The Lying Guy

Eric Rigney has a blog, which I promise will be worth a stop every so often.

I know this fellow who lies. Not a lot, not in big ways, but in the same ways I was frequently guilty of lying as a young man. Exaggeration. Bragging a falsehood. Crossing the line from wishful thinking to saying something is really true. It’s a game you play with yourself, knowing that the person you are lying to won’t be able to sort it out, or won’t care enough about what you said to try.

This fellow will occasionally talk about an opportunity he’s been given. He really doesn’t have to say a thing. Everyone likes him and he doesn’t need the buildup. He talks, then brags and out comes the story. Not true, sounds good, and probably never going to be checked out.

Well, this time I shared his “good news” with several other people, who congratulated him on his opportunity. He was suddenly in a panic. How many people had I told? Exactly what did I say? He was worried.

I felt bad, but not too bad. He needs to learn that these lies make him look foolish, and he is a smart person who doesn’t need to create false impressions. There are a string of these exaggerations in his recent past, and I’m struggling with whether I should go and gently confront him with the facts of where these lies are taking him. Everytime it’s apparent he was lying, my estimation of him falls. I become less interested in believing anything he has to say.

Lies promise to let us live in our own fantasies for a few moments, and no one will be hurt. The truth is that lies always hurt, and tale by tale, they take away from us that integrity that ought to be more precious to us the longer we live.

It’s getting a little hot in here….in worship, that is.

Josh said it in his usual blunt manner, but he’s right.

I said it months ago in this IM piece on romanticism in worship.

S.M. Hutcheons absolutely beats it like a drum in a recent article in Touchstone.

Larknews parodied it dead on last year.
Continue reading “It’s getting a little hot in here….in worship, that is.”

What About Christians in the Public Schools?

My friend Steve Mcfarland has written a provocative and impassioned plea from a Christian in the public schools. Steve is asking his fellow Christians to not abandon one part of the culture- the public schools where millions of Christians work, millions of Christian kids attend, and millions of lost, hurting students need our help.

A plea like Steve’s isn’t heard much because it has to overcome the growing calls for Christians to abandon the public schools and homeschool. I want him to be heard.
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The Pope Needs a Business Meeting

Someone sent me this Rick Warren quote, and it’s buggin’ me.

When I write about Rick Warren, I’m usually not taking issue with the content of the guy’s books or the value of his accomplishments. I’m a voice in the wilderness ranting about cookie-cutter-consumeristic idolatry in evangelicalism, so I’ve had my fun with Mr. Warren’s apparent elevation by the powers that be to the level of Pope Rick I. But I’ve not had much comment about what he’s actually said.

But this one bothers me.

“Rick’s Rules of Growth…. Third, never criticize what God is blessing, even though it may be a style of ministry that makes you feel uncomfortable.” [PDC, page 62, bold and italics mine.]

I’ve thought about it for most of a day, and I’ve decided what the new Pope of evangelicalism needs is one of the great traditions of the Southern Baptist church of yore: the business meeting.
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A Serious Lack of Appropriate Social Skills

That’s me. Seriously lacking in social skills. Particularly when it comes to two important things here in my ministry at a Christian school.

1. Welcoming new people. 2. Being gracious to people who decide to leave. In both categories, I get a “D-.”

When new folks come to OBI, it takes me weeks to really start seeing them as members of the team. It’s like they are just visting, and I expect them to be gone in a few moments. There are folks here right now who have been at work for over a month, and I still haven’t met them. (Of course, not ever seeing them makes that easy!)

I’ve concluded I am operating on some kind of agenda of self-protection. In many ways, I am afraid of people. I am afraid they will demand too much or expect too much. I fear rejection or too much intimacy too soon. Being the campus minister, everyone has a lot of assumptions about what I am all about, and I don’t fit many of those. I protect myself too long from new friendships because of those fears.

It’s uncomfortable to have to say, “Well, I really haven’t read Jabez,” or “No, I’m not really a big fan of Christian music.” It’s avoidance, and it’s not fair, not loving and not good. I’m sorry folks. I need to do better. These folks came here needing friendship and encouragement from those of us who are here. I can’t be stingy with my friendship and support. An air of aloofness was never a characteristic of Jesus.

I’m even worse when it comes to saying good-bye to fellow staff who quit, but it’s simpler to understand. Usually, I feel betrayed and abandoned. I want them to stay.

Many of these folks are leaving over problems that we faced and overcame in our time here. It frustrates me to see people leaving over those very solvable problems. Others simply aren’t cut out for this kind of work, and I ought to rejoice in that. But it’s a bit like war. Even if I am glad they are going back home, I’m feeling left out here a little less defended and supported than before.

