The Internet Monk Archives

Saturday Ramblings, May 10, 2014

Hello fellow imonkers. I hope you are enjoying your Saturday. The last few weeks I have poked fun at Chaplain Mike’s fandom of the Chicago Cubs. But since I respect Mike more highly than almost anyone I know, I have vowed to lay off.

For a week.

Did you know that one-fourth of American Hispanics are former Roman Catholics? This from the latest Pew Study. Where are they going? Some became Protestants, but even more have turned away from Christianity altogether.

Academia is all about diversity these days, and Harvard is no exception. The Cultural Studies Club there is hosting a Shinto tea ceremony, a Shaker exhibition, a Buddhist presentation on meditation, and a Satanic Mass. Wait…what??? Looks like veritas has given way to inclūsiō.

Speaking of veritas, did you know that the Veritas Forum has an incredible number of debates and lectures for thinking Christians? Good stuff.

Ever had neighbor problems? Ana Maria Moreta Folch did. The Floridian really did not like the “unsavory” folks in the trailer next door. So what did she do? Talk out her issues peacefully over pecan pie? Seek mediation with the help of others? Pretend to own their trailer and have it bulldozed? Bingo.

An English man went into the hospital for minor procedure this week. He left with an accidental vasectomy. Yikes.

Did you know there are more than 100 Christian tv stations in our country, but not one station for atheists? That is about to change. Atheist TV may soon be coming your way. Lest you think this will just be House re-runs, they are planning on highlighting videos from events like the recent Reason Rally. But once they run out of Richard Dawkins’ ad hominems, what will they show? Cosmos? Bones? Benny Hinn highlights? Actually, I don’t think we should be too worried – there is no way that channel will create as many atheists as TBN has.

U.S. Air Force: We’re not afraid of Godzilla. Good to know.

From the AHCD [Absurd Holocaust Comparison Department] comes this beauty from Tennessee State Senator Stacey Campfield: “Democrats bragging about the number of mandatory signups for Obamacare is like Germans bragging about the number of manditory (sic) sign ups for ‘train rides’ for Jews in the 40s.” In a later telephone interview Campfield refused to apologize, and maintained his comparison was apt: “I think Jewish people should be the first to stand up against Obamacare…If government is controlling people’s health insurance, they are potentially controlling people’s lives … letting the government choose who lives and who dies.” Yep. That’s my country.

Then there is the statement by Monte Shaw, an Iowan running for Congress, who equated the Affordable Care Act’s mandate that employers cover contraceptives with forcing people to serve hate groups such as the Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazis. “Think of the outrage that would be out there if they tried to pass a law that said a Jewish printer had no choice but to print up handbills for a neo-Nazi rally. Or an African-American artist had no choice but had to paint a portrait of the local grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.” Shaw is considered a frontrunner in the Republican primary in Iowa’s third district.

The Chinese government has banned the Noah film for its religious themes.

Odd headline of the week: Naked Man Doing Push-Ups Struck and Killed by Car in Portland.

“Let’s keep Christianity weird”. This quote from Russell Moore, the face of the Southern Baptist Convention, begins First Things’ article on the annual Q conference. Never heard of the Q conference? It is being described as “TED for evangelicals”. “This annual conference has emerged as a favorite watering hole for youngish evangelicals dealing with mixed emotions about the culture wars fought by their theological parents and the parallel subculture in which they were raised…They aren’t fighting to hold on to the vestiges of a ‘Christian America’ but instead are looking for the best ways to be faithful exiles in a post-religious world…”

Different issue, same magazine: “This campaign—and the legislation it has spawned—is not so much about stopping bad behavior as it is about using the machinery of state education to compel children to adopt politically correct attitudes on the nature of human sexuality, gender identity, and alternative family structures.” The author is referring to the Minnesota’s proposed laws about school bullies. “The “Safe Schools” strategy relied, first and foremost, on reframing school bullying in the group-based language of civil rights. Instead of treating all children equally, the legislation inspired by the task force singled out eighteen “protected classes” of students—based on criteria including race, sexual orientation, and “gender identity and expression”—for special attention and protection. At the same time, the task force called for vastly expanding the scope of prohibited student speech and conduct. Instead of targeting bullying defined as a pattern of verbal or physical abuse, it recommended that students be punished for even one word that another student (especially those in protected groups) could claim to find “humiliating” or “offensive,” or that “interferes” with another student’s ability to “participate in a safe and supportive learning environment.” In addition, the regulations proposed by the task force would require schools to police “cyberbullying,” including comments a student writes on his Facebook page.” Wow. I can’t imagine that having any chilling effect of free speech, can you?

First Things also has a long and very informative take on the struggles and triumphs of the Orthodox Church in Russia. Great read if you have the time.

Regular readers know I’m a huge fan of Steve Taylor, who is putting out his first cd in twenty (!!!) years, and supporting it with a tour. How has he aged? Incredibly well. Jesus Freak Hideout, the best site for real (read: not radio-driven crap) Christian music had this to say: “Taylor jumped, danced and moved in ways few singers half his age can or do. His stage presence is engaging and infectious and it felt like Taylor hadn’t missed one beat since taking a break for several years… The man seemed to barely break a sweat all night and didn’t display any wear on his voice despite such an energetic and sometimes frenetic performance. It’s truly mind-blowing.” Michael Tolosa has posted HD videos of the whole concert here, and we will end with this video of The Finish Line:

http://vimeo.com/album/2865640/video/94461722

Witnessing a Birth

Last Sunday I had the privilege of experiencing something rather special. I was invited to attend the first ever service of a new church.

