t the host so you and I don’t get to tell someone that they are not welcome because we have created an artificial barrier or a higher standard than the one that Jesus set forth and Paul affirmed. We should as His people be constantly striving to find ways to be in fellowship over the Table with other Christians more often, not seeking to exclude one another from this critically important act.

Product Review: Kindle Fire

2011-11-21T14:16:00.000-05:00

Thus far the Kindle Fire has been great. I don’t have much of a comparison to work from, having never used the old standard Kindle or the new iPad, but based on what I am able to do I like it a lot and it is a great value at $199 (no doubt that price will plummet over the next year or two as the next great thing comes out). The downloads are super fast with a wifi connection and the interface is generally great to use. Web browsing on the proprietary Silk browser is faster than I expected. Watching videos and navigating from page to page is quite fast and the bigger screen makes it a joy to browse the web compared to a smart phone.

If you have an Android smart phone and like the apps on it, you will love the Kindle Fire! I downloaded Angry Birds as soon as I opened the box and it is way more fun on the Fire than on a phone. Web pages are also of course much more user friendly because they are much larger and cleaner. So far the touch screen is generally very responsive. The ease of navigation in the store is very nice. The device itself is far more portable than a laptop and more user friendly than a smart phone. My wife was walking around the house last night watching a show on Netflix with her headphones on and the Kindle in one hand. I love the ability to bookmark and highlight a book I am reading and them navigate back to those spots with ease. I think the most basic book feature of the Kindle looks better on the older versions but when you combine the ability to check scores on ESPN, post on Facebook and read a book from one device it can’t be beat!

Some of the downsides. The main page has a “carousel” of icons for the most recent books, apps, etc. that you have used. You “spin” the carousel to browse through the options but it is kind of hard to make it stop where you want and it regularly keeps flipping when you try to tap an icon to open a book or app. Some of it is not terribly intuitive. For example, when you are in a book there is nothing obvious to tap to navigate but I figured out pretty quickly that a “double tap” brings up the menu including the all important home button. I have also been pretty bummed by the accessories that Amazon is offering. I bought a cover made by Belkin for $29.99 but it was absolutely garbage and I already returned it. I get the need for margin boosters but the quality of this product was so bad that Amazon should be embarrassed to be offering it alongside their new flagship product. These are all pretty minor concerns and don't detract from this breakthrough product.

Amazon has hit a home-run with the Fire. The product is just about perfect for the price and is a legit challenger to the iPad because of Amazon’s unique product line-up that goes along with the Kindle and the favorable price point that makes it more accessible to a wider audience.

The passing of a great man

2011-11-21T11:46:00.000-05:00

A good man passed away last week. Not just some guy, not just another of the “greatest generation” but a close friend of the family and the man I was named after. We shared more than a name though. Arthur Regenold Jr. was a fixture in my life growing up, frequently stopping by our home when I was a child. He was probably the only man I know who could get away with teasing my father unmercifully! He was generous and gracious, a man of very few words but each and every word he spoke was worth listening to attentively.

He was a quiet and gentle man but a “man’s man” in a way that is far too uncommon today. A man who answered the call of World War II and who was married to the same woman for over 60 years. A man who would go grouse hunting with my father and I but seemed far more interested in enjoying being in the woods than he was in shooting birds. Even as an older man (and Art always seemed old to me!) he had that sort of pace in the woods that made other men scramble to keep up with him, especially guys with short legs like my dad and I! Art owned a very sizeable property on Black Lake, Michigan that we visited as a family every summer over the fourth of July and whenever we went, there was Art. He was always doing something, working on a boat, putting in his dock, helping someone else with a project. The vacation spot that Art owned was probably worth a great deal of money but you would never know it from meeting Art, a guy who preferred flannel shirts, work pants and quilted vests. The only time he dressed up was when he put on his “marryin’ and buryin’ suit” and I can count the number of times I saw him dressed like that on one hand.

Art was hardly a politically correct guy. That is the understatement of the year! He liked scotch and growing up I always remember him smoking some nasty brown cigarettes. I am also confident that he never once turned down someone who needed his help. I have a hard time writing about him without tears welling up in my eyes. I am sure he never knew how important he was to me but he is someone I will always remember with the very fondest of memories. I still remember him telling me stories of World War II or calling my dad “The Big Kahuna” as an affectionate tease. For me Black Lake will always be integrally linked to Art Regenold and there is no place more special for me in the world.

You can read Art’s obituary here. My life is richer for having known Art Regenold growing up. How we could use more men with his spirit and wisdom in America today. Good-bye my friend.

Missions: Few subjects are more important or more filled with misconceptions

2011-11-19T18:59:00.000-05:00

Dave Black posted a list of Top Ten Misconceptions About Missions and it is a great list. The mission of the church is the great responsibility and great privilege of every single Christian. It is a terrible truth that many of the so-called experts on missiology have transformed the universal calling of all Christians into a specialized subcategory of the church.

Getting things early, another reason to like Kindle!

2011-11-19T08:29:00.000-05:00

I mentioned last week that I had pre-ordered Voddie Baucham's new book Family Shepherds but it wasn't being released until November 30th. This morning I realized it was already released in Kindle format so I cancelled my pre-order and bought it via Kindle. Seconds later it was on my reader and ready to go! Plus I saved a buck because unlike Tim Keller's Generous Justice, the Kindle edition is cheaper for Family Shepherds.

Kindle. When waiting for a new book simply is unacceptable.

Farm Stuff

2011-11-18T14:22:00.000-05:00

Another member of my family is getting into the blogging world. My wife started up a blog to share what is going on with our little farm. Her blog is called My Wages Farm and is a play on the account of Jacob and his animal husbandy:

As soon as Rachel had borne Joseph, Jacob said to Laban, “Send me away, that I may go to my own home and country. Give me my wives and my children for whom I have served you, that I may go, for you know the service that I have given you.” But Laban said to him, “If I have found favor in your sight, I have learned by divination that the LORD has blessed me because of you. Name your wages, and I will give it.” Jacob said to him, “You yourself know how I have served you, and how your livestock has fared with me. For you had little before I came, and it has increased abundantly, and the LORD has blessed you wherever I turned. But now when shall I provide for my own household also?” He said, “What shall I give you?” Jacob said, “You shall not give me anything. If you will do this for me, I will again pasture your flock and keep it: let me pass through all your flock today, removing from it every speckled and spotted sheep and every black lamb, and the spotted and speckled among the goats, and they shall be my wages. (Genesis 30:25-32)

We have a number of Jacob sheep, so called because of their spotty wool. They are a fairly rare breed, not like the more common specialized meat or wool breeds and are unusual in that often have four horns rather than the normal two. That is the genesis (pun intended) of the name of the blog. Since my wife is usually far busier than I am with keeping the home and teaching the kids, her writing output will not keep up with mine but it will probably be far more interesting. Look for lots of pics and updates as we tinker around with a semi-agrarian life, hopefully without additional major injuries!