The Love Of God

This is just one of the greatest songs of the last decade.  There are very few that surpass it lyrically…maybe ever.

MERCY ME lyrics

How Might We Fix It? Part 2

In order to get on with solutions I need to address one other area of concern that I believe lies at the root of our predicament: the gospel that we preach.  I’m convinced that the prevailing gospel of evangelicalism and particularly the tribe to which I belong is fundamentally flawed.  The gospel we preach produces the kind of unchanged people I have described.

So, what’s wrong with the gospel we preach?  For one it is heavily influenced by the dualism inherent in dispensational theology.  It’s no secret that I am no fan of that particular theology (see, for instance, here, here and here).  I’m going to go ahead and tell you how I really feel: I believe dispensational theology borders on heresy.  I feel that way primarily because of how it, in the end, distorts the gospel.  The end result is that the prevailing view of the gospel today is that one needs to believe in Jesus so that he/she will go to heaven and not hell when he/she dies.  It is, by and large, an escape from this world and all that is in it for a better world, a spiritual world.  It has done significant harm to a healthy and biblical view of resurrection, which lies at the heart of the gospel.  For evidence just look at the discussion going on here where it is being argued that affirmation of the resurrection is an optional part of the gospel.

It is a gospel that, despite our objections to the contrary, is based heavily on mental assent to certain theological affirmations - that Jesus died on the cross for our sins and that believing that fact gives us new life.  Do you believe that you are a sinner?  Do you believe that you need forgiveness?  Do you understand that you are incapable of working out your own forgiveness?  Do you believe that Jesus died on the cross for your sins?  And if you understand the nature of sin and the meaning of Jesus’ death on the cross you are a born again Christian.  Mental assent.  We prove that over and over with our children.  We consistently ask if they know what they are affirming.  The big question is, "Do they really understand?"  Do they understand what it means for Jesus to die for them?

We talk about believing with our heart and not just our head, but I’m pretty sure we don’t have a very good grasp on what "believing with our heart" looks like.  It is a kind of passion or devotion that accompanies our beliefs in the propositions laid out above.

As an example, it is regularly mentioned in Baptist circles that we need to add discipleship to conversion.  We need to get serious about discipling people once they have trusted Christ.  This is a part of the dualism we have inherited from dispensational theology, and this is where it fundamentally distorts the gospel.  The distinction between conversion and discipleship is an unbiblical distinction and results in people who believe that they have "trusted Christ" and are "going to heaven when they die" and who can show no essential change in their nature, be mean as a snake and fight tooth and nail to get their way in nearly everything, the church be damned.  And in far too many cases the church is damned as a result.

So the primary means of fixing our problem is to recover a biblical gospel.  We need to drive out of our minds the notion of a gospel who’s goal is to get me to heaven and rescue me from hell with all the vigor Jesus had when he drove the moneychangers out of the temple.  I’m not denying that heaven awaits those who are in Christ or that hell awaits those who reject him.  But heaven is not the goal.  It is the natural byproduct of a life of following Jesus.

Dallas Willard, among others, points us to this biblical gospel.  It is the good news that Jesus is Lord and that following him leads to life.  Repentance is genuinely turning from our own notions of what gets us life.  Those things are sin and rebellion.  It is turning to Jesus - not just a historical Jesus who died 2000 years ago, though that is true, but turning to the living Jesus who is available to us today (and as if I need to say this to make it explicit: he is alive because he is risen).  When Jesus approached James and John on the shores of Galilee he said "Come follow me."  Jesus was going to show those disciples the way of life and it is the way of apprenticeship to him.  Believing in Jesus is not just believing facts about him, but it is fundamentally trusting him and his way of life.  Thus, when he says to love our enemies we learn to do that because we actually believe that doing so leads to life and failing/refusing to do so leads to death.

