Leadership Journal's Out of Ur

For today's entry in the Friday Five interview series, we catch up with Amy Simpson.
Amy Simpson is editor of Christianity Today's Gifted for Leadership and author of numerous resources for Christian ministry. Her latest book is Troubled Minds: Mental Illness and the Church's Mission (InterVarsity Press). You can find her at AmySimpsonOnline.com and on Twitter: @aresimpson.

-Daniel

What prompted you to write about and study mental illness in the church?

My family was affected by mental illness. My mother has schizophrenia, which had a profound effect on our family, especially when I was a young teenager. Like many other families, we stayed pretty quiet about what we were experiencing, and we didn’t receive the support we needed from the church. My dad was a pastor for 10 years, and after that we were involved laypeople. But many people didn’t know what was happening. And the church leaders who probably wanted to help us didn’t know how. No one ever talked about mental illness at church.

In my own pursuit of healing, I worked to understand my mom’s illness and how it affected me. I started learning about how common mental illness is. I read about other people’s experiences and realized how similar they were to ours. I grew to understand that the church’s lack of engagement was affecting many more people than just my family. God began to nudge me toward writing on this topic as a ministry to others. As I was planning an article for Leadership Journal, the editor and I felt it would be valuable to survey church leaders and find out about their experiences with mental illness. And later, as I was writing Troubled Minds, I interviewed several people because I wanted to represent more perspectives and experiences than just my own family’s. But my family’s experience was the starting point.

Recent tragedies such as the death of Rick Warren's son have raised awareness of mental illness among evangelicals. Yet we're still a bit hesitant to talk about it. Why is that?

While Skye was in Switzerland, Phil has a brain burp in Dallas, Justin Beiber runs amok in Dubai, and special guest Pete Leonard roasts the world's best coffee - as a ministry! Only on the Phil Vischer Podcast!

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As a pastor it’s easy to believe that everyone cares about spiritual formation as much as I do. In a community group years ago, I remember rambling on about something our church was beginning and something I, as a pastor at the church, really wanted everyone to understand. I was very excited about it and shared with this group how important all of this was going to be for them. Afterward, as my wife and I recapped the night, she gently said to me, “Chris, you need to remember that you care more about the church than anyone else.”

She was right. I care about the word “missional,” and how often a person interacts with his coworkers about faith. I care about church attendance, reactions to sermon series, and how a person defines “the gospel.” But most people don’t. They care about their kids, their families, their jobs, and their bills. They care about life. And this realization is how Dallas Willard saved my ministry.

Willard didn’t write many books intended for pastors, but most pastors have read his books. He wrote about life--the vast area in which God is working--of which “church ministry” is just a small subset. For example, after a long chapter describing the curriculum for Christlikeness in The Divine Conspiracy, Willard took just over one page for, “Some Practical Points About Implementation—Especially for Pastors” (pg. 371). The final chapter of Renovation of the Heart is, “Spiritual Formation in the Local Congregation,” and is just 20 pages of his 257 page book. Willard’s words were not just for pastors—and not even just for Christians—they were for all of life; our mundane and ever-important life.

If you woke up and the world had been transformed into a super-nerd dystopia where a demigod-Patton Oswalt forced you to choose only the best superhero to preserve from 100 years of American comics, you would choose Superman.

Sure, the more educated nerd-palate prefers a hero who is less of a boy-scout. (Batman is my pick.) After all, Superman is a little goody-goody. He ALWAYS does the right thing. He has the most complete set of powers: flight, x-ray vision, super strength, etc. He’s invincible, except for the whole kryptonite thing.

You would not tell demigod-Patton Oswalt that the ideal superhero for cultural preservation was Jesus Christ. Being honest, Jesus is actually a terrible superhero. Even if you give him the whole walking-on-water and miraculous healing thing, that doesn't give you much to work with when Lex Luthor decides to blow up the sun or Darkseid starts a zombie apocalypse. Apart from the Ascension, Jesus can't even fly. So there's nothing he can do about the whole exploding sun fiasco. And re: the zombie apocalypse? Can he go around healing the zombies? No, no no. That's not going to help. They will make more zombies. Someone has to stop Luthor and Darkseid. Someone needs to strap them to a meteor and toss them out into space. At least in the comic books, that will solve the problem.