Every departure isn’t a rejection of the ministry, even if some are. God has his own time schedule, and I need to help people feel good and useful in the time they have served here. It’s the right thing to do, and pragmatically speaking, it makes sense. These folks are still contributors, supporters and word-of-mouth advertisers.

Things change. People come and go. I need to be better at offering myself to them as friends, and better at expressing thanks for what they have contributed. I have a ministry, and that isn’t about protecting myself from awkward feelings. The experiences I’ve had in life that made me like this don’t have to keep me captive. God has given me a love for others, and I need to express it.

Being a social hermit is something I’d like to change about myself. I’ll never be Mr. Gregarious, but I could do better. I’ll make it a matter of prayer in the future. My real apologies to those treated shabbily in the past. Practice at being a servant of God can sometimes be so bad, I wonder if I will ever really get in the game?

I’m Glad I’m Not a Young Earth Creationist

It’s funny when I think about it, but the reasons to not be a young earth creationist get better all the time. Take the latest creationist flap on our little campus: The Gap Theory.

Gap theory is apparently one way to let off the pressure that some folks feel from having to assume the Bible teaches science. Which is necessary to sustain a view of inspiration that says the Bible must be 100% truthful about every subject it touches, even if it were inspired and written in cultures that were scientifically illiterate and had no access to all types of knowledge.

I believe the Bible’s inspiration is that it tells us about Jesus. After that, not only am I not interested, I don’t know why I should be. Of course, Jesus turns out to be the meaning of all of scripture, so I win the pony.
Continue reading “I’m Glad I’m Not a Young Earth Creationist”

The Last Laugh In The Least Likely Place

The Last Laugh In The Least Likely Place (Holy Saturday ’04)

A reader at Josh Claybourn’s blog writes

On the Christian calendar, today is Holy Saturday. It marks a kind of pause in the “Triduum,” the three days from the Last Supper on Maundy Thursday until the triumphant dawn of Easter Sunday. For the modern church, it is a time for reflection and anticipation, a day to complete one’s meditation on the Passion and prepare one’s heart for the joyous celebration of the Resurrection. For Jesus’s followers, however, as the corpse of their bloodied master lay cold in the tomb, we can only imagine the depth of sorrow and anguish that was theirs that first Easter weekend. But for them as for us, it was the weekend that changed everything. And it was a change no less dramatic and unexpected for all the years that they had spent following him in Galilee and Judea. This “unexpectedness” of Easter–the sheer surprise of it–ought to be as much a part of Easter celebrations as the joy of the holiday. For the surprises are also a part of the new life in Christ. The Scriptures themselves tell the story. Before the Resurrection, uncertainty hovers around the person of Jesus. “Are you the Messiah?” But after the Resurrection–no, it is not that Jesus is at once recognized as the risen Lord–rather, it is that the recognition comes in the most astonishing ways, overwhelming the soul with joy and awe. On the road to Emmaus; on the way to Damascus; in a locked room; and–most beautifully in its narration–at breakfast on the shores of the Sea of Galilee. “It is the Lord!”

The great promise of the Christian revelation is that this same surprise is available to us, if we will go forth to meet the world in his name. May Christ be with you, today, tomorrow, and every day. Happy Easter!

I’ve always felt that Passion plays of every sort missed out on what must have been going on in the hours after the death of Jesus. We need to meditate on the utter, complete, abject devastation and disappointment the disciples would have been feeling right now.

Modern critics of the Gospels, such as the Jesus seminar gang, make the same mistake. I heard J.D. Crossan say, “When I read (the resurrection accounts), I’m reading hope, not history.”

Hope? What hope? A man who never met a corpse he couldn’t raise, a disease he couldn’t cure, a storm he couldn’t calm, is lying cold and dead. His power vanished before their very eyes and he was crushed like a bug. All the talk of who would sit on his right and who would be the greatest…how absolutely stupid it all would seem now. Can anyone imagine the disciples having the Lord’s Supper today? It’s absurd. Everything was crushed, and there was no hope, only despair.

The assumption that the disciples were standing by the windows waiting to see Jesus is bizarre. The resurrection came blasting out from under a planet-sized boulder of hopelessness.

Perhaps we sometimes forget that Christianity doesn’t teach that despair and doubt are alien to faith. The prelude to Easter faith was the darkest, blackest kind of doubt and unbelief. The songs of Easter are growing out soil that’s devoid of any reason to sing.

The apologists who believe the evidence for the resurrection is compelling need to remember that the greatest argument against the resurrection is the simplist: This just doesn’t happen. Death is final.

