Lessons from my Father

My father sleeps almost all the time now.  In the final stages of his disease he spends his time, I think, reliving the good times and anticipating better times, in the world of his dreams. 

On Monday mornings I sit beside him reliving the good times and anticipating better times.  This past Monday I spent some of my “reliving time” thinking about the lessons I've learned from my father (I call him Pop).  I thought Father’s Day would be a good time to share some of them.

The most recent lesson Pop attempted to teach me was how to shoot pool.  In his younger years, from what my cousins told me, he was quite the pool shark.  (Pop would never speak about such things when I was growing up because “pool-sharking” wasn't one of the lessons he wanted me to learn.)  When times were hard his pool stick put food on the table more than once; again, according to my cousins.

I’m afraid this lesson was wasted on me.  I was never good at geometry and it is evident when I attempt to line up a shot.  The last time we made the trek out to the garage to shoot a game Pop used a walker to get there, could barely hold the stick, shook like a leaf and still beat me handily.  He was frustrated because he thought I threw the game to make him feel better.  By the way, when you shoot the best you can and it still looks like you’re throwing the game, it’s a real blow to your ego. 

Almost all the other lessons are much older; some almost as old as I am. 

Pop taught me to hunt.  Hunting is an indirect way to learn patience and he seemed to want me to master patience more than bagging game.  From “hunting lessons” I also learned to respect all God’s creatures.  “If you shoot it, you eat it.  If you won’t eat it, you don’t shoot it.”  So I shot squirrels, skinned them and gave them to my mother who reluctantly, painstakingly turned them into delicacies.  I don’t hunt much these days.  

Pop taught me how to work.  For Pop, work was not an undesirable but necessary part of life; work was a gift from God.  God put the man and woman in the garden to work it, take care of it and eat from it.  So Pop put me in the garden to learn the blessing of a hard day’s work, to toil over a task all day long, so at the end of the day I could look at it and see the results, go to bed and sleep well…the sleep of satisfaction.  That lesson took many years of repeated sessions.

Pop taught me to respect and care for all human beings no matter their ethnicity, economic or social standing.  Some of our neighbors were tenant farmers living on someone else’s land (a modern version of sharecropping).  Pop shared produce with them from our small farm along with pies and cakes from my mother’s kitchen.  He taught me that every living creature on God’s good earth has intrinsic value.  Humans are created in God’s image and all of them are equal and equally loved by their creator.  This is a lesson our world is slow in learning. 

Pop taught me to love.  He taught me what love is.  Of course my mother participated in all these lessons as well (except shooting pool).  Pop taught me love not so much with his words but with his work.  He got up before daylight and fed animals.  Then he went to his job (carpentry most of his life) and worked all day.  Then he came home and fed animals again, again in the dark.  Only then did he sit down with us to a good meal, provided by his own calloused hands.  Somehow I never wondered if I was loved.   

These are the kinds of things I think about on Mondays these days.  These lessons and others, many others, I think about when I sit by Pop’s bedside, when I scramble an egg and try to get him to eat a few bites, when I moisten his dry mouth, when I help my sister bathe his frail body.  These lessons and others, many others, are the reasons my siblings and I do not consider doing these things a burden.  Like all the other lessons he taught us, this final lesson, a lesson on how to grieve well, is a gift.  

Is the Evangelical Church Hopelessly Lost? – Part II

In my last post I asked the question, "Is the Evangelical Church Hopelessly Lost?," I attempted to argue that we are, indeed, lost and to explain (at least in part) how we got lost.

The critical word, I think, is “hopelessly.”  Some are already planning the funeral service for the Evangelical Church, but maybe that’s a bit premature.  I would argue that we’re not hopelessly lost but hopefully lost.  We’re still lost, but I think we’re beginning to follow the biblical bread crumbs that will lead us back home to Jesus.

From my perspective I see (and feel with a part of me that maybe can’t be categorized under one of the five senses) that there is a grassroots movement in the church.  It is definitely not being initiated by any of the major denominations (especially mine), but it is happening.  It is being led primarily by millennials (young adults), although many from older generations are glad to see it growing and want to be part of it. 

Maybe we could think of it as a series of shifts or movements within the church; kind of like the shifting tectonic plates imperceptibly moving beneath us a millimeter (or less) at a time, until finally there’s an earthquake.  I think we could talk about a lot of these shifts but I will only discuss two.

A shift from Biblianity (or Biblicism) back to Christianity

One of the fall outs of Fundamentalism is the elevation of the Bible to “god status.”  In short, the “inerrancy” fundamental claims that the entire Bible is equally authoritative. 