For the last 30 years I have had a strong interest in church planting. When in seminary I wrote a thirty page paper on “Philosophies of Church Planting”. I have a stutter, which would make full time pulpit ministry difficult, but for many years I imagined myself as having a future as a member of a church planting team. As a lay person, I have been directly involved in two church plants(one is still going strong, the other closed its doors), and assisted more indirectly in a number of others (You need a pianist, here is someone who can help you out.)

For many years, for most denominations, church planting has been pretty haphazard. I was involved for a number of years with the Christian and Missionary Alliance. Their strategy was to identify an area that was “underchurched”, identify a potential church planter, hold a public meeting and introduce those who were interested to the church planter. The church would struggle along for a few years, and would either survive or fail, largely based on the giftedness of the church planter. (The failure rate was quite high.) They also tried bi-vocational teams, and that met with limited success as well. More recently they have decided that denominations do not plant churches, churches plant churches. So they have switched their strategy to building up core groups within existing churches. The members of the core group would be from a certain geographical area that is distinct from that of the mother church. When the core group is strong enough to stand on its own, it goes out and starts its own church. This strategy seems to be a little more effective in planting churches that actually survive.

While not a Christian and Missionary Alliance Church, this was the strategy that was employed by the church that was birthed on Sunday. It started with six people who attended a church outside of their community, but has a vision for their community, a small Canadian city. A year and a half later the core group had grown to 60 people, and a few months after than the leaders of the mother church gave their blessing for the church plant to proceed. It took another year of much planning and prayer before the new church was ready to open its doors. By this time the core group had grown to 180 people, still meeting as part of the mother church. These 180 invited their friends from the area, but really had no idea how many might show up at the first service.

Last Sunday arrived. The parking lot filled up. The overflow parking filled up. The over-overflow parking filled up. Four hundred and ninety people showed up for the first service.

Here are some other observations I noted from the service:

People were given opportunities to use their gifts. The family that invited me have six children. The youngest was in the class of two to four year olds along with 20 other kids. Her mother taught the kids, and her two older girls served as helpers in the class. The dad and his six year old daughter served as greeters at the door. Next week he will be playing bass guitar for worship, something he hasn’t done for over 10 years. Their fourteen years old son ran the power point, and their seventeen year old son was responsible for the sound system. They both did excellent jobs.

The sermon was excellent, talking about the importance of seeking after God, along with an emphasis on God’s grace.

There was an invitation made to those who had not yet made a decision to follow Christ, to stand if they wanted to do so. I could only see the first six rows of room, so I do not know how many chose to stand, but in the rows I could see their were six standing. I felt privileged to have experienced not only the birth of a church, but multiple new births as well.

The one draw back: theologically I didn’t fit. There were two many things in their statement of faith that I disagree with. Sometimes I think my theological education is a bit of curse. It makes it hard for me to “sign on the dotted line” wherever I go. Still I am happy for my friends, and think that this will be a wonderful place for their family to be.

What has been your experience with church plants? What has worked, or not worked? I haven’t touched on this in the post, but why do we plant churches? As always, your thoughts and comments are welcome.

Daniel Grothe: Dripping Wet: Developing a Christian Imagination for Baptism

Note from CM: Our friend Adam Palmer recently introduced me (via email) to Daniel Grothe, who serves at New Life Church in Colorado Springs. After reading his blog, Edging Into The Mysteries, I agreed with Adam that Daniel has good things to say and that he says them well. So, he graciously agreed to share the following post about baptism and why this sacrament takes center stage in the Easter season. I look forward to more from Daniel in the future and hope you will give him a warm welcome here at IM today.

* * *

Another Lent has come and gone. This last week we made the journey with the faithful–and with many more still feeble in faith–to the tomb where we discovered that it is still empty! Thanks be to God for that. And now priests, pastors, and parishioners around the world are preparing for baptisms this Sunday. But why is baptism the next (theo)logical movement in the Church’s calendar year?

Historically, Lent has been set aside as a time of preparation for the catechumenate–the people who are coming to faith for the first time, or those who are returning to their First Love after a season, however long, of wilderness wandering. Lent, you see, is a death before a resurrection, a time of releasing the weights and sins that so easily entangle us so that we can run with perseverance. We know that once we make the journey to the tomb-that-we-hope-is-still-empty, we’ll have plenty of work to do.

The Church, therefore, has taught that after the period of Lenten training, one is properly prepared to enter the waters of baptism. But what is baptism? What is going on in baptism?

To begin, we remember that baptism requires water. If we open the first page of the Bible, before we read the creation story we find the Spirit hovering over the primordial waters. This detail is not throwaway. Water is an essential part of the Christian story:

YHWH sends The Deluge in Noah’s time. Water cleans out and water creates new possibilities.

Baby Moses floating the Nile in a basket. The future rescuer is rescued from the treacherous waters.

Crossing the Red Sea. Israel is saved and separated from her oppressors through water.

