church
- Theological pickiness. I don’t expect that I’m gonna agree with everything at any church I attend, (heck, I didn’t at Noelridge or Imago, either), but I’d like it to be close. And I’ll need to have the freedom at a church to hold some views that don’t quite line up and not be ostracized for those. For example: one of the churches we’ve been considering has a rather long excursis in their doctrinal statement concerning the exact sequence of a premillenial end times. I’m OK with them believing that, but I won’t be able to handle it if they’re dogmatic about it.
- Leadership Expectations. Now, I have no desire to be in leadership again for a while. But I’m going to want to have the pastor and elders of a church I attend be men who enjoy reading and discussing theological topics. I almost feel sorry for the pastor and/or elders who will have the typical so-you’re-interested-in-our-church meeting with me. I have a feeling I’ll have far more questions for them than they will have for me. Bonus points for anybody that’s read any N. T. Wright. :-)
- Limited Choices. Now, while some of my friends will step in and suggest a bigger denominational change, I just can’t see us moving to a more mainline denomination, even a conservative branch of one. We’re not gonna end up Catholic, Lutheran, or Methodist, and we don’t even have conservative Anglican or Presbyterian options in Cedar Rapids. Which pretty well leaves us Baptist, Bible, maybe E Free, and, well, not much else. Even in as big a town as Cedar Rapids. :-(
- The Struggle for Contentment. I am acknowledging here up front that we may not find someplace that I’m completely happy with. And that will have to be OK. I would dearly love to have Steve McCoy’s church or Joe Thorn’s church or Rae Whitlock’s church nearby. I would totally go for an Acts29 church, and would take a very long hard look at one of the new breed of PCA churches. (We have one PCA church here about 30 minutes away, and it appears to be the old, stodgy flavor of the PCA.) But given that those aren’t available, we will have to be content with what we have available here. We’re praying that God will be clear in His leading.
- 5:00 - 5:15 prayer for the service
- 5:30 - 6:30 worship service
- 6:30 - 7:00 fellowship and snacks
- 7:00 - 7:50 adult Bible classes
- Provide a way for people to feel like they are a part of the congregation
- Provide a process whereby people can understand Imago’s distinctives, including doctrinal statement and leadership structure
- Create an environment where people come to think of “membership” as having responsibilities and commitments rather than “privileges”
- Keep the voting base limited to the core planning/leadership team, rather than the standard Baptist congregational democracy.
- Oh, yeah, and the end result needs to be church members, committed to service and under the authority of the church.
- I will support the ministry of Imago Christi Church with my regular attendance at worship services and other events sponsored by the church.
- I will support the ministry of Imago Christi Church with my regular attendance at worship services and other events sponsored by the church.
- I will support the church with its financial needs as the Lord so directs me.
- I will use my spiritual gifts in ministry opportunities of the church.
- I will become better acquainted with ministry opportunities and strategies by attending planning and evaluation meetings of the church. I understand that I am able to contribute to the discussion at these meetings, but do not have the right to vote.
- I will submit myself by being accountable to the leadership of Imago Christi Church.
- I will support the ministry of Imago Christi Church with my regular attendance at worship services and other events sponsored by the church.
- I will support the church with its financial needs as the Lord so directs me.
- I will use my spiritual gifts in ministry opportunities of the church.
- I will attend and participate in the discussion at planning and evaluation meetings of the church and have the right to vote on any church business as prescribed by the church bylaws.
- I will submit myself by being accountable to the leadership of Imago Christi Church.
Another thought on church shopping and polarization
Yesterday’s post on church shopping and cultural polarization reminded me of a question I’ve been cogitating on for the past week or two.
What would it look like if we were forced to go back to attending local community churches? How would it affect our view of what was necessary in a church and what things were “essentials”?
Say gas prices spiked to the point where we couldn’t afford to drive the 10 miles each way to our church of choice. Our choices are now walking or riding bicycles on Sunday morning. In my neighborhood, that would limit my choices to four churches, one Catholic, one United Church of Christ, one “Community of Christ” (which I know very little about) and one Lutheran Church Missouri Synod.
In our 2008 church search (not limited by driving distance) we didn’t really consider any Lutheran churches; would a walking-distance limit change my mind? Probably, given my options. Another possibility: would we canvas the neighborhood to see if there were other like-minded evangelicals who wanted to meet in a house church with us? Seems like an option, but it also seems somewhat fractured and silly given that there’s a LCMS church in the neighborhood.
See how quick the criteria changes? All of a sudden I’m thinking about what might be “good enough” rather than finding the church that’s exactly what I want. So what I’ve proved (to myself, at least) here is that in my non-distance-limited church choosing I’ve unconsciously made a tradeoff, choosing a church that more closely aligns with my doctrinal and worship style comfort zone above a local church that would have me going to worship with my neighbors.
This isn’t an unusual trade-off; it’s one that our suburban culture has widely adopted. Gas is (relatively) cheap, driving everywhere is natural, and so we spend time in the car to associate, or shop, or worship, with those of our choosing rather than those of our neighborhood. And this post isn’t really all that different from a slew of other blog posts and books wrestling with the suburban culture and longing for a true local community.
