This past weekend we were privileged to have Dr. Gerry McDermott from Roanoke College here with us in Cedar Rapids. Dr. McDermott’s trip was sponsored by Reconciliation Ministries and Coe College. He spoke twice on Friday at Coe, and then on Saturday up at Troy Mills Christian Church in Troy Mills. Finally, he spoke at the morning services on Sunday at Noelridge Park Church. It was a busy weekend!

Dr. McDermott is a professor of Religion there at Roanoke, is a specialist on Jonathan Edwards, and has written something like eight books on a variety of religious topics. A recent article he wrote for Christianity Today, titled “Jesus and the Religions”, can be found here. Our connection here in Cedar Rapids to Dr. McDermott (let’s just call him Gerry, he won’t mind) is a personal one; he is a long-time friend of my pastor, Richard Marsceau. Richard was very excited to get him in here to speak.

Gerry’s first lecture at Coe was a comparison and analysis of the religious views of three notable early American thinkers: Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and Jonathan Edwards. It was quite good. The second lecture, which I was unable to attend, was provocatively titled “Was Jesus a Fundamentalist or a Liberal?”. Apparently it drove some very good discussion regarding Jesus and who He claimed to be.

Friday night Richard invited me to join him, Gerry, and a Coe professor for dinner. I don’t think I said more than a dozen words through the entire dinner, but had a wonderful time, listening to these guys discuss their spiritual journeys, current events, and views on religion. I felt somewhat out of my league, but I was learning a lot.

Saturday there was only a small gathering at Troy Mills to hear the discussion on Christians and homosexuality. It, too, was a good talk. I think it was helpful to those that attended. Gerry has been in the midst of the debate on homosexuality for some time now; he was an Episcopal priest for several years, and only recently left that church because of their liberal views. (He is now a pastor in the Lutheran church (ELCA).)

All of the folks that attended were invited to lunch afterwards, and again we had a good discussion. Later on it veered into theology, and we had a chance to discuss several views being debated in the Reformed church lately. (Gerry considers himself Reformed.) He recommended N.T. Wright’s book What St. Paul Really Said as an excellent read. I’ve heard it discussed, but haven’t read it, so I went ahead and ordered a copy – actually, two copies; one for me, one for Richard. UPS should deliver them tomorrow. It will be an interesting read.

Sunday morning his message was on “True Religion”. Again, good stuff. When I can dig out my notes, I’ll summarize it here.

It’s not often that I get the chance to participate in discussions and listen to lectures like I did this last weekend. It almost (only almost, mind you) makes me wish I were back in school, or participating in some grad school. But I don’t think that’s in the cards for any time too soon. So, I’ll just take the time to enjoy weekends like this one.

I recently had the opportunity to review an advance copy of Sex and the Supremacy of Christ. Forthcoming from Crossway Books, it has a collection of chapters by various authors, all of them edited by John Piper and Justin Taylor. Piper’s Desiring God Ministry hosted a national conference in 2004 by this title (audio available here), and this book is the natural outflow or summation of the conference.

Sex and the Supremacy of Christ brings us a refreshing viewpoint on sex; Piper manages to avoid both tiptoeing around the subject and bludgeoning the reader with heavy-handed “thou shalt not”s. What we get instead is a series of reminders that sex is a God-created part of life, and as such we should glorify God with our sexuality by submitting even that area to His supremacy. To quote from Taylor’s introduction:

Suppose you wanted to know what the Bible teaches about sex. How would you go about finding out? A word search on variants of the word sex in an English Bible shows that it almost always occurs in the context of sexual immorality (Greek, porneia—from which we derive the word “pornography”). So you might conclude that the Bible does not have much to teach us about sex, and that when it does address sexuality, it does so only in a negative, prohibitory, prudish fashion.

But this would be a rather shallow conclusion. Scripture has a lot to say about sex, because Scripture has a lot to say about everything. So rather than searching the Bible only for the word sex, a more productive strategy would be to search the Bible for the term all things, since sex is obviously a subset of all things.