Water from the Rock in the wilderness. Even the arid wilderness, we’re told, gushes for YHWH.

Crossing the Jordan River into the Promised Land. Obstinance is washed away before land is possessed.

Naaman the Leper dips seven times. God heals this scoundrel ruler of a foreign army through a washing.

Jesus walks on water. Jesus turns water into wine.

Jesus says, “Peace be still.” A storm ceases.

Jesus says to the woman at the well, “Whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

Jesus says that from believer’s bellies will flow “rivers of living water”, and by this he meant the Spirit.

Revelation 22 imagines the “River of Life that flows from the throne of God and of the Lamb.” The tree of life stands on both sides of the river, bearing twelve crops of fruit (to feed the Twelve Tribes!), “and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.”

On and on it goes–water, water, more holy water.

Jesus himself insisted on being baptized, getting in on the work his Father was doing in the deep end of the pool. Through water Jesus is anointed with the Spirit and declared a son. His ministry is inaugurated and power released as he comes up from the depths.

John the Baptizer himself, a man known for doing his best work down in the Jordan River, said: “I baptize you with water for repentance. But after me comes one who is more powerful than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.“

The Greek verb bapto means “to dip” or “to dye”. In baptism we are “dipped” into newness, the old sin-story being washed away, carried downstream by the currents of the Spirit. We begin to see our baptism as a divine coloration, a “dye-ing”, our lives increasingly tinted by shades of Christ’s love, holiness, and glory.

What is especially important about the Christian rite of baptism is The Story going on within and beyond the story that we see playing out in the water in front of us—the reality that this person splashing around in water is being baptized with the Holy Spirit and fire, right here, right now. In baptism, we believe we are watching the simultaneous decimation and reconstruction of a life by the Spirit who is called Holy. Baptism is a drowning and a rescue all at the same time. Baptism is the release from slavery into the glorious freedom of the children of God.

Marilynne Robinson, in her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, Gilead, has provided us one of the most sanctified accounts of water. In a vivid scene, she writes:

The sun had come up brilliantly after a heavy rain, and the trees were glistening and very wet. On some impulse, plain exuberance, I suppose, the fellow jumped up and caught hold of a branch, and a storm of luminous water came pouring down on the two of them, and they laughed and took off running, the girl sweeping water off her hair and her dress as if she were a little bit disgusted, but she wasn’t. It was a beautiful thing to see, like something from a myth. I don’t know why I thought of that now, except perhaps because it is easy to believe in such moments that water was made primarily for blessing, and only secondarily for growing vegetables or doing the wash.

Every morning I try to get up early to have a shower before my three kids stir. It is one of the few quiet moments of my day and it has become a time of holy reflection for me, my daily “mini-baptism” where I think to myself, “What if it’s true? What if water was made for blessing?”

We come up out of the baptismal waters and someone hands us a towel. We quickly dry off and celebrate this momentous occasion with family and friends. But the truth is we never really dry off. The Spirit within us guarantees a life drenched in the grace of God. Baptized Christians walk around dripping wet.

iMonk Classic: Grace Is As Dangerous As Ever

Woman Caught in Adultery, John Martin Borg (link below)

A classic Michael Spencer post from May, 2007.

The last few weeks of my men’s morning Bible study has been about “Texts That Will Get You In Trouble,” and we spent two sessions on John 8, and Jesus’ words to the woman caught in adultery: “Neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more.”

Read Leviticus 20:10 and the other older testament indictments of adultery and sexual sin. There’s no doubt about the woman’s sin or the stated penalty.

The Pharisees’ motives aren’t really the important fact here. Their use of the law is the focus. Even more important is “What is God like?” Does God have moral commands for human beings? Are we created in such a way that adultery is more than just a behavior consenting adults engage in; it is a violation of the sexual and marriage bonds that God considers sacred because they reflect God’s covenant love. How does God’s justice relate to his moral standards, and how do those living in community before God experience and demonstrate God’s law and God’s justice?

Often, interpreters focus on the hypocrisy of the Pharisees for not having the man present, or the double standard inherent in holding a woman more responsible for sexual sins. In fact, while these concerns may be valid, they are not the focus of this story.

This is an incident where Jesus’ understanding of God and his purposes are contrasted with the understanding of the Pharisees, who functioned as a renewal movement seeking to bring about the salvation of Israel by zealous attention to the keeping of the law. Like so many other incidents at this point in Jesus’ life, this one is meant to publicly discredit Jesus as a dangerous liberal who rejects the Law and covenant obedience.

Jesus brings the focus away from the particular sin of the woman in violation of the covenant law, and puts the focus on the universal fact that God is in covenant with a sinful people who constantly depend on his mercy. God has been working to bring about redemption in a sinful world from the beginning. The universal sinfulness of the human race has been the backdrop of all God has done in his covenant, both for Israel and for the world.

Listen to Yahweh in the book of Deuteronomy:

Deut. 9:4 Do not say in your heart, after the LORD your God has thrust them out before you, ˜It is because of my righteousness that the LORD has brought me in to possess this land,” whereas it is because of the wickedness of these nations that the LORD is driving them out before you. 5 Not because of your righteousness or the uprightness of your heart are you going in to possess their land, but because of the wickedness of these nations the LORD your God is driving them out from before you, and that he may confirm the word that the LORD swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.

