October 30, 2007

Missions and Masturbation

There is no need to reiterate the statistics on sexual immorality among clergy. We all know them. And we also know that addiction to pornography is at epidemic levels even within the church. But do we know how many gifted young leaders never answer their call into ministry because of the guilt they feel over past sexual sins?

John Piper has written an article for Christianity Today addressing this problem. He says:

?so many young people are being lost to the cause of Christ's mission because they are not taught how to deal with the guilt of sexual failure. The problem is not just how not to fail. The problem is how to deal with failure so that it doesn't sweep away your whole life into wasted mediocrity with no impact for Christ. The great tragedy is not masturbation or fornication or pornography. The tragedy is that Satan uses guilt from these failures to strip you of every radical dream you ever had or might have. In their place, he gives you a happy, safe, secure, American life of superficial pleasures, until you die in your lakeside rocking chair.

It's no surprise that Dr. Piper's prescription for overcoming a guilty conscience is a heavy dose of Reformed theology. "Take two doctrines and call me in the morning," seems to be his answer:

With this passionately embraced theology - the magnificent doctrines of substitutionary atonement and justification by faith (even if you don't remember the names) - you can conquer the Devil tomorrow morning when he lies to you about your hopelessness.

Agree or disagree with Piper's solution, the problem he is addressing is important. As our culture becomes increasingly sexually charged Christians will need the tools to not only fight temptation but also the means to recover from failure. When facing an epidemic preventative medicine alone isn't enough.

Similarly, how do we help young people find balance when many gage the health of their relationship with Christ on a single issue - their sexual purity? A friend working at a Christian college has noticed this trend in recent years. Incoming freshmen are the first generation to have grown up since grade school with internet access. Many have been exposed to massive quantities of pornography since their pre-pubescent years. By age eighteen some young men are already sexual addicts. But many others have been formed to measure their spirituality based solely on their sexual self-control. When a single issue carries so much weight the guilt of failure can overwhelm.

Is Piper right? Are we at risk of losing a generation of Christian leaders not because of sexual failure but because they haven't been taught to fight the aftershock of guilt? And is embracing a passionate theology of justification and atonement the solution? I encourage you to read Piper's entire article here, and post your thoughts below.

Posted by UrL Scaramanga at October 30, 2007 | Comments (35)

October 29, 2007

Squelched by Marriage

When I get home tonight, I'll think awhile about Gordon MacDonald's new column. In fact, I think most pastors and leaders should think hard on his thesis: What has the dominant, big-personality, leader type squelched in his spouse? I may muster the courage to ask my wife what she thinks about it.

Those of us who have spent our lives getting close to people for pastoral reasons are quite well acquainted with the grief that floods the life of one who has lost a dearly loved spouse. We've observed the paralyzing sadness and sense of loss and know that only time will dull the pain. There are a plethora of books and seminars that speak about this experience.

What is less talked or written about is the opposite of such grief. The word that comes to me is liberation. In some cases the death of a spouse actually liberates the surviving spouse to remove something like a disguise and become a new person.

I once stood near enough to overhear a conversation between a woman and two of her adult children soon after the funeral and burial services for her husband (and their father) had concluded. Apparently, either the son or the daughter, thinking they were offering a kind of protective love to the mother, tried to take charge and tell her something that she should or shouldn't do.

The mother (freshly a widow, remember!) reacted with words wrapped in anger. "Now let's get something straight right this minute. No one! No one is going to tell me what to do any longer. I've been doing what everyone else wanted (alluding no doubt to her deceased husband) for fifty years. Now it's my turn. I'll make my own decisions from here on out. Is this understood?" I had the feeling these words has been rehearsed and that it was only a matter of time until they came out. Now they did.

They came from a small-statured woman who had always seemed content to live as a loving and serving wife in the shadow of her more-dominating husband. As far as I could tell she had always seemed happy with her marriage arrangements. Now I had some doubt.

More than a few times, I have seen surviving spouses who - soon after a period of mourning - seem to change dramatically. They buy new clothes, begin to travel (or stop traveling), redecorate their home, join organizations or find new ways to make money. They deepen spiritually or (and this shouldn't surprise) do just the opposite. Anyway, a new person emerges. A new person? Or the hidden one?