We are carrying around in us, and with us, a message of hope that’s laughably ridiuclous. Faith really is comedy. God refuses to play by the rules. He raises Jesus and gives us life in Jesus’ death and resurrection. And we get to give it away, any way we can.

I’m so glad the resurrection hope isn’t theology, but miracle. Absurdity. A divine joke on all of us. There is no depth we can go to- not even the depths of hell and the grave- where we can escape from God’s laughter at our certainty it’s all over. If you want to figure it out, write a theology or pen a convincing apologetic, knock yourself out. God raised Jesus from the dead. He opened a window in your hell and my grave and said, “You’re free to leave. The rules don’t apply anymore.”

I trust you see the beauty in it. Theology, religion, the bland pleasures of the world- none of them can reach into death, despair and the grave and rescue me. I regularly need rescue from such places, and I’m pretty sure the time will come when trusting what God did to Jesus will be ALL I can believe.

So be it. Let the laughter begin in the least likely places.

A Rant on The Baptism

A Rant of mine from the BHT. About the Pentecostal/Charismatic view of the Baptism of the Holy Spirit.

The iMonk rants on the Baptism in/with/of/by the HS. (I was a bit cranky.)

The innovation of the Baptism in/with/by/of the HS (BHS from now on) as a separate experience from salvation is one of the great mistakes brought upon evangelicals by the Pentecostal community. It’s a mess, and it’s made a bigger mess. Having lived through the whole charismatic thing in the 70’s, I have a lot of bitter memories of what this all turned out to really be: an enormous con job. A con that’s still going on. People who trust in Christ being told they still need something else to REALLY be spiritual. Oop. Ack.

Let’s start with the exegesis. Acts 1:8 says that the Gospel will move out in Luke’s story in three concentric circles: Jerusalem, Samaria, and the World in general. So Acts shows us a separate Pentecostal experience for Jews (in Acts 2), Samaritans (in Acts 8) and Romans ( Acts 10). The Apostles witness each one so they will see what GOD is doing. (Note that there is no Pentecostal experience for the Ethiopian eunuch, because no apostle is present.)

From this, Pentecostals created an experience that divided the body of Christ into two halves. Those with, and without, “the baptism,” and the accompanying evidence of “tongues.” The fact that P/C tongues always turned out to be that “special prayer language” and not the actual languages of Acts 2, etc., didn’t really matter. Especially when the Pentecostal revivals of the early twentieth century decided to appropriate the whole Acts 2 experience as proof the ends times really where here, and they were riding the wave of restoring the end-times church and all those end-times miracles. (Don’t you p/cs get tired of always being told you are a special last time, end times, special bride generation?)

With a new way to create second class Christians in hand, and flush with the knowledge that all those un-spiritually baptized protestants at your local deadwood Baptist church were actually only half full of God, Pentecostalism proceeded to take over evangelicalism in most of the world. With experience now outdistancing scripture in every corner, it became easy to read every reference to spirit baptism as another reference to laying on hands and speaking in tongues. (I heard one Pentecostal preacher say that “lama lama” was Jesus praying in tongues. Yeehaw!)

Of course, the fact that scripture clearly taught that ALL Christians are spiritually baptized never slowed down this train. I Cor 12:13 For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body- Jews or Greeks, slaves or free- and all were made to drink of one Spirit.

Today, P/SCs have backed way off all this malarkey, and whole denominations- The Vineyard, for instance- appropriate Pentecostal views on everything except the separate experience of the BHS. Still, the damage is done, the work of the HS is now forever seen as some sort oGnosticic goose bump evidenced by acting like you are being zapped, and millions of evangelicals believe barking and rolling around drunk are likely evidences of the HS. I can’t talk to my P/C friends about much of anything because they are into an entirely different religion. We can’t even PRAY together because they spend all their time praying to the devil and various demons.

One P/C preacher I befriended eventually preached a sermon in MY chapel pulpit saying that I was blocking the work of the HS for not speaking in tongues. It really made him angry when I said I spoke in tongues for a year, but had to finally admit I was just making noise. Yes, under pressure from P/Cs who promised me the pow-wah, yours truly babbled on in shambala-shingy style from 1973-74. Right after I received the BHS “by faith.” Uh -huh.

Hey Pentecostals…listen. The rest of us have to say we are wrong all the time. It’s your turn. You are WRONG about the BHS. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Read Gordon Fee and I’ll be happy. When we are regenerated we are baptized in/with/by/to/for/whatever the HS and into Christ. Hence we are Christians. Quit dangling some spiritual experience and some non-existent gift out there like a carrot to those who really want to believe they are just a prayer away from being a super hero.