But it’s a challenging exercise to think through. What churches would you have as options? What would you do?
Church shopping and cultural polarization
CNN.com has a blog post today exploring “How Church Shopping is Polarizing the Country”. Written by law professors Naomi Cahn (George Washington University) and June Carbone (University of Missouri Kansas City) who have recently co-authored a book on cultural polarization, the particular focus on church shopping intrigued me. Heck, I was church shopping not all that long ago. I’m helping cause cultural polarization? I must know more.
Fascinating (and saddening) are their definitions of the two polarized camps: traditionalists, who “…believe in an eternal and transcendent authority that tells us what is good, what is true, how we should live, and who we are”, and modernists, who “…would redefine historic faiths according to the prevailing assumptions of contemporary life”. Modernists, they note, “…have become less likely to attend church at all.”
In previous generations, they say, both modernists and traditionalists tended to attend the same churches, typically right in their community. Today, though, the ability to church-shop has the traditionalists seeking out churches that affirm their “personal values”, and has modernists staying home.
The authors lament the decline of the mainline Protestant denominations that in previous generations housed both camps, and complain that today’s evangelical churches (full of like-minded traditionalists) are self-reinforcing in belief, and that evangelicalism’s close ties to the Republican Party serve to marginalize those who might be in agreement politically but not religiously (or vice versa). In the end, they say, traditionalists group together and talk only to themselves, and modernists leave church altogether, resulting in an increasingly polarized society.
There are certainly places where I disagree with the authors' views on the topic. I think that Protestants seeking churches where their beliefs are shared and reinforced is a good thing. And drawing rosy pictures of a post-WWII generation where everyone attended the same community church regardless of what they believed only serves to hide the fact that those weak, any-belief-is-OK churches in large part helped cause the modernist/traditionalist divide we see today, by valuing the form-over-substance mindset that was eventually cynically discarded by Generation X.
However, within the microcosm that is the evangelical church, there are good lessons to be learned here. We need to be vigilant to ensure that we limit our “distinctives” to the fundamental Gospel truths. As soon as our teaching, or even our church culture, becomes, even by way of unspoken assumptions, ‘the gospel plus conservative politics’ or ‘the gospel plus homeschooling’ or ‘the gospel plus pre-millennial dispensationalism’, etc., we will alienate those who either desperately need to hear the Gospel or who could be vibrant, participating members of our local body.
The good news that Jesus Christ is Lord of all is polarizing. We should not be surprised when law professors find it so. But there is still a lesson for us here: let the Gospel be polarizing, not the cultural things we are so apt to add on to it.
Well, we joined.
After taking quite a bit of time to make our decision, Becky and I yesterday became members of Stonebridge Church (EFCA). For a while we were wondering if enough members would show up to form a quorum so we (and 14 others) could be voted into membership, but eventually enough trickled in to make it official.
It feels good to have made the decision and committed to a body of believers. We are very thankful that God has led us to this fine group of folks as we continue through life’s journey.
Partaking "in an unworthy manner"
Brent Thomas posted yesterday on the question of “fencing the table” at communion, and while the comment thread on his post has gone down the path of fencing based on doctrinal fidelity (ah, those Calvinists!), I’ve been more thinking about it from my evangelical perspective, and the idea of partaking “in an unworthy manner”. (Thanks to my brother Andrew for batting around some thoughts with me.)
1 Corinthians 11 is the relevant passage here:
In the following directives I have no praise for you, for your meetings do more harm than good. In the first place, I hear that when you come together as a church, there are divisions among you, and to some extent I believe it. No doubt there have to be differences among you to show which of you have God’s approval. When you come together, it is not the Lord’s Supper you eat, for as you eat, each of you goes ahead without waiting for anybody else. One remains hungry, another gets drunk. Don’t you have homes to eat and drink in? Or do you despise the church of God and humiliate those who have nothing? What shall I say to you? Shall I praise you for this? Certainly not!
For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me.” For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.
Therefore, whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord. A man ought to examine himself before he eats of the bread and drinks of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without recognizing the body of the Lord eats and drinks judgment on himself. That is why many among you are weak and sick, and a number of you have fallen asleep. But if we judged ourselves, we would not come under judgment. 32When we are judged by the Lord, we are being disciplined so that we will not be condemned with the world.
So then, my brothers, when you come together to eat, wait for each other. If anyone is hungry, he should eat at home, so that when you meet together it may not result in judgment.
Now, in the churches I’ve been in, the pastor typically instructs the congregation something along these lines before communion is served: “take a minute quietly, examine your heart, ask God to reveal sin to you that needs confessed, then confess and partake. Don’t take it unworthily.” And while these are good instructions, I’m not sure they’re actually the point of the passage.
The problem Paul is addressing with the Corinthians isn’t that there are a bunch of unrepentant sinners partaking of communion (which undoubtedly there were), but rather that people are coming and gobbling up the food in a haphazard, flippant, gluttonous fashion, not recognizing, as Paul says, that this is the body of the Lord. They’re not taking it as a serious remembrance. Paul’s corrective summary in verse 33 doesn’t say “repent of your sins before you partake!” - rather, it says “wait for each other”. Paul is emphasizing the corporate nature of this sacrament, something that the Corinthians seem to have forgotten.
