July 28, 2010
Ur Video: Dever & Wallis on Justice and the Gospel (Part 1)
Is racial reconciliation part of the church's mission or a distraction?
The summer issue of Leadership features an interview with Mark Dever and Jim Wallis about the role justice ought to have in our gospel ministry. Over the coming weeks we'll be posting video segments of the interview hosted by Leadership's managing editor, Skye Jethani. In part 1, Dever and Wallis focus on whether or not tackling racism is part of the church's call or a distraction from its core mission.
We want to hear your reaction. Which perspective do you believe aligns best with Scripture and the church's mission? Stay tuned for more video from the interview in the days ahead.
Posted by UrL Scaramanga at July 28, 2010 | Comments (7) | TrackBack
July 27, 2010
Driscoll, Avatar, and Native Justice
Mark Driscoll's rant against Avatar reveals how blind we remain toward oppressed peoples.
Last week Dr. Metzger wrote on Ur about the novelty of multi-ethnic efforts in the church today. He asked whether justice was really taking root in our hearts, or is it just a trend. In this follow-up post he exposes our general blindness to injustice by referencing Mark Driscoll's comments about the film Avatar. If you recall, earlier this year Driscoll called the James Cameron film "the most satanic movie I've ever seen." A video with his full rant against the film can be viewed below.
Some friends drew my attention to the YouTube post of Pastor Mark Driscoll’s sermon where he critiques the movie Avatar. I don’t know Pastor Driscoll, but I have watched the movie. There were two things that struck me about his remarks: his rightful concern for orthodoxy coupled with his desire for Christians to think critically about the worldviews that films present such as pagan spirituality; and his conviction that the movie attacks cultural progress.
Whether or not the director, James Cameron, intended to promote a pantheistic perspective (everything is God), I do concur with Driscoll that a pantheistic or monistic view of reality proves problematic for consideration of sin and evil—if we are one with the divine in our creaturely state, how can we be sinners? It also proves problematic for consideration of the need for a Savior—if we are ultimately one with God, why do we need a Savior to remove the separation? From a pantheistic or monistic perspective, separation is not moral or ontological; it is basically mental. According to this model, our sinful state is one of illusion. We fail to see things as they truly are, and we must cease living the lie and get in touch with our true selves which is not beyond us, but rather within us (what Driscoll refers to as the spark of divinity). I should also add that it is ultimately impossible to differentiate good from evil in a pantheistic or monistic framework: good and evil proceed from one ultimate reality, which is beyond good and evil.
So, I commend Pastor Driscoll for his biblical and theological convictions regarding pantheism. And yet I don’t find his brief statements on Avatar orthodox enough. Here I have in mind Pastor Driscoll’s statement that the movie attacks cultural progress.
Driscoll rightly detects in the film a social commentary and a profound critique leveled at a certain kind of cultural progress. Avatar is the story of two cultures. One culture “progresses” by ravaging neighboring cultures and destroying the surrounding ecosystem. The other culture “progresses” by a “shared life” approach: living communally as grateful stewards of the environment, never taking more than is necessary for the survival of the tribe. I have a hard time imagining how ravaging an indigenous people’s cultural habitat and stripping the land to obtain a mineral prized by the dominant culture on another planet signifies cultural progress. Nor do I find that it lines up with God’s prophetic word concerning caring for the poor and helpless in Isaiah or in James (Isaiah 58:5-11; James 1:26-27).
In his remarks Pastor Driscoll does not demonstrate how problematic those agents of cultural progress on Pandora were in their oppression of the Native people. It was a page right out of American history. See U.S. Senator Daniel K. Inouye’s foreword to Documents of American Indian Diplomacy: Legal History of North America Series #4. There Senator Inouye writes that the more than 800 treaties made with indigenous peoples over our nation’s history were broken or never ratified. See also Karl Menninger’s discussion of the atrocities and oppression of native peoples in our land in Whatever Became of Sin?
We must use technology for true cultural progress—that which benefits all people, especially the poor and the voiceless. While the paraplegic marine who takes on Avatar form to save the Na’vi pales in comparison to Jesus, at the very least he does not oppress the indigenous people but rather sacrifices himself for them.
What is beyond me is that Driscoll believes the movie promotes negative forms of consumption rather than generosity; it is quite clear that the movie condemns the corporate and military powers for greed and violence. Driscoll should be affirming the movie’s critique of these injustices rather than attacking the movie as propaganda against cultural progress. It leads me to wonder just how tone deaf we (not just Pastor Driscoll) are to the plight of indigenous cultures and their habitats, even in the twenty-first century. Given his power and authority, I plead with Pastor Driscoll to wed orthopraxy to orthodoxy (right practice to right doctrine) and to use his position to advocate on behalf of the marginalized and oppressed indigenous peoples in our day.
