Christianity
- Read Jane’s story of sexual assault cover-up at The Masters College or about
- The abuse scandal at Sovereign Grace Churches, or about
- Paige Patterson getting the boot from Southwestern Baptist Seminary, or about
- The abuse mess at Southern Baptist churches that the Houston Chronicle has been reporting on this week.
- Mark Driscoll built and then destroyed the Mars Hill empire.
- Bill Hybels at Willow Creek was revealed to have a long unchecked history of sexual misconduct which ended up with the resignation of both of his replacement pastors and the Willow elder board.
- Just this week James MacDonald was fired by Harvest Bible Chapel after suing journalists who had been investigating abuse coverups at HBC, including a bizarre recording of MacDonald talking with a Chicago radio host about trying to put illegal porn on the computer of the CEO of Christianity Today.
- Church as we have known it is not the first option for the next generation. Neither is it an affordable option. It is not sustainable in the long term.
- Seminaries are in trouble.
- The Christian music industry as we have supported it, is over.
- The Christian publishing industry, as we have enjoyed it over our lifetime, is over.
- The church planting movement, in its ecclesiocentic and unholistic form, has played out its song and is now doing an unrequested encore.
- Prayer meetings are focused on making our outdated methods work better.
- “to walk alongside”. I am more and more convinced that this is the posture that we as Christians should take with all those that we encounter. We are not enemies in opposition of those who don’t believe the way we do; we are not self-righteous, hypocritical mockers of those whose sin is more obvious; we are not insulated saints who retreat to the comfortable hidey-hole where everything is “safe”. Instead, we are right there alongside people, where they are. We have an arm around their shoulders and we are speaking words of love and encouragement. We need to be alongside both the lost and the found, among the rebellious and the repentant alike.
- “each person we meet”. This phrase reminds us that our calling isn’t limited to the church but is as expansive as each person that God places in our path. The heart of the believer is to be outwardly-focused, and a heart filled with the love of God will overflow into each one they meet.
- “as they take their next step”. This recognizes that all of us, believers or not, are still in progress, taking one step at a time. It reminds us to be gracious with each person we encounter, because they are on a journey just like we are, even if they’re at a different point. And it reinforces the message of 1 Corinthians 3:5 - 8: that we may each play a different role in God’s work to bring someone to Himself. Whether we plant the seed or water the seed or see the seed blossom into flower, it is God providing the growth, and we are reminded not to be discouraged if our work doesn’t create instant results.
- “with Jesus." And this brings us back to the ultimate object of our lives in service to others: to bring them to, and encourage them with, Jesus. Whatever work God calls us to do, it is done out of love for Jesus, in the name of Jesus, and for the glory of Jesus. Whether you are serving on the stage or behind the scenes, publicly proclaiming Christ in the midst of a crowd or quietly sharing with a friend or co-worker, working for justice in a far-off country or just caring for the weak and needy person on your street, you do it for Jesus. God has given diverse roles and functions, but puts us all together in one body, and says that it is the body of Christ (1 Cor 12).
Lamb of the Free by Andrew Remington Rillera
I have a small handful of theological books in my past that I look back on as turning points - books that spoke to me at my particular place and time, opened my eyes, and set my thinking about God in a new direction. The first of those is NT Wright’s Surprised By Hope; the second is Ilia Delio’s The Unbearable Wholeness of Being. I’ll give it a week or two before I inscribe this in stone, but I’m inclined to think that Andrew Rillera’s Lamb of the Free is the next one. Let me try to explain.
In the Protestant church (at least), there has been much ink spilled over the years to systematize atonement theories, that is, to organize all the teaching about Jesus’ death and how it works to save us into some sort of coherent, synthesized framework. In the conservative evangelical world of my first 40 years as a Christian, the predominant, nay, the only acceptable atonement theory is penal substitutionary atonement, usually abbreviated PSA. PSA says that each of us, as a sinner, deserve God’s punishment, but that Jesus died in our place, taking that wrath upon himself. The children’s bibles usually summarize it as “Jesus died so I don’t have to”.
Rillera says that PSA fails to pay attention to how sacrifices worked in the Old Testament, and as such then horribly misreads the New Testament (particularly Paul and Hebrews). This may be the book that inspires me to go back to where I always get bogged down in the Bible In A Year reading plans, and do a close reading of Leviticus.
Rillera starts right off the bat in chapter 1 by making the assertion that
There is no such thing as a substitutionary death sacrifice in the Torah.
He notes that “for sins that called for capital punishment, of for the sinner to be “cut off”, there is no sacrifice that can be made to rectify the situation”, and that far from animal blood on the altar being a substitute for human blood, human blood actually defiled the altar rather than purifying it. Neither was that animal sacrifice about the animal suffering; to maltreat the animal “would be to render it ineligible to be offered to God”, no longer being “without blemish”. Already you can see the distinctions being drawn between this close reading of Levitical sacrifices and the usual broad arguments made in favor of PSA.
Lamb of the Free takes 4 chapters - a full 150 pages - to review OT sacrifices. I’m not going to try to summarize it here. But I have a new understanding and appreciation for paying attention to those details now! Then in chapter 5 he turns the corner to talk about Jesus, and summarizes his arguments thusly:
(1) According to the Gospels, Jesus’s life and ministry operated entirely consistent with and within OT purity laws and concern for the sanctuary.
(2) Jesus was a source of contagious holiness that nullified the sources of the major ritual impurities as well as moral impurity.
(3) Thus, Jesus was not anti-purity and he was not rejecting the temple per se.