I can’t tell you how many times recently  I’ve heard people who are facing some conflict say that they either weren’t going to do what Jesus said because it didn’t apply to them specifically or that they tried it once and it didn’t work.  I’m not kidding.  I’ve really heard people say those things.  Prominent people in prominent churches.  And honestly I’m not surprised that they said it.  I see people regularly living those sentiments out.  I’m more surprised that they publicly admitted it, because that is a bold admission.  It is a bold admission because it is an admission that they, in fact, do not have faith in Jesus where their specific circumstances are concerned.  They believe that Jesus died on the cross for their sins, but they do not trust him, as a person.  They are not apprenticed to him because they don’t believe he has the answers to life.  They simply believe he has the answers to the afterlife.  And this is where the prevailing gospel is woefully flawed.

But Jesus never told us to go and make converts.  He told us to go and make disciples.  Making disciples is not something we do after we make them converts.  Making disciples is making converts.  I would contend that there is no such thing as a disciple who is not a convert and no such thing as a convert who is not a disciple.  You simply cannot be one and not the other.  Except in modern evangelicalism.

So the gospel is showing people that the life that Jesus would lead us into is the only real life.  It is hitching our wagon to him, not just facts about him or assent to historical realities related to him.  Of course, he must be alive for us to hitch our wagons to him.  Hitching our wagons to a dead man will do us no good.  Hitching our wagons to a ghost will not do either.  That is one of the reasons the apostle Paul could say that if Christ is not raised our faith is futile.  We follow him around.  We learn to do the things he did, which obviously included all of those difficult sounding things like loving our enemies, blessing those who curse us, turning the other cheek, going the extra mile, loving God and loving our neighbors as ourselves and so on.

If we preached and taught that gospel - a gospel for all of life, not just the afterlife - we would begin to see genuinely transformed lives.  We would see church conflicts, marital conflicts, conflicts with our children and conflicts at work being resolved lovingly and this love would become a testimony in our world that the Father sent his Son.  It obviously wouldn’t be the end of conflict.  We will, of course, continue to live with that.  But it would be the beginning of the end of much of the needless conflict and it would be the beginnings of dealing with the conflicts that remain in ways that demonstrate a love for one another that covers a multitude of sins and results in unity rather than more church splits, marital splits and so forth.

We can change systems to neutralize those who always seem to be in the middle of the conflicts, but we will be much more effective in the long run by seeing hearts changed as people apprentice themselves to Jesus, learn his ways and begin to live by them.

How Might We Fix It? Part 1

Yesterday I described a problem that many churches face today.  It is a problem where, after years in church, people are left unchanged and churches are tyrannized by bullies, or at least powerful personalities who are, nevertheless, spiritually immature.

How do we go about fixing that - or at least constructively addressing it in ways that allow us to move forward and hopefully into new territory?

There are some popular answers that I must reject outright.  One is that we just need a revival.  Southern Baptists have been revivalistic for nearly a hundred years.  The revival impetus within our denomination remains so strong that the annual Evangelism Conference is one of the best-attended state-sponsored events.  Not only does the state have an EC, many associations do as well and churches continue to have revival meetings. 

I want to be clear that, for the most part, I am not simply rejecting revival meetings.  I am rejecting the expectation of a wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am outpouring from God through "protracted meetings."  I’m not saying we couldn’t use a good outpouring of God’s Spirit.  God knows we could.  But different parts of our world have experienced that sort of thing with largely only temporal effects.  What we need is something more than an event that impacts us for a year, maybe a couple.  We Americans love the "revival" because we love things quick and easy.  Give us 40 Days Of Purpose.  Nevermind that 40 days in the Bible wasn’t what everyone longed for….40 days of judgment via rain clouds….40 days in the wilderness ending with soul-testing temptation.  It still sounds better (easier) than a lifetime of self-denial, repentance and trust in things we cannot see yet long for.

I would also reject the notion that what we need is to do what we already do, only do it with more commitment and vigor - and really mean it this time.  It’s not a simple matter of trying harder.  I can flap my arms with all the energy I have and I’m still not going to fly.  Twenty years ago when I was in Seminary one of my preaching professors, Grant Lovejoy, told us that you could boil most sermons down to about four things: pray more, read your Bible more, give more and witness more.  And here we are.  Unmoved.  I don’t see more of the same as the answer.