Deut. 9:6 Know, therefore, that the LORD your God is not giving you this good land to possess because of your righteousness, for you are a stubborn people. 7 Remember and do not forget how you provoked the LORD your God to wrath in the wilderness. From the day you came out of the land of Egypt until you came to this place, you have been rebellious against the LORD.

God never gave the Pharisees permission to think that the covenant depended on anything but God’s gracious involvement with people who, as individuals and as a nation, deserved his wrath and justice like the rest of the world.

This explains why Jesus takes the “small circle” of the woman’s adultery and turns it into the “large circle” of “let the one who is without sin cast the first stone.” He isn’t minimizing adultery or saying God does not desire that we honor the law. He is saying that God is not on the side of religious zealots putting themselves in the place of God as if they were somehow deputized to play God. For Jesus, the mark of those who are in the covenant is their gratitude for God’s mercies to include sinners of all kinds within the boundaries of “his people.”

The second part of the text is Jesus’ conversation with the woman, a conversation that focuses on the word condemnation. There is the inadequate and flawed human condemnation of the woman, and there is the justified and appropriate divine condemnation of a guilty adulteress.

Those who would have singled out this woman’s sin have dispersed. None of us can stand in the place of God in the condemnation of another person unless we have been divinely authorized to do so (and the Pharisees were not given that position.)

Jesus, however, was different. He had the authority of his heavenly Father. He has the authority to judge. He is righteous. He is the author of the law. He has the power, the right, the insight and the ability to condemn an adulteress. In fact, if he does not do so, he must answer the legitimate question “why not?”

“Neither do I condemn you. Now go, and sin no more.”

When the quality of God’s mercy in the Gospel no longer amazes you, you will begin to justify the dilution of amazing grace into religious grace, or moral grace, or grace in response to something.

Real grace is simply inexplicable, inappropriate, out of the box, out of bounds, offensive, excessive, too much, given to the wrong people and all those things.

When God’s grace meets us, Jesus has to order away the accusers of our conscience. Satan. Religion. Parents. Church members. Culture. Morality. Legalism. Civility. The oughts. The shoulds. The of course we know thats. The I’d like to but I just can’ts.

Jesus orders them away so he can tell us that grace is doing what only grace can do, and we must go and live in the reverberation of forgiveness. We must live with the reality of grace when it makes no sense at all, can’t be explained and won’t be commodified or turned into some form of medicine.

You may not know that this story is a bit of a homeless story, banging around various manuscripts of the New Testament with no real home. It comes to rest in John 8, but it’s not part of the original. It’s a story that the Jewish leaders of early Christianity wouldn’t have liked, and recovering Pharisees would probably have been happy to lose it.

But it persisted, and is in our New Testament, I believe, because at the heart of true Christian experience is this inexplicable, annoyingly inappropriate, wondrously superlative experience of Jesus saying, “I don’t condemn you. Go and live your life.”

He says it to the divorced. To the expelled. To the unemployed. He says it to criminals. To perverts. To the damaged and the worthless. He says it to cutters, to whores, to greedy businessmen, to unfaithful husbands, to porn addicts and thieves. He says it to the lazy, the unholy, the confused and even the religious. He says it to you and to me.

It’s how he changes lives, and it’s as dangerous as ever.

* * *

Header image from John Martin Borg.

Paul Zahl: Grace in Pastoral Ministry

He will not break a bruised reed
or quench a smoldering wick
until he brings justice to victory.

– Matthew 12:20, NRSV

* * *

Pastors see many things. It is easy to get angry in ministry. One can become overwhelmed by brokenness, dysfunction, and trouble in people’s lives. A pastor feels responsible. A pastor feels called to bring Jesus to people so that he can touch their lives and work faith, hope, and love in them. Results are not always apparent, and this is immensely frustrating. Living with a congregation can lead to sleepless nights and paralyzing anxiety. The Apostle Paul himself testified that his greatest trial was the daily weight of concern he felt for his churches.

Faced with these facts, some ministers give up and go do something else. Others hang around, suffering a low grade fever of discouragement and fading hopes. The strong in spirit decide they won’t put up with lukewarm Christians and take control. They develop a strategy, surround themselves with faithful lieutenants, and build a church in their image. They fortify their power base, disallow any dissension, root out “problem people,” and forge ahead to “success.” People in the church are deemed successful when they toe the line and fit into the program. The majority of ministers fall somewhere in between, savoring those seasons when things are going well and the church family seems healthy, persevering through the tough times, and often finding themselves wondering if there isn’t more they can do to move the church forward into spiritual health and maturity.

All ministers face the temptation to be God the Father, laying down the Law, God the Son, overturning the tables in the Temple, and the Holy Spirit, cutting the congregation to the quick. It’s up to us, isn’t it? This is our calling, right? We mustn’t settle for anything less than “radical” Christianity.

In his book, Grace in Practice: A Theology of Everyday Life, Paul Zahl urges a different way.

The main feature of pastoral care rooted in grace is non-proactivity. This is another way of saying that the main feature of pastoral care rooted in grace is passivity. Grace in pastoral care eschews control and acts out of response rather than action. This means that pastoral care from grace consists mostly of listening and watching.