What I have learned from watching episodes like this is that many people apparently harbor a secret person inside of themselves that never sees the light of day. That hidden "person" is intimidated or refused by someone near who controls all the airspace of the relationship.

Someone, by the way, will point out that this is most certainly true in many acrimonious divorces. Terminate the relationship and you have no idea what new person may emerge.

Of course there is a corollary to all of this for which I do not have space except to mention. Sometimes the survivor goes into a kind of character or spiritual disintegration and you realize that what they were was being propped up or held together by the one who had just passed on. This scenario is not pretty.

Having seen one more of these hidden persons emerge in just the past few months, I was pressed to engage in some reflective thinking about my own marriage. Could there ever be such a person hiding in my wife, Gail? Someone that I have refused to recognize and welcome over the years of our marriage? Put another way: is this woman whom I dearly love everything she is capable of being partly through my encouragement and affirmation? Or - and this is hard to write - would my departure be that "person's" liberation? I'd like to think that the answer is a resounding "no!" There is nothing in Gail that needs to hide. Nevertheless, it is a question worth asking myself (no matter how morose) so that I can be the more sure that I have encouraged her (as well as all my friends) to be all that God meant her (and them) to be.

A wonderful read: Jonathan Aitken's John Newton (Crossway, 2007) is a marvelous biography. I'll never sing again Amazing Grace without remembering the power of Christian conversion as it was so remarkably evidenced in Newton's life. Before Aitken's book, I thought I'd covered the bases on John Newton. Not so. He's a fresh new hero to me now.

An irritating read: Jim and Casper Go to Church, by Jim Henderson and Matt Casper (BarnaBooks, 2007). A brilliant idea for a book. Two guys (one an out-of-the-closet-atheist) visit various well-known churches in America at worship time. The atheist, Casper, offers the Christian, Jim, a fresh-eyed view of what he is seeing as people gather and sing and listen to sermons. I guess I'm glad they didn't come anywhere near where I preach - although I probably would have learned a lot.

I wish the book could be rewritten with an eye toward more depth in the subject matter. There weren't a lot of surprises about what one might experience if he visits a congregation at worship for the first time. Still, the value of the book was in its reminder that some things done in church must seem pretty bizarre to the critic who stands outside the faith.

The price of the book is in the question that Casper asks Jim several times after leaving various churches to which they have traveled. "Is this really what Jesus told you guys to do?" Casper seems incredulous.

A prayer request. This was a wonderful weekend in New England: the foliage remains brilliant; the Red Sox won the World Series; the Patriots are undefeated; and Boston College is number two in the nation. We need humility. Right now it's a spiritual battle for all of us. A spiritual battle I would be happy to entertain into the foreseeable future.

Gordon MacDonald is Leadership's editor at large

Posted by UrL Scaramanga at October 29, 2007 | Comments (16)

October 26, 2007

Willow Creek Repents? (Part 2)

Last week's post about Willow Creek sparked a lot of conversation. It all flowed from comments made by the church's leaders following a three year self-evaluation of Willow Creek's ministry effectiveness. Your comments caught the attention of Greg Hawkins, Willow's executive pastor. Below Hawkins reponds to your thoughts, clarifies what Willow has learned, and discusses the church's future.

Friends,

I'm thrilled to see the high level of interest and energy behind the blogosphere comments about REVEAL. But I've read enough postings to think that it might be helpful to provide a few facts on three issues that keep coming up. Trust me. I'm not into "spin control" here. I just want to fill in some gaps.

1. It's Not About Willow
? REVEAL's findings are based on thirty churches besides Willow. In all thirty churches, we've found the six segments of REVEAL's spiritual continuum, including the Stalled and Dissatisfied segments. And these churches aren't all Willow clones. We've surveyed traditional Bible churches, mainline denominations, African-American churches and churches representing a wide range of geographies and sizes. Right now we're fielding the survey to 500 additional churches, including 100 international churches. So, while REVEAL was born out of a Willow research project in 2004, the findings are not exclusive to Willow Creek.

2. Willow Repents?
? The first blog started with this question, and the answer is "yes". But repenting is not a new experience for us. We've made a number of major course corrections over the years ? like adding a big small group ministry for the thousands of new Christians coming to faith at Willow, and adding a mid-week service for our Christ-followers. We've always been a church in motion and REVEAL is just another example of Willow trying to be open to God's design for this local church.