In a recent article entitled "Why Christians Should Support the Death Penalty," Al Mohler argues that they should.  (You may support the death penalty.  I’m not arguing that issue one way or another here.)  My point is not that Mohler argues for the death penalty but how he does it.  In the article he never mentions Jesus; not once.  He uses the Old Testament teaching about capital punishment (a great advancement in the ancient world for sure) and applies it authoritatively to today’s society.  He simply doesn’t wrestle with anything that Jesus said.

Jesus, however, audaciously claimed that his teachings outranked the Jewish Torah.  Repeatedly he said, “You have heard it said [in Torah]… but I say to you…”  May I suggest you read Matthew 5:38-48.

What I sense, particularly among young people, is a return to a more orthodox understanding of the scriptures.  They agree, I believe, with the "The Baptist Faith and Message" which says, “The criterion by which the Bible is to be interpreted is Jesus Christ.  The Bible is the written Word about the living Word.  Therefore, any interpretation of a given passage must be made in the light of God’s revelation in Jesus Christ and his teachings and redemptive work.”  (page 30 in the 1971 edition)    

A shift from Arrogance to Humility

I would like to be able to describe this shift in more diplomatic language, but I don’t think I can.

By its very nature, Fundamentalism seems to gravitate toward arrogance.  We tend to be intellectually arrogant about our theology.  We seem to be unable to entertain the idea that we might get it wrong and someone else might get it right.  We tend to be morally arrogant.  So we point out those sinners and their sin instead of acknowledging that we are all sinners.  In a word, this is called moral superiority.  In another word, it’s called judgmentalism.

But I sense a shift away from this kind of arrogance.  These days I talk to more and more Christ followers who are humble and gracious.  They have this refreshing spirit about them that is respectful of people who are different from them.  They have the wonderful ability to disagree with someone while seeing that person as the offspring of God, created in his image.  They don’t need to portray themselves as less sinful or less broken than others.  They genuinely believe that every human being is loved by God and they possess the uncanny ability to extend love to all of God’s beloved, which means everyone.   

I think a lot more “shifts” could be listed.  We’re seeing young Christians shift from consumer Christianity to contributor Christianity, from maintaining the institutional church to embracing the beautiful, comprehensive mission of the Church, from being politically hyperactive to being communally interactive; the list could go on.

The result is that our lost Evangelical Church is becoming more and more hopefully lost.  We don’t claim to know exactly how or when we will find our way back home to Jesus, but we are confident that we’re moving in the right direction.  We feel him in the air.  We smell his sweet aroma.  His beauty is beginning to shine through.  And, in my opinion, the beauty of Jesus is practically irresistible.

Is the Evangelical Church Hopelessly Lost? - Part I

John Dickerson, an Evangelical pastor, says that “a majority of young people raised as evangelicals are leaving the church.”  According to Dickerson, “In the 1980s heyday of the Rev. Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority some estimates accounted evangelicals as a third or even close to half of the population, but research by the Notre Dame sociologist Christian Smith recently found that Christians who call themselves evangelicals account for just 7 percent of Americans.”  From 50% to 7% – quite a drop!  (Taken from the N.Y. Times article The Decline of Evangelical America by John S. Dickerson

It seems to me that evangelicals are lost.  We’re wandering aimlessly and some (actually most…especially young adults) are wandering out the door.  We not only don’t know where we are, we don’t know who we are.  We’re lost inside and out.

I think we need two blog posts to discuss this.  In this post I want to talk about how we got lost.  Next time I’ll wrestle with whether or not we’re hopelessly lost.

Who were evangelicals before we got lost? 

The word “evangelical” is derived from the Greek word “euangelion” which means “good tidings or good news” i.e. Gospel.  Evangelical Christians have historically been followers of Jesus who actively shared the good news of God’s love expressed through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  Our distinguishing characteristic was conversion; the belief that the love of Jesus Christ transforms human beings and empowers us to become different people. 

We believe the Gospel of Jesus Christ is literally changing the world.  The kingdom of God that Jesus announced is crashing into this world and the world is being transformed.  It is a message (and a movement) of redemption and hope.  Evangelicals have a beautiful heritage and a beautiful message.

The evangelical movement is normally traced back to the Great Awakenings and leaders like John Wesley and George Whitfield.  But the heart of evangelicalism (Gospel) is as old as the Christian movement itself.

So what happened?

Like other good movements before and since, the Evangelical movement has been sort of high-jacked and morphed into a kind of “mutant” that doesn’t look much like it’s original self.  From my perspective, subcultures (think of them as viruses) have grown up in the evangelical church.  Over time these subcultures (viruses) have severed us from our identity and cut us loose to drift aimlessly.  There were other factors but I think these three were primary. 