. . . Ministers see no evil, and yet they see everything. This is the reality of imputation. Pastoral care is not “proactive,” a big word in our lives today. Pastoral care observes, yet decides not to see. This is the essence of grace in practice. You look out on a group of people on a Sunday morning and observe bickering mothers and daughters, sullen and resentful sons, sexually frustrated men and misunderstood wives. You feel the rising infidelities and the hurt feelings and the palpable mourning for mothers and fathers who are no longer present. You see all this if you have an eye to original sin and total depravity. Yet you speak the word of imputed righteousness: “God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him” (John 3:17). The blanket of condemnation that the discerning eye cannot fail to see is replaced by the “garments of salvation” (Isaiah 61:10).

This means that pastoral response is always the response of listening and passive reception. It is not the response of trying to fix things. Every conversation you ever have in ministry is a piercing conversation from the standpoint of the pastoral listener. He or she has heard it all before, many, many times. Yet it has to come out. It has to be heard with full acceptance, even sorry acquiescence. Grace never tries to fix, but trusts God to do this. Grace listens.

In caring for people in the setting of a local church, the idea is first to relax control and the idea of control. No more micro-managing! This only takes place in the vacuum provided by the absence of human control. It is the fruit of the Spirit to create love where there was resentment, and creativity where there was blockage. This happens among everyday people when the control of the law is lifted.

– pp. 240-243

Paul Zahl: Humor in the Pulpit

I remember well a special meeting we had in seminary when our wives were invited to join us for a discussion of marriage. One of the speakers was Walt Kaiser, one of my favorite profs at Trinity. Dr. Kaiser is among the most winsome people I’ve ever met. His lectures and preaching were always filled with humorous asides and stories that drew us in and often drove home serious points from the biblical text. I will never forget him speaking at that marriage event and saying that one of the greatest evidences of grace in a person’s life is when that person has the ability to laugh at himself.

I’ve been dipping into Paul F. M. Zahl’s book, Grace in Practice: A Theology of Everyday Life, and have been feeling especially nourished by what he says about grace in the church and pastoral ministry. I thought we might discuss one small section that deals with the minister’s use of humor in preaching.

I’d love to hear how you respond to Zahl’s words and what your own experiences have been with the use of humor from the pulpit.

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Humor in the Pulpit

Another indispensable aspect of grace as applied to the pulpit is humor. Humor is a vital part of the theology of the cross, which is the blood of Christ de-mystified and connected to real things. Humor is an embodiment of humility, because it demystifies human importance and transfers this importance to God. Humor in the pulpit says that the preacher takes his or her own role with a grain of salt. It also lowers the walls of denial that people bring to any form of public address and builds up what we today call the “comfort level.”

. . . Humor plays two roles in the pulpit. First, humor deconstructs the preacher. He or she is just a fool and martinet and narcissist like everybody else. The preacher needs humor for the sake of humility. This is a requirement for speaking the gospel. Second, humor takes down the defenses of the listener. When you laugh, you are then ready to cry. Your emotions are working. Humor is part of the “heavy lifting of worship.”

– p. 234f

Ancient-Future Faith (4): Worship in a Postmodern World

As a young student in Bible college, newly awakened by the Spirit and called to pastoral ministry, I never had a single class on the subject of worship. So when I graduated and went into my first church armed with a guitar and accompanied by a wife who played the piano, we did what we knew. We sang the “old hymns” — and by that I mean the gospel hymns our little Baptist church had always sung. We also introduced them to “Jesus music” — mostly praise and scripture choruses from Maranatha and some of the early proponents of Contemporary Christian Music. The structure of our services was standard for churches like ours. We sang, we took an offering, sometimes we had a Bible reading (most often the text of the sermon), we sometimes had testimonies, there was a pastoral prayer and special music performed by the choir and/or a soloist or ensemble. The focus was on the message, with the other aspects either understood as “preliminaries” designed to open our hearts to hear the Word preached, or as some sort of “response” calling for various types of commitment.

While we were serving that little church in New England, we went to some conferences at Grace Chapel in Lexington, MA, where Gordon MacDonald was the senior pastor. Their worship was robust and traditional and formal in style. It included more liturgical elements and a sense of high seriousness that our smaller church could not imitate. Our architecture, facilities, musical talent, and size led naturally to more informality and an atmosphere of family fellowship rather than transcendence. At one of the conferences, I took a workshop on worship, the first time I had heard a serious presentation on the subject. I was transfixed. The speaker invoked the name “Robert Webber” in his presentation, and I was treated to a new perspective on worship that was biblically, historically, and theologically rich. This young pastor had walked through a door into a new world.

A few years later, after I had returned to seminary, the presenter of that workshop and another professor combined to teach a more comprehensive class on worship at Trinity. I signed up right away. I was reading Webber’s books as well as others, and my understanding and interest in the subject grew.

Stop and think about this for a moment: it took ten years, including five years in actual pastoral ministry, until this evangelical minister received education and inspiration on the subject of worship!

Now, I find this admission remarkable and incredibly sad. The attitude of my evangelical educators was that nearly two thousand years of church practice basically didn’t exist, or at least was not relevant for someone like me going into pastoral ministry. My job was to study and teach the Word. Everything else was secondary. In my world, “worship” basically meant we had to put up with singing a few songs so that we could get to the main event, the sermon.