3. Is Willow Re-thinking its Seeker Focus?
? Simple answer ? no. My boss would say that Willow is not just seeker-focused. We are seeker-obsessed. The power of REVEAL's insights for our seeker strategy is the evangelistic strength uncovered in the more mature segments. If we can serve them better, the evangelistic potential is enormous, based on our findings.

I hope this was helpful. In any event, I'm enjoying following the dialogue. Keep it up! And let me know if you have any questions you'd like me to address.

Greg Hawkins

Posted by UrL Scaramanga at October 26, 2007 | Comments (55)

October 25, 2007

The Next Caption Contest

What are your captions for this cartoon? We know Out of Ur and Leadership readers will have some great ones on this NASCAR theme.

Winning entries will be published in the Winter 2008 edition of Leadership. Please include your name, your church’s name, city, and state.

Posted by UrL Scaramanga at October 25, 2007 | Comments (31)

October 23, 2007

The Alternative After-Lifestyle

In August, leaders at High Point Church in Arlington, Texas, "cancelled a memorial service for a Navy veteran shortly before it was to start because the deceased was gay." That is how the event was described by the Associated Press. The report ignited a firestorm of bad press for the church with many accusing the congregation of homophobia.

Initially, High Point Church had volunteered to host the funeral because the dead man was the relative of a church employee. However, the church withdrew the offer when the family asked that a choir of homosexual men (Turtle Creek Chorale) perform at the funeral. In addition, they wanted a homosexual minister to officiate the service. The church's decision to cancel the funeral was "a slap in the face" according to the man's sister.

The Dallas Morning News reported that the church's reason for cancelling the funeral had nothing to do with the man's homosexuality but that "his friends and family wanted that part of his life to be a significant part of the service." This contradicted the church's policy and beliefs.

A statement released by High Point Church said:

The issue was not whether we would hold a memorial service for someone in a lifestyle of sin. We have assisted many families in this regard. The issue was whether we would allow an openly homosexual service that celebrated and emphasized homosexuality in our church. We love the homosexual, but cannot condone the homosexual lifestyle. We could not allow homosexuality to be glorified in this house of worship.

Read the entire statement here.

April Steven, co-pastor of the High Point Church with her husband, Gary, is also the sister of Joel Osteen. When Osteen was asked about his sister's decision to cancel the funeral he said, "It's a management issue more than a moral issue." Defending his sister and brother-in-law, he continued:

We have buried and honored anybody from any walk of life, and, in defense of them, they have too. [The family] wanted their own officiants to come in there, their own pastors to come in there, and [my sister and her husband] didn't feel comfortable with turning their church over to somebody they didn't know. That's the difference. Gary, my brother-in-law, and my sister would do anybody's funeral in the world.

When the interviewer asked Osteen if he would have hosted the funeral if the family had not requested their own officiant he said, "We would do it. I'd take anybody." How would you have answered that question? Is there any funeral your church would refuse to host?

Posted by UrL Scaramanga at October 23, 2007 | Comments (21)

October 18, 2007

Willow Creek Repents?

Few would disagree that Willow Creek Community Church has been one of the most influential churches in America over the last thirty years. Willow, through its association, has promoted a vision of church that is big, programmatic, and comprehensive. This vision has been heavily influenced by the methods of secular business. James Twitchell, in his new book Shopping for God, reports that outside Bill Hybels' office hangs a poster that says: "What is our business? Who is our customer? What does the customer consider value?" Directly or indirectly, this philosophy of ministry - church should be a big box with programs for people at every level of spiritual maturity to consume and engage - has impacted every evangelical church in the country.

So what happens when leaders of Willow Creek stand up and say, "We made a mistake"?

Not long ago Willow released its findings from a multiple year qualitative study of its ministry. Basically, they wanted to know what programs and activities of the church were actually helping people mature spiritually and which were not. The results were published in a book, Reveal: Where Are You?, co-authored by Greg Hawkins, executive pastor of Willow Creek. Hybels called the findings "earth shaking," "ground breaking," and "mind blowing."

If you'd like to get a synopsis of the research you can watch a video with Greg Hawkins here. And Bill Hybels' reactions, recorded at last summer's Leadership Summit, can be seen here. Both videos are worth watching in their entirety, but below are few highlights.