(4) Jesus’ appropriation of the prophetic critique of sacrifice fits entirely within the framework of the grave consequences of moral impurity. That is, like the prophets, Jesus is not critiquing sacrifice per se, but rather moral impurity, which will cause another exile and the destruction of the sanctuary.
(5) But, his followers will be able to experience the moral purification he offers.
(6)The only sacrificial interpretation of Jesus’s death that is attributed to Jesus himself occurs at the Lord’s Supper. At this meal Jesus combines two communal well-being sacrifices… to explain the importance of his death. However, the notion of kipper [atonement] is not used in any of these accounts…
There’s a lot there, and Rillera unpacks it through the second half of the book. (I was particularly enthusiastic at his point (2), as it dovetails neatly with Richard Beck’s Unclean, where Beck argues that Jesus’ holiness was of such a quality that indeed, sin didn’t stick to him, but rather his holiness “stuck to”, and purified, other people’s sin and sickness.) Rillera says that Jesus’ death conquered death because even death was transformed by Jesus’ touch, and that Jesus came and died not as a substitution but rather as a peace offering from God to humankind. (His unpacking of Romans 3:25-26 and the word hilastērion was particularly wonderful here.) Jesus’ suffering under sin and death was in solidarity with humankind, and uniquely served to ultimately purify humankind from death and sin. (Really, I’m trying to write a single blog post here and summarize a 300 page book. If you’ve gotten this far and you’re still interested, go buy the book and read it. If you want to read it but it’s too pricy for you, let me know and I’ll send you a copy. I’m serious.)
I’ll wrap this up with a beautiful paragraph from a chapter near the end titled “When Jesus’s Death is Not a Sacrifice”. In examining 1 Peter 2, Rillera says this:
First Peter says that Jesus dies as an “example so that you should follow his steps”. In short, Jesus’s death is a participatory reality; it is something we are called to follow and share in experientially ourselves. The logic is not: Jesus died so I don’t have to. It is: Jesus died (redeeming us from slavery and forming us into a kingdom of priests in 2:5, 9) so that we, together, can follow in his steps and die with him and like him; the just for the unjust (3:18) and trusting in a God who judges justly (2:23; 4:19). This is what it means to “suffer…for being a ‘Christian’” (4:15-16). It does not particularly matter why a Christ-follower is suffering or being persecuted; it only matters that they bear the injustice of the world in a Christ-like, and therefore, a Servant-like manner.
There are a dozen other bits I’d love to share - maybe in another post soon. But for now, I’m thankful for Andrew Remington Rillera and his wonderful work in Lamb of the Free. I’ll be thinking about this for a long time.
A couple recommended reads: Trusting your Heart, and Christianity as an MLM
A couple posts came through my inbox while I was traveling the last few days which I want to pass on and feel like they have some parallels:
Katelyn Beaty asks “What if you can trust your heart?"
I have written before about evangelicals' love for playing the Jeremiah 17:9 card. This tactic is regularly used to push people into submission to their leaders' arguments even when their internal compass says something isn’t right. Beaty calls out this unease with feelings so prevalent in Reformed evangelicalism, and says we need to pay attention to our whole selves, our gut instinct as well as our rational thought.
…I’ve only grown in the belief that our gut is always speaking and deserves to be listened to. “Gut intuition” is distinct from emotions more broadly. But both are pre-rational, something we feel in our bodies before we have the words to articulate them. And I wonder if that’s why a lot of the evangelical world has trouble honoring them: we’ve inherited a mind-body dualism that says that mind is good and the body is bad. And, of course, that the body is the realm of women: messy, “irrational,” “crazy,” prone to quick changes and fluctuations, etc. This is all Plato, not Jesus, folks…
I can’t tell you the number of stories I’ve heard that someone’s “off” feeling about a person, place, or institution proved to be disastrously true, that they should have spoken up sooner but stuffed their feelings in the name of loyalty to a leader or cause. And I wonder if we’d have fewer church scandals if Christians honored intuition as a worthy source of truth — even as a place where the Holy Spirit is speaking to or through us, if only we would listen.
I think she’s onto something there.
Second is Katharine Strange’s post on ‘Christianity vs. Therapy’. In reviewing Anna Gazmarian’s Devout: A Memoir of Doubt, Strange discusses evangelicalism’s long-standing beef with psychology and therapists. Many evangelical churches are strong on Biblical Counseling, a movement which trains laypeople to exclusively use Scripture to counsel people, a movement which is strongly antagonistic to professional psychotherapy. (Oh, do I have thoughts on this. But I’ll save them for another post.)
Strange pulls at another thread in suggesting why evangelicalism is so opposed to therapy, and it resonates with my own experience:
But I think a large part of the problem boils down to the way that Christianity is “sold” in this country. As I’ve written about before, there’s so much pressure to convert our friends and neighbors that what we often end up presenting to the world is a kind of “prosperity gospel lite”—Jesus as cure-all. Being both Christian AND a person with problems is bad for the brand.
This “multi-level marketing” version of Christianity leads to a religion that values a mask of perfection over authenticity. Belonging, in this case, means cutting off parts of ourselves, whether that’s our sexuality/gender expression, our personal struggles, or even the fact that we experience basic feelings like sadness, irritation, envy, etc. It’s toxic positivity as a ticket to sainthood. Churches that buy into this methodology create lonely people even in the midst of community (for what is belonging without authenticity?) They also have a tendency to thrust narcissistic and authoritarian types into leadership because these are precisely the kind of people who are best at never letting the mask slip. Such environments can easily erupt into abuse, religious trauma, perfectionism, and scrupulosity.