And so off we go, applying principles that the Bible has for how we should treat all things, and then applying them to sex. Indeed, he argues in the introduction, we can’t have a right understanding of sex without having an understanding of how sex relates to God. This volume then sets out to teach us how we can understand sex in relationship to all of our life and worldview, with the ultimate view of living to the glory of God.

The book is split into five sections: God and Sex, Sin and Sex, Men and Sex, Women and Sex, and finally History and Sex. The topics are fairly and practically addressed. Both single and married men and women are given practical advice on how to glorify God in their sexuality. Sexual sin is addressed appropriately, as sin, but with the immediate reminder of God’s desire for repentance, forgiveness, and healing. In the History section, we receive a wonderful story about Martin Luther, one-time celibate priest turned married reformationist. His marriage to and relationship with his wife, Katherine von Bora, is a valuable study to anyone either in or considering marriage.

Sex and the Supremacy of Christ is well worth buying, reading, and then, if you’re bold enough, sharing. It is a much-needed breath of fresh air in the somewhat stale atmosphere that is the Christian library on sex. And if my opinion counts for anything, it comes highly recommended.

Was reading today and found this wonderful quote from Martin Luther describing the process of the Christian life. It challenges and encourages me…

This life, therefore,
is not righteousness but growth in righteousness,
not health but healing,
not being but becoming,
not rest but exercise.
We are not yet what we shall be, but we are growing toward it.
The process is not yet finished, but it is going on.
This is not the end but it is the road.
All does not yet gleam in glory but all is being purified.

We’re holding some church leadership strategy meetings this summer, and one of the big topics is the proposal that we change the name of our church. It’s a big step – we’ve been Noelridge Baptist Church for almost 50 years. But the times, they are a-changin’. The denomination with which we’re loosely affiliated (Conservative Baptist Int’l, ‘CBI’) has mulled over a name change for the last year or so and settled on WorldVenture. The rationale for the name change is that when you poll the population at large and ask for church-name-type words with bad connotations, right at the top of the list are both “conservative” and “baptist”. Two strikes against you before you even get started. We have discussed it for a while and decided that Baptist has got to go. But what will we change it to?

Our leadership group at these meetings is comprised of eight of us: our four elders (two of whom are the staff pastors), two elder apprentices (of which I am one), the chair of the deacons (my friend Steve), and the chair of the deaconesses (my wife). (Did I mention we’re a little bit involved in our church? ) Anyhow, our group is pretty well split on naming philosophies right now. Our senior pastor (by far the dynamic leader of the group) is in favor of something more seeker-friendly, and is a big fan of something perhaps in Latin that will pique the interest of seekers. (Think of Imago Dei in Portland, for an example.) I think that both of us apprentices and probably the elder chair would go for that.

But then there’s the other side. Steve and John (the youth pastor) and Becky are all on the opposite side, thinking that a “foriegn-sounding” name will just turn people off; that they’ll go “huh? what’s that? can’t even pronounce it!” and that’ll be it. John (I love ya’, bro) likes to play the stupid card: “well you guys may be rocket scientists, but I’m just a simple guy and I wouldn’t even know how to spell it if you told it to me…” It drives me nuts sometimes. He’s not that simple. Anyway, their vote would be for something simpler, like “Peace Church” or “Potter’s Clay Community”. Sure, the names are simpler, but to me they don’t inspire the awe or interest that some other type of name would.

So there’s our dilemma. We will be making a change, but to what? Do you, the reader, have any ideas? Here’s the list of everything that was proposed yesterday at our meeting.

Peace Church
Peace Community
All Souls Church
All Souls Community Church
Last Baptist Church
Community of Faith
Glory of God Community
Image of God Community
Potter’s Clay Community
Last Chance Church
Last Stop Church
Noelridge Church
Gratia Dei Church
Charis Deo Church
Pax Dei Community
Imago Christi Community

Do any of them strike you as good or bad? I’ll take all of the input I can get.