In my experience, not much has changed in the evangelical world, at least at its core. Oh sure, we have invented a whole new category of ministry — “worship leader” — and the “worship set” has become a more prominent part of the service. We talk a lot about worship. For years now, artists have been putting out “praise and worship” music. Many churches sing a lot more, and worship leaders and planners have developed philosophies about the trajectory that those singing times should take to achieve maximum impact on the congregation, but in reality, evangelicalism still reflects and serves the “revivalist” order of Preliminaries/Sermon/Response. It’s still all about the sermon in the end, and the only real difference between churches is whether the particular congregation puts its emphasis on teaching or on preaching for decision.

And Robert Webber continues to speak to me.

The content of worship is a rehearsal of the covenantal relationship God has established with Israel and the church. For example, at Mount Sinai God entered into a covenantal relationship with Israel, sealed with his blood. They became “a people holy to the Lord . . . chosen . . . to be his people” (Deut. 7:6). The Lord became Israel’s God and Israel became God’s special people. And in this relationship there emerged tangible signs of that union — the sanctuary, the priesthood, the offerings, and the appointed feasts and seasons. In this way Israel’s worship looked back to the exodus event and forward to the promised land. In the New Testament there is another covenant, sealed with the blood of Christ, through which the church becomes Christ’s peculiar possession, “a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God” (1 Peter 2:9). This new relationship is the body — the body of Christ, an extension of the incarnation, the continued presence of Christ on earth, a divine organism inhabited by the presence and power of the Holy Spirit. In the church, his body, there are tangible signs of the presence of Christ in worship — the assembled people, the Word, the sacraments, ministry, fellowship, discipleship, prayer, and love. All these expressions of worship look back to the Christ event and forward to the new heavens and the new earth.

In sum, the content and meaning of classical worship tells and acts out the story of God’s saving work in history, culminating in the work of Christ to overthrow the powers of evil and to ultimately establish his kingdom over creation. This story is in our hymns and songs, in our prayers and testimonies, and, supremely, in the reading of Scripture, preaching, and the Eucharist.

– p. 103f

In Ancient-Future Faith, Webber repeats themes for which he is well known. After urging a recovery of the theology of worship that is seen in the quote above, he encourages churches to recover the order of worship, as described in Acts 2:42, worship that is organized around the two pillars of Word and Table.

Then, since design9cross this book focuses on the postmodern context of our faith and practice, Webber speaks to the need to restore a balance between the rationalistic, conceptual forms of communication which have dominated much Protestant and evangelical worship since the Enlightenment and symbolic forms which stimulate the imagination and restore a sense of mystery to our worship. He lists seven examples where symbolism and symbolic actions should be strengthened:

In our worship spaces
In the order of our worship
In our worship music
In restoring the divine symbolism of baptism
In restoring an understanding of Christ’s presence in the Eucharist
In restoring observance of the church year
In a renewed emphasis on the arts in worship

These are subjects we have considered and will continue to discuss here on Internet Monk. I owe Robert Webber a debt of gratitude I can never repay for introducing me to the primary practice of the church, a practice that few of my other teachers appreciated or thought important enough to pass on.

Saturday Ramblings, May 3, 2014

Happy May, fellow imonkers. First, a quick baseball update (Chaplain Mike loves baseball updates): As of Friday, the Chicago Cubs have played 26 games (out of a 162 game schedule) and are only 9.5 games behind first place. If my math is correct (highly unlikely) this means that at this pace they will only be 59 games out of first place at season’s end. Is that a record? I think it should be a record. Please be a record.

There's always last century. Very, very early last century. — There’s always last century. Very early last century.

It’s hard to argue with the statement that the holocaust was, “the most heinous crime in modern human history”. But the source of the quote is surprising: Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

The National Day of Prayer was Thursday. The main event, held at the Capital in Washington, was billed as a non-partisan prayer gathering. James Dobson used the occasion to call Obama, “The Abortion President”.

The principal thought it would be a good idea for students to say the pledge of allegiance in Arabic. Very inclusive, right? What could go wrong? Oh, maybe the “under Allah” part. Yeah, maybe that part could annoy a few parents. Possibly.

The new Godzilla movie comes out this month. It’s always a little risky rebooting a classic. And some Japanese are criticizing the movie for making Godzilla “too fat”. I think he’s just big-boned. In any case, if the movie does well (read: makes bank) expect more, many more to come. Updates on recent racists: ABC reported this week that Clive Bundy is a Mormon patriarch of a family with over 50 grandchildren. F. Glenn Miller Jr., the white supremacist who killed three people outside Jewish centers in Kansas a couple weeks ago, was caught in the mid-1980s in a car with a black male prostitute dressed as a woman, a former federal prosecutor said. And after Donald Sterling gets booted out of the NBA owner’s club for his hypocritical, plantation-like remarks about African Americans, Oprah Winfrey will try to buy the Clippers. I would love to see the Clippers with an African-American owner, wouldn’t you? You know, after my initial glee over Sterling’s fate, a question began to haunt me: Should people be punished for something said while being secretly recorded in their own home? Granted, I can’t work up much sympathy for the man. But is this a slippery slope? Would it be just if it happened to you? Your thoughts?

Continue reading “Saturday Ramblings, May 3, 2014”

Where there is no Vision…?