The movie Avatar was not simply a movie to Pastor Driscoll. Nor was his critique of this movie simply poor cultural critique to me. It was a symbolic statement of total blindness to what the Western powers have done and continue to do in our day to indigenous peoples and their habitats globally all in the name of progress.
Avatar’s just a movie, which Driscoll calls “a sermon preached.” Driscoll’s talk is just a sermon point, which it seems Mars Hill turned into a YouTube video clip. And ours is just a generation, which is a movement in the making, swayed by the Camerons and Driscolls on the left and on the right. And so, the movie is more than a movie. The sermon is more than a sermon. Movies and sermons turn generations into movements, but movements toward what end? It’s one thing for us to have justice packages in church that enable us to give charity to people in need—like indigenous people groups whom the Western world continues to oppress, but never spend ourselves on their behalf. Isaiah 58 tells us to spend ourselves on behalf of the poor and oppressed. A missionary to Native Americans was once told by them that, “We will believe in your Jesus when you come and live and die with us.” It will require that we wed orthodoxy—right views of the incarnation to orthopraxy—right applications in view of the incarnation."
I discussed this movie and sermon clip with a group of young leaders in a course on apologetics. When I finished my critique of Pastor Driscoll’s critique of Avatar, I asked the class what they thought of the movie, Driscoll’s reflections, and my own. One person responded to my critique by saying, “I would rather not think about these things. Where I live and work, I never have to think about these things. If I do, then I would sense some guilt and responsibility and would sense that I have to do something about them. I would rather do something else.” Such an honest, powerful and revealing statement. It’s a statement I should have made for myself. I would rather think about something else, because if I think about this, who knows what will happen? Who knows what I will have to do? Who knows what the Lord will call me to be?
As the community of the crucified and risen Jesus, we must become the living apologetic even as we live out our apology among the native peoples—not as mere Avatars who simply appear to incarnate the divine, but as Jesus’ body, participating in his incarnate and cruciform life. I am more crippled than the paraplegic marine in Avatar—often failing to walk the walk. Lord, grant us courage and cause us to be your hands and feet.
Posted by UrL Scaramanga at July 27, 2010 | Comments (25) | TrackBack
July 23, 2010
Out of Context: Jim Wallis
This excerpt is taken from "Always Personal, Never Private" in the Summer issue of Leadership.
"When the status quo benefits you, your theology doesn't normally include changing the status quo. For most white, middle-class Christians, the world is working fine. So religion that includes social change doesn't matter. They want to leave things pretty much as they are."
Jim Wallis is the founder and editor of Sojourners, a magazine and community focused on the biblical call to social justice. To read the rest of the interview with Mark Dever and Jim Wallis in context, pick up the Summer 2010 issue of Leadership journal or subscribe by clicking on the cover in the left column.
Posted by UrL Scaramanga at July 23, 2010 | Comments (31) | TrackBack
July 21, 2010
Multi-Ethnic Novelty
Are consumer Christians engaging justice and racial reconciliation because they're trendy?
You can learn a lot about Evangelical Christianity by going into a typical Christian bookstore in a shopping mall. You’ll find scores of how-to, self-help, and church growth books. I doubt you will find many books on reconciliation.
While the church definitely needs good, practical literature on helping individuals and churches grow, we must guard against replacing the gospel of reconciliation with a gospel primarily or exclusively focused on quantitative church growth. In fact, Dr. John M. Perkins prophetically confronted the Evangelical church as far back as 1982, saying that “We have substituted a gospel of church growth for a gospel of reconciliation” (See Perkins, With Justice for All, pp. 107-108). Perkins was speaking primarily of the need for churches to break down racial barriers between people of different ethnicities. With this in mind, it is a welcome sight to find churches like Willow Creek being intentional about welcoming diverse ethnicities (See “Can Megachurches Bridge the Racial Divide?” Time, January 11, 2010). There are vital signs of hope.
