Straddling The Tiber

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

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

Jesus the Free Market Capitalist

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

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?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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!