I don’t want to discount the need for examining our hearts as we come before God in worship - in Matthew 5:23-24 Jesus says to go make things right with your brother before you come to the altar to sacrifice to God. But I’ve talked to people who told me “you know, I thought about it, and I remembered something I needed to settle with another person, so I let the elements go by and didn’t partake”, and this, to me, seems to be entirely missing the point.
Partaking of the bread and the cup in communion is a reminder of the sacrifice that gave us salvation. In giving us salvation, God calls us to repent and believe, even knowing full well that perfect repentance won’t ever happen for us this side of eternity. In communion, God calls us to remember the death of His Son, with the same heart of brokenness and repentance that is working in our salvation, even as He knows that each of us will go back out and willfully commit sin.
To put it another way: communion isn’t intended to be for Christians who’ve somehow managed to get everything cleaned up. In examining ourselves, we should quickly recognize that we wretched, miserable sinners desperately need Jesus' blood to cleanse us every day. And in partaking, we should not fear that we’ve somehow forgotten a sin and so God is going to smack us, but rather should be humbly thankful for the awesome gift we have been given.
Joining up... or not
That little announcement made its quarterly reappearance in the church bulletin last Sunday: “Times are available for those wishing to become members to meet with the elders. Call the church office to schedule.” It sits there on the page in eight point font and taunts me. Church membership. Am I really ready to join?
Ten years ago when we moved to Iowa we decided on a church relatively quickly, and once there, proceed with similar pace through the membership process. After eight years there we left to help plant another church. There was no official “membership” in the early stages of that church plant, but we were on the core team and I was an elder, so we were quite obviously committed.
When it was clear the Lord was leading us away from the church plant, we finally settled on our current church home, where we’ve been attending for a year now. Not just attending - involved, too. I’m playing on the worship team once a month, Becky is volunteering in the nursery. We attended the “welcome to the family” class several months ago. It was a helpful introduction to the church’s history, doctrine, and philosophy of ministry. At the time, we weren’t ready yet to join. And now, as the announcement comes around again every three months, I wonder again, is it time?
My hesitancy isn’t a fear of responsibility or accountability - in fact, I’d much prefer being under the authority of a local church body to being some sort of Lone Ranger. Three months in, I wasn’t ready to join mostly because joining felt like dating someone on the rebound - it was just too soon. We’d been with our previous church family for nearly ten years, I wasn’t just gonna dive back in. But now it’s been a year. I don’t have any big doctrinal issues that would keep me from joining. I guess it’s just mostly cold feet. What if this ends up not being the place for us long-term? On the other hand, how long do we stay in this holding pattern before we should just give up and admit that our current church has become our de facto home church and we should just go ahead and join?
Much to ponder. Your thoughts are always appreciated.
Not being able to do it all
Kevin DeYoung just nails it in a post today. Titled “On Mission, Changing the World, and Not Being Able to Do It All”, DeYoung challenges and encourages those of us who have the inclination to try to do it all, and who end up finding themselves age 30, cynical, and burned out. A few highlights:
I understand there are lazy people out there (and believe me I can be lazy too sometimes). I understand there are lots of Christians in our churches sitting around doing nothing and they need to be challenged not to waste their life (seriously, I love that book and think Piper motivates for radical Christianity in the right way)…
…We need to be challenged, but in ways we can actually obey, not pummeled into law-induced submission until we finally feel completely rotten about most everything in life and admit we aren’t doing enough for the poor, the lost, the children, the elderly, the least of these, the…you fill in the blank. Is the goal of Christianity really to leave everyone feeling like terrible a parent, spouse, friend, or neighbor all the time?
I believe there will always be more indwelling sin in my life and I believe that I will never do a good deed perfectly. But I don’t believe God gives us impossible demands in which we should always feel like failures….
When the pastor preaches on generosity the goal should not be to make every last person feel like a miserable, miserly wretch. Because unless you live in some Godforsaken locale, there are probably people in your church who practice generosity…. Sometimes, by God grace, we do get it right. The problem with “do more” Christianity is that no one is ever allowed to get it right. And the problem, ironically enough, with never allowing anyone to get it right, is that fewer people feel like getting it right really matters.
No doubt some Christians need to be shaken out of their lethargy. I try to do that every Sunday morning and evening. But there are also a whole bunch of Christians who need to be set free from their performance-minded, law-keeping, world-changing, participate-with-God-in-recreating-the-cosmos shackles. I promise you, some of the best people in your churches are getting tired. They don’t need another rah-rah pep talk. They don’t need to hear more statistics and more stories Sunday after Sunday about how bad everything is in the world. They need to hear about Christ’s death and resurrection. They need to hear how we are justified by faith apart from works of the law. They need to hear the old, old story once more. Because the secret of the gospel is that we actually do more when we hear less about all we need to do for God and hear more about all that God has already done for us.
Go read the whole thing. It’s worth it. Really.