The gospel of reconciliation calls us out from affinity groupings based on cliques that intentionally or unintentionally exclude those who are different from us according to race, class, gender, generation, etc. Unfortunately, people don’t just shop in bookstores. Many people inside and outside the church in North America view the church as “a vendor of religious services and goods” (Hunsberger, in Missional Church, p. 84); they look for churches that will “sell” them the religious goods and services that they as individuals and as individual nuclear families want, not what they ultimately need relationally as citizens of God’s communal (and not commodity-) kingdom. We need to be expanded relationally, moved beyond hanging out simply with our “own kind of people,” moving toward being enriched by Jesus’ people from diverse backgrounds, and moving into the realization of God’s kingdom.
Multi-ethnic is increasingly in, but I am afraid that it may be because many religious consumers are infatuated with multi-____ (like multi-grain, multi-vitamin); infatuation is only skin deep. It’s faddish in some circles to take on board various concerns for justice, but I have witnessed how people want to talk about race matters at a forum but not embody racial justice in concrete practices in diverse community as Christ’s body. I also find it hard to move beyond my comforts and preferences to engage people who look and think differently from me culturally, especially when it entails being marginalized by the dominant culture if I continue down that path.
I don’t want to be an outsider, and so it is difficult for me to identify with outsiders until I take to heart that when I do I am experiencing Jesus’ outsider kingdom vision. We see Jesus envisioning this kingdom in the parable of the wedding party where, rather than being shut out from the party, the poor and the lame are made participants of the celebration (Lk. 14:15-24). I want for us to promote and experience the fullness of Jesus’ outsider-as-insider-kingdom.
While I admire this young generation of Christians for their passion for caring for the body, society and creation as a whole, they must make sure that they are running a marathon race; for example, overcoming racial divisions inside and outside the church will take a lot longer than it takes to run a fifty yard dash. And so I ask, what happens if the consumer passion for multi-ethnic novelty goods dies? Will church leaders continue calling for reconciliation, or is the current call simply a cover for attracting justice-minded consumers? We must guard against commodifying justice and become a just community.
What you won’t find in most Christian bookstores is talk of how to make a ‘prophet,’ but quite a bit on how to make a ‘profit’ in one way or another. Mention was made of Dr. Perkins above, a contemporary prophet. I have had the privilege of getting to know Dr. Perkins and partnering with him in ministry. When we speak together, I am always struck by God’s power, passion and compassion that oozes from this 80 year old son of a Mississippi sharecropper and modern day apostle. People love Dr. Perkins’ passion, his sense of humor, and charm. They also love his story of how God called him to move beyond the victimizing hatred of racial oppression that he experienced as an African American over the years, and to partner with people of all colors to rebuild impoverished communities in Jesus’ love and truth and justice. We love his novel ministry, but if we are not careful we will turn it into a novelty as part of our novelty shop experience.
I spoke with Dr. Perkins about this matter. He resonated with my concern and said in response: “Don’t receive the grace of God in vain. Don’t simply enjoy hearing the Word and then compartmentalize it in a world of profit.”
We—including I—must come to realize that the gospel of the kingdom is ultimately about reconciling, relational growth that includes people outside my affinity group. Affinity is not the same as community, and we are to envision and embody in our concrete practices the eschatological kingdom, living now in light of what will be. We must become, rather than buy, a kingdom community where people of different ethnicities and economic backgrounds among others feast together at Jesus’ banqueting table.
Read Dr. Metzger's article "What is Biblical Justice" in the Summer issue of Leadership Journal.
Posted by UrL Scaramanga at July 21, 2010 | Comments (9) | TrackBack
July 20, 2010
Who Speaks for Evangelicals?
Do Christians even need a unified voice?
One of the advantages of being Catholic is that, whether you agree or not, at least you know who speaks for you. When a controversial subject needs to be discussed, there are vehicles and forums to help it get a hearing with the right people around the table.
Who coordinates the discussion for evangelicals? When we have difficult issues to ponder, who makes sure they get talked about by the right voices, with conviction and civility?
I think it was Mark Noll who wrote that at one time you could pretty much define a person’s relationship to evangelicalism by how they would respond to the name Billy Graham. There was a pretty clear sense—not just of what evangelicalism stood for—but that its core leaders and organizations were tied together by a thick strand of overlapping relationships. The leaders often had gone to school together, done ministry together, or served on boards with one another. The evangelical community had large deposits of what Robert Putnam would call social capital—relational interconnectedness.
This didn’t mean that every issue got consensus—or even politeness. We have always had a fair number of cranky characters. But there was generally a sense that the main players around the table at least knew and understood each other.
It’s not clear that the players know each other so well today.
It’s not clear they’re all at the table.
It’s not clear we have a table.