I think John Farris’ solutions may be helpful to an extent.  I would agree that our focus must change.  This is probably a characteristic of most established churches - that they have become inwardly focused while comparing themselves to the Jones’.  We’ve bought into the American Dream that bigger is of necessity better, yet that fights against our impulse to maintain control of things ourselves which drives many churches to live out the belief that they really don’t want bigger; where we are is much more comfortable. 

I also think addressing systems can be helpful, though my experience is that taking a head-on approach to the system is almost always futile because it so seldom actually works.  Many times the "bullies" have garnered great support over the years.  They are the patriarchs and matriarchs of the church.  Especially in rural settings they may have numerous relatives in the church.  John Maxwell talks about having to build up pocket change with the people you lead so that when the time comes you can empty your pockets to make the change you are seeking.  But in many cases the pastor will never be at the church long enough to build up the amount of pocket change necessary to overhaul the entire system.  It may take 20 years, and by then it will likely be too late, and you will have already given up.  And in the end that seems like an external solution to an internal problem.  I think what we should be moving toward is not simply eliminating the outward impetus to have a fist fight or to split the church, but to eliminate the things going on inside of people that leads to those sort of things.

Easum says to convert them, neutralize them, kick them out or kill them.  Surely our desire should always be for the first, yet I would word it as: see them changed/transformed.  Of course, even Jesus recognized that such a thing isn’t always possible.  That sort of transformation doesn’t happen by itself and it doesn’t happen unintentionally.  These days it seems to happen far too rarely.  But it can happen.  It should happen.  How does it happen?  Come back tomorrow and I’ll talk about this some more.  Hint…check this out.

I’m 300!

Today’s earlier post marks the 300th post here since moving to TypePad last April.  My first post here on my TypePad blog was April 12, 2006.  Since then I’ve had 300 entires and 1000 comments (exactly).  I’ve had 45,350 page loads from 29,411 unique visitors.  I’m currently averaging around 4,500 pageloads per month.  Thanks to all of you who have read, commented and linked to my little corner of internet graffiti over the past year.  I know they’re not Marty Duren or Kevin Bussey-like numbers, but I’m thankful for all of you who stop by.  Hopefully it’s been worth your time.

What Are We Doing?

Yesterday I mentioned that I had the privilege of listening in on a conference call with Dallas Willard last week.  At lunch yesterday I was asked to talk about something he said that was good.  Well…that would pretty much include everything he said.

One of the numerous things that stuck out was when he shared a little about his journey as a pastor.  He made the comment that he looked at himself and his church and concluded that the church didn’t have much of anything to say to him, and that as a pastor he didn’t have much of anything to say to the people.  Now, he wasn’t saying that he didn’t know how to preach or that the Bible doesn’t speak to our lives today.  What he meant was that he noticed that the predominant things we emphasize in our churches are personal salvation from sin and a sort-of "do better" morality, and that by and large those messages have left far too many people unfulfilled, defeated and unchanged.  [I would add that it is the very thing that led to the famous "Lordship Salvation" controversy between Zane Hodges and John MacArthur, among others, in the late 80’s and early 90’s.]

Last Wednesday night I shared with our church that I’ve often felt the same way.  It is just amazing how many pastors leave the ministry each year out of discouragement.  Not an illicit affair.  Not absconding with the church finances.  Discouragement.

I’ve actually been quite fortunate as a pastor.  It hasn’t always been a bed of roses, but I’ve avoided a lot of the troubles I hear about so often.  But trouble is prevalent enough in the American church that Marshall Shelly could write an important book titled Well-Intentioned Dragons: Ministering to Problem People In The Church.  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve recommended that book to someone.  Church consultant Bill Easum has seen it enough to call it a "disturbing pattern," and writes, "Most established churches are held hostage by bullies. Some
individual or small group opposes the church’s making a radical change,
even if it means the change would give the church a chance to thrive
again. Courageous pastors often ask, ‘What do I do when one or two
persons intimidate the church so much that it is not willing to try
something new?’ My response is always, ‘Either convert them, neutralize
them, kick them out, or kill them. The Body cannot live with cancer . .
.’"  [Thanks to Wade Hodges for the quote.]