Fundamentalism

A lot can and has been said about Fundamentalism but I will try to simplify as much as possible.  Fundamentalism is the 20^th century version of 1^st century Phariseeism.  The Pharisees were the legalists of their day and the Fundamentalists were (and are) the legalists of their day.

In response to the threat of liberalism in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, a group of protestant pastors got together and developed a list of “fundamentals.”  These were the “essential” beliefs that, in their opinion, one must adopt in order to be considered a Christian.  Most lists included five “fundamental” beliefs: biblical inerrancy, the virgin birth of Christ, substitutionary atonement, the bodily resurrection of Christ and the miracles of Christ.    

Here’s the important part.  The list itself was not the problem.  Many evangelicals hold to these beliefs.  The problem was the same one that always slips up from behind and bites legalists in the butt.  For Fundamentalists, an empirical belief in the fundamentals became the way one achieved salvation.  Fundamentalism turned “belief” into just another form of works salvation.  Instead of entrusting ourselves into the loving care of God through his Son Jesus, a beautiful transformation, “belief” became just another way to earn God’s favor.

Consequently we lost the transformation and the beauty.  The problem with any form of legalism is that it doesn’t actually change who we are.  We remain the same people (often bigoted and hateful), but we feel okay because we “believe” the right things. 

Fundamentalism may have been the greatest blow to the evangelical church.  Some say it was the virus that killed us.

Militant Eschatology

I thought I made up that term until I googled it and discovered that there’s a book out entitled Restorative Militant Eschatology.  I don’t know what the book’s about but here’s what I mean.

Eschatology is a word that is used to describe the study of the “end times.”  Around the time Fundamentalism came into vogue, a school of eschatology developed, at least partly out of the Fundamentalist movement.  In other words, this understanding of how this age ends and the new age begins is a little over 100 years old.  So, for 1900 years the church functioned without this idea of the end of time.

Here’s how I would describe this school of eschatology in a nut shell.  There are lots of variations on this theme, but here’s a summary.  The world is a really bad place and it’s only going to get worse.  At some point the world will be much like the time of Noah when human beings were totally controlled by the evil in their hearts.  When that happens Jesus Christ will return, but unlike his first coming when he came in peace and sacrificed his life, this time he will come in war and sacrifice the lives of his enemies.  The first time he came as a lamb.  The next time he’s coming as a lion.  In short, he will destroy all his enemies and set up his kingdom.  This theory is, of course, derived from a very specific understanding of the book of Revelation and parts of Daniel.

There are lots of flaws with this concept of “the end of time,” but the biggest problem, in my opinion, is its militant nature.  If this is the way Jesus and his Father work, then God is no different from any of the warrior gods in the Greek or Babylonian pantheons.  Jesus didn’t really defeat evil on the cross.  To get the job done he will have to come back and slaughter his enemies. 

Think about it.  If this is the way God operates then the cross is depleted of its power and we don’t really have a Gospel worth sharing.  Maybe this is one reason no one is listening when we try to share it.  We do have a beautiful story to tell.  It’s a story about a God whose love is so powerful it moves him to rescue the world.  He doesn’t have to destroy his enemies by nailing them to crosses and killing them.  He defeated evil and sin and death and hell by being nailed to the cross and dying.  His resurrection is the proof. 

Without that story to tell, evangelicals are lost.  

Militant Activism (I think we could list some more but I’ll stop because this post is getting really long.)

Fundamentalism needs two things to survive and thrive; a belief system and a list of enemies that fail to adhere to the belief system.  Militant activism is the fuel that keeps the Fundamentalist engine running.  Whether Christian, Muslim or some other expression of Fundamentalism, they need an enemy to fight (sometimes physically).

For Christian Fundamentalists the enemies tend to change over time.  Right now abortionists and homosexuals seem to be our primary targets.  Like our Pharisee ancestors we are bent on ignoring the beam in our own eye while we poke at the speck in the eyes of others.  The end result is wide spread blindness.

The other day I received a request to fill out a survey from Lifeway Research, a division of the Southern Baptist Convention.  One of the questions instructed me to rate how much of an intentional effort my church is making to address abortion and homosexuality.  I responded by saying that our church is pretty busy trying to deal with our own sins of gluttony and greed.

Sadly, evangelicals have become known for what we are against, not what we’re for.  Various research groups have conducted random surveys asking, “What is an Evangelical?”  Typical answers are almost always negative.  Most people identify us as narrow minded, bigoted, right wing, hateful and negative.