While I knew MLMs were largely fueled and run by religious people, I hadn’t ever really thought about the idea that evangelicalism is essentially selling Christianity as a sort of MLM, by MLM principles. Now I can’t unsee it.
I may have become the stereotypical liberal exvangelical.
On a beautiful Sunday morning, I slept in (until 8).
Kicked off the coffeemaker to brew my locally-roasted beans.
Played Wordle. (Got it in 4.)
Read through my email newsletters for the morning. Realized I was long overdue to support A.R. Moxon. Clicked the link and started a monthly donation. By my count, the 5th recovering homeschooled or super-conservative Christian-schooled evangelical-kid-turned-writer I’m supporting. It’s a whole genre.
Made breakfast. Drank coffee. Started reading a book on social science.
I’m now a member of a church where you don’t have to show up at the crack of dawn and stay all morning to prove your devotion to the cause. My wife and kids aren’t going this morning. (My kids don’t usually. My wife has other plans today.) I’ll show up this morning for the 10:15 service and do my part by getting up to read the OT and Psalm. I’ll be home by 11:30. (The Episcopal Church: Where You Can Love Jesus and Your Trans Kid. ™)
After church I’ll probably hit the neighborhood farmer’s market. (First market of the year today!)
Still evangelical enough that there’s a verse in my head to summarize my morning thoughts:
“When the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.”
Medieval Christians' perspective on climate change
Well, this is a fascinating perspective: medievalist Dr. Eleanor Johnson writes on Literary Hub about medieval Christians' view on climate change:
The Evangelical Declaration on Global Warming opens by saying, “We believe the Earth and its ecosystems—created by God’s intelligent design and infinite power and sustained by His faithful providence—are robust, resilient, self-regulating, and self-correcting, admirably suited for human flourishing.”
As a scholar of medieval religion, culture, and literature, I am utterly perplexed by this belief, because I study a period and region of history where people were, if anything more devoutly and observantly Christian, and I’m here to tell you: medieval English people had no problem believing in climate change and ecosystemic collapse.
Like contemporary Christians, medieval Christians did believe in a providential God. They also believed Nature’s functionality was guaranteed by His will. But they did not believe that, since Nature was underwritten by divine will, Nature would automatically take care of them.
Instead, they assumed that climate change and ecological disasters were divine punishment for human malfeasance. They believed this, first, because they were living through the Little Ice Age, and everyone could feel its effects; nobody bothered to deny it, because it was obviously happening.
A fascinating contrast to today…
Fascinating: 5th Century Byzantine Basilica honoring Female Ministers found in Israel
Reported at Haaretz.com on Monday:
The Holy Mother Sophronia. Theodosia the deaconess. Gregoria the deaconess. These are some of the women lovingly memorialized at a magnificent Byzantine basilica that Israeli archaeologists have uncovered in the southern city of Ashdod.
The splendidly mosaiced church, built in the fourth or fifth century C.E., is being hailed as one of the earliest and largest Christian basilicas found in Israel. It is also one of the most unusual, partly due to the number and prominence of graves and inscriptions dedicated to female ministers. Then as now, women in the clergy were usually overshadowed by their male counterparts.
So much church history that is still lost to us… neat to see this glimpse into ancient Christian practice.
An Easter 2021 Meditation
This last year has felt a lot like death.
We’ve had a pandemic sweep the world, and in this country had our leaders fail to lead, instead spreading rumors and assigning blame. Hundreds of thousands are unnecessarily dead. We’ve necessarily stayed cut off from work, family, friends, school, church, and travel plans to protect ourselves and each other. It feels a lot like death.
We left our church last year. This year I‘ve been watching as the evangelical church in America consistently chooses the hope of political power over truth and justice. Chooses to side with abusers rather than victims. Chooses to marginalize women in the name of Biblical literalism. Chooses to persecute LGBTQIA people rather than love and accept them. Chooses “personal freedom” rather than taking basic steps to protect others amid the pandemic. It feels a lot like death.
In August last year we had a derecho destroy our city. The majority of our tree canopy is gone. Everyone had house damage. Our power was out for almost two weeks. Eight months later, I don’t have to drive further than my own street to see houses still missing siding and fences, roofs with tarps where shingles should be. In my own yard where three old friendly trees once stood, all that remains are ragged scars and chips left by a hurried stump grinder. It feels a lot like death.
There are other stories too personal to post. Stories that aren’t mine to tell. Stories that have kept us awake at night, on the floor in desperation, in helpless gnawing realization of things that aren’t alright. That has often felt a lot like death.
This is the first Easter in my memory that I haven’t been to church to celebrate. That, too, feeels like death.
Somehow, through all this, Jesus still holds on to me. I don’t know how. Even after I put away the fear wrought by legalism, after the habits are ripped away, after the culture that taught me Jesus for 40 years has turned from Him in the name of power and freedom, Jesus is still there. Faithfully loving and sustaining me. Faithfully promising that, in the end, this mess will be redeemed.
In this year that has felt a lot like death I will cling to the hope that Jesus is risen. Somehow, He feels a lot like life.
What systemic repentance might look like for the Evangelical church
There are a few big stories rattling around the American evangelical church community lately that I see as being related. I’m not sure that there’s a single root cause, but there are some common symptoms and conditions that contribute to them all.
There have been barrels of ink used to write on these issues already. I’m primarily thinking about:
Recognition of a broad historical pattern of misogyny within the church.