Even if you narrow your scope to Biblical heroes Jesus isn't the coolest from a nerd’s point of view. Sampson is probably the best biblical hero. He's at least got super strength. I could see David having a spin-off giant killing mini-series that would connect with the right demographic. But Jesus never kills any giants. He doesn't bust open heads with a donkey's jaw-bone. When he gets the chance to do something big in front of a crowd, he just makes lunch. I guess he could open a catering business but that's not going to stop invading hoards of Philistines.

Most Christians are familiar with the Messianic expectation of the Hebrew people. It’s not that the Messiah for God's people wasn't supposed to be awesome. He was. Before Jesus showed up people were anticipating someone who could single-handedly take down the Roman empire. The Messiah was supposed to be “bad ass.”

The problem is, Jesus is not “bad ass.”

It's been a few weeks since Congress voted against any new gun control laws or even the expansion of background checks, an idea supported by nearly 9 in 10 Americans. With the media no longer focused on guns, and with the partisan politics of the issue out of the spotlight, I'm curious to know what Ur-banites think.

This CNN video, featuring Ur's own Daniel Darling, gives some stats and background on where evangelicals stand. But like many other issues (immigration comes to mind), is there a divide between evangelical leaders and laity on gun control? Share your thoughts after watching the video.

For today's entry in the Friday Five interview series, we catch up with Russell Moore, the recently-elected president of the Southern Baptist’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, replacing the recently retired Richard Land. Prior to accepting this position, he was the Dean of the School of Theology and Senior Vice President for Academic Administration at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Moore is a popular author and speaker. His latest book is Tempted and Tried: Temptation and the Triumph of Christ. He is a widely sought-after commentator and public speaker, frequently quoted in leading religious and secular publications.

Today we chat with Moore about the changing face of evangelical activism, his relationship with President Obama, and what he means by “convictional kindness.”
-Daniel

You were recently elected as President of the Southern Baptists' Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission. How do you feel your life experience has prepared you for this moment?

From the very beginning of my Christian life, I have felt a tension between two callings: to the pulpit and to the public square. I sensed a call to ministry early in my teens, but veered away from it for some time, pursuing a life in the political arena. My wife and I dated on the campaign trail, as I was working for U.S. Rep. Gene Taylor. She was with me from county fair to fundraiser to seafood festival in our congressional district in south Mississippi, drumming up support for Gene.

While gearing up for a political life, I sensed a renewed call to the ministry, and here we are. It always seemed to me that those years of political preparation weren't wasted time, but that God was afoot, getting me ready for something.

In my years in academia, I have spent most of my attention on the subject of the kingdom of God in Christ, which is the consuming passion of my life. This issue is central to the questions I'll be addressing as president of the ERLC.

Your election comes at a time when Southern Baptists (and evangelicals in general) seem to be reexamining their public engagement. Does your election signal new messaging?

“What’s with the face paint?”

I got the question a dozen times from the men in my church. It was a Friday evening in spring. They stood around a fire, bemused and slightly nervous as I painted black and red stripes on their cheeks and noses.

“In some cultures,” I said, “the men carve a scar in their arm for every man they kill. Some high school guys put a notch in their belt for every girl they sleep with. I’m putting a stripe on your face for every child you have.” One color for children outside the womb, a different color for pre-borns.

Their expressions were not so nervous after that.

Most cultures worldwide practice rites-of-passage and coming of age rituals. The Bar Mitzvah. The Masai lion hunt. Poy Sang Long in Burma. The Hispanic Quinceañera. The Aboriginal walkabout. Sheijin Shiki in Japan. The Amish Rumspringa. A Native American vision quest. Vanuatu land diving. Hamar cow jumping. You get the point.

In America, though, the transition from child to adult is much more ambiguous. We recognize certain “rites,” such as a first shave, getting the driver’s license, our high school graduations, fraternity hazing, our “first” drink when we turn 21. But these are practiced inconsistently, and most are either not intentional or not edifying. Neither do they set up a boy’s journey into manhood as a particularly sacred or honorable thing.

As a result of growing up in American culture, with rituals the way they are (or aren’t), I now find myself married for almost five years, two months shy of my 30th birthday, expecting my first child in just over a month, working a full-time counseling job with benefits, and holding a masters degree. And most days I still feel like a kid. Put another way, I’ve worked hard to get where I am, but I still don’t feel like I fit in with other grown-up men.

What happened to me? What is happening to boys in our nation who are expected to become “manly” men? Boys like me are raised, hopefully with a father figure, then pushed out into the world with the anomalous directive, “Be a man.” We’re not told clearly when we’ll have achieved that goal. We’re told in the most general terms what being a man is—strong, decisive, godly, head of the household, breadwinner. Then we suddenly find ourselves as fathers responsible for teaching our boys how to be men and our daughters how to be women. But we’ve barely figured it out ourselves.