In the Hawkins' video he says, "Participation is a big deal. We believe the more people participating in these sets of activities, with higher levels of frequency, it will produce disciples of Christ." This has been Willow's philosophy of ministry in a nutshell. The church creates programs/activities. People participate in these activities. The outcome is spiritual maturity. In a moment of stinging honesty Hawkins says, "I know it might sound crazy but that's how we do it in churches. We measure levels of participation."

Having put so many of their eggs into the program-driven church basket, you can understand their shock when the research revealed that "Increasing levels of participation in these sets of activities does NOT predict whether someone's becoming more of a disciple of Christ. It does NOT predict whether they love God more or they love people more."

Speaking at the Leadership Summit, Hybels summarized the findings this way:

Some of the stuff that we have put millions of dollars into thinking it would really help our people grow and develop spiritually, when the data actually came back, it wasn't helping people that much. Other things that we didn't put that much money into and didn't put much staff against is stuff our people are crying out for.

Having spent thirty years creating and promoting a multi-million dollar organization driven by programs and measuring participation, and convincing other church leaders to do the same, you can see why Hybels called this research "the wake-up call" of his adult life.

Hybels confesses:

We made a mistake. What we should have done when people crossed the line of faith and become Christians, we should have started telling people and teaching people that they have to take responsibility to become ?self feeders.' We should have gotten people, taught people, how to read their bible between service, how to do the spiritual practices much more aggressively on their own.

In other words, spiritual growth doesn't happen best by becoming dependent on elaborate church programs but through the age old spiritual practices of prayer, bible reading, and relationships. And, ironically, these basic disciplines do not require multi-million dollar facilities and hundreds of staff to manage.

Does this mark the end of Willow's thirty years of influence over the American church? Not according to Hawkins:

Our dream is that we fundamentally change the way we do church. That we take out a clean sheet of paper and we rethink all of our old assumptions. Replace it with new insights. Insights that are informed by research and rooted in Scripture. Our dream is really to discover what God is doing and how he's asking us to transform this planet.

Posted by UrL Scaramanga at October 18, 2007 | Comments (120)

October 15, 2007

Glimpses of Glory

We live in a dark world. Our hearts long for goodness, beauty, justice, and peace, but they are often hidden behind the shadow cast by evil and sin. This is why preaching is so necessary. Whenever the kingdom of God is proclaimed, it is like a bright burst of light. In those brief moments, the shadows recede and we are given a glimpse of a world behind the darkness. It is a sublime vision that reorders our perception of reality and leaves us hungry for more.

This understanding of preaching, the unveiling of an inspiring vision of God's kingdom, is not the one I've always held. I was formed to think that the primary purpose of preaching was instruction. This view of preaching expects the informed, articulate person behind the pulpit to teach the congregation divine truths and skills. The pupils are then expected to bury these seeds of biblical knowledge away in their brains where in time they germinate into godly values and behaviors, although few people seem surprised when they don't.

In Dallas Willard's V.I.M. model of spiritual formation, he differentiates three parts: vision, intention, and means. Instructional preaching falls under the third component - means. It teaches people the methods through which they can obey Christ. These "how to" sermons usually have clearly articulated, often alliterated, application points relevant to one's life.
I never questioned this "preaching as instruction" view until I stepped behind the pulpit myself. What I discovered disturbed me.

Despite my hours of preparation, thoughtful use of visuals, and tangible takeaways, most people retained very little of the nutritious content offered to them. Like my lactose-intolerant son who spat up every ounce of milk we gave him, how would people thrive if they couldn't retain biblical knowledge? How would they live differently?

What I have since discovered is that lecturing a passive audience for 20 to 40 minutes, what Doug Pagitt calls "speeching," has been repeatedly proven to result in a very low retention of content. Likewise, adult education experts testify, along with a multitude of unregenerate pew sitters, that passive learning rarely transforms values. Does this mean we should abandon instruction in the church? Of course not. After all, we are commissioned to teach people to obey everything Christ commanded. It simply means traditional preaching is not the best medium for skill training and instruction.