The #ChurchToo movement, recognizing a long pattern of cover up of sexual abuse and assault in the name of protecting church leaders and “the church’s witness”.
The disgrace of several multi-site megachurch pastors.
Reeling yet? That’s all just within the past five years or so. And there are undoubtedly more revelations to come.
Common threads
A few decades from now I’m sure there will be analyses with better perspective on this stuff, but right here in the middle of it I want to suggest two common threads in all of these.
Powerful, unaccountable men. Whether at the megachurch level or the independent Southern Baptist Church level, men craving power find ways to set up systems that will keep them from accountability. They hand-pick their elder boards. They re-write church bylaws and membership agreements to ensure that they have all the control.
Systemic silencing and ignoring of women If you haven’t read Beth Moore’s post yet, go read it. She’s just one of many, but expresses the issue well. In complementarian churches, women who are themselves fully committed to the idea that they shouldn’t be elders or teachers too often find themselves pushed out of any role that smacks of leadership. Tim Challies, no flaming outlier in the neo-Reformed camp, restricts women from publicly reading Scripture in a worship service. John Piper says that women shouldn’t be police officers because they ought not to be “giving directives” to men. I could go on.
Practical steps going forward
It’s not enough to lament. Real repentance includes taking real steps toward change.
When the doctor tells you that you’ve got heart failure and high blood pressure and are going to die very prematurely if you don’t make some changes, you don’t just say “thanks, doc” and then keep your old lifestyle. You re-evaluate your priorities. Sure, you believed strongly in desserts and cheeseburgers and lots of Netflix time. But if you want to be healthy, you may find that a belief in vegetables and desserts in moderation and regular exercise are also acceptable life choices and will allow you to flourish in a way you wouldn’t otherwise.
Similarly, the evangelical church needs to look at its “life choices” and tightly-held doctrinal distinctives and the fruit that has resulted and make decisions accordingly. How serious are we about repentance?
Accountability Pastors and leaders need real, tangible accountability. For denominations that are structured with congregational autonomy, there should be elder boards that can call pastors on the carpet when need be. We need to take the qualifications for eldership seriously. Not argumentative? Not greedy? Heck, we need to take the fruit of the Spirit seriously. Peace? Patience? Kindness? Self-control? A lot of this stuff is obvious and just needs to be followed.
Additionally, stronger denominational oversight, even an accountability hierarchy, may be appropriate. It’s not a silver bullet - the Roman Catholic church is the largest religious bureaucracy in the world and has its own accountability issues - but something needs to be done. If congregational autonomy is so important that it precludes churches from reporting and protecting other churches from known sex offenders, congregational autonomy is an idol that should be done away with.
Bigger is not better Can we all just agree at this point that big multi-site churches with charismatic preachers streaming in over video are a really, really bad idea? How many more Driscolls and MacDonalds do we need to build and then destroy these empires before we’re willing to acknowledge that this model is unhealthy, produces unhealthy churches, and causes serious hurt to thousands of believers who were a part of those churches? Give me an army of Eugene Petersons ministering in little neighborhood churches rather than a Mark Driscoll or James MacDonald or (dare I even say it) Matt Chandler projected larger than life on a video screen at campuses across the country.
Listen to women and believe their testimony When women and young people come forward with allegations of abuse, we must take them seriously. We must have good processes and training in place at our churches to make sure that children and young people are protected. And we need to be willing to expose abuse if it happens, and learn from it, and improve. This is non-negotiable.
Bring women into leadership It seems obvious that if women were included in the leadership of these churches, and if they were listened to and had power such that they could take action, we would not have the systemic ongoing issues with abuse that we have today. (Again, not a silver bullet - Willow Creek has women in leadership - but still…)
I don’t want to add another thousand words to this post to stake out a position on complementarianism vs. egalitarianism. (OK, so I want to, but that’s another post.) But even pragmatically, if people like Scot McKnight and N. T. Wright - neither of whom can reasonably be accused of being wild-eyed progressives - can find a Scriptural basis for women being ordained into ministry leadership, it’s not unreasonable to ask whether complementarianism is a second- or third-level doctrine that deserves another look.
Finally
Repentance requires action. Repentance for particularly painful, systemic sin probably requires painful, systemic action. Whether the evangelical church in America will be willing to broadly repent remains to be seen. I pray that it will, and commit to doing what I can in my own congregation to act out that repentance.
What are Evangelicals afraid of losing?
Dr. Michael Horton has a wise piece on CT in response to President Trump’s comments to evangelical leaders that they are “one election away from losing everything”.
Nowhere in the New Testament are Christians called to avoid the responsibilities of our temporary citizenship, even though our ultimate citizenship is in heaven (Phil. 3:20). However, many of us sound like we’ve staked everything not only on constitutional freedoms but also on social respect, acceptance, and even power. But that comes at the cost of confusing the gospel with Christian nationalism. … Anyone who believes, much less preaches, that evangelical Christians are “one election away from losing everything” in November has forgotten how to sing the psalmist’s warning, “Do not put your trust in princes, in human beings, who cannot save” (Ps. 146:3).
That’ll preach.
-- What are Evangelicals Afraid of Losing? - Christianity Today
Fr. Boules George: A Message to Those Who Kill Us
If your church had been bombed and your people killed, would your reaction be ‘Thank You’ and ‘We Love You’? Yeah, probably not. So it’s worth reading.