Taking Reproof Seriously
Nearly a week ago I wrote a piece here wrestling with some concerns I’ve had about Sunday morning worship. That post went past with relatively few comments, but this morning I had a conversation with a brother from Stonebridge who, without regard to the content of my concerns, asked why I hadn’t just come to folks at church directly with my thoughts before publishing them on my blog. Furthermore, he let me know that there were feelings hurt by what I wrote.
We had a good conversation, one with which I’ve been wrestling for the rest of the day. And while I don’t feel like this was a situation where someone had wronged me and I should’ve been following Matthew 18, in hindsight (don’t you hate that word, hindsight? just its presence indicates that something was screwed up) I can understand that there could be folks who were hurt by what came across, despite my best intentions, as public criticism of them and their service at church.
With all that in mind, I want to say just a few more things, and hope that they can settle the topic for now.
First: if my earlier post caused you hurt in any way, I apologize and ask for your forgiveness.
Second: I tried to say it in my earlier post, and I’ll try to say it again here and hope that it comes through clearly: none of the criticism I was bringing was directed at any person. I certainly have enough experiences doing unprofitable things in church on which I can look back regretfully. I am fortunate that I have had people who noted those, corrected me in a spirit of love, and then encouraged me to get out there again. I want the same for Stonebridge, but I obviously handled the lines of communication poorly.
Finally: I’ve only been at Stonebridge for less than a year, and have had precious little opportunity to get to know any of you, so I’ll say something that in better circumstances hopefully wouldn’t need said: the last thing I desire is to cause disunity within the Body. My only desire is that God be more glorified in each one of us, individually, and in all of us, corporately, with each passing day.
I earnestly yearn to chew on these topics with you in the days to come.
Taking Worship Seriously
OK, so it’s entirely possible that at the ripe age of 32 I’ve just become an old curmudgeon, but in the past few weeks I’ve had a couple of experiences at church that cause me to wonder just how seriously we take this thing we call Sunday morning worship.
Now, I’ll put some caveats at the front. Yes, I’m going to be talking about Stonebridge. Yes, I expect that there are people from Stonebridge who will read this. Yes, I’m going to ask some questions that will sound critical. So up front let me say this isn’t about any one person, or any one service, or any one topic, but rather it’s about the things I’ve seen, and about the mindset I think it reveals.
Experience #1: two weeks ago we ended the service with a great sermon from James, and started it with a good set of worship songs that were full of the Gospel - solid stuff. But the worship team had barely time to get off the stage, and the music had barely faded, before we were treated to one of the church staff dressed up in a superhero costume - complete with mask and cape and theme music! - to give us an announcement about an upcoming event. Hope you didn’t want time to reflect on what you’d just sung about. You weren’t going to get it.
Experience #2: this morning at church was “Family Sunday”, which means that there was no Sunday School for the kids - the whole family got to sit in church together. Then, after three worship songs, the children’s pastor was tasked with giving the message. First came a pseudo-introduction with a scripted “interruption” to give an announcement about a women’s event. Then came the actual sermon from James, and it felt more like a gimmick than a sermon. There was a very distracting, ever-louder ticking clock in the background (for effect!) and at the end of three short points, during what seemed like a conclusion, the ticking finally stopped, and the pastor cut off the sermon mid-sentence and walked off the stage. And just like that, we were done.
Now yes, I know this morning was an attempt to be dramatic and illustrate the sermon point. But I’m afraid that what people are left remembering this afternoon isn’t the point from James 4, but rather the awkward way everyone sat and looked at each other as the pastor walked off, as my daughter asked “is church over?”. She was confused, too. And yes, Laura, church was over. We ended up spending more time driving to and from church than we did actually in the service this morning.
I fear that experiences like these reveal that we don’t value enough the experience of Sunday worship. Yes, we show value to the Gospel in the songs we sing - but we don’t value them enough to give folks time to meditate on the great riches of God’s grace after singing. Instead, we distract them with superheroes in tights. Yes, we value and encourage the Sunday morning gathering, but then we allow gimmickry to replace Gospel proclamation, and send people home early, wondering “what was that?”.
I remarked to my wife on the way home that, on a spectrum with stodgy and boring but solid on one end, and flashy, cool, and vapid on the other, our current church home is one or two ticks further toward the flashy end than I’m quite comfortable with. Don’t get me wrong - I have great respect for a lot of people there, and have regularly heard the Gospel from the pulpit. But times like these past few weeks leave me wondering if our lip service to the Gospel isn’t quite being backed up with the sort of Sunday morning gravity that it deserves.
The Church Search: A Conclusion of Sorts
After Nick chided me last night about my infrequent blogging, and after Roger noted elsewhere that he’d never really heard any conclusions from our church search, it occurred to me that I’d never really written a concluding chapter to that story. Let me fix that now.
We knew when we made our list of churches to visit that it wouldn’t be a long list. We started with three churches that were our primary focus, and after ruling out one of them midway through, it was really down to two: Maranatha Bible and Stonebridge. We visited both of those churches multiple times, evaluating and praying that God would direct us. Looking for churches is frustrating from a time perspective, too - there are only so many church services per week that you can visit. Patience is required. Not easy.