But preaching is wonderfully designed for the prerequisite component of Willard's spiritual formation model - vision. Preaching this way will not always have the end goal of application, but rather inspiration. As Willard says, "It's the beauty of the kingdom that Jesus said was causing people to climb over each other just to get in." Only after people have a vision of God (the love, beauty, justice, and power of his kingdom) will they be ready to intentionally seek and employ the means to experience him through obedience - an aspect of spiritual formation that occurs most effectively in smaller settings through the medium of relationship.

Preaching to inspire rather than instruct is a differentiation we see in Jesus' own ministry. The Greek word for "preach" (kerusso) means to announce. This is not the same as the word for "teach" (didasko), meaning to instruct. In Mark's Gospel we learn that Jesus came "preaching the gospel of God" and saying, "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand." Jesus' preaching was a revelatory act. He announced the kingdom. He turned the lights on so people could see the kingdom that lay "at hand" just behind their present darkness.

Even Jesus' most celebrated and lengthy sermon was intended more to inspire than to instruct. The Sermon on the Mount paints a vivid image of a life lived within God's kingdom - a life that does not lust, lie, or manipulate; a life full of love, charity, and prayer. But the sermon includes very little "how to." Jesus' purpose is to reveal the kingdom; to illumine a sublime vision of a life in intimate communion with the Father.

Early in the gospel narratives, Jesus sends his new apostles out to proclaim the kingdom. Have you ever found that odd? These fishermen and tax collectors understood so little, and later chapters show the magnitude of their ignorance. Would you have put one of these guys in the pulpit?

But Jesus does not send them to "teach" (that command comes after his resurrection). Rather, he sends them to "preach." Teaching requires proficiency with a set of knowledge - knowledge these men did not yet possess. But preaching is different. Announcing the kingdom only requires one to have seen and experienced it. It's the difference between announcing that Flight 544 from Cleveland has arrived (kerusso), and teaching people the aerodynamics that enabled the aircraft to land (didasko).

Understanding the difference is crucial. If we see the purpose of preaching as primarily instructing, then it will be confined to an individual exercise; a responsibility granted only to the most biblically educated, articulate, and proficient in the congregation. But if we believe preaching is primarily the announcing of the kingdom, unveiling a vision of God's glorious reign and our life in it, then the responsibility to preach cannot lie solely with the pastor, but with all of God's people - even ignorant fishermen.

Read the full article at www.LeadershipJournal.net.

Posted by Skye Jethani at October 15, 2007 | Comments (12)

October 10, 2007

Out of Context: Rick Warren

"The American church as a whole needs to move from selfish consumerism to unselfish contribution. Those are poles apart. To start with a woman who's most interested in how many diamonds she's got in her tennis bracelet, and move her to sit under a banyan tree holding an AIDS baby- that's a giant leap. People in this culture are trained to think about me, me, me; I've got to do what's best for me. Even when we go to church we have this consumer mentality."

-Rick Warren serves as pastor of Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, California. Taken from "It's Not About Rick" in the Summer 2007 issue of Leadership journal. To see the quote IN context, you'll need to see the print version of Leadership. To subscribe, click on the cover of Leadership on this page.

Posted by UrL Scaramanga at October 10, 2007 | Comments (4)

October 9, 2007

Living with Less

Chad Hall is experiencing the simpler life. Intentionally. And he's wondering what effect his quest for less has on those he leads. And he has three questions we can ask.

Everywhere I go these days, big is in. My combo meal is super-sized, my SUV is third row, and the TV of my dreams is 62-inch plasma. We Americans are big eaters, big spenders, and big wasters. Even our churches are into big, enlarging auditoriums, renting big malls and even bigger coliseums in order to accommodate big crowds and enable big growth. Like the population at large, we Christians seem to have a growing acceptance of the bigger is better credo.

But all this growth might be creating some big problems.

Our society and systems seem incapable of handling the never-ceasing expansion of want and need. Our souls are groaning and the planet is buckling beneath the collateral damage of growth. Landfills are full, the air is thick, and we cannot drink from many of our streams.

In light of our growing problems, maybe the church should give small a chance. I propose that ministry leaders are just the ones to help Christ followers exchange big for small. After all, leaders are supposed to help usher others toward something better (not just something bigger), so maybe we should start ushering folks toward living lives that are less hectic, less cluttered, less selfish, less toxic. And maybe instead of a big ad campaign advertising "LESS!" we should start living with less ourselves. Instead of just preaching it from the pulpit, maybe some personal choices would help slow down the growth, bring some sanity to our lives and make the world more livable.