We’re holding some church leadership strategy meetings this summer, and one of the big topics is the proposal that we change the name of our church. It’s a big step – we’ve been Noelridge Baptist Church for almost 50 years. But the times, they are a-changin’. The denomination with which we’re loosely affiliated (Conservative Baptist Int’l, ‘CBI’) has mulled over a name change for the last year or so and settled on WorldVenture. The rationale for the name change is that when you poll the population at large and ask for church-name-type words with bad connotations, right at the top of the list are both “conservative” and “baptist”. Two strikes against you before you even get started. We have discussed it for a while and decided that Baptist has got to go. But what will we change it to?

Our leadership group at these meetings is comprised of eight of us: our four elders (two of whom are the staff pastors), two elder apprentices (of which I am one), the chair of the deacons (my friend Steve), and the chair of the deaconesses (my wife). (Did I mention we’re a little bit involved in our church? ) Anyhow, our group is pretty well split on naming philosophies right now. Our senior pastor (by far the dynamic leader of the group) is in favor of something more seeker-friendly, and is a big fan of something perhaps in Latin that will pique the interest of seekers. (Think of Imago Dei in Portland, for an example.) I think that both of us apprentices and probably the elder chair would go for that.

But then there’s the other side. Steve and John (the youth pastor) and Becky are all on the opposite side, thinking that a “foriegn-sounding” name will just turn people off; that they’ll go “huh? what’s that? can’t even pronounce it!” and that’ll be it. John (I love ya’, bro) likes to play the stupid card: “well you guys may be rocket scientists, but I’m just a simple guy and I wouldn’t even know how to spell it if you told it to me…” It drives me nuts sometimes. He’s not that simple. Anyway, their vote would be for something simpler, like “Peace Church” or “Potter’s Clay Community”. Sure, the names are simpler, but to me they don’t inspire the awe or interest that some other type of name would.

So there’s our dilemma. We will be making a change, but to what? Do you, the reader, have any ideas? Here’s the list of everything that was proposed yesterday at our meeting.

Peace Church
Peace Community
All Souls Church
All Souls Community Church
Last Baptist Church
Community of Faith
Glory of God Community
Image of God Community
Potter’s Clay Community
Last Chance Church
Last Stop Church
Noelridge Church
Gratia Dei Church
Charis Deo Church
Pax Dei Community
Imago Christi Community

Do any of them strike you as good or bad? I’ll take all of the input I can get.

We’re holding some church leadership strategy meetings this summer, and one of the big topics is the proposal that we change the name of our church. It’s a big step – we’ve been Noelridge Baptist Church for almost 50 years. But the times, they are a-changin’. The denomination with which we’re loosely affiliated (Conservative Baptist Int’l, ‘CBI’) has mulled over a name change for the last year or so and settled on WorldVenture. The rationale for the name change is that when you poll the population at large and ask for church-name-type words with bad connotations, right at the top of the list are both “conservative” and “baptist”. Two strikes against you before you even get started. We have discussed it for a while and decided that Baptist has got to go. But what will we change it to?

Our leadership group at these meetings is comprised of eight of us: our four elders (two of whom are the staff pastors), two elder apprentices (of which I am one), the chair of the deacons (my friend Steve), and the chair of the deaconesses (my wife). (Did I mention we’re a little bit involved in our church? ) Anyhow, our group is pretty well split on naming philosophies right now. Our senior pastor (by far the dynamic leader of the group) is in favor of something more seeker-friendly, and is a big fan of something perhaps in Latin that will pique the interest of seekers. (Think of Imago Dei in Portland, for an example.) I think that both of us apprentices and probably the elder chair would go for that.

But then there’s the other side. Steve and John (the youth pastor) and Becky are all on the opposite side, thinking that a “foriegn-sounding” name will just turn people off; that they’ll go “huh? what’s that? can’t even pronounce it!” and that’ll be it. John (I love ya’, bro) likes to play the stupid card: “well you guys may be rocket scientists, but I’m just a simple guy and I wouldn’t even know how to spell it if you told it to me…” It drives me nuts sometimes. He’s not that simple. Anyway, their vote would be for something simpler, like “Peace Church” or “Potter’s Clay Community”. Sure, the names are simpler, but to me they don’t inspire the awe or interest that some other type of name would.