In the end, while we liked both churches and could’ve probably been happy at either, we decided back in mid-November that we would give it a go at Stonebridge. There’s a lot of good going on there, the teaching has been solid, there are lots of ministry opportunities. We’ve signed up to join a small group that will start meeting next week. I’m excited to get the chance to start to get to know some people and really feel like I’m a part of the place. We’ll see how God continues to lead, but for now, we’re happy to start calling Stonebridge home. Let’s hope it’s a while before we have to do the church search again.
How do you select/appoint elders?
When we visited Maranatha on Sunday, one of the inserts in their bulletin was a full page giving the testimonies of each of their elder candidates. That got me to wondering what sort of selection and vetting process different churches use for choosing elders.
In my experience at Noelridge, here’s what happened: the existing elder board suggested men to serve as elder apprentices. Those apprentices had to be approved by the congregation. Once approved, they met with the elders at all the regular meetings, etc for some period of time - a year, maybe two. At the point the elders were comfortable with their qualifications and thought them ready to become full elders, the elders would recommend the apprentices names to the congregation for approval.
Things that, to me, were notably absent: any sort of in-depth theological examination. Granted, there were some one-on-one theological discussions in various meetings over the apprenticeship period, but there was nothing formal. It was assumed that you agreed to the statement of faith, and that was good enough. While we agreed that Alex Strauch’s idea of interviewing elder candidates' wives to get their input was a good idea, in practice I never saw it happen.
So here’s my question for you, be you a church leader or just a church member: what sort of selection and vetting processes are in place for elder candidates? Popular nomination and election? Any sort of congregational examination? I remember hearing about Rae’s study sessions before his PCA elder exam, so I know some of the answer I’ll get from him, but I’m interested in hearing from the rest of you all.
Living Life Together
It is becoming more and more clear to me lately how we are created for community, and how much we need that community to live our lives. When we announced a month ago (though it seems like it has been much longer) that we were leaving Imago Christi Church, the primary reasons were a need to recalibrate and reprioritize. What I have started to see in the past month is how much the need for community played into our busyness and weariness.
Let me back up just a bit. While it was by no means the beginning of the issue, Becky and I had a long discussion on the way home from an Andy Osenga concert earlier this summer. (I’m stunned that I didn’t blog about it at the time, but I did post pictures to Flickr.) Andy introduced his song “Hold the Light”, as usual, by telling the story about his small group. They have gathered in somebody’s backyard every week for a couple of years, sharing life stories, praying, encouraging, and living life together. It’s a powerful song, and a powerful story. On the long drive home I found myself getting jealous of my friend Andy. How I would love to have a group of folks like that.
Over the past several years as a church leader I’ve been a part of dozens of discussions where we’ve talked about building community. How do we build community? We know we need it. How do we make it happen? Too often the solution seemed to be another program. Things like “let’s organize a small group book study” or “let’s start a group based around this particular interest”. We’d try to find leaders for the group, put out a signup list, and then get frustrated because the same people who were asking for community weren’t signing up for stuff.
Here’s where I think we, and many churches, have made the mistake: we focus so much time and energy on church programs that we rob ourselves of the time to just live life together. The best friendships and most supportive community I’ve experienced in my life haven’t come out of any church program; they’ve come from people deciding to get together around meals and activities to just live life. Meeting up at someone’s home to play basketball, eat a meal, watch football on TV. Taking off on the spur of the moment to help someone move a piece of furniture. Taking a Saturday to help someone move to a new house. What saddens me is how many times we’ve not done things like this because we were too busy - and usually too busy with church stuff.
This is easy to lament, but harder to correct. We’ve taken the first step by the only method we could see that would work. Now we’re looking for another church, and the place we’re looking for will need to place a high priority on this sort of community. I’m praying every day that God helps us find it.
Beginning the church search
After making the decision to leave Imago Christi at the end of the month, we find ourselves in an unfamiliar position: starting the church search. My church history is fairly short and doesn’t include much searching: while growing up we attended a C&MA church, a small Berean church, and then a small Bible church. When I went to college I floated around for my first semester until Becky invited me to her medium-sized Bible church, which we then attended for the next 3.5 years. When we moved to Iowa, we were recommended to a church up here, and after about three weeks of visiting other churches decided to stick there where we had been recommended, at Noelridge. We were at Noelridge for 8.5 years before leaving to plant Imago, and we were at Imago for the better part of a year. So my total church searching experience is a few months of aimless wandering in college and a few weeks after moving to Iowa. That ain’t much.
Church searching has changed a lot since 9 years ago when we were looking around here in Cedar Rapids. Back then your main resources were the yellow pages and the religion section of the newspaper. Today, though, it’s all about the websites. You can find out a lot about a church’s beliefs and ministries with just a few clicks of the mouse. You can even listen to recent sermons. I think I’ll have to be careful not to do too much pre-judging by the websites.