The Benedict Option (i.e. Christian Cultural Withdrawal)
Rod Dreher has been championing an idea he calls The Benedict Option - as he describes it, “a limited, strategic withdrawal of Christians from the mainstream of American popular culture, for the sake of shoring up our understanding of what the church is, and what we must do to be the church”
Alan Jacobs spins things in a slightly different direction:
So I wonder if a better way to think about the Benedict Option is not as a strategic withdrawal from anything in particular but a strategic attentiveness to the institutions and forms of life within which Christians can flourish.
It’s some interesting reading, even if Dreher can be rather dour. But I really like what Jake Meador has to say about it today over at Mere Orthodoxy.
…perhaps the issue isn’t that the culture has moved away from the faith, but that the faith’s adherents have moved away from it along with the culture–and as the culture we’ve attached ourselves to becomes progressively more antagonistic to orthodoxy we are simply becoming aware of the distance that has opened between the faithful and traditional orthodoxy. We’ve been riding along with the culture even when we shouldn’t have and we’re just now beginning to realize where that ride has taken us.
While there will always be some who feel called to a more significant strategic withdrawal from the culture, Meador’s analysis seems close to the mark. Maybe withdrawing from the culture isn’t something special for this time and era so much as it is a call out from a culture to which we’re far too drawn in. Certainly worth some reading and thought.
MPT: 20 Problems with Progressive Christianity
Matthew Paul Turner says he’s a “progressive Christian”, but that he’s never really owned the label because he’s not entirely sure how to define it. He writes an insightful piece, with a title (“20 Problems with Progressive Christianity”) that’s a bit of a head fake - rather than being a list of 20 items, it’s an essay with 20 “problems” identified throughout.
While I wouldn’t identify myself as being in the same theological place that he is, I do recognize myself in some of his self-descriptions. For instance:
A part of the bigger problem is that it’s easy for many of us onetime conservatives/now progressives to get caught up in our faith being defined by our past as opposed to it being inspired by what’s in front of us (<-Problem number 10). In other words, many of us know exactly what we believe to be true and untrue about the churches we grew up in, the theologies that we were taught, and the perceptions of God that we once worshiped. And there’s nothing wrong with knowing what we believe to be good and true about our pasts. But sometimes we fall onto the path of getting so lost in fighting the ills of our former spiritual lives that we go for long periods of time when that’s all our faith is, one big fight against what was.
I went through that period for quite a while a year or two back. It might’ve been helpful to me for a while, but it was something I had to get beyond if I was going to move forward.
Turner never really gets around to defining what he means by “progressive Christianity”, so I’m not sure whether I’d self-identify as a member or not. I often find myself somewhere in between, not willing to fully endorse the liberal leanings of folks like Rachel Held Evans, but also not fully embracing the conservatism of my more fundamentalist past or the neo-Calvinism to which many of my friends hold.
Down in the comments of Turner’s post, Colorado pastor Jeff Cook proposes a set of “centering affirmations” of progressive Christianity, and these I could probably get behind:
… We believe in a New Creation , not in an escapist soteriology. We do not embrace the Gospel as “the plan of salvation” (a gospel just about me). The Gospel is the royal announcement that Jesus Christ is Lord (a gospel about all of creation). … We have moved from speaking of ethics as simply rules to follow, to seeing the good life as a process of becoming a person fully alive in Christ and in community through the power of the Spirit. … We have moved from thinking history doesn’t matter or that modernity is history’s zenith to seeing the past as full of wisdom to draw on. …We are aware that the Bible must be interpreted by fallible readers. … We elevate Jesus’ life, teachings, resurrection and ascension, and reject an exclusive focus on just the virginal birth and cross. All 6 are necessary to see God and his unveiling story.
If you’ve made it this far through my post, I’ll recommend you go over and read MPT’s post in its' entirety.
My brain is full: a quick clarification
I realize after writing these last couple of posts that they may make me sound like I’m deeply unhappy or unsatisfied with my current church. Given that lots of my local church friends read my blog, let me assure you that it’s not the case. I’m happy with where we are as a church. I’m encouraged and challenged by the teaching on a regular basis. I enjoy serving as a part of our music team. I’ve made some good friends in the three years we’ve been at Stonebridge, and I know those relationships will only deepen as time goes on.
We’re also involved in a community group (which is a new addition for us this year). It’s possible that as we get to know our group better it will serve as some of the fellowship I’m looking for. But those relationships take time to grow. We’ll see how it goes. And I’m also enthusiastic about the spiritual goals that our church leadership has set out for us this year. They’re good ones. We just have to follow through on them and make them more than just words.
I wouldn’t be surprised at all if I get an email from my pastor sometime within the next week saying “hey man, read your blog, anything we can talk about? How can we minister to you better?” I love my pastor deeply and greatly appreciate the fact that he will notice it and be faithful as a shepherd to get with me and see what’s up.
But here’s the thing. I don’t think that what I’m looking for is someone or some group to minister to me in a way that I’ve been missing. What I’m looking for is a community of believers who can join, side by side, in agreement that we are all broken and in need of the Gospel to minister to us on a daily basis.
[My apologies: 300+ words is hardly a quick clarification. sigh]
My brain is full, part 2
Yesterday’s post wandered a bit in talking about the relevance of God’s Word even as it is found in the daily readings and prayers of the church. When I started writing I was aiming for an appreciation of the BCP daily prayers and how they have ministered to me even in just the bit I have used them privately. Where I wandered, though, was to the observation that “my brain is full; it is my soul that needs fed”, and I’d like to work through that thought a little bit more today.