“Where there is no vision, the people perish . . .”
– Proverbs 29:18 (KJV)

Proverbs 29:18 may be one of the most misapplied verses in all the evangelical church today. Many a church leader has used it to spiritualize his strategies and blackmail followers into supporting his entrepreneurialism. Vision statements are cast. Mission statements are crafted to serve the vision. A list of values is composed to serve the mission. An array of programs is developed to serve the values. A stable of leaders is recruited to serve the programs. An army of volunteers is inspired to assist the leaders. – Jared Wilson

Strange things happened when the church I used to pastor renounced vision. It used to be a church that thrived on vision. There was the annual seeking of vision from God, then articulating the vision and then the vision casting, along with banners and meetings and reminders. Vision was its blood. Then the church gradually let visionary thinking go… People really loved the visionless way of doing church. It was more authentic, real, raw, spontaneous, relaxed, gracious, open and stressless. People felt free to be who they were without having to conform to the church’s vision or mission statement. Even visitors remarked on how unusual the church felt. They loved the spaciousness. – David Hayward (Author of “Without A Vision My People Prosper)”

I must admit that I have a different take on vision than the above quotations. It may be that vision has been so tied to numerical growth in so many cases that it has become a dirty word. My own experiences have been quite varied.

In the first church in which I experienced a vision “process”, I was at the stage of life where I was newly married, about to graduate from Seminary, and serving as an Intern (student) Pastor at a church in Regina, Saskatchewan. The leadership of the church was trying to get a sense of where they wanted to be/go as a church, and so they set a process in place where the elders of the church interviewed every family of the church. When the interviews were gathered, the same theme was presented over and over, and a remarkable consensus emerged. The church wanted to be a safe place where hurting people could find healing, both spiritual and physical. One of the ways that this was facilitated, was that after every communion, the elders made themselves available to those who wanted prayer. It was amazing to see how God started working in people’s lives through those times. This church certainly had a vision, but it was a vision that was not related to numbers, but about ministering to those who needed our help.

Fast forward a year. My wife and I had moved to Hamilton, Ontario. We were helping out with a church plant in a neighboring community. It was an interesting situation, in that many of the key people in the church did not live in that community, but had decided to be a part of the church plant for a variety of reasons. The church drifted from rented facility to rented facilty, six different venues in total over four years, before finally closing its doors. I was there for most of its life, and never really got a strong sense of who they wanted be as a church.

Fast forward six years. I know had three kids and was helping a small Pentecostal church plant in my home town of Dundas, Ontario through a pastoral transition. A fairly diverse group of individuals, including myself, were named to the Pastoral search committee. Although we were a small church, the search committee had really been put togther from a cross section of the congregation and we did not know each other very well. Our first step was to determine who or what we wanted to be as a church. Again a consensus quickly emerged. We wanted to be known as a church that had a heart for worship. (I don’t want to get into a debate here about what that means. We knew what it meant to us.) Secondly, we wanted the church to become more of a family. We didn’t know each other very well. Our church was without a Pastor for over a year, though the denomination did help us appointing a retired minister to preach every Sunday. When the new Pastor arrived, he found a healthy church. We had grown together as a congregation, and were united in our vision to be a worshiping community.

Fast forward another three years. We felt that God was calling us to help a church in another neighboring community. Two years later and I was serving on the Elder’s board, and on yet another Pastoral search committee. There was certainly a strong vision for where people wanted the church to go. In fact, there was two of them! I have never experienced such a divided elder’s board. The search committee was split down the middle too! We were presented with pastoral candidate after pastoral candidate. None could get the necessary votes to even be presented to the congregation as a candidate. The denomination even offered us a previous District Superintendent (think Bishop) as a Pastor. He too was turned down. Our numbers dwindled away until we were down to 17 members. The church district ended up stepping in and dissolved the elder’s board. They appointed an interim pastor, and nine months later with the advice of a regional church committee chose to close the church.

I could give other examples, but in general my experience has been that when a church unites around a meaningful vision, good things happen. Where there is no vision, or there are competing visions, the church struggles. So, I tend to agree with the proverb: “Where there is no vision, the people perish…”

Why am I thinking of this at this time? The church we know attend is holding a vision retreat this coming weekend. I have decided not to go into details, because I am not really soliciting advice about what we should do as a church. I do ask that you pray for me, and for the group meeting, that we would seek God’s will, and listen to each other with open hearts and minds through this weekend.

I would however love to hear of some of your own church visioning experiences, both good and bad, so let it rip!

Another Look: A Journey to Wonder

First posted August 24, 2010. This post gives an overview of my own story about a journey from evangelicalism to an “ancient-future” form of faith. Your own mileage may vary, of course, but I thought it important to put a personal touch on the things we’ve been discussing from Robert Webber this week.

* * *

I have spent my adult life primarily in Bible-believing, non-denominational church settings.

I experienced a conversion during the “Jesus Movement” of the late 60′s and early 70′s.

I went forward during an invitation in a Southern Baptist church. Got dunked.

Our youth group was serious about Bible study.

We attended Bill Gothard, “Institute in Basic Youth Conflicts” seminars.

I still remember listening to the first Maranatha “Praise” album. On vinyl.

I myself wrote testimonial songs about Jesus and sang them with my guitar.