So there’s our dilemma. We will be making a change, but to what? Do you, the reader, have any ideas? Here’s the list of everything that was proposed yesterday at our meeting.

Peace Church
Peace Community
All Souls Church
All Souls Community Church
Last Baptist Church
Community of Faith
Glory of God Community
Image of God Community
Potter’s Clay Community
Last Chance Church
Last Stop Church
Noelridge Church
Gratia Dei Church
Charis Deo Church
Pax Dei Community
Imago Christi Community

Do any of them strike you as good or bad? I’ll take all of the input I can get.

Within the last 7 days I’ve heard three separate sermons from the same passage. This doesn’t happen all the time. Well, for starters, usually I don’t even hear three sermons in a week. But the Moody conference last week gave me 12 general session messages to choose from. And when I get three in the same week, I think it’s time that I sit up and listen a little more closely.

The third sermon of the bunch was from a guest speaker at our church on Sunday. It honestly wasn’t even that interesting, was pretty shallow. But, it got me turned back to that passage. The other two messages were from D. A. Carson and Tony Evans. Now those will get your attention.

The passage in question is Ephesians 3:14-21:

For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith–that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.

Tony Evans laid it out this way: Paul is praying for us to have more intimacy with Christ. Intimacy provides capacity, and the capacity provides power – God’s power. In other words, if we are lacking intimacy with Christ, our capacity for God to work in our lives is diminished. On the other hand, if we pursue intimacy with Christ, our capacity for God to work in our lives is increased, “more abundantly than all we ask or think”.

D. A. Carson, though, had the illustration while teaching this passage that will stick with me the longest. His question was this: why does Paul pray that “Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith” when he’s talking to Christians, who presumably already have Christ in their life? He told this story, which I’ll paraphrase in the first person:

“When my wife and I bought our first house, it was what they call a “handyman’s dream”. You know what that means… it needed a lot of work. There was black and silver wallpaper in the bedroom. The previous owners had two dogs who were rarely let out – there was still dog poo in the corners of the house. The walls were dingy. It needed lots and lots of work. When we bought the house and moved our stuff in, it was ours, we lived there, but we didn’t really inhabit the place yet.

“But as we continued to live there, we starting working on the house. We knocked down a wall to expand the kitchen. We painted. We took down the black and silver wallpaper. We cleaned up the dog poo. Had we stayed there longer, we undoubtedly would have built on an addition when the kids were born. After some period of time, we could step back, look at the house, and say, ‘wow, we really live here.’”

This, Dr. Carson says, is the difference Paul is talking about in Ephesians 3. When we first accept Christ, our lives are a lot like that handyman’s dream house. There’s black and silver wallpaper on the walls. There’s dog poo in the corners. (“Dog poo” is an exact quote from Carson, by the way. ) Christ is living there, but He doesn’t really “inhabit” the place in the way that Paul means. What God wants to do is to clean us up, to do that painting, take down the wallpaper, and remodel the place so that our Christ is really inhabiting our lives.

This illustration was the most striking, insightful picture to me from the whole conference. I want to let Christ continue transforming my life, until it just radiates from me that “Christ lives here”. With three sermons in a week, I think God was trying to tell me something. I hope I’m paying enough attention.

Ned Rice has a great column today on NRO where he makes a strong argument that the folks whining about the lack of liberalism in the new pope should suck it up, think about what they’re saying, take their beliefs (and the church’s beliefs) seriously, and then pack it up and leave if they’re really that unhappy. The column deals specifically with the Roman Catholic church, but I think the ideas are applicable to any person complaining about their church’s beliefs.

The whole column is worth reading, but I’ll copy a few of the choice lines here.

…a truly liberal Holy Father might have moved the Church towards the proverbial, doctrinal hat trick: allowing actively gay men to be Catholics, then ordaining them as priests, and then allowing them to marry their male partners. There’s a name for churches that condone that sort of thing, and that name is “Episcopalian.”

…if you believe that your church was literally founded by the Son of God, based on principles he personally handed down to His followers (as Catholics do), why would you make your church’s doctrine conveniently open to revision by its flock? It’s like deliberately designing a bucket with holes in it, then wondering why it won’t hold any water.