This post is from my keynote address at the Wilberforce Weekend hosted by The Chuck Colson Center in Washington DC on April 26. My actual remarks may have differed slightly from this transcript. You can read Part 1 of the talk here.

PART TWO: FROM EXILE TO INCARNATION
So what is the solution? If the Exile model, derived from Jeremiah 29:7, is a sub-Christian model of cultural engagement, what is the alternative? Just as the church shifted from the Exodus to the Exile model 40 years ago, I believe we need to shift again. But this time we need more than a new strategy. We need new eyes to see the world in a fundamentally different way. If we don’t then our efforts to manifest the kingdom will remain flawed because we will still be driven by fear and control--by a vision of the world as an unsafe and dangerous place. But to see the world differently, to see with new eyes, requires a supernatural encounter with the grace of God.

In 1956, Martin Luther King Jr. was a young Baptist minister in Montgomery, Alabama. After Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on the bus, King found himself leading a bus boycott against the racist policies of the city. He lived under constant threat to his life. On Jan 27, he was woken in the middle of the night by a phone call. The voice said that if he wasn’t out of town in three days they were going to kill his family.

King couldn’t go back to sleep. With his wife and infant daughter in the next room, he made himself a cup of coffee and sat in the kitchen trying to figure out how to escape Montgomery. He later admitted that he was “scared to death” and “paralyzed by fear.” Like Thomas Aquinas’ city under siege, fear had caused King to turn inward in a posture of self-protection.

But then something happened, something unexpected. King felt something stirring within him--an inner voice that spoke to him. It said, “Stand up for righteousness. Stand up for justice. Stand up for truth, and lo, I will be with you, even until the end of the world. ”The voice promised “never to leave me, never to leave me alone. No, never alone. He promised to never leave me, never, to leave me alone.”

That night King experienced the presence of Christ and it changed the way he saw the world. It took away his fear. He saw with new eyes. He saw a God-with-us world. After that encounter in his kitchen with God he said, “I can stand up without fear. I can face anything.” His new view of the world was about to be tested.

Enjoy this post from former Obama faith staffer Michael Wear. Be sure to also read Ur’s recent interview with Michael.

-Paul

Today, partnership—a simple, benign idea in general—is perhaps one of the most counter-cultural concepts in practice. Division and polarization are now common themes in our lives. This is certainly true in our nation’s Capitol, where our politics is too often characterized by seemingly institutionalized gridlock and partisanship that prevents action on the issues that matter most. However, if we are honest with ourselves, we know that this spirit is not just confined to Washington. In our culture, our media, even our relationships, we often find it easier to retreat to spaces that only reaffirm our existing beliefs, rather than sincerely seeking to understand the perspective of those with whom we may disagree.

I served the President during a time of great change and challenge in this country, but I left with a greater sense of optimism and hope for our future than when I began. Through my work at The White House Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships, I learned about the incredible power and potential of partnership.

It started with this tweet by Dr. Anthony Bradley:

“Being a ‘radical,’ ‘missional’ Christian is slowly becoming the ‘new legalism.’ We need more ordinary God and people lovers (Matt 22:36-40).”

Needless to say, he had my attention. As I read the ensuing article the tweet inspired called “The ‘New Legalism’” (World Magazine), my curiosity quickly turned to confusion, then frustration and finally disappointment. Bradley so misses the mark with this piece that I felt it important to respond in some detail. Please read the original article first, as I don’t want you to rely entirely on my perspective.

Bradley starts by identifying a very real and prevalent problem:

“I continue to be amazed by the number of youth and young adults who are stressed and burnt out from the regular shaming and feelings of inadequacy if they happen to not be doing something unique and special. Today’s millennial generation is being fed the message that if they don’t do something extraordinary in this life they are wasting their gifts and potential.”

My reaction to this dynamic is somewhat conflicted. On one hand, I have seen the suffering he identifies and agree that not only do we need to address it compassionately, but also root out the underlying causes. On the other hand, in light of how most Christians around the world live, I have a hard time feeling too much sympathy for those who are almost entirely made up of the world’s most privileged few. It is in this sense of tension where I think the problem lies: there is certainly a problem that needs addressing, but the diagnoses of cause(s) and the remedies suggested are so off the mark that I fear they might very well cause more harm than they remedy.