Scot McKnight, that thoughtful New Testament professor/author/blogger, said recently that evangelicalism seems increasingly divided into different factions. The centrifugal force is greater than ever. And emotions around factional identity seem to run hotter. (Scot said, in what came as a surprise, that the single topic that will draw the highest number of responses in a blog is not sexual orientation or politics, it’s mentioning John Piper.)
One of the reasons for the controversy around Ted Haggard was that the national media often seemed to assume that his position as the head of the National Association of Evangelicals was a little like being the pope of that branch of the church, that he had been chosen by evangelicals as their voice. That wasn’t exactly the case. Current NAE head Leith Anderson has brought terrific leadership to that position, in part by maintaining a more under-the-radar profile.
Why is there a decline of social capital among evangelical leadership?
One reason is that evangelical leaders tend—like our society generally—to be more narrowly niched. Some are leaders of local churches—Bill Hybels and Rick Warren and Andy Stanley. Some work in spiritual formation—Dallas Willard, Eugene Peterson. Some of them are New Calvinists; some head up parachurch organizations (in the 1940s and ’50s, this was a disproportionately large part of evangelical leadership—beginning with Billy Graham himself.) Today some are identified more generationally. Scot mentioned the names that his college students are highly aware of and in tune with—including Rob Bell, Brian McLaren, Shane Claiborne, and Donald Miller.
I expect another reason why the ties that bind evangelicals are becoming looser is the change in church/faith landscape. When I was growing up in the 1970s, a large part of evangelical identity was who we were not: we weren’t Catholic and we certainly weren’t mainline, liberal, establishment, pipe-smoking, sherry-drinking, hush-puppy wearers.
But those distinctions are no longer quite so clear. Some Catholics are quite evangelical. And the mainline is no longer the adversary it used to be. (Although as Christian Smith has noted, many of the values of the mainline church now dominate our culture--tolerance, individualism, egalitarianism, etc.--at a certain point of theological vacuity you no longer need to attend church to have the values.)
Part of what kept the NATO countries allied was the Cold War; once the USSR ceased to exist, the unity of NATO actually became a bigger challenge. One presidential discussion in 2008 took place at Saddleback Community Church. Such a site would have been unthinkable thirty years ago. Today it’s almost impossible to imagine a classically liberal mainline church that would host such an event.
So who does speak for evangelicals? We produce diverse voices: Jim Packer; Jim Bakker; Jimmy Draper, Jimmy Swaggart, James Kennedy, Jim Wallis, Jim Dobson—the Jim’s alone will make your head spin.
I suppose ever since Moses and Aaron the struggle to find the right faith spokesman has been chronic.
These days, who speaks for you?
Posted by Marshall Shelley at July 20, 2010 | Comments (29) | TrackBack
July 16, 2010
Struggling with Thankfulness in Ministry
The benefits of focusing on what you've got, not what you lack.
It’s true confession time. I struggle to be thankful.
I’ve been reading a lot in the Old Testament recently (for a class; I’m not so holy.). One of the themes that has jumped out at me again and again throughout the Pentateuch and Historical Books is how often the Israelites respond poorly to God’s grace and generosity. Before the class I would have summarized Israel’s attitude as “rebellious” or “stiff-necked” or “ornery.” Now I think I would say their primary sin was thanklessness. I think that’s probably my primary sin, too.
God’s first major act of redemption for Israel as a nation was the miraculous Exodus from Egypt. Under God’s leadership, the entire community—which had been enslaved for 400 years or so—is snatched out of the oppressor’s hand with no loss of life. The Bible tells us not even a dog barked at the people as they left (Exodus 11:7). If that’s not enough, God parts the Red Sea, the Israelites cross through on dry ground, and the most powerful army on the planet at the time is swept away in the current. Three days later, the Israelites start grumbling against Moses because they are thirsty. Again God provides miraculously—a stick turns bitter water sweet. Shortly thereafter the people give up completely. Hungry and tired, they say, “If only we had died by the LORD's hand in Egypt! There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted, but you have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death” (16:3).
Ingrates.
I suspect the narrative is designed to make the Israelites look ridiculous. And it would be funny, if only I were not so much like them.
Again and again in my life I’ve experienced the Lord’s grace and deliverance one moment and then immediately despaired that he’d abandoned me the next. Get the good job, make it into the right school, find a way to make ends meet in tough times. And then, at the first sign of difficulty, my stomach goes in knots, I lose sleep, I worry. I think the problem is that I’m not truly thankful when God provides. I may be happy that I got the job I wanted, pleased that I made it into the right program, or relieved that we’ve paid all our bills on time again. But I don’t think I’m thankful for those things, because deep down I believe I pulled them off on my own. There’s no sense being thankful for something you do yourself.