Give less a chance
Our family recently decided to sell our riding mower because its impact on the environment was not offset by its necessity. Shortly after, my wife quipped, "I think we're becoming tree-huggers."

How had it come to this? After all, I have a strong dislike of Birkenstocks, I think Michael Moore is a narcissist, and I appreciate creature comforts every bit as much as the next guy. So why is my family choosing to push-mow the lawn, ditch the extra television, and experiment with line-drying our clothes? I'm not sure how it all began or where it's going, but we've adopted a series of small questions that are redirecting our souls and may be benefiting the world around us.

Three small questions
Not to cast blame, but my journey toward less started with Randy Frazee. Prior to a conference in 2003, Randy and I had a dinner conversation during which he shared with me the somewhat radical lifestyle changes his family had made in order to make room for real relationships.
A few months later Randy wrote the book Making Room for Life.

When my wife and I read that book, we started talking and eventually began asking the question of simplification, "Even though something is commonplace, do we really need it in our lives?"

With that question in mind, all sorts of things were up for grabs: buying a house in the "right" school district, needing two incomes, cell phones, minivans, and even (hold your breath!) signing our kids up for soccer. It was like a little compact fluorescent light bulb turned on to illuminate some of the chains of conformity we had allowed to make our decisions for us. We began to see how deeply we'd bought into culture's code of success being equated with more and more. The results of all this "more" were clutter and confusion and so we decided to simplify our lives. Removing some of the typical suburban clutter was a bit scary, but over the course of a few years, it really has begun to make room for life.

We soon discovered the joy of having fewer bills to pay, fewer trips to make, fewer calendars to juggle, and fewer agendas to manage. Lurking amid the resource of free time, we discovered the pleasure of not just having neighbors, but of knowing our neighbors. Our lives soon began to revolve more and more around the half dozen or so families we considered to be our neighbors.

We soon recognized that our role as good neighbors meant significantly other than trying to get someone to attend this or that church. As we experienced the inherent value of people and place, we began to ask, "How can we live so that when Christ returns he won't have to work so hard to redeem our neighborhood?" This became our family's question of significance. We want to add kingdom value to the relational, spiritual and even physical environment we inhabit. Our interactions with neighbors have gone from enjoying their company to co-laboring with them for the good of our little corner of creation. Campfires in the backyard, pizza on Sunday nights, and building a tree house all took on kingdom significance because we were contributing to making things in our acres of earth a little more as they are in heaven.

Continue reading Chad Hall's article at LeadershipJournal.net

Chad Hall is a coach/consultant living in Cary, North Carolina, and the co-author of Coaching for Christian Leaders: A Practical Guide.

Posted by UrL Scaramanga at October 9, 2007 | Comments (23)

October 5, 2007

Me, Myself, and Jesus

David Fitch is back with part 2 of his critique of the emerging response to evangelicalism. In part 1 he noted the "we're in, you're out" mentality in much of the evangelical church, and the anemic emerging reaction to this black and white theology. Here, Fitch takes on our over emphasis of having a "personal relationship" with Christ while ignoring the social component of the gospel.

A second weakness I see emerging churches responding to is the individualizing tendencies of evangelical ways of being Christ's church. Our churches are organized to meet the spiritual needs of individuals, and our salvation is incredibly individualistic. Calling Jesus "a personal Savior" sounds like Jesus is in the same category as my personal barber, personal trainer, or personal dental hygenist (BTW, I don't have a personal trainer). The danger is making salvation all about me.

I know it didn't start out this way in evangelicalism, but it was latent in the structure of our soteriology. And so we have almost romanticized our relationship with God; created a narcissistic experience of it. And churches become all about preserving, maintaining, and nurturing this experience in their parishioners.

But the gospel is not about getting something, it is about participating in something - God's work of reconciling the whole world to Himself. And yes, we do have a relationship with God which becomes personal but it is inseparable from His mission.