Certainly my personal quirks and characteristics help cause this condition: I read a lot. My mind never seems to let go of details and trivia. (Let’s put it this way: I was the kid who at the age of 9 or 10 was reading through encyclopedias in the morning when I’d wake up early.) I do a lot of synthesizing, by which I mean that I’m not so good at creatively staking out my own position, but that I can listen to two or three other positions, evaluate them, and then pull together the pieces into a unified whole that makes sense to me. I also don’t re-read much, because my brain says “yeah, been there, read that”, and it becomes hard to slow down and concentrate on something for a second time.
As a teenager and into my twenties my voracious book appetite combined with the wealth of good books on theological subjects served me well. I read a lot, learned a lot. My bookshelves are still filled with Lewis, Piper, Keller, Wright, Chesterton, and Spurgeon. I read through a lot of Schaeffer. I had a hard time finding the patience to appreciate some of the older theologians; how can you use so many words to say seemingly the same thing over and over? I could sit and talk theology with my church leaders, and before long that desire and aptitude, combined with the ability to apply it in practical ways, drew me into church leadership myself. (Somewhere along the way we had three kids, I over-committed to almost everything, burned out, and changed churches. But that’s another story.)
Our current evangelical culture, and especially the neo-Reformed subculture within it (wherein I find currently myself) seem to highly favor this intellectual, bookish approach. Pastors like John Piper pen profusely. Pastor Mark Driscoll established his own publishing line of theological literature. Tim Keller seems to crank out a book a year (at least). It’s as if you’re not anybody until you’ve published a book. But with very few exceptions, these books don’t seem to really say anything new; the publisher is just pushing an update or a rehash with new cover art and the current big-name pastor as the author.
Now that I’m in my mid-30’s, things seem to have changed in my reading appetite. I can think of only three or four books I’ve read in the past 5 years that have really made me just stop and go “wow, what did I just read?”. Now, maybe I’m just failing to choose the right books. (In that case, I’m open for recommendations, so please leave me a comment or send me an email, FB message, or tweet with your ideas.)
But maybe I’m at a plateau where more head knowledge is not the answer. And this is where I file my desire (expressed yesterday) for the daily corporate practice of Scripture, prayer, and worship. Even that is undoubtedly not the magic answer. Maybe the struggling pursuit of the seemingly elusive daily “quiet time” is a more practical answer. But that, by itself, seems to private and insulated to me. I need community to go with it. Not community for study purposes; I just want to be with people who, like me, have that need in their soul to pray, worship, confess, and hear the Word on a regular basis. If you know where to find it, please let me know.
My brain is full; it is my soul that needs fed.
BHT patron and Twitter friend John H posted earlier today about the “Flash evensong” he participated in last night in front of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. Since St. Paul’s has been closed due to the Occupy London protests happening nearby, there was a “flash” decision to hold a standard Anglican evening prayer service in public outside of the cathedral. (John can be seen in this video, in the back row, wearing a blue, open-collared shirt.)
John notes how relevant even this standard, everyday service was for the situation:
What really struck me about the service, though, was this: the service was nothing more than the Church of England’s standard evening prayer for tonight, with the psalms and lessons taken from the lectionary, and the hymns and anthem being pretty standard fodder as well. And yet large portions of what was said, sung and prayed seemed to speak very directly to the context in which the service took place.
And further down in the post:
I think it is that “crunchiness” [the against-the-mainstream aspects] of the word of God that turned an exercise that may have had an element of whimsy to it – or at least could have been seen as nothing more than a bunch of mostly white, mostly middle-class, mostly Anglican people being “well-meaning” – into something transcendent.
A few thoughts prompted by, if not directly related to, John’s post:
First, this not-quite-comfortable evangelical would’ve loved to be a part of that service. I was greatly moved just watching the short video.
Second, I, too, have been struck by how often the “everyday” readings seem to speak with the subversiveness of God’s kingdom directly to the events of the day. The past few months I have tried, on a maddeningly infrequent basis, to start and end my day with the Book of Common Prayer morning and evening prayers. Even practiced as just a personal reading and prayer, the Scripture and prayer elements of the service have spoken directly to my heart with surprising regularity with regard to the events of my day, both personal and public.
Finally, there is a part of my soul that yearns for a daily corporate practice like this. I would dearly love it if there were some local early-morning gathering around which I could schedule my day. What I really don’t want is the (for me) awkward, informal Bible study and prayer groups that seem to abound in my evangelical church culture. Sitting around in a circle waiting for someone to come up with some thought on the day’s passage and then sharing shallow prayer requests doesn’t feed me in the near the way that the morning prayer liturgy could. I need that daily practice of praise, confession, Scripture and prayer, and the opportunity to do it corporately rather than off by myself.
My brain is full; it is my soul that needs fed.
Hard, true words from @tallskinnykiwi
Andrew Jones (aka “Tall Skinny Kiwi”), “itinerant social entrepreneur”, wandering missionary and prolific blogger, has a hard but true, and dare I say, prophetic post on his blog today. It’s unfortunate that the piece is headlined as an appeal to be chosen to speak on The Nines, because the bulk of the post is about the changes coming for the church and for Christian culture.
Did I mention it was a hard word? Here are just a few of his headline points:
“If Americans want to play in the sandbox in global missions and sustainable holistic church ministry”, says Jones, “then they need to listen to what the majority world is already discovering and implementing.” He says that we can and should use this time of recession to re-orient and re-calibrate our thoughts on ministry and mission rather than just asking for more money.
You should go read the piece to hear his whole argument. Hard as it may be, I think Jones is right.