Not many are saying, “Oh yeah, evangelicals are those followers of Jesus Christ that believe he is transforming our world one person at a time.”  We don’t hear many people say, “Evangelicals are people filled with love for their enemies.  They follow the example of the founder of their movement.  They reflect the beauty of Jesus Christ!” 

Consequently, more and more young people are simply leaving the church.  There is a new wave of atheism gaining momentum among young adults.  The evangelical church is lost and we’re losing those who can’t see Jesus in us.

Are we hopelessly lost?  Stay tuned.

TMI

I’ve been thinking about the amount of information that streams through my fingers and head every day.

When I was a kid, local and global news had to be squeezed into a one hour block of time every evening after we ate dinner.  My dad turned on the TV, adjusted the rabbit ears and we watched as Doug Mayes and Walter Cronkite, respectfully, told us everything we needed to know.  Our choices were pretty limited.  Only one channel worked.

Still, there were evenings when I felt overwhelmed by the news, especially the national news.  I remember scenes from the Vietnam War and a barrage of information about Water Gate.  I asked my dad if Cronkite was talking about Cowan’s Ford Dam and he said no, he was talking about Nixon.  I didn’t understand.

Today, if I were so inclined (and the problem is, I am), I could read articles, tweets, books and web sites twenty four hours a day.   

Add to that the compulsion to contribute my own tweets, posts, blogs and sermons to the vast sea of information floating around out there and the problem becomes overwhelming.  Sometimes when I sit down in front of the computer screen I feel like I’m going to throw up.

And so I do.  I regurgitate the stuff that’s rattling around in my head onto that computer screen and most of the time I feel like it’s pretty worthless.  My measly little neurons firing at some topic about which others have already written volumes feels like shooting a cap gun beside a cannon.

I’m really not sure why I’m saying all this now.  Maybe I just need to admit to myself and to you guys that I’m suffering from mental fatigue.  (One or two of you – you know who you are – who are going to write a “funny” comment right now.  Go ahead.  Get it out of your system.) 

Can I be really honest?  Sometimes I walk into my office and, for the life of me, it’s all I can do to keep myself from picking up my souvenir Braves baseball bat and beating the mother board out of my computer (which would be really bad since it doesn’t belong to me).   

Our Church is Moving to One Worship Service

This coming Sunday our church (zoarchurch.com) will transition from our current schedule of two morning worship services (one contemporary and one traditional) to one worship service.  The plan is to try this for three months and see how it goes.  I thought I would say a word or two about why we’re making this move.

Disclaimer:  I want to be clear about what I’m not saying.  I’m not saying that it’s a bad idea for churches to have more than one worship service.  If your church has more than one service, that’s great.  I just want to state as clearly as I can why I believe our church is making a change.  (By the way, I don’t claim that all our church members feel the same way.)  So here are two of the primary reasons.

1.      I think our church is stating clearly that worship is about expressing our adoration to God, not about satisfying our personal preferences.

Soren Kierkegaard was a philosopher/theologian who described worship as a drama or a play.  He said that in the worship drama it’s wrong to think of the congregation as the audience, the worship leaders (singers, musicians, preachers etc.) as the actors and God as the prompter.  He believed that the worship leaders were to be the prompters, all of us (the leaders and the congregation) are the actors and God is the audience.  In the worship drama, God is an audience of one.

Sometimes someone will tell me (most often through one of our deacons) that they don’t like the way we did something in a worship service.  Or I will hear the phrase, “I just don’t get anything out of that kind of worship.”  While I appreciate and try to respect individual preferences, I have to say that “getting something out of worship” is not our objective.  Our objective is not to get anything, but to give God our all in worship.

Is it nice to get an emotional charge when we worship?  Of course!  But if I measure the value of worship by my emotional barometer I’m afraid I will seldom get an accurate reading.  Can I be honest?  I think the relatively recent movement to make our personal preferences the single criterion for worship decisions has not only distorted the church’s understanding of worship, it has depleted our worship services of real influence in the communities we are called to evangelize.  

Which brings me to the second reason…

2.      I think our church is realizing that the evangelistic power of our worship is not in trying to have “seeker sensitive” worship services but in seeking to have Spirit filled worship services.   

As a young pastor I came along in the heyday of the “seeker sensitive” movement.  I must admit that I embraced it wholeheartedly.  I mean I swallowed it hook, line and sinker!  Now, in the dying embers of that movement I can see clearly that those who are outside of the church are not expecting, or even wanting the church to be more seeker sensitive. 