So if you think this or any other pope is just plain wrong on celibacy or homosexuality or anything else big, and this upsets you so much it interferes with your spiritual life, you’d be well advised to find yourself another church. Otherwise you’re like the orthodox Jew who, in light of recent developments, has taken it upon himself to decide that it’s all right for him to eat pork. You can be an orthodox Jew, and you can eat pork. You’re free to do either one. But folks, you just can’t do both. There are names for Catholics who don’t accept that they can’t do certain things and still receive the sacraments, and one of those names is Senator John Kerry.

And last but not least…

Warning of the “tyranny of relativism” that’s become so pervasive, Cardinal Ratzinger argued that it’s better to be guided by time-honored principles of morality than to be endlessly buffeted about by the myriad whims of conventional wisdom in the name of “freedom.” With the clear implication being, if you don’t like these principles the rest of us here have agreed to live by, maybe this isn’t the Church for you. Or as my Dad used to say during dinner, if you don’t like what we’re serving here, try next door.

Good stuff.

It had been planned for about a month that I would fill the pulpit at my church on April 24th. Then about a week ago I got asked if I could switch to the 17th, to fill in for our youth pastor who has been sick. So, on short notice, I think it turned out OK. You can listen to the second half of the sermon here… apparently the audio guys only managed to record half of it. Arrrgh.

The topic of the sermon is “Three Characteristics of a Loving Follower”, from Ephesians 5:1-2. It’s not super-exciting, but one of my better efforts (of which only total 3, so I’m relatively inexperienced here). And that’s your little insight into Chris’s life for today.

Peggy Noonan (one of my long-time favorite columnists, and a devout Roman Catholic) has a column today on OpinionJournal in which she crafts a tale of a group of Cardinals discussing and thinking over the qualifications for the next man who would be pope. I think she manages to hit on some of the characteristics that really mark a great leader.

(Now let’s not let this get into a discussion on the theology of the RC church, or the relative merits of whether or not John Paul II was a believer… that’s not the point. He was a great man and leader regardless.)

In Noonan’s piece, a rather hardened and cynical old Cardinal is trying to understand why so many people felt so devoted to JPII, why this outpouring of devotion for an old sick man who was constantly telling people what they should/shouldn’t do in regard to moral issues… what was the appeal? And then comes a moment of realization. She writes:

Maybe–maybe . . . Maybe people, being imperfect and human, live whatever lives they live but deep in their hearts–way down deep and much more than they know–they actually notice when somebody stands for truth. And they actually honor it. Maybe that’s why in all the big modern democracies they’d burst into tears when John Paul came by, when he was visiting America and France and Germany. Maybe they knew they were not necessarily living right themselves but they were grateful–they were grateful on behalf of civilization!–that there was a man like him among us. They recognized him and honored him in their hearts. And then word came that he’s dead and suddenly their hearts told their heads: Get on the train and go honor him. Because he adorned us. Because he was right. And we can’t lose this from civilization, this beacon in the darkness.

I think she hits it here: “they actually notice when somebody stands for truth. As a believer, I have Christ in me and I am called to live his truth. And as a person, I respond similarly when I see it in others. The qualities of a life well-lived, lived to uphold the truth. People like JPII. People closer to home, like Bob Dye, who has led the local Youth for Christ chapter for 35 years and radiates Christ through the community every day. People… just normal people, but who live out Christ’s truth every day.

Near the end of Noonan’s story, the Cardinals are in discussion about the qualities that will be needed in the new pope. One argues that the need a holy, devout man. Another argues that they also need a “rock star” – someone with an image and personality that will appeal to the younger generation. Then the voice of wisdom kicks in from a third.

“It would seem our duty is to choose a great man who is not necessarily a dramatic or endearing figure. The Holy Spirit will give him voice. Our time will need greatness. ‘For nowadays the world is lit by lightning.’”

OK, so she’s quoting Tennessee Williams with that last line… but the point remains. The flashes of lightning that illuminate the world will be those that come from the hearts of the faithful. Thanks, Peggy, for the reminder.