The right kind of tolerance
“Tolerance” is a much misunderstood word these days. I remember hearing a barn-burner of a chapel message back in college from Josh McDowell, warning us that the biggest sin in the worlds eyes in upcoming days would be “intolerance”, which they would define (roughly) as “saying someone’s beliefs are wrong”.
The fact of the matter is that it’s impossible to be tolerant if you don’t disagree with someone, since tolerance is, by definition, allowing the existence of something that you disagree with. I was recently witness to an illustration…
Our associate pastor, Robin, and his wife, Kathryn, hosted a foreign exchange student last year. His name is Ahmed and he is from Egypt. When I first heard about him (just a few weeks ago - guess I’m out of the loop!) I thought to myself maybe he’s Coptic Orthodox or something… that’d make sense if he’s living with a Christian pastor… but nope - Ahmed is a Muslim. Some experience that must’ve been, I thought.
Then two weeks ago, after the sermon in our Sunday morning service, Pastor Robin invited Ahmed to join him on the platform and they spent nearly 15 minutes discussing Ahmed’s year here. Ahmed told the story of his initial trepidation of being hosted by a Christian pastor. He told a couple of funny fish-out-of-water stories that had everyone laughing. He admitted that American high school was a much more laid back and pleasant experience than his all-boys French Catholic high school back in Egypt. And he spoke proudly of the Egyptian people’s overthrow of the Mubarak regime in this spring’s revolution.
Then Robin invited Ahmed to share with us the basic beliefs of Islam, and asked him to talk a bit about how Muslims view Jesus and what some of the key differences are between Islam and Christianity. Our church listened intently as Ahmed described the Five Pillars of Islam and that the Muslims revere Jesus as a prophet though they don’t believe that he was crucified and resurrected.
When the discussion time was over, Pastor Robin prayed for Ahmed, asking God to guide him and watch over him as he returned to Egypt. Then Ahmed was presented with a parting gift: a McDonald’s gift card. (Apparently Ahmed has developed a taste for Big Macs.)
This, my friends, was a beautiful display of the right kind of tolerance. There was no pretense in the entire conversation (or, clearly, in the entire relationship between Ahmed and his “parents” Robin and Kathryn) that they agreed religiously. However, the love and respect between them as they discussed their differing beliefs and shared experience of the past year was evident and obviously real. Ahmed was also quite gracious in his willingness to be prayed for by a man who believes so differently. (I sometimes wonder whether I and my Christian brethren would be as gracious if the roles were reversed.)
That Sunday morning discussion between Robin and Ahmed was valuable for all of us in several ways. We learned a little more about Islam. We gained a better appreciation for seeing our own Christian practice through foreign eyes. And whenever some rabble-rousing politician or media fear-monger wants to stereotype Muslims, we’ll be able to look back to this handsome, genial, friendly young man and remember that those who follow Islam are, for the vast majority, like him, and not like those extremists that we are told to fear.
My friends, this is true and good tolerance, and I am all for it.
Bad Christian Art
There’s a great post over on Image Journal addressing the concerns of “bad christian art”. Author Tony Woodlief is clearly fed up with movies and books that pander to “good Christian people who judge art by criteria like message and wholesomeness and theological purity.”
Bad art derives, he says, from bad theology:
To know God falsely is to write and paint and sculpt and cook and dance Him falsely. Perhaps it’s not poor artistic skill that yields bad Christian art, in other words, but poor Christianity.
He goes on to address Christian books specifically, noting “common sins” including “neat resolution”, one-dimensional characters, sentimentality, and cleanliness. (In my opinion: any reader of books marketed as “Christian fiction” will immediately recognize these issues with pretty much any such novel.)
He brings it home with some piercing questions about how the proliferation of bad Christian art reflects on the state of the evangelical church that embraces and consumes it:
In short, if Christian novels and movies and blogs and speeches must be stripped of profanity and sensuality and critical questions, all for the sake of sparing us scandal, then we have to wonder what has happened that such a wide swath of Christendom has failed to graduate from milk to meat.
And if we remember that theology is the knowing of God, we have to ask in turn why so many Christians know God so weakly that they need such wholesomeness in order for their faith to be preserved.
My friend (and talented songwriter) Andy Osenga often talks about two approaches to songwriting as a Christian (and I’m sure this isn’t original to him, but I heard it from him): you can either write about the light, or you can look out at the world and write about what the light shows you.
What strikes me is that the art that Woodlief is talking about here doesn’t fall into either of those categories. The purveyors of this particular flavor of Christian art have rather chosen to ignore the reality of what the light shows them. Instead, they paint an unrealistic fantasy world that reflects what they hope might be.
We, and all of creation, are broken, and in need of redemption. If we pretend through our art that this Christian life is neat and tidy and that all the threads resolve by page 350, not only do our stories ring hollow, but we fail to acknowledge the greatness of the work of redemption that Jesus Christ is doing in the world. Christians must do better.
Postscript: after passing along a rant like this, I’d be remiss if I didn’t recommend the work of Christians I know who are creating good art. Hit up The Rabbit Room to find excellent art, books, and music that may not always be “safe” but will always be good.
Some thoughts on the proposed new mission statement for Stonebridge
A couple of weeks ago Becky and I attended a Friday night meeting at church where the church leadership discussed their notional new mission statement for the church. While this statement is still a draft, and has yet to be presented to the full congregation, with the pastors' permission I want to explore the new statement in some detail and explain why I’m very much in favor of it.
First, the statement:
“The mission of Stonebridge Church is to walk alongside each person we meet as they take their next step with Jesus."
Let’s look at some key phrases.