This has some pretty remarkable implications for ministry, too, I think. How often do we come away from a successful program or event with a sort of high because we sensed God working in power among us, only to find out that a volunteer has dropped out of another ministry, our benefits have been slashed, or some personal tragedy is unfolding at home? One moment we feel like God is smiling on us; in the next it seems he’s turned his face. It seems to happen to us all the time:
We have a record number of children registered for VBS. Praise the Lord!
Three of our key VBS volunteers drop out at the last second. How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever?
I regularly hear pastors say—I’ve said it myself—“If only we had a full-time youth person (or a younger worship leader, or a larger operating fund, or whatever) we could finally be effective in ministry.” A wise pastor told me recently that she and her co-pastor are convinced that God has brought every member of their church in the doors for a reason. Thinking that way reminds them to be thankful: sure, God sends the talented people, but he also sends the ornery ones. And sometimes he doesn’t send them what they think they need. Connie has been praying for 30 years for God to send them a youth pastor. She’s beginning to think that if God hasn’t provided it, they must not need it. That sounds like someone who has learned to be thankful for God’s provision.
Thankless pastors operate their whole ministry from a sense of what they lack. To be thankful we must be convinced that what we have is a gift and that it is enough.
Posted by UrL Scaramanga at July 16, 2010 | Comments (7) | TrackBack
July 15, 2010
Out of Context: Mark Dever
Does the church have a responsibility to care for the outcasts in society?
This excerpt is taken from "Always Personal, Never Private" in the Summer issue of Leadership.
"We have a special responsibility to make sure our brothers and sisters in Christ are cared for. Beyond that it is appropriate to care for the poor outside the church, but that is something for all humans made in the image of God to do, and Christians can certainly help. But the church isn't called to solve social ills."
Mark Dever is the senior pastor of Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, D.C. To read the rest of the interview with Mark Dever and Jim Wallis in context, pick up the Summer 2010 issue of Leadership journal or subscribe by clicking on the cover in the left column.
Posted by UrL Scaramanga at July 15, 2010 | Comments (20) | TrackBack
July 13, 2010
Brothers and Sisters, We Kinda Sorta Are Professionals
A call for boundaries and the danger of rooting our identity in our ministry.
If there’s one issue that all pastors must wrestle with, beyond how the Gospel applies to their own lives and ministry, it’s the issue of rest and Sabbath.
Wait—scratch that. Those are actually the same issue.
There was a time a few years back when I was working in a support staff role doing media design for a local church. It also happened to be the first year of my marriage, and as far as first-year-of-marriage jobs go, I couldn’t have asked for a better one. I came in the morning, did my work, went home and didn’t think about it again until the next day. The computers I worked on were there at the church office—I couldn’t take work home with me, and I was very, very okay with that. When I was off, I was off.
Fast forward a couple of years and to when we planted a church. Suddenly, that’s all I could think about. Early morning, late night—I was working on the website, writing posts on our forum, answering emails. I was always on.
What was the difference? I was working at a church in both situations. Both were “ministry.” The difference was that one was a job, and the other was my identity.
Many of us view ministry as a calling, and we purposefully push back against the idea that ministry is a job or a profession. Usually that thinking is helpful. But the unintended side-effect has been that the natural boundaries that usually come with a job simply aren’t present, or present enough, in our ministries—often to our own detriment and the detriment of our families.
Like I said, for the last few years of church planting and pastoring, I’ve been “always on,” answering the phone when it rang, working on sermons on my weekends, packing my schedule with ministry meetings and events, and just generally being a pastor all the time. Through it all, I’ve watched with a bit of envy as friends go to work and come home; as they turn it off and enjoy their nights and weekends without always thinking about work.
And as I became more tired, less effective and increasingly frustrated with my decreasing ability to be present when and where I really need to be, I’ve realized that the issue isn’t so much time-management or being more productive (though those help) but rather a shift in thinking and belief.
I need two things.
First, as always, I need more fully to embrace the Gospel at a personal level. My failure at turning off ministry and making true rest a part of my weekly rhythms reveals within me a basic disbelief of the Gospel truth that Jesus is enough and that my identity can and should be rooted in his finished work for me--not the results I get, the church I pastor , how well (or poorly) it’s doing, or whether I think people are approving or disapproving of me based on the amount of access I give them to myself and my time. The only way we pastors will ever find sustainability and longevity in ministry is if we do what we tell other people to do ALL THE TIME: Rest our souls in the finished work of Christ. Stop getting our identity from our job/ministry. Take some time to unplug, unwind and, more importantly, connect with God, our families and our own souls again.