Let me state it this way.  I can’t remember talking to a non-Christian who told me they would come to our worship services if we had more edgy music, or more traditional music.  No one tells me that they want better preachers or better teachers or better singers.  Let’s be honest.  If we are trying to draw people into our worship services by providing them with a better show than they can get somewhere else we might as well give up.  They can attend almost any concert and hear better music.  (I have a DVD of the Eagles in concert that is better than any music I’ve ever heard in a worship service.)  They can go to almost any comedy club and hear a more entertaining speaker. 

Here’s the truth, in my opinion.  Non-Christians are not looking for churches that blow them away with a great show; whether the show is southern gospel or gospel rap or anything in between.  Non-Christians are looking for churches that blow them away with a genuine movement of the Spirit of God when they come together to worship.    

Jesus said, “And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” (John 12:32)  During the season of Lent we remember the truth of this statement.  Jesus was lifted up on a cross and, amazingly, for two thousand years people have been drawn to him.

This is what churches are called to do in our worship services.  I think our church is simply trying to find our place in this long and time honored tradition of exalting Jesus.  I guess we’ll see if this is the way forward for us.  Either way, I’m really proud of our people for seeking God’s will and trying to follow his leadership.

Tweeting about Prayer

I've been tweeting about prayer; which seems almost sacrilegious to me, not to mention futile.  With each twitter post I insinuate that I’m actually saying something significant about the ancient, mysterious, majestic, miraculous practice of prayer in 140 characters or less.

Maybe preaching a sermon on prayer is even more sacrilegious and even more futile.  (But I’m still going to try it this Sunday.)  Maybe the further you wade in, the deeper you get until finally you drown in the depths of the unfathomable.  I’m not sure.     

I think it’s worth noting that Jesus taught the disciples how to pray in twitter sized statements.  In Luke’s version it’s a three verse tweet.  (Luke 11:2-4)

In the ancient world (Greek and Jewish) the common practice was to pray very long, complicated prayers.  They thought that quoting lengthy incantations over and over again, just the right way, for a really long time would sort of manipulate God (or the gods) into hearing and answering their prayers.  God (or the gods) would have no choice but capitulate to prayers done correctly.     

Of course we are far too sophisticated to believe such silliness about prayer now.  No modern believer would imagine that they could actually manipulate the creator of the universe by using certain words or phrases; magical incantations that are more about the one praying than the one to whom the prayer is directed. 

Things like being sure we claim the answer to the prayer in Jesus name, and being sure to word the prayer so that it sounds like our faith is not actually quite week, and being sure that we banish satanic forces when we pray, and being sure we plead the power of the blood when we pray.  Stuff like that.

Maybe we should just pay attention to Jesus’ twitter feed.  Maybe prayer is not really that complicated.  Maybe it’s pretty simple.  Maybe the most powerful prayers are 140 characters or less.

Help!

Thank you!

God, I don’t understand!

God, I’m so angry right now!

Praise God!

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.

Feel free to share your favorite twitter length prayer.

God Cares for You

“Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.” I Peter 5:7

Honestly, that seems a little far-fetched to me… doesn’t that seem far-fetched to you?  I mean, think about it!  Think about that crazy claim!  God cares… for you! 

We’re talking about the one responsible for creating a universe so vast, so expansive we simply can’t begin to comprehend it.  Scientists tell us that the “observable” universe is 46 billion light years in radius.  That’s pretty big! 

And yet, according to this ancient writer, the one responsible for the creation of this universe (we refer to this entity as “God”) not only knows of the existence of one human being on one very small planet in one small solar system in one galaxy in that vast universe (which could be one among many), God cares.  God cares for you!

So how could anyone be expected to believe something that unbelievable?  Who would ever, even for one moment, entertain the thought that it could be true?  It just feels so…well…far-fetched! 

But what if it is…true?

This morning I spent some time meditating on that verse.  I sometimes have doubts like everyone else, but the longer I meditated on that verse the more convinced I became that it must be true.  This morning it kept reverberating through my mind (and some part of my being that is capable of knowing better than my mind).  The audacious thing this writer claimed simply could not possibly be untrue! 

Think about it!  It’s just too beautiful to not be true!

If the universe came into existence through the intentional creative work of an entity we call God, and if that God envisioned “human beings” and possessed the mind and heart to make that dream a reality, then would it not be impossible for that God, with that mind and heart, to not care about every single one of those human beings?

Think about it!  It’s just too beautiful to not be true!  God is just too beautiful for it to not be true!

So here we are, 2000 years after Peter wrote these words and I’m inviting you to embrace the possibility that it must be true.

For a few moments let this thought sink deep into your spiritual psyche.  God cares for you!  Then, in the cosmic wake of such a beautiful thought cast your anxiety on him.  Go ahead.  You can do it.  Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.