I feel like this mission statement does a good job of capturing the essential direction of ministry that we’re already on at Stonebridge, and I hope that as it is further refined and rolled out it will encourage each of us to be constantly mindful of being alongside those that we encounter every day.
Another take on 'Hipster Christianity'
Back in August I linked to a piece by Brett McCracken wherein he decried what he sees as the evangelical temptation to “be cool” at the expense of real, genuine faith. My initial read resonated with the column, and I was a bit surprised when some folks I quite respect took issue with McCracken’s book.
I’ll admit that I haven’t read the book, and absent a copy finding its way into my hands for free, I probably won’t. However, I came upon an insightful review today that puts McCracken’s book in a different (and much less favorable) light.
James K. A. Smith, posting on TheOtherJournal.com, says that McCracken needs to add the word “poser” to his lexicon.
McCracken’s analysis ends up being reductionistic: he thinks anyone who looks like a “hipster” is really just trying to be “cool.” This, I think, tells us more about Mr. McCracken than it does about so-called hipster Christianity…
McCracken sets his sights on his own generation: hip millennials who are taken with incense, hemp clothing, Wendell Berry, and Amnesty International. McCracken is worried that this is just the next generation of cultural assimilation in the name of relevance.
But his analysis only works if, in fact, all hipsters are really just posers. That is, McCracken effectively reduces all hipsters to posers precisely because he can only imagine someone adopting such a lifestyle in order to be cool. Let me say it again: this tells us more about McCracken than it does about those young Christians who are spurning conservative, bourgeois values. [Emphasis in the original.]
Smith acknowledges that there are, indeed, Christians who are trying to be “cool” or “hipster” simply for the sake of being cool, but he asserts that they are the “posers” and are not representative of the “Christian hipsters” he knows:
In short, the lives of the Christian hipsters I know are a gazillion miles away from being worried about image or trendiness; they live the way they do because they are pursuing the good life characterized by well-ordered culture-making that is just and conducive to flourishing—and this requires resisting the mass-produced, mass-marketed, and mass-consumed banalities of the corporate ladder, the suburban veneer of so-called success, as well as the irresponsibility of perpetual adolescence that characterizes so many twentysomethings who imagine life as one big frat house.
I very much appreciate Smith’s review and analysis and recommend it as worthwhile reading.
Also Bring Cold Water
Responses from right-wingers and evangelical Christians to the so-called “Ground Zero mosque” have been spread broadly throughout the cable news media and online news and opinion sites over the past few weeks. Initial responses were typical God-and-country red meat, proclaiming Ground Zero to be “hallowed ground”, and declaring that allowing Muslims to build a mosque on that site would be, (to borrow a tired phrase,) to let the terrorists win.
This response, despite the patriotic fervor with which it was proclaimed, has now finally widely been debunked (including a great bit by Frank Rich today in the New York Times). First off, the proposed building isn’t a mosque, but a cultural center. And it isn’t planned for the “Ground Zero” World Trade Center site; it’s actually two blocks away. And similar “hallowed ground” within a two-block radius of Ground Zero houses an off-track betting establishment, a strip club, multiple fast-food restaurants, and several souvenir shops (just to name a few), so it’s not like the whole area has been somehow ‘set apart’. And finally, what does it say about our belief in religious freedom if, after due process has been followed, we then want then government to prohibit the building of a religious center based strictly on the particular religion in question?
Those points may not yet have gained full acceptance, especially among Republicans looking for an election-year issue, but in general I’ve seen them make inroads in he past few weeks.
But yesterday on the Christian group blog Evangel, a post by Tom Gilson (a strategist with Campus Crusade for Christ) brings up what I believe will be the next round of argument against the project: saying that if we look at this strictly as a religious liberty issue, we are making the mistake of believing that Islam is simply another religion.
[A friend] views Islam as a religion that deserves the same rights and privileges as any other. That’s questionable, to say the least….
If you think the Ground Zero mosque comes down to a simple matter of symbolism, or of religious freedom, then you don’t understand the issues deeply enough.
Instead, the author proclaims, Islam is a way of belief whose ultimate goal is domination, and that if we don’t watch out, America will simply be Islam’s next conquest.
On this topic I have heard and seen much from both sides. I have read Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s chilling account of growing up in Somalia and her passionate assertion that Islam, as a religion, denigrates women. I have also heard first-hand from a Zimbabwean Christian pastor who warned that the Islam he encountered in Africa was intent on conquest. But by the same token I have worked for many years alongside Muslims who are gentle, family men, who had no aspirations but to provide for their families and to live here peaceably as neighbors and friends. (And, let’s face it, I can no more fairly hold all Muslims responsible for 9/11 than they can fairly hold all Christians responsible for Timothy McVeigh, Aryan separatists, and, oh, the Crusades.)
The more I think on this subject, the more I am convinced that once again right-wing Christians like Mr. Gilson have mixed up their politics with their religion and gotten it wrong. Nowhere does the Bible instruct us to protect our turf, to repel the unbelieving alien, and to presciently foil those who might intend to persecute us. But it does instruct us, often, to love our neighbors. To turn the other cheek when wronged. It reminds us over and over that our battles are spiritual battles, not physical ones. That Jesus already is Lord, and that we need not fear what mortal men can do to us.
We should stop fighting new mosques at every opportunity, and stop making enemies of dear people for whom Christ died. Instead, we should follow Christ’s command and love them.
It’s time to apply Jesus' teaching about giving both coat and cloak. If someone comes and says ‘give us land to build a mosque’, don’t just give the land; also bring cold water (in the name of Jesus) to those who are laboring to build it.