Second, I find the most helpful thing I can do is to regain a sense of where the job pieces of ministry start and stop. My calling is to be a full-time follower of Jesus and to serve Him with the gifts He’s given me without reservation. Right now my profession is serving as a pastor to my community. And whereas I once saw those two things as being virtually identical and overlapping, I can now see that they aren’t.
There are things like kindness and mercy, patience and justice, how I relate to God and others—basically Christlikeness—that I need to pursue hard 24/7. But there are other pieces of what I do that are ministry, but need to fall into the category of 9-5. And I don’t mean just the admin stuff. Writing my sermon on my day off? Answering the phone during dinner? Doing the emergency counseling session? Sure, there will be times when I need to bend a little. But I’m beginning to see that for the sake of my family, I need to re-categorize much of my ministry activity. I need, like those friends of mine with their 9-5 jobs, to be able to say with equal conviction, “Now I’m at work and it’s time to get after it” AND “Now I’m off— I’m going to let that sit until Monday morning when I can give it my full attention. Right now my family needs me.”
Essential to truly resting from our work is being able, in a sense, to put that work on the shelf for a day or two, step away from it, and let go.
Brothers and sisters, (with apologies and all due respect to John Piper) we kinda sorta are professionals. And truly finding rest and Sabbath will depend both on how you look at Jesus AND how you look at your job. Know when you are at work and on the clock and give the communities you serve the full benefit of your attention and efforts. Know when you are not at work, and when you are off, be off. And know most of all where true rest is found.
Posted by UrL Scaramanga at July 13, 2010 | Comments (12) | TrackBack
July 9, 2010
What Did You Say?
This week in memorable church quotes.
The Portuguese issue of Playboy showing Jesus Christ among topless models.
“We did not see or approve the cover and pictorial in the July issue of Playboy Portugal…. It is a shocking breach of our standards.” -Theresa Hennessy, Vice President of public relations at Playboy Enterprises
(Wait. Playboy has standards? –Url Scaramanga)
How iPhones are changing religion.
“The future is very bright, but we have yet to get our mind around a world where some [people get] their whole religious experience through a device.” -Dudley Rose, the associate dean for ministry studies at Harvard University’s Divinity School
(Does this mean Steve Jobs is the digital pope? –Url Scaramanga)
The growing disenchantment with church growth strategies.
“I don’t think there is anything intrinsically wrong with the church growth principles we’ve developed . . . yet somehow they don’t seem to work.” - C. Peter Wagner, a leading spokesmen for the church-growth movement.
(Mr. Wagner, have you ever considered a career in politics? I also hear there are some vacancies at BP. –Url Scaramanga.)
Why evangelical churches lose fewer young people than liberal churches.
“For evangelicals, if children and youth are not enjoying church, it is the church’s fault and evangelical parents either find a new church or try to improve their youth ministry. For liberals, the tendency is the reverse; if youth do not find church interesting, it is their problem.” -James Wellman, author of Evangelical vs. Liberal: The Clash of Christian Cultures in the Pacific Northwest
(A good reminder that the call of the Christian life is to enjoy church. –Url Scaramanga)
A Methodist seminary in California decides to start a program to train Muslim imams and Jewish rabbis.
"It kind of fits, to some extent, California.” -David Roozen, director of the Institute for Religion Research at the Hartford Seminary
(Ya know what else is totally California? Disneyland. Maybe the seminary should train Mouseketeers too. –Url Scaramanga)
New report on who is most likely to be involved in church activities.
"There certainly is a dominant demographic faith profile of Christians in the nation. The typical profile of an involved Christian is a married woman in her early fifties." - David Kinnaman, president of the Barna Group
(Perfect if our mission is to make disciples of Martha Stewart. –Url Scaramanga)
The impact of using business strategies and consumer values in the church.
“In a recent survey of 1,000 church attenders, respondents were asked, ‘Why does the church exist?’ According to 89 percent, the church’s purpose was ‘to take care of my family’s and my spiritual needs.’ Only 11 percent said the purpose of the church is ‘to win the world for Jesus Christ.’” - Greg Laurie, senior pastor of Harvest Christian Fellowship in Riverside, California.