But that begs the question: why are so many churches held hostage by bullies and who are these bullies?  In every case they are influential people within the church.  Many have been in the church for years, if not decades.  They are almost always in some position of leadership.  Sometimes the bully is the pastor.  And every time I hear about a specific instance of some blow up I always think to myself, "They ought to know better.  Of all the people there, they ought to know better."  So how is it that a person could be in the church all those years and remain relatively unchanged in their spiritual formation?

This is what Willard meant when he said that the church did not speak to him.  This is what I mean when I say that in large part I agree with him.  Of course, Willard didn’t just give up.  He actually said that he preaches in churches more now, as a philosophy professor, than he did when he was a pastor.

This question, "What am I doing," is one of the primary reasons I got involved with Emergent.  It is why I read Leslie Newbigin, Walter Brueggemann, Eddie Gibbs, Alan Hirsch, Len Sweet, Robert Webber, a bunch of other "missional" stuff, and, of course, all the Dallas Willard I can get my hands on.  It is a question I ask again and again.  Will the people I have been called to shepherd live their lives in 20 years exactly as they do today?  One of these days, either while I’m still here or after I’m gone, will the people of Faith Baptist Church split over some conflict because there were at least two bullies who decided to take different sides?  Many talk about doctrine uniting us, but doctrine has not united us.  In the Southern Baptist Convention Biblical inerrantists are still divided.  Our squabbles in church are almost never about some point of doctrine.  They are almost always about spiritually unchanged people living under the tyranny of having to have their own way.

What are we doing?

I (Pre)Suppose

Last week I listened as Dallas Willard spoke about religious monopolies.  What he meant is that there is this tendency within religion, and Christianity in particular, to contend for a monopoly on the Christian faith.  I’ve seen estimates between 1000 and 1500 Christian denominations in North America.  Willard made the point that it is highly unlikely that any one of them has a monopoly on the truth, though different groups obviously claim to have that monopoly.  We’ve seen instances of that recently among Southern Baptists.  He suggested that we should approach our understanding of Scripture with a healthy dose of humility.

I’ve lost the link, but I read an article a while back about an event that occurred in Israel.  There were two very different - even contradictory - reports of the same event, one by a Jewish newspaper and the other by an Arab newspaper.  The reason for the differences lie in the presuppositions and differences in perspective that are brought to the table.

Scot McKnight points out something similar in a blog review of Mark Allan Powell’s book What Do They Hear?  The story of the Prodigal Son is viewed from the various perspectives of Americans, Russians and Tanzanians - and the point of the story takes on a very different meaning depending upon who’s perspective one is reading from.  Of course, we could add N.T. Wright’s observations about how a 1st Century Jew would have heard the story as well and add yet another understanding.

I’m not advocating a Reader-Response approach to the Bible.  In fact, just the opposite.  I think it becomes that much more important for us to try to set our presuppositions aside and get at what was originally being said so that we can appropriately apply it to our own context.  The problem I often see, particularly in the American church, is a pride that says we already have all of that figured out.  Too many view the American church as the tutor for the rest of the Christian world.  Yet we fail to realize how entrenched our way of looking at life is to our reading of the text.

If the world were a hundred people only one would have a college education or own a computer, 50 would be malnourished, another 20 would be undernourished.  Seven would be North Americans who would spend half of all the money, eat one-seventh of all the food and use one half of all the bathtubs.  They would have ten times more doctors than the other 93.  The seven would continue to get more and more while the other 93 would continue to get less and less.  Do we really not think that this context colors how we view the Scriptures?  Here is just one example of hundreds more that could be given (the hundreds more actually being based in fact, rather than a spoof like this one). 

In his book I Believe In The Church, David Watson tells about a discussion that took place between some missionaries and a group of teachers from a tribe in South America.  "One of the missionaries asked, ‘What would you consider to be the axle of the missionary’s way of life?’  Unanimously and unhesitatingly they replied ‘Money!’  Astonished by this, the missionaries asked if they often talked about money.  ‘No,’ came the reply; ‘they usually talk about God and religion, but money is still the most important thing in their way of life.’  They then illustrated this with numerous examples of how, in practice, money was the ultimate yardstick in both the material and spiritual areas of the missionaries’ life and culture."  (p. 305)

What I am suggesting is that we do not realize the depths of the presuppositions we bring to our readings of the Scriptures.  It isn’t simply in the words that we speak, it is in the things that we do.  Ron Sider says that the American church spends literally billions (with a "b") of dollars servicing buildings every year (see Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger).  Meanwhile across the world if the local church has a building it is a ramshackle shack with dirt floors and no glass in the windows, let alone any sort of heat or air conditioning.  Do we really not think that that reality affects our view of life, faith and the Scriptures?