Several things I am anticipating will make this church search tough:
We get a pass this weekend - we’re leaving in a couple of hours to head to Wisconsin to visit my folks. But next weekend we’ll have to bite the bullet, pick one of our options, and give it a try. I’m planning on blogging our adventures, so check back. If you’ve got any thoughts or suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments.
Changes Coming
Tonight after the service at Imago Christi, I read this brief letter to the congregation:
It has been a blessing to be at Imago Christi this year, to serve as an elder and as worship leader, and to help plan and organize a church in its very first days of existence. It is therefore with sadness tonight that I come to tell you that my family and I will be leaving Imago Christi Church as of the end of this month.
Why are we leaving? Like any decision, there are a multitude of reasons each having a small part in the big decision. Primarily, though, it comes down to personal and family needs, and the conviction that I need to reprioritize my life with family in mind first. Some have already asked “well, can’t you stay at Imago and just reduce your responsibilities?” and believe me, we have wrestled long and hard with that question. I have had something of a pattern of this my past several years in ministry - needing to recalibrate, trying to reduce, finding it impossible to effect permanent change. It is that history, as much as anything, that has convinced me (and Becky, too) that bigger change is necessary.
In case I haven’t been clear about it already, this isn’t a case of anyone being forced to leave or asked to leave or pushed out - quite the opposite, I have been pleaded with at length to stay. We are still very much behind the mission of Imago Christi, and our prayers go with you. I know that some of you do not or will not understand quite why we made this decision. And that’s OK. If you have questions feel free to talk to me afterwards. But please know that we have prayed much about this, and really feel like we are following God’s leading here. So we go. And so we trust, and pray that you will, too, that God is at work in this, both for our family, and for Imago Christi as a church body.
This has been a very difficult decision for us over the past couple of months. In the end, though, we feel like this is where God is leading us - to make a break and try and re-form things in a way that works better for our family. We don’t know where we’ll end up for church, but we’ll be looking around. That’ll feel weird after nearly 10 years with mostly the same folks at Noelridge and Imago.
One day at a time.
Finding the right Saturday-night service time
One of our challenges at Imago has been figuring out the right time to hold our Saturday night service. Pick a time to early, and folks find it hard to attend because they’re still wanting to finish their Saturday activities. (Especially during the summer.) Pick a time too late, and you’re running in to evening plans (which is bad if you’re trying to attract college students), dinner schedules, and small children’s bedtimes.
When we started back in January we decided on holding the services from 5:30 - 6:30pm. The reasoning went something like this: it’s early enough that people can eat afterwards, even go out to dinner with someone else from church after the service. It’s early enough that people with small children won’t run into trouble with bedtimes. It’s late enough that people should be able to make it and still have been able to put in a good day of work on Saturday. And really, for the past 7 months, that’s worked pretty well. For our volunteers, it means something more like a 4:30 - 7:00 commitment, but that’s still not awful.
Now we’re approaching fall and we want to add a couple of adult Bible studies on Saturday nights. We’ve tossed around all sorts of service times, from starting earlier (5:00?) with classes afterwards, to having classes first, then the service, to moving everything later… Even though we’re talking about at most a two-and-a-half hour block of time, for some reason it seems a lot more difficult to fit it in on a Saturday night than it would be on a Sunday morning.
Tonight at our core team meeting the elders are going to propose the following schedule:
I think it’s probably the best option we’ve got right now. The other challenge is what to do with the kids during the class time given that we’re struggling with having enough manpower to do kids ministries. But we’ve got to do that somehow, to make the opportunity available. We’re trusting that God will provide the workers to teach the kids He brings in.
Wrestling with ideas about church membership
One of the things we’ve been wrestling with as elders at Imago is the concept of church membership. Now, we all agree that membership is important, both for accountability for folks who are a part of the fellowship, and to provide accountability for the church leadership. But most of us come from Baptist churches where “membership” is too often considered a ticket to gripe and cause trouble at business meetings.
Our objectives for “membership” and the “membership process”:
We have pretty well settled on a set of three “covenants” that might be looked at as “tiers” of membership, though we’re trying hard not to call them that.
Fellowship Covenant
This one is pretty basic. This allows people who want to feel like they’re a part of a fellowship to say that yeah, they’re a part of the fellowship. I have really wrestled with whether or not this covenant should include a statement of accountability to the church. I am thinking maybe it should.
Ministry Covenant
Part of the commitment at this level would require completion of a membership class, which would include a review of the doctrinal statement. At this level we wouldn’t require that the person agree with the doctrinal statement 100%, but we’d ask them to identify any differences they have and discuss them with the elders.
People committed at this level would be able to assume responsibilities such as teaching children, assisting in (but not leading) ministries, and would be welcome to participate in business and planning meetings of the church, but would not have a vote.
Leadership Covenant
At this level, we would require that folks agree with our doctrinal statement, have been baptized by immersion, and have completed the membership class. This level would also require the approval of the elders.
We’re still not sure when we’ll institute this process - I’m guessing probably in January. A year is plenty long for us to run with no members.