(Alrighty then. Good night, folks. Would the last person to leave the church in America please turn off the lights? –Url Scaramanga.)
Posted by UrL Scaramanga at July 9, 2010 | Comments (3) | TrackBack
July 8, 2010
Beyond Bono
Is justice just a trend, or is it central to the church's calling?
The summer issue of Leadership is about a week away from mailboxes. The theme is "Beyond Bono: Doing justice God's way is more than a fad." In the last few years, there has been a dramatic rise in pop-cultural engagement with issues of justice and poverty. This trend is captured best by Bono--lead singer for U2. This video from a few years ago illustrates the celebrity-driven focus around justice.
But what about the rise of justice as an issue within the church? Can it be explained away by the visibility of stars like Bono, or is there something more going on? And what does it mean to move beyond emotion and guilt toward a biblical and theological foundation for our justice efforts? These topics and others are addressed in the summer issue of LJ. Some of the voices in the issue include:
John Ortberg on prophetic preaching
Bethany Hoang on the justice generation
Eugene Cho on the risks of getting personally involved in justice
Jim Wallis and Mark Dever debating the role of justice in the gospel
Mark Labberton on the cultural and theological roots of the trend
We'll be posting excerpts, quotes, and videos from the summer issue in the coming days. And if you haven't yet subscribed to get all the great content in each issue of Leadership, click on the cover on the left side of the screen for a special offer.
Posted by UrL Scaramanga at July 8, 2010 | Comments (9) | TrackBack
July 6, 2010
Is Ministry a Job or Vocation?
And what difference does it make?
Eugene Peterson laments in For the Beauty of the Church: Casting a Vision for the Arts (Baker Books, 2010) that he has been “trying for fifty years now to be a pastor in a culture that doesn’t know the difference between a vocation and a job.” It was a bunch of artists that clued him in on the difference.
Definitions are in order. According to Peterson, a job is “an assignment to do work that can be quantified and evaluated.” Most jobs come with job descriptions, so it “is pretty easy to decide whether a job has been completed or not…whether a job is done well or badly.” This, Peterson argues, is the primary way Americans think of the pastor (and, presumably, that pastors think of themselves). Ministry is “a job that I get paid for, a job that is assigned to me by a denomination, a job that I am expected to do to the satisfaction of my congregation.”
A vocation is not like a job in these respects. The word vocation comes from the Latin word vocare, “to call.” Although the term today can refer to any career or occupation (according to Webster), the word (vocatio, I imagine) was coined to describe the priestly calling to service in the church. So vocation=calling. This is how Peterson is using the word, anyway. And the struggle for pastors today, he continues, is to “keep the immediacy and authority of God’s call in my ears when an entire culture, both secular and ecclesial, is giving me a job description.”
During his seminary education in New York City, Peterson worked with a group of artists. They were dancers and poets and sculptors, and they all worked blue-collar jobs as taxi drivers, waiters, and salesmen—whatever they had to do to pay the rent and put food on the table. Soon enough Peterson realized that “none of them were defined by their jobs—they were artists, whether anyone else saw them as artists, and regardless of whether anyone would ever pay them to be artists.” That is to say, being an artist wasn’t a job for them, but a vocation. Their jobs simply kept them alive so they could pursue their vocations. “Their vocation didn’t come from what anyone thought of them or paid them.”
I found this discussion both liberating and convicting. Looking back over the past decade or so, I wonder if the angst I’ve experienced while trying to figure out what to do with my life has stemmed from confusing these two categories.
In my senior year of high school, I “surrendered to the gospel ministry” (that’s what we called it). I sensed a calling to dedicate my life and career to serving Christ through the local church. I immediately understood that vocation in terms of the jobs that commitment made possible or impossible. Before then, I wanted to teach high school English for a living. After, I knew that a call to ministry meant abandoning that career. At the time, the only ministers I knew were senior pastors, youth ministers, and worship leaders. The job description of pastor seemed the best decision.
In college I waffled. I was pastoring a church and didn’t appreciate the identity foisted upon me when people from church introduced me as “Pastor Brandon.” I still felt the sense of vocation, but didn’t like the job. Since then I’ve been trying to figure out what job would be enable me to live out my vocation.