The work of the HS is ordinary. The extraordinary part is the fullness of God is ours in Christ and we are joined to him. All God’s promises- including the promise of the HS- are ours in him.The work of the HS is started before we ever ask for it. Yes, we are commanded to pray to be filled with the HS, just like we are commanded to drink of the water that is Jesus. But this isn’t a bonus. It’s another way of talking about faith.

Acts 2. One hundred twenty have the “Pentecostal experience.” Then Peter preaches. And says what?

38 And Peter said to them, “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. 39 For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself.”

And 3,000 believed and apparently received the gift of the HS. Without Pentecostal whiz bang. Whaddayaknow?

Tell ya what. When I start seeing the fruit of the Spirit in my life, somewhere close to Jesus, then I’ll run right over and be baptized in the HS so I’m really ready to rock.

A Small Church Tragedy

A Small Church Tragedy

I’m back. I want to talk about a story from back home in my hometown, Owensboro, Kentucky. I wish I could link the newspaper account of this story, but it’s under a registration page, so you will just have to trust me on this one.

The church is Wing Avenue Baptist Church in Owensboro, a small church where I preached quite often as a young preacher. It’s in a poor part of town, on the wrong side of the tracks- literally- in a changing neighborhood. The kind of little SBC church that grew enough to get beyond mission status, but never really was in the kind of community to attract new people just from location or the usual programs.

Then, several years ago, the church did something unusual for our community. They hired a Liberian as their pastor. Not a librarian, but an African from Liberia. Now, I grew up in this community, and I can tell you that while it’s never been a town known for racial tension, it is definitely Southern enough that white, SBC churches weren’t hiring black pastors. African or otherwise. This was a bold move, and everyone sat up and took notice. How would things turn out?

I can tell you that I know these kinds of small, traditional churches. They are quite simple. There is a core group that wants to run the show. They want the church to grow, but that means 1950’s SBC style worship, evangelism and so forth. Don’t rock the boat or get to creative. That group wants to be visited, fawned over and placated. If they are happy, you can hardly do wrong. If they don’t like you, leave. Because they aren’t going anywhere, and they will only follow when they know they are running the show.

From all reports, WABC experienced a marvelous positive turnaround under this new pastor. Like many African Christians that I know, he was warm and welcoming, conservative, devoted and hard-working. He’s a good preacher, as my mother can report from several hearings. In one year, the church took in almost 50 new members and baptized 27. Most remarkably, the church took in enough minorities to be able to call itself multi-racial, which in our community, is far from the norm.

Things changed. Worship changed, as anyone might expect, and the church seemed to be growing with little of the expected stress. All seemed to be going well. So it’s sad to report that the pastor has, with the help of a hefty vote against him, decided to leave the church, and IMO, most likely start another congregation.

What happened?

Apparently two things. First, the pastor asked the church to change their name to something less geographical and non-denominational. It seems like a small thing, but in an established, traditional SBC church in my town, it’s major league serious. Ultimately, it was never going to fly. Those West Kentucky Southern Baptist know who they are, and they don’t intend to go generic.

Secondly, the pastor tried to restructure church government in a completely non-traditional manner, a move that was perceived by many- rightly, IMO- as a way to get enough power to make decisions like the name change without having congregational votes. When you are dealing with a core group that pays the bills, anything that takes them out of their traditional power dynamics and allows the pastor to deal with a group other than the congregation is going to be opposed.

So, losing these votes, he left. No racial tension, but a repudiation of the philosophy the pastor was pursuing. The church is back where they started, because it is safe to say that the majority of the growth people will move with him to whatever he begins.

This is a sad story, because it shows what so many pastors are all about. I am not in any way bad-mouthing this young pastor. He did a great job and the church grew. Good things happened. Christians were seeing the kind of congregational transformation that most traditional churches never see.

If this young pastor could stay with it, even more good things could happen. But what’s going to happen now is yet another church is going to be born out of the generational warfare among evangelicals. Call it the worship wars, the seeker sensitive controversy or the influence of Rick Warren on ordinary pastors. Whatever it is, it seems to increasingly come down to this: If these changes can’t be made on my schedule, then I’m not willing to stay until the transformation in lay leadership makes it possible. In the end, this becomes about what changes can be made from the top down. If a church isn’t on board for them all, then it’s cya later.

It’s a shame, and it’s a failure. I wonder when the innovators will start writing books on how to stay at a church and see some things through on a schedule that might admit real change won’t come at the same pace as a pastor’s ambition might dictate.