I said in an article I wrote for Allelon:

Imagine what it would be like in our churches, if there were no such division (between personal justification and social justice). If we were not invited to go forward as individuals to receive a packaged salvation from God that gets us off hell, but instead came forward to become part of something, what God is doing in the world through Jesus Christ - the reconciliation of all men and women with Himself, each other, and all of creation (2 Cor 5:19), which BTW inextricably must still include my own personal reconciliation/relationship with God.

Again, McLaren is speaking to this when he says in an article:

The term missional asks this question: what is the purpose of the church? To enfold and warehouse Christians for heaven, protecting them from damage and spoilage until they reach their destination? Or to recruit and train people to be transforming agents of the kingdom of God in our culture? The missional church understands itself to be blessed not to the exclusion of the world, but for the benefit of the world. It is a church that seeks to bring benefits to its nonadherents through its adherents.

In relation to emerging church's response to the false evangelical dichotomy between personal salvation and social justice, I think the missional mantra - God is already working, let's just join up with Him wherever he is - sometimes ignores that God is not working everywhere. There are powers in rebellion against God. We fail to deal with Foucault's great insight: worldly power is this homogenous totality that engulfs, absorbs, and incorporates all resistance within it. So in essence, we start out working for justice against the dominant Symbolic order and end up supporting it, helping to spread its injustice even more.

In short the emerging church is right when they say "NO JESUS WITHOUT JUSTICE" but is naive to think we can know JUSTICE WITHOUT JESUS. I'm not saying that all works of justice and mercy require a gospel tract to be handed out. But I'll have to write more about this later.

Posted by UrL Scaramanga at October 5, 2007 | Comments (9)

October 1, 2007

So Many Christian Infants

Gordon MacDonald's column for October is my own lament: Why are there so many spiritual babies? And why don't the mature believers do something about it? We're really good at bringing people into the kingdom, Gordon says, but lousy at prodding them to maturity. Our sage is not afraid to point fingers.

I have been musing on the words of Martin Thornton: "A walloping great congregation," he wrote, "is fine and fun, but what most communities really need is a couple of saints.
The tragedy is that they may well be there in embryo, waiting to be discovered, waiting for sound training, waiting to be emancipated from the cult of the mediocre."

"Saints," he says. Mature Christians: people who are "grown-up" in their faith, to whom one assigns descriptors such as holy, Christ-like, Godly, or men or women of God.

Now mature, in my book does not mean the "churchly," those who have mastered the vocabulary and the litany of church life, who come alive only when the church doors open. Rather, I have in mind those who walk through all the corridors of the larger life - the market-place, the home and community, the playing fields - and do it in such a way that, sooner or later, it is concluded that Jesus' fingerprints are all over them.

I have concluded that our branch of the Christian movement (sometimes called Evangelical) is pretty good at wooing people across the line into faith in Jesus. And we're also not bad at helping new-believers become acquainted with the rudiments of a life of faith: devotional exercise, church involvement, and basic Bible information - something you could call Christian infancy.

But what our tradition lacks of late - my opinion anyway - is knowing how to prod and poke people past the "infancy" and into Christian maturity.

A definition of a mature Christian is lacking. Best to say that you know a mature Christian when you see one. They're in the New Testament. Barnabas is one. Aquila and Priscilla are others. Onesiphorous impresses me. And so is the mother of Rufus of whom Paul said, "she has been a mother to me." That's a short list.

The marks of maturity? Self-sustaining in spiritual devotions. Wise in human relationships. Humble and serving. Comfortable and functional in the everyday world where people of faith can be in short supply. Substantial in conversation; prudent in acquisition; respectful in conflict; faithful in commitments.

Take a few minutes and ask how many people you know who would fit such a description. How many? Apparently, Paul, pondered the question when he thought about Corinthian Christians and said, "I could not address you as spiritual but as worldly - mere infants in Christ."

As usual, I'm long on questions and short on answers. Right now I'm wondering - assuming that Martin Thornton is right - if we church people have forgotten how to raise saints. And if the question is worthy, then what's been going wrong? Bad preaching? Shallow books? Too much emphasis on a problem-solving, self-help kind of faith?

Maybe the answer is deeper or more profound that that.

Continue reading Gordon MacDonald's column at LeadershipJournal.net.
Pastor and author Gordon MacDonald is chair of World Relief and editor-at-large of Leadership.

Posted by UrL Scaramanga at October 1, 2007 | Comments (48)