Easter Thoughts
I had the opportunity to do the Easter “program” (if you want to call it that) twice this year: once in a slightly-odd (celebrating Easter on Saturday?) Saturday night service at Imago; the other on Sunday morning at Noelridge. It was a nice change to not have to plan the service this year; I really enjoy just being the pianist and playing behind someone else. Of course, not planning the service means that you get whatever the leader plans. My only real comment in that regard: I am not a fan of Gaither tour DVDs. In fact, I think pretty much any sort of live person-led activity, even of lower technical quality, is preferable to playing a DVD of a song. Your mileage may vary.
My larger observation, though, is that I think we at Noelridge, and likely the greater evangelical church, miss something by not observing all of Holy Week. Maundy Thursday? What’s that? Good Friday? Well, there’s a community Good Friday service that we could’ve attended, I guess. But it’s not really pushed as a priority. We just have an Easter morning service.
What happens, then, is that the Easter morning service turns into an observance of all of Holy Week, and, in our case, turned into 80% (or more) reflections on Christ’s death and the cross, and only about 20% (or less) about His resurrection. And the natural result of that is that the message (sandwiched in after all the special music at the end of the service) ends up being a call to unbelievers to believe, with nothing really targeted at believers, other than a reminder of the hope that we have that death is not the end.
Now the influence of N. T. Wright’s recent Surprised By Hope on my thinking is going to show. Wright argues strongly that we don’t celebrate the Resurrection enough, and I think he’s right. He says, and I loosely paraphrase since I don’t have the book with me at the moment, that we spend 40 days in sacrifice for Lent (oh, something else we don’t do as Baptists) but then Easter is maybe 2 hours on Sunday morning. Instead, Wright says, Easter should be the kickoff day for a full week of celebration. And the message of the Resurrection isn’t just for hope that we will go someplace better when we die, but that God is working to redeem and restore the whole of creation, and that we look forward to participating in Christ’s kingdom.
So much still to think through…
Wrestling with Tom: An American Evangelical's coming-to-grips with N. T. Wright's Surprised By Hope
Few writers have gained the attention of, and made waves in, the Christian blogosphere in recent memory in quite the way that N. T. Wright has. (The other that immediately comes to mind is Mark Driscoll, but his similarity with Wright probably ends about right there.) A “Lord Bishop” (ach, a hierarchical title!) in the Anglican (aren’t they all liberals?) Church, Wright is a brilliant yet down-to-earth scholar of the New Testament. He has written a thick three-volume set on Jesus (one volume of which I received as a Christmas gift and am still wading through), a defense and apologetic of Christian beliefs (Simply Christian), and a little book that went off like a bomb in the Reformed world called What St. Paul Really Said. (As a non-Reformed evangelical, I don’t really get what the huge deal is about, though I do appreciate the insights that Wright has to Paul.)
I have been listening to as many of Wright’s messages as I could get my hands on over the past year (check out ntwrightpage.com - a great resource!) and have heard much that seemed to make sense, though it seemed different than what I’ve learned in the evangelical church, regarding the resurrection, heaven, and the end times. So when I heard that Wright was writing a book to sum up those arguments, I put it on my to-buy list and grabbed it as soon as it was released.
Surprised By Hope runs just over 300 pages (not counting the copious end notes) and is full of the reminder of the hope of Christians not for some ethereal existence in some far-off “heaven”, but for a resurrected body (similar to Jesus' prototype) and eternal existence as a part of a redeemed and restored creation on the “new earth”. Wright makes powerful arguments that this hope of resurrection is consistent with the belief of Israelites before Christ, with the belief of the early church, and that it makes much more sense of the gospels and of Paul than do some of today’s more popular views of heaven.
I have completed one pass through Surprised By Hope and have managed to mark up almost every page. What I have found has been eye-opening; not so much that it is a hugely different doctrine than what my denomination holds to, but more that it sets out so clearly beliefs that we tend to get muddled up and then just gloss over. Wright hits it on the head in Chapter 2:
It comes as something of a shock, in fact, when people are told what is in fact the case: that there is very little in the Bible about “going to heaven when you die” and not a lot about a postmortem hell either. The medieval pictures of heaven and hell, boosted though not created by Dante’s classic work, have exercised a huge influence on Western Christian imagination.
And a bit later:
Most Christians today… remain satisfied with what is at best a truncated and distorted version of the great biblical hope. Indeed, the popular picture is reinforced again and again in hymns, prayers, monuments, and even quite serious works of theology and history. It is simply assumed that the word heaven is the appropriate term for the ultimate destination, the final home, and that the language of resurrection, and of the new earth as well as the new heavens, must somehow be fitted into that.
Yeah, that’s me. That’s what I’ve been taught… though not so much taught it, because other than a requisite Sunday School class teaching the standard dispensational view of the book of Revelation, we don’t teach it much more than the usual thumbnail sketch: heaven is where Christians go when they die. They are there forever in God’s presence. It’s pretty much an eternal conversation with the saints of old who you want to get to know, and there’s some idea of worshiping God, though we’re not quite sure what that’ll look like, and then the glassy sea, and crowns, and well, yeah, it’s a bit muddled. We don’t teach it much because we don’t have a coherent framework that incorporates the gospel with the resurrection and then applies it to our mission today. Sure, if we’re current we’ll talk about things like contextualization, of paying attention to the culture and being in the community, but we see it with just the end goal of being “normal” people so we’ll have an in with the non-Christians who we want to tell about Jesus. Wright is saying throughout the book that there’s more to it than that, and he makes a powerful argument.