The trouble is, I’m not sure I could tell you in a sentence what I feel called to. I have several jobs: editor, writer, college instructor, doctoral student (not paid for it, but it sure is work). None of those things are “ministry” in the strictest sense. Yet I feel “called” to ministry still, and there are parts of each of my jobs that satisfy my sense of calling. But it sure would be nice to answer the question, “What do you do?” with a sentence that doesn’t begin, “Well, it’s complicated…”
Jobs pay the bills; vocations may or may not. I suspect bi-vocational pastors, as they’re called, must have a deeper sense of vocation than the rest of us. So many men and women who feel called to the ministry drop out when they can’t find a job at a church that’s big enough to pay their rent and student loans because we tend to think of ministry as the job that will put food on our tables. I admire the men and women who do what they have to for a living so they can do what they are called to do for the kingdom.
Posted by UrL Scaramanga at July 6, 2010 | Comments (24) | TrackBack
July 1, 2010
Be Careful What You Worship on July 4
Is national patriotism inconsistent with Christianity?
I’ve been a part of numerous churches that celebrated American Independence Day with abandon: 80-foot flags hanging from the ceilings, singing the “Star Spangled Banner” and “I’m Proud to Be an American” and even— most disturbing to me as I reflect back—saying the Pledge of Allegiance during our corporate worship.
If some visitor had asked us on those Sunday just what we were worshiping, I think that might have been a very perceptive question.
For many, the Fourth is about gratitude for the blessings of freedom. And as far as that goes, I’m in complete agreement—though to see only the “blessings” of freedom and not also repent of all the many varied and creative ways we’ve abused it might be a bit short-sighted. Still, yes to gratitude.
For others, these celebrations go beyond merely the gratitude and obedience that Scripture commands, into something else, something entirely absent from the God’s Word: Patriotism.
Patriotism, defined as “devoted love, support, and defense of one's country; national loyalty” makes little sense to a people called to live as aliens and strangers, as exiles. If I am—as Scripture tells me I am—a “citizen of another country,” where should my “national loyalty” lie?
And as for my “devoted love”what does it mean to say I “love my country”? I love and feel called to the people in it? Yes. But should I ever love the people of America more than the people of Canada or Mexico, of Haiti or Ghana? Probably not. To say “I love America” is to say I love a political system, a set of laws and arbitrary boundary lines that history will eventually erase and more: I think it might be saying more than I ought to say as a follower of Jesus.
Tony Campolo puts it this way: “America may be the best Babylon the world has, but it is still Babylon nonetheless.”
We are exiles living in Babylon, folks. Our corner may be called “America,” or “Canada,” or “France,” but it’s still all a part of the same thing: a world system that transcends borders, is dominated by materialistic consumerism and exploitation, and is fundamentally opposed to the Kingdom of God. And while love and affection for the people living in that system is entirely necessary, and while we should certainly pray for the peace and well-being of the place where God has set us, we need to avoid the mistake we see over and over in Scripture: becoming so enamored with our temporary dwelling—whether that’s called Egypt, Babylon, or even America—that we lose sight of what Hebrews calls “a better place.”
I may carry an Oregon driver’s license, but I try hard to remember where my identity is really rooted. It’s rooted in Jesus, the One whose claims of Lordship will always challenge Caesar’s.
And that means that nationalism, in any degree, is misplaced affection. If Jesus really is our Peace who has broken down every dividing barrier between us, to celebrate the arbitrary lines and political distinctions which divide us is, in a sense, anti-gospel. Jesus expressed anger a number of times in the Gospels, but the most famous was when He saw what should have been “a house of prayer for all nations” turned into something else.
And my fear is that by highlighting ideas of America and patriotism so heavily in our Fourth of July services, we do just that. At best, we fail to see how waving the American flag in a worship service looks to the Brits and Kenyans and Malaysians sitting in our pews and what it communicates to them. And at worst, we give to Caesar what really belongs to Jesus.
Is it okay to celebrate the Fourth with neighbors, families and friends? Absolutely. If we really want to love people to Jesus, we live in line with the rhythms of the places where God puts us. When we show them the Gospel lived out in a culturally contextualized way we demonstrate that Jesus is for all people. So, grill some burgers, dogs, or the vegetarian alternative of your choice. Set off the firecrackers and watch the fireworks. Don’t dare be a stick in the mud during a national celebration.
But in your worship this Sunday, steer people towards gratitude and obedience, and stay far, far away from nationalistic pride. But most important, be careful what you pledge allegiance to this Fourth of July. Caesar is owed your obedience, your prayers for his health and well-being, and, as Jesus and the IRS both agree, your money... but your allegiance belongs to Someone Else.
Posted by UrL Scaramanga at July 1, 2010 | Comments (74) | TrackBack