So I agree with Willard.  I believe we should approach the Scriptures with humility and with ears open to our brothers and sisters in Christ throughout the world to hear what God is saying to them and through them.  In so doing we might very well learn some things about the Scriptures that we never would otherwise.

Jesus Is Not A Republican

I remember first hearing of Tony Campolo when I was in college.  I knew he was Baptist - though tragically not of the "Southern" variety - and that he was outspoken.  Back in those days the fundamentalist takeover changing of the guard in the SBC was not fully completed and Campolo had not been entirely relegated to Southern Baptist purgatory at that time….some thought he had something to say worth hearing.  I think they even sold one or two of his books in the OBU bookstore.  I’m sure they’ve long repented of that sin.

I know that his position on homosexuality has become hard for evangelicals to swallow, and who could blame them, but that shouldn’t undermine everything else that he has to say.  Sadly for too many it does.  But I like his "Red Letter Christian" movement.  I know that the list of supporters is littered with popular whipping boys Jim Wallis and Brian McLaren, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t listen to what is being said.  Whether we will or not is another story.  I was really surprised to see Campolo listed among a Who’s Who in the Religious Left.  When I think of the religious left I think of people like Robert Funk, John Dominic Crossan, Marcus Borg and John Shelby Spong, not Tony Campolo.  But hey.  That’s me.

Take a listen to this interview with Campolo.  I promise you won’t begin to doubt your faith or question the Divinity of Jesus or anything.

HT: Paradigms Lost

On The Web

Two of my photos from Eureka Springs have been picked up for an online article by Jean Bauhaus appearing in Associated Content.  You can check it out here.  Pretty cool!

Picture This

The top pic is Jake.  He’s a little boy that my wife has been watching a couple of days a week.  He was muggin’ for the camera here.  The bottom pic is Nathan running the relay at a recent track meet at Union High School in Tulsa.  Nathan is one of our church youth who runs track for Sapulpa High School.  He comes from a family of runners.  A couple of years ago his uncle Randy, a Sapulpa resident, ran from the West Coast to the East Coast, running the same rout Oklahoman Andy Payne ran in the 1928 Bunion Derby.  Payne won that Bunion Derby.  Randy wrote Running With Payne, chronicling his journey.  Nathan’s older brother Daniel came within two minutes of qualifying for the 2008 Olympics in the marathon.  He will run again in October in hopes of qualifying then.  Their Grandfather, Calvin, still runs at 76 years of age.

Got Fellowship?

Andrew Jones has an Acts-styled post on the meaning of fellowship.  What he describes is much more than your typical ice cream social, though it could certainly lead to one.

Here’s a teaser:

FELLOWSHIP. It might be an old and tired word for many of us, conjuring
images of bad-food potlucks and cups of tea with boring people, but the
word itself is a keeper and offers a way out of our individualist,
consumerist christianities. Fellowship ALWAYS costs us something and it
makes others richer. But giving that gift enriches ourselves and God’s
community.

HT: Alan Cross

And then there’s this quote of Vernard Eller via Alan Cross where the church is likened to a caravan:

A caravan, on the other hand, is something entirely different. It (and a walking caravan best fits our idea) is a group of people banded together to make common cause in seeking a common destination. (Cur emphatic use of the word "common" makes it evident that we are speaking of a community rather than an institution) The being of a caravan lies not in any signed and sealed authorization but in the way it functions.
Its validity lies not in its apparatus but in the performance of its
caravaners–each and every one of them. A caravan is a caravan only as
long as it is making progress–or at least striving to make progress.
Once the caravaners stop, dig in, or count themselves as having
arrived, they no longer constitute a caravan.

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