I’m planning on chewing on the book with multiple blog posts over the next week or two; I also now need to make another pass through the New Testament with this new understanding in mind and see how it fits. Oh, and to Dad and to Richard: I have ordered you copies and they’re on the way. :-)
[You can buy Surprised by Hope from Amazon.com.]
Comparing Services
This past weekend I had the pleasure of leading music both at Imago Christi on Saturday night and at Noelridge on Sunday morning. It was the first time in a month that I’ve been to Noelridge, and with a month of Imago under our belts it was a good chance to draw some comparisons.
Look and Feel At Imago we’re meeting at night in a 100-year-old sanctuary with lots of stained glass and insufficient lighting. At Noelridge we’re meeting on Sunday morning in a smaller 50-year-old sanctuary. Noelridge has a smaller, intimate, friendly feel to it; Imago has a deeper, more awe-inspiring feel. I think I prefer the relative expanse of Imago. We do need to do something about the lighting, though. (Plans are in process.)
Music OK, the music was basically the same. At Imago I led on an electric keyboard with Dave playing guitar behind me. At Noelridge I led from a baby grand with another Dave playing bass and Tapuwa on the congas. I’m much more comfortable sitting down leading at the piano rather than standing up - partly I need a mic stand with a longer boom so I can situate the stand better; partly I’ve just mostly led while sitting down, and it’s a bit of an adjustment to stand up. Both congregations knew the songs pretty well. There was a bunch of sound generated by each congregation with the singing. I am struck, though, by how much more live the sanctuary at Imago is. Hardwood floors and a big high ceiling let the sound rattle around in a way that creates some presence. Noelridge with its low ceilings and carpet is dead by comparison.
Preaching Same pastor, same sermon, pretty much. I don’t have recordings of either of them, and I was semi-distracted during the Imago service during the sermon (trying to decide what song to sing for a closing meditation), so I’m going on middling memories here. The Imago version was more concise and seemed targeted a bit more toward unbelievers in the audience. At Noelridge it went kind of long (which seemed OK, though). Still, quality stuff from John 1 both times.
Attitude This is where there are two very distinct feelings between the two churches. At Imago, since we’re so new, everyone seems focused on finding the visitors/new people, greeting them, pulling them in. At Noelridge we have an established congregation, so it’s much more of a family feel - people have established relationships, and it shows. Noelridge is still very friendly to visitors, but it’s a slightly different feel. What I gather from this is that we at Imago really need to work on developing relationships among the core team and volunteers, getting us feeling more like a warm family and less like a band of volunteers.
Conclusions? There are good things going on both places. We both have work to do. We both have things we can learn. In both, the gospel is proclaimed, and so I rejoice.
The importance of training others
“…and what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also.” (2 Tim 2:2)
Paul’s wise counsel to Timothy is applicable on many levels, and has a multitude of benefits. A few that I will mention today:
It about the message, not the messenger. Paul was a good example of this, not being jealous of others who gained renown preaching the gospel, but rather simply rejoicing that the gospel was proclaimed. Pride will tempt us to want to be “the guy” - the teacher and leader that people remember and look to. But what is of primary importance isn’t us, but is the gospel that gets preached. When we practice entrusting to faithful men, we are shedding a few of the (multitudinous) opportunities for pride.
The message must carry on after us. Paul himself knew that his days on the earth were short. To have his most effective ministry, he needed not only to preach to unbelievers, but also to teach the teachers who would reach the following generation. I have heard it said that your effectiveness as a parent isn’t shown as much in how your children turn out as in how your grandchildren turn out. For Paul’s spiritual grandchildren to be vibrant and mature Christians, he needed to make sure his spiritual children were well-trained.
You can’t do it all on your own. This is the big temptation for me, and was the initial thought that prompted this post. Just because you (or I) have the skills to do the task yourself doesn’t mean you should be the one to always do it. There is far more work to do than any one of us can handle. Finding and training others who can both assist and replace you is essential in maintaining health, sanity, and the healthy operation of any ministry.
Creating the routine
The biggest adjustment this week in preparing for the Saturday night service is starting to think of it as a weekly routine. We’ve done other one-time events down there in the past, and it would be quite easy to think of last Saturday’s service as just another one-time event. Except that it’s not - I need to get music planned, get the worship team lined up and ready to go, get the lyrics prepared for the bulletin, all the usual tasks… again this week.
One thing I think would help in this regard is setting a regular schedule throughout the week for my planning and preparation. Something like this:
Saturday night: worship service.
Sunday: prepare sermon recording for website, listen to it again and evaluate.
Monday: make sure the website is updated for the week.
Tuesday: choose music for the following week and email to worship team.
Thursday: prepare bulletin.
Saturday: practice with the WT and do the service.
Repeat.
I think it might work. However it happens, I sure need a routine.