I once sang in meetings for an evangelist who wore a white belt and shoes.

I wore a wooden cross around my neck

I cut my hair so I could go to Bible college.

We studied dispensationalism there and read the Bible through that grid.

We suspected that Moody Bible Institute and Wheaton College might be liberal.

We certainly did not trust the amillennialists. They spiritualized the Scriptures!

No way would we approve of baptizing babies.

Or wearing robes in the pulpit.

Or using the RSV.

Or, heaven forbid! the Good News Bible!

Roman Catholicism? We quietly considered it a cult.

I never even heard of Eastern Orthodoxy.

Some of our professors thought Francis Schaeffer was off his rocker.

The “Church Fathers” to us were Lewis Sperry Chafer and C. I. Scofield.

Calvin and Luther were OK, as long as you stuck with, “The just shall live by faith.” They were awfully weak in their ecclesiology and eschatology, however.

Billy Graham allowed liberals on the platform. A definite no-no.

Our pastoral department frowned on public invitations. Too much appeal to the emotions. Just teach the Word!

Charismatics were deluded. Maybe not even Christians.

Denominations were apostate.

Women preachers? What are you, crazy?

We were forbidden to listen to anything that might be interpreted as “rock” music.

I think we were “soft” fundamentalists though. A pastor once turned his back on me at the table when he found out where I went to school. He was from Bob Jones University. He considered our school, and therefore me by association, compromised.

All I wanted to do was teach the Bible.

I carried all this into my first church at the wise old age of 22.

Kyrie eleison!

I preached expository Bible messages.

We sang hymns and choruses. With organ, piano, sometimes guitar.

We baptized those who got saved.

I visited the shut-ins, led the youth group, held “sword drills” with the kids, separated myself from the sinners, performed a lot of funerals, tried to dry all that wetness behind my ears.

We had a baby.

I was ready for seminary. We moved back to Chicago.

In my heart, I was moving away from fundamentalism, but I had no conception of leaving the Bible-believing nondenominational way of life and church.

I found I couldn’t subscribe to dispensationalism anymore. At least not the pre-trib variety.

I liked rock music too much.

I was ready to think for myself a little bit.

We settled in an independent fundamentalist church anyway.

We thought Willow Creek was liberal, maybe even heretical.

And so it continued…

…it took a long time to break free.

I’m still breaking free.

Why? What’s so bad about this environment of faith? Why must I break free?

Certainly not because I no longer believe the Bible. I trust and value God’s Word more than at any other time in my life. It’s the Story in which I found life, the Story in which I live, the Story that continually brings Jesus to me.

Not because the people I’ve known in those circles were bad. They remain dear friends, and I love them, and we love Jesus together.

Not because I got hurt or disillusioned in some personal way.

Not because God didn’t work in and through us in those settings.

Rather, it is because I can no longer believe that God confines himself to those settings.

Because it all looks to me now like a little tunnel where people hide from a great big scary world. Where I hid too.

But now I see that this world is exactly where God is and has been all the time.

Because I now believe, even though I don’t remember it consciously, that God was there when my parents brought me to the font to be baptized as an infant.

And he was there when I looked with curiosity and fascination through the books we had at home about Jesus and the twelve disciples.

And when I was a young child and wanting to stay with my parents in “big church” to see the light streaming through stained glass, the colorful robed people processing down aisles and across balconies, the somber vision of the white-haired minister kneeling to pray before worship; the rhythm of his words when he preached. Singing, “Glory be to the Father, and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost. As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end. Amen. Amen.”

My mom taught me to follow the words in the hymnal by tracing a path with her finger. I loved hearing her sing.

I remember times after youth choir practice, wandering around the dark hallways of the church building and coming upon a little chapel lit by an eternal flame. The smell of the old wood. The feeling of silence.

I remember the wonder. He was there.

I recall the pastor visiting my grandparents in their home, always friendly and kind.

Kneeling at the altar rail for communion.

Wishing I could be an acolyte carrying the flame.

Singing my first solo as a robed elementary choir member.

Joking with our choir director and having so much fun.

I remember, though vaguely, my confirmation class. The white-haired minister spoke to us in somber tones about how God met him and changed his life. I felt so serious as I bowed my head in prayer.

Standing outside at night after youth group as the snow fell upon the old stone church building.

He was there.

Somehow, one day that world ended.

It was dark for what seemed like forever. And then…

…a newborn fundamentalist came into the world.

In my born-again mindset, I looked back on childhood as the time when I was lost and knew nothing of God. Is that right?

Now I wonder.

Don’t get me wrong. Whatever my “conversion” experience as a young adult actually involved spiritually, I know for sure that I needed God’s intervention to turn me around at that point. I was the prodigal son. However, for years now, I’ve known that the narrow-minded path I started walking on at that moment is not enough, at least for me. It’s not a big enough God. It’s not a big enough life. It’s not a big enough vocation.

I hope I’m going forward now into something newer, bigger, more wonder-filled.

But in doing so, I find I’m looking back a lot.

Perhaps my desire for an “ancient-future” faith is a longing for nothing more ancient than the childhood where God first made himself known to me in ways that made a child dream.

Stained glass.

Eternal flame.

Brilliant robes.

Smell of old